Read Novel Full Chapter 511: The Station of a Demigod Cannot See the Ultimate Form of Wisdom
Chapter 511: The Station of a Demigod Cannot See the Ultimate Form of Wisdom
A tiny city clustered around the great tree, home to Spirits of Old Things both large and small. From within, the whole place resembled a jungle in the mortal world.
No one saw that the dome overhead had been pieced together from panes of glass. Beyond them, invisible to all, lay the cold, dim emptiness of the void.
Six figures had been standing beside the stream outside the imp city. Then two more arrived.
The six mythical witch doctors immediately stepped aside and turned to the two sovereign deities, one tall and one short.
"Lady Shelly and Lady Hila are here too."
Knowing that the witch doctors were holding their trial for the new witch doctors of the Second Era today, Hila had brought Shelly along to watch.
Shelly pushed straight to the front and claimed the best seat.
"Hila said there's something fun to watch today."
Standing beside her, Hila said, "This is a momentous day for the witch doctors. They will choose those who shall inherit their power and their will in the future."
The eight divine beings watched the five children from the Medical Fortress while imps of every kind took the stage one after another.There was the powder box imp, who loved dressing herself up. The pocket watch imp, utterly convinced he was a general. The quill pen imp, who wrote letters for others.
Before their eyes, five little bone figures threw first the City of Old Things and then the entire Witch Doctor Kingdom into an uproar. At last, the imps gave the children their recognition, and the five climbed to the Gate of the Divine Kingdom to meet the golden radiance falling from above.
Dawn broke.
Dawn in the botanical garden came from the thin layer of Rainbow Light Shifting Clay coating the glass dome. Like a film, it shifted from absorbing light to giving it off.
That thin film adjusted the color and brightness of the light, giving morning, noon, and dusk each a character of its own, as though a real sun rose and set in the sky overhead.
Yet anyone standing beneath it could still feel the difference.
Sunlight turned the City of Old Things dreamlike and lovely as the children who had undergone the trial left the stage one by one.
Hila was delighted. She loved an atmosphere like this.
Muddled though every imp appeared, none of them was stupid. The memories they inherited allowed them to see into a person's heart better than most.
"How delightful!"
"This truly is an intriguing trial."
The witch doctors offered another view.
"We do not believe it is a trial at all. They are coming to know one another, and that very process is the point."
Hila smiled.
"To know others, and to know oneself. Is that not the trial of every life?"
Shelly watched intently as the noisy, dreamlike night in the City of Old Things drew to a close, and eagerness stirred within her.
All at once, she turned to Hila and spoke up loudly.
"Hila, I want to go in too!"
"I want to choose an imp of my own!"
Then her gaze shifted to the witch doctors. She needed no words. A single look told them she wanted to be transformed and sent inside so she could chase imps through the City of Old Things just as the little bone figures had.
Of course, the imps had chased the little bone figures. Shelly intended to reverse the arrangement.
The witch doctors were speechless. Had my lady not already carried off an entire set of cup and tea bowl imps to keep at home?
Even now, the City of Old Things still whispered of those pitiful imps who had met a cruel fate and vanished.
Hila told her, "Every imp in there knows you already. If you go in now, they will all run away in terror, and this will become an empty city."
Only then did Shelly abandon the idea.
Besides, finding stray little imps out here was entertaining enough.
Hila turned to the witch doctors.
"Another step forward, then?"
"You have created an extraordinary race wholly new to this world, and gained an extraordinary profession wholly your own."
"What do you intend for the next step?"
The witch doctors answered at once, "We have not yet settled upon it."
The six witch doctors exchanged a look.
"For now, we mean to complete the divine kingdom, create more witch doctors in the mortal world, and establish more witch doctor academies."
"As for any greater goal..."
After a pause, the witch doctors shook their heads one after another.
"Perhaps it is still too soon."
Hila nodded.
"We are returning now in any case. Come with me and see God!"
Hila and Shelly led the witch doctors into the flower valley, where silver flower cups bloomed everywhere. Amid that sea of blossoms, the colorful hot air balloon boat lay moored.
Shelly had only just reached out to fling open the door.
Before she could, the plump mythology spirit Vellen opened it first. Standing stiffly in the doorway, he waved with the utmost respect to welcome Shelly and Hila.
Shelly's hand remained suspended in midair, and the moment turned awkward.
"Mmm~"
Shelly fixed Vellen with a stare. Only when he began wondering whether to kneel and beg for mercy did she finally speak.
"If you're going to open the door, you've got to be quicker."
"Don't wait until I've already raised my hand."
Terrified, Vellen nodded repeatedly and promised to do better next time.
Shelly bounced over to the table, sat down, and called, "I'm thirsty!"
A legged cup came trotting over at once, each step careful for fear of sloshing the milk tea inside it over the rim.
Grabbing the cup, Shelly began drinking her milk tea.
Slurp, slurp!
As Shelly drank, a cry seemed to rise from the depths of the cup imp's soul.
"Yaaah!"
It sounded as though some dreadful fiend were sucking out the poor cup imp's brains.
When she finished, Shelly smacked her lips and licked the syrup from them.
"That's barely anything!"
"I want more!"
The poor cup imp fled to the far end, where the teapot imp filled it to the brim. Once full, it ran back on its little legs.
Such was Shelly's life now. When she wanted a drink, the cup delivered itself. When she wanted a snack, plates and bowls came crawling over.
The cups, teapots, and bowls were, of course, old-thing imps who had lately wandered alone beyond the City of Old Things and been kindly taken in by the Supreme Divine Being, Lady Shelly.
Shelly prepared for another round of slurping and lip-smacking, each sound uncommonly loud.
Nearby, the Creator finally set down the antique bottle he had been turning in his hands.
"Try not to make noise when you drink."
Puzzlement in her eyes, Shelly turned to God Yinsai.
She considered the question. Had she made a sound just now?
Apparently, she could not remember.
"Oh!"
The Creator then turned to the witch doctors.
The mythical witch doctors, however, bowed their heads in perfect unison. Meeting the Creator's eyes was unthinkable. They did not dare look even at his shadow.
God Yinsai asked the witch doctors, "Why did you create the imps and the new witch doctors? Was there some ideal behind it, some unfinished purpose you still wished to fulfill?"
The witch doctors told the Creator, "We miss our days in the Witch Doctor Cottage. We miss the days we spent with our trilobite students. We miss the journeys on which we studied and explored the mysteries of life together."
"We wish to see witch doctors return to this world, and more witch doctor academies born into it."
Yin Shen looked upon the six mythical witch doctors, his gaze seeming to pierce the deepest longing in their hearts.
"Is that truly all?"
After some hesitation, the witch doctors confessed, "We also wish to find an answer."
Yin Shen remained silent and waited for them to speak that answer aloud.
At last, the witch doctors gathered their courage and spoke.
"What is a truly perfect life of wisdom?"
Even as they spoke, the witch doctors framed the words as a question.
It was the doubt buried in their hearts, and the answer they longed to know.
"O Great Creator, when You created us, You charged us with finding a way for life ability to gain wisdom. Yet as we walked the road of that mission, we began to question it as well."
"Witch doctors have always repaired life, seeking to restore damaged living things to their original forms. Yet we can do more than repair. We can make a life more perfect than it was."
"For a time, we lost ourselves in the search for perfect life."
"We proposed the idea of the perfect life form. We believed that one perfect form existed in this world, the final form of all life, and that every other form of life was flawed."
"If we could find that perfect life form, we believed we could perfect every life in the world, cure every illness and defect, and uncover life's ultimate mystery."
"We never imagined that this belief would take hold of our student Lester and lead him astray in pursuit of a so-called cure-all elixir."
Sorrow overtook the witch doctors at this point, Witch Doctor Left Hand most of all.
Lester had been the student closest to her.
"Afterward, we followed You in Your greatness across time itself."
"We watched life evolve. We watched one era succeed another. We watched every living thing evolve, each pursuing its own limit and its own end."
"Some of our beliefs changed. We began to wonder whether the road we once pursued had been wrong. Among the countless paths by which mortal species evolve, does a perfect life truly exist?"
"What we call perfection, seen from another angle, might also be called a flaw."
"Perhaps we cannot see what perfect life might be along another road. Perhaps we do not even know whether life contains any such thing as perfection."
At this point, the witch doctors knelt one after another.
They raised their heads slightly toward the afterglow the Eternal Star cast upon the world, as though hoping to glimpse once more the outline of that figure who stood above time and the universe alike.
Their belief in perfect life had begun there.
If anything in the world deserved to be called perfect, surely it was the great being before them.
In time, however, they came to understand that some things lay beyond pursuit. Like the universe, like time, there were those fated never to see where such things ended.
The witch doctors spoke as one.
"But, O Great God Yinsai!"
"Might we at least take a look?"
"The final form of the wisdom seeds. The form beyond the very end."
"What shall it be like!"
"When wisdom reaches its true end, in what form shall we appear within this world?"
"We were born into this world with wisdom. Without end, we press forward and grow stronger. Without end, we pursue power and perfection. To what purpose do we do it all?"
"We wish to see."
Yin Shen studied them.
"And if, at the very end, you discover that the answer has no meaning at all?"
The witch doctors replied, "To behold the answer has itself become our meaning, whether that answer is right or wrong, O God Yinsai!"
"We do not care what the answer is. We only want to see it."
"It is like the fading of a life, like the death of any person."
"Death itself has no meaning. Yet the journey from birth to death, the rise and fall of a person's life, all they loved and hated and could not relinquish, bestows meaning upon death."
Turning toward Hila and Shelly, Yin Shen said, "From the moment wisdom is born, it contemplates the purpose of its existence and seeks the meaning of life."
"Mortals and divine beings alike walk this road."
"Thus may they forever blaze with a dazzling light, a light that surpasses all things."
The Creator's voice lingered, carrying something like a sigh.
"It is wondrous, and it is enviable."
As Hila regarded the witch doctors, her old understanding of them seemed to break apart.
They were not divine creations capable only of obeying a mission. They were not machine-like servants fit only to follow the Supreme Divine Being. They were beings who had explored the secrets of life since the primordial age.
Smiling, Hila offered them her heartfelt blessing.
"I am truly happy for you."
Still drinking her milk tea, Shelly made a face at Yin Shen.
"I'm different! I'm perfectly happy doing nothing at all."
Yin Shen slowly shook his head.
"But the final form of the wisdom seeds lies far beyond anything one of demigod station can hope to behold."
The witch doctors knew as much. The station of a true god lay far beyond their reach.
Nor could mythical artifacts pursue the power of the Four Sovereign Authorities. That barred them from the four Wisdom Fruits already born.
Yin Shen gazed out the window. Something seemed to be emerging in the Star Realm high above.
"Beyond the Four Sovereign Authorities lies one further road, leading straight to the Source of Wisdom."
"The Race Covenant is a road beyond the Four Sovereign Authorities. The true god of the Race Covenant is another path to true divinity."
"Swear the oath. Condense a Wisdom Fruit from the power of a race. Then establish a mortal divine system and bring that fruit to ripeness."
Others had already guessed that such a road existed, that somewhere beyond the four strongest authorities lay a path to the source.
Long ago, the Race Covenant had given Xiao a glimpse of the power leading directly to the Source of Wisdom. Beyond the Four Sovereign Authorities, it alone could touch the Crown of Wisdom.
The question was how a Race Covenant could be turned into power, and how the source of wisdom, the root divine tree representing every wisdom seed, could be made to bear new fruit.
No one knew. No one had ever tried.
Looking back at them, Yin Shen asked, "Do you wish to become true gods by this road?"
As the words fell, the Floating Island drifting through the Star Realm turned toward the far side of the earth and encountered another, more distant existence.
A shaft of radiance pierced the film of light above the Mythic Domain of the Witch Doctor Kingdom and fell upon the island.
The moon had come.
The sky had only ever held one moon, yet when it appeared before the windows of the God's Mount, it changed.
Without warning, the moon split apart.
One became two.
The light of God's Moon poured over the Floating Island, silver radiance streaming down until it swallowed everything.
Elsewhere, the children's consciousnesses left the Star Realm and returned to the Oracle Kingdom.
Dawn had only just reached the Oracle Kingdom. Sunlight slipped through the attic window of the Medical Fortress and spilled across the empty room.
One after another, the children woke as though from a wonderful dream.
Their memories felt real, yet the storeroom around them made everything seem illusory.
It had all been nothing more than a strange dream in the attic of the Medical Fortress.
The bald boy spoke first.
"I just had this dream where we ran off to a world full of living forks and spoons and bottles!"
Little Matafus jumped to her feet and turned to the boy beside her.
"The imp city? I dreamed about it too!"
The plump boy had not recovered from the fright.
"I dreamed a whole mob of forks and spoons and a pocket watch chased us. I was scared half to death!"
The thin, short-haired boy said, "I dreamed I caught a ring imp."
The children exchanged looks. If they had all shared the same dream, then surely it had never been a dream at all.
"That's right, I was the one chasing you."
"You rotten little thing, you even threatened to scratch my gem."
"I'm the prettiest!"
Just then, the imps emerged one after another, glowing within the children's bodies.
They had already become part of the newborn witch doctor apprentices, joined with their very bodies.
Some had melted into their hearts, some into their wings, and some into their skin and organs.
In some wondrous fashion, the imps now shared the children's bodies.
Little Matafus glanced behind her. Her small, sweet wings had transformed into a long white pair.
Beneath the feathers on her back lay a tattoo of an open book with a Globe at its center.
Deeply mysterious, the tattoo held the eye with startling force.
At that moment, the book shone from within Matafus and allowed her to see herself.
"Grandpa Ose?"
The book imp answered in a somewhat aged voice, "I'm not your grandfather. I'm only Ose's book."
Loss stabbed through little Matafus. Her great-grandfather had not returned to life after all.
"Oh."
The book imp continued, "But what Ose hoped for you is what I hope for you too."
"Matafus, can you finish what Ose left undone?"
Little Matafus clasped her hands, nervous and uncertain.
"I'll try my very hardest."
Shrieks suddenly erupted from the other children. They too had discovered the changes in their bodies.
"My sickness is gone!" The bald boy pulled off his hood. The strange scaly rash and the sores covering him had vanished. A quill-shaped shadow swept over his skin again and again, blotting out every last patch of the rash.
"Mine's gone too!" The plump boy watched his swollen, vein-laced belly slowly return to normal. Within it, the phantom of a pocket watch turned circle after circle, as though sweeping every worm from his stomach.
"There isn't even a scar!" A layer of white powder spread over the pigtailed girl's skin, healing every wound it touched bit by bit.
At last, the white dust gathered in the air and formed a woman's face.
"Look, you're beautiful now."
The pigtailed girl stared.
"It's you, the powder box imp!"
Though the imp had grown much smaller, the pigtailed girl felt no less close to her.
The short-haired boy gazed at the ring within his heart. All the blood in his body streamed endlessly through its gem, and at last a hint of color returned to his withered frame and pale face.
"We really did receive a divine being's blessing."
The children asked the imps, "How did you get inside our bodies?"
The imps explained, "At first, there's no other way. We've taken the place of the damaged parts of your bodies, and that's how we cured your sicknesses."
"But you aren't truly cured. You're only borrowing our power. As soon as we leave, your sicknesses will come right back."
"So you've got to study and learn how to use our power."
"Once you can use our power yourselves and cure your sicknesses for good, you'll be real witch doctors."
"Then we'll be able to come out, and we'll help you become even better witch doctors!"
The newborn witch doctor apprentices did not fully understand, yet an immediate sense of urgency seized them.
At that moment, urgent shouts broke out beyond the room.
"Where are they? How did they all disappear?"
"Why is the room empty?"
"Quick, go find them!"
"You lot, hurry up and find them!"
When the children reappeared, the sight struck everyone dumb, all the physicians of the Medical Fortress who had been searching for them and every one of the children's families, without exception.
Every incurable illness had vanished.
The child born deformed now bore wings like a sky messenger's. Those who had been written off as nearly dead looked healthier than ordinary people.
"How is that possible?"
"What's going on?"
"How did they do this?"
The physicians found it impossible to believe. Not even an ordinary sky messenger could have done such a thing.
The children demonstrated a witch doctor's power to their families and told them of their journey to the kingdom of a divine being.
There, they had sealed contracts with strange living beings and earned a divine being's recognition.
"We're extraordinary ones!"
"That's right, we're witch doctors!"
"A divine being blessed us!"
The witch doctors' appearance caused an uproar.
News reached the Sacred Mountain of Light at once. An unknown divine being had become the stuff of legend. A wholly new extraordinary profession had been born.
Nothing could have been more shocking or drawn more attention.
Even so, no one dared question the divine or covet the power of these newly emerged holders of an extraordinary profession.
No race understood the cost of failing to fear the divine beings better than the winged people.
Least of all when the imps themselves had revealed that the gods of the witch doctors numbered six in all.
The Sacred Mountain of Light
High on the mountain stood two eight-winged Kings of the Sky Messengers. They looked at a four-winged sky messenger kneeling before them, and one asked a question.
"Mythical witch doctors?"
Even Duma had never heard of them, nor did they appear to be gods of Ruhe Beast Island.
"Six mythical beings. Six..."
Yet the number brought something to the surface of Duma's mind at once.
She suddenly remembered Lomier's report upon his return. A strange domain had appeared over the sea, a spectacle visible above the Star Night Mountain Range.
Lomier had come within a breath of death beneath the power of the Child of the Star of Death. Then six mythical shadows appeared together and saved him, sending him racing toward the coast and forbidding him to look back.
Afterward, the star of death rose beyond the high heavens, and wave after wave of meteors rained upon Ruhe Beast Island.
Lomier had stood before Duma and told her.
"Lady Duma!"
"Yes. Ray told me they are the mythical witch doctors, beings who attend the Supreme Divine Being."
"Ray said they also have a student, the God-Created Man, Stuen, the oldest mythology in the mortal world."
"It was his birth that gave every later mythology and apostle the power to change into God's Form by imitating and borrowing his power."
Duma, King of the Sky Messengers, considered the answer.
"Then the demon spirits know of them."
The demon spirits might indeed know something. Whoever possessed such knowledge, however, was no ordinary demon spirit.
As it happened, one such demon spirit was passing through the Sacred Mountain of Light.
An ancient metal puppet in the form of a woman, she drove a mobile shop and had stopped at the sky messengers' sacred mountain to hawk her wares. She hoped to earn magic gold coins and extraordinary materials, return to Magic Tool City, and upgrade her shop.
Ancient metal puppet demon spirits were nothing like ordinary demon spirit puppets. Each had been transformed directly from one of the People of the Abyss in the primordial age, although every death and rebirth produced a wholly new life.
Whenever they awakened, however, they traveled to the Yinsai Temple deep within the Demon Spirit Pyramid. There they received their inheritance anew and had audience with the God of Demon Spirits, Elena.
A few lingering images of old memories would return to them there, revealing a portion of the primordial age's secrets.
The female ancient metal puppet demon spirit considered Duma's question for a while. At last, she remembered a record about the witch doctors.
"Witch doctors!"
"You mean those ancient beings from the primordial age?"
Duma asked her, "You have heard of them?"
The mobile shop's owner replied, "I've never met them. I've only read about them."
"It was in some historical record about Anhofus of the Samo family, I think."
"There are six witch doctors. Legend says they came to the mortal world on a mission from the Creator. If what you're telling me is true, this is only the second time they've truly set foot in the mortal world."
"Plenty happened the last time they came here."
"I've heard their divine robes bear images of the divine, and that they're the origin of all mortal mythology."
"Anhofus gained his insight from seeing them. That's how he came to create the artificial god."
"They're also the ones who raised Stuen, the oldest and strongest mythology of all."
"The last time they entered the mortal world, they brought the power of mythology with them. In a sense, every power and every conflict since has a thousand tangled threads tying it back to them."
The mobile shop's owner told Duma and Lomier much more. The witch doctors' ancient history and origins left them shaken beyond words.
Never before had Lomier heard the tale of Anhofus and the artificial god.
"An artificial god?"
The King of the Sky Messengers pondered what she had heard.
"Divine robes inscribed with the secrets of mythology. The origin of every mythology in the mortal world?"
Through the demon spirits, the news soon spread to Ruhe Beast Island as well.
Word of the witch doctors' return as an extraordinary profession swiftly reached the gods of the mortal world.
The Blood Kingdom of the Deep Sea
Beneath the Genealogy Chart of the Creator Gods stood the Scarlet Goddess, Vivien. Her thoughts turned to her friend and countryman Lester, who, like her, had come from Cross City.
"The witch doctors have entered the mortal world once more?"
"What might that mean?"
The Scarlet Goddess, Vivien, did not know what had brought the witch doctors back this time. Their appearance called up memories of Lester and Stuen, of Cross City and the neighbors who had lined its streets.
Scenes from long-vanished days rose one after another, ending with the image of a mythical shadow racing toward the vault of the sky.
The shadow of the young man who had lost everything in his pursuit of medicine separated from the God-Created Man and spoke to her.
"I'm sorry."
She knew the apology was not hers alone. He was apologizing to everyone in Cross City.
By then, however, only she and Anli remained of Cross City.
Sky Miracle Garden
Iva drew a letter from the Rainbow Tree. After reading it, he looked up at the sky.
No one understood better than he what the witch doctors' return to the mortal world meant. No longer were they tools burdened by a mission. They had become mythologies of the mortal world.
"Then they too have found a meaning of their own?"