Chapter 817 — The Line of Reality

Mental contamination cuts both ways.

At least that was how Gao Yang saw it.

Drawing on the experimental reference provided by the Dreamer, and on the technical records left behind by the Defiant, Gao Yang had by now all but confirmed that the birth of a god was bound up with the faith of mortals—or, to put it more precisely, the collective currents of mortal thought projected into some deep dimension of this world, giving rise to a god. And if that model held, then the process of dealing with a god face to face was in truth a process of staring each other down until one's sanity bled away—that is, of mutual contamination.

A god's knowledge would contaminate, unimpeded, any mind that established a link with it (Gao Yang still had no idea how to block such a link), while conversely, those minds linked to a god must surely exert a reverse influence as well. But one thing was plain: the mind of an ordinary man could not remotely compare with the mind of a god, so this contest of sanity became nothing but one-sided erosion.

But what if there were a mind untouched by a god's knowledge—a mind that also carried a vast archive of memory—and it "interfaced" with a god?

The Upper Narrator, vast as a mountain, split apart; the quartered torso slowly toppled. Its last remnants of power still struggled to hold the body together, but even that faded swiftly as the divine patterns dimmed. Gao Yang stood quietly in place, watching it all while ceaselessly suppressing and dissolving the contamination eroding him.

The erosion he had suffered was severe—far more severe than it appeared on the surface. This time he had not faced a god's flesh sealed within a crystal cube, nor the stitched corpse of a false god manufactured by biotechnological means. The Upper Narrator was a true, whole, living god; even if it was weak, it possessed a special station. To pit his contamination against its own had been a rather reckless move.

But it was the only way Gao Yang could think of.

Blade and sword could not kill the Upper Narrator; no height of combat skill could contend with a nightmare itself. To destroy a formless, immaterial god, only a force equally formless and immaterial would serve. In the battle before this, he had fought Duvalt with a longsword—but that had been nothing more than a blind on both sides, each concealing his own mental contamination.

Gao Yang looked down at his hands and saw that his arms had begun to gradually return to human form. Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief.

The Upper Narrator was a young and inexperienced god—that was Gao Yang's sole advantage. Had it been one of those gods in the real world who had existed for countless ages... best not to attempt anything so reckless again.

Deep in the darkness, beside the spiderweb, the birdcage of unknown material soundlessly came apart. Selina felt the invisible force压制—the unseen pressure restraining her power—truly begin to disperse. Without pausing to check her own condition, she hurried to Gao Yang's side. Only when she saw him little by little recovering his human form did she secretly let out a breath.

"Is it over?" She looked at Gao Yang, then at the fallen Upper Narrator, and asked in disbelief.

Gao Yang gave no answer; instead he fixed his eyes on the enormous spider crouched at the center of the web. He was asking himself the same thing—was it really over? Just like that?

A thread of doubt rose in his mind, trailing wariness behind it. Gao Yang's expression suddenly turned grave: "Wait—I'm afraid it's not over yet!"

He stared hard at the spider god that seemed already to have lost all breath, his words tumbling out fast: "Duvalt called himself the Upper Narrator's 'human nature'... then where is the corresponding 'divine nature'?! And those 'cocoons' we saw the Upper Narrator protecting—where are they?!"

Selina jolted as well, as though a part of her consciousness that had been affected and walled off in her mind suddenly began to function again, making her realize the crucial point she had overlooked: "That girl called Naretiel?!"

...

Deep in the Dreamer's underground palace, in the corridor leading to the central region, Semler's voice echoed down the long passage:

"Trouble broke out shortly after the operation began. First the containment zone was contaminated, then the other zones. Many shrine priests who had been perfectly normal suddenly turned into followers of the Upper Narrator—we had no choice but to treat every single person with the utmost vigilance..."

"Understood," Magnan said in his rough voice. "The Upper Narrator... that thing is truly unholy. I only glanced at it once inside the sandbox and nearly didn't make it back! Luckily, though, I helped you find a means of quickly identifying the contaminated..."

"Don't bring up your 'means' again," Yuri cut him off, his face wearing the look of a man recalling something unbearable. "In all my decades I have never uttered such vulgar words. I now strongly suspect you were not expelled from the War God's Church for privately studying heretical texts, but for being driven out on account of your coarse tongue!"

Magnan glared. "And one of the charges they pinned on me back then was indeed exactly that—so what?"

Semler's grim, severe face turned a shade darker than usual. He ignored the conversation behind him, kept his features taut, and walked on.

Yuri sighed as well and said no more.

Finding that no one answered him, Magnan shrugged indifferently and strode forward with heavy steps, taking his place in the middle of the column.

The deep, winding corridor seemed to have no end, stretching all the way toward the palace's central region. The glow of the magic-crystal lamps fell upon the helmets of the spirit knights beside them, gleaming bright.

A faint, half-transparent phantom suddenly swept past the corner of his eye, and Magnan's steps halted of their own accord.

It seemed to be part of some enormous jointed limb, so transparent as to be nearly invisible. It passed through the nearby wall and ceiling, flickered at the edge of Magnan's vision, and quickly withdrew back into the wall.

"Magnan?" Yuri noticed that Magnan had suddenly stopped and wore a grave expression, and at once stopped as well. "What's wrong?"

"Yuri, I think I just saw something flash past," Magnan said solemnly. "Like some kind of limb... a spider's."

Semler at once frowned and looked around, then checked his memory of the moment, and shook his head. "I saw nothing."

Everyone shook their heads—it seemed Magnan alone had seen that fleeting phantom.

An illusion? A mistake? A hallucination brought on by mental fatigue and overwrought nerves?

The thoughts surfaced in the minds of the shrine priests present for less than a second before being dismissed outright. Yuri raised his hand directly; formless magic summoned visible runes, and a halo like a ripple of water spread through the entire corridor—"Mind Detection!"

The other shrine priests and spirit knights acted as well: some activated protective spells, some began scanning the nearby space for unknown mental impressions, and some raised their weapons and formed ranks to protect the comparatively fragile priests at the center of the column.

The Dreamers never spoke of "seeing things," never lightly trusted so-called "nervous hallucinations."

They were experts in the realm of dreams, explorers of the mental world, and already walking the dangerous road of contending with gods. To be vigilant to the point of neurosis was the professional habit of every Dreamer. Someone in the column claimed to have seen something abnormal? Whether it was real or not, throw twenty Mind Detections at it first!

Yet even after every detection spell had been activated, no one saw what Magnan had described, nor sensed any anomalous mental impression in the space around the corridor.

"Nothing at all..." Semler said in a low voice.