Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 1131: Chapter 1130: Discussion About the Starry Sky

The twilight is arriving, and the glow of the distant sunset has gradually retreated into the mountains, leaving only some dark red afterglow illuminating a small patch of sky in the direction where the giant sun sets. Meanwhile, the vast dark blue night sky is spreading from another direction, with stars gradually emerging in that deep night, becoming ever more apparent in the dark blue that mortals have gazed upon for hundreds of years.

How much splendid imagination and pastoral-like fairytale do those twinkling points in the night sky carry for mortals? Perhaps even the most erudite scholars of the Silver Empire cannot recount them all. The stars hang high in the sky, suspended in realms that mortals cannot touch. Their distant separation and ancient, unchanged luminosity carry an almost divine significance for those bound by gravity to the earth. Thus, countless divine-like tales have unfolded around the stars since ancient times, taking root in the hearts of mortals.

However, these stories describing the starry sky actually have nothing to do with the real, vast universe stars.

Amon and Enya have both personally confirmed — there is no kingdom of gods above the stars. The kingdom is merely an alien space established by mortal thoughts, and countless stories pointing to the starry sky are just layers of splendid shells. Mortals have never truly touched this universe outside the shell, nor have they prepared to do so.

Yet, the vast universe stars won’t stop twinkling because of the indifference of mortals — they are ultimately there, the endless movement of all things in the sea of stars has now finally made a voice cross the distance of the stars. Whether the various races on this land are prepared or not, this voice has arrived.

Of course, all this remains unverified, but at least for Gawain personally... he believes this voice is very likely pointing to the stars.

After all, on this planet, there have already been visitors from the starry sky like the sea demons. In the records of the Dragonkin, there even appeared the ancient Voyager fleets and the Alien Allied Forces who embarked on the expedition journey together with the fleets — so he is willing to believe that there are other intelligent beings among the distant stars. They might just have opened their eyes to look up at the sky, and at this moment are sharing this world with the mortals of Loren.

The evening breeze swept past the treetop of Sorin, whistling over the monitoring antenna, while the giant Magic Web Nexus in the distance and the nearby monitoring antenna hummed together in a low sound. Queen Belsetia suddenly awakened from her deep thought and spoke: "Regarding the stars, the astrologers have always had a vision beyond ordinary people. Since the Gondor era, human Master Mages have succeeded in measuring the distance between our planet, the Sun, and ’Ao’, and determined that the stars twinkling in the universe are high-energy celestial bodies similar to ’Ao’. Around the same time, silver elf scholars proposed a conjecture, believing our ’Sun’ is actually a high-energy celestial body similar to ’Ao’, but it is gentler, not undergoing intense burning..."

"I remember this. When I was a knight apprentice, my mentor brought a book from the city, recording the human Master Mage and Elven Mage holding a conference, and the debate on stars that took place at the meeting," Gawain nodded, "The scholars believed it was precisely because of the sun’s mildness that we could survive on this planet, while the excessive energy radiation of ’Ao’ would destroy any ecosystem approaching it... based on this, a Master Mage from Gondor once hypothesized that if there existed celestial bodies in the universe similar to our sun without intense burning and having an appropriate energy emission level, and similar solid satellites in suitable orbits, such environments might give birth to alien life."

"In that era, no one knew the origins of the sea demons, no one knew those mysterious creatures living in the deep-sea actually came from the universe — even until today, very few people worldwide know this, this is still due to certain popularization efforts on the Cecil side," Beltira said with a hint of emotion, "But it was during such times that the top scholars of the Mortal Nations had already set their sights on the stars, even began to speculate on what those distant worlds might look like."

"But before they discovered more, the chaotic wave destroyed the powerful Gondor Empire, and to mend the enormous wounds left by the chaotic wave on this world, even the Silver Empire was dragged into a vortex lasting several centuries, with all development stalling or even regressing by several hundred years," Queen Belsetia said softly, with the sound of leaves turning in the wind coming from afar, "Thinking back now, it was truly a glorious yet ignorant era, our top had explored so far towards the deepest truths of the world, yet the main body of society remained stagnant. With the outbreak of the chaotic wave, from the highest mages to the lowest civilians of the Gondor Empire, all turned to ashes in an instant — we were entirely unaware of the dangers of this world."

"I remember you had precisely described this situation," Beltira suddenly looked at Gawain, "Severe disconnection of knowledge between the top and bottom, inability to form any linkage between cutting-edge technology and social productivity... how did you say it?"

"The knowledge structures of the top and bottom completely lose continuity, the cutting-edge technology can’t translate into productive power for the entire society, leading to severe development imbalance, severely weakening the resilience and recoverability of civilization when world-class disasters erupt, the few upper elites can’t protect the entire civilization body, even lacking the power to protect themselves, even the few surviving social entities can’t rebuild society due to knowledge fragmentation, thus eventually causing the rapid downfall of entire civilization— this was how the Gondor Empire came to an end," Gawain casually talked about the theories he had summarized back then, then unexpectedly glanced at Beltira, "Have you read those things I wrote?"

"...I occasionally take a look," Beltira seemed somewhat unnatural while saying, "At least it helps me summarize how the Oblivion Association came to an end."

"...Anyway, reading more books is always beneficial," Gawain touched the tip of his nose and sighed, "Ah, unfortunately, there are still many countries following such an old path to this day..."

"After all, for the order crafted by Transcendents, concentrating all knowledge and wealth in one point is the simplest and most prudent choice," Queen Belsetia chuckled, shaking her head, "Fortunately, Anzu has already risen from the ashes, Typhon instituted reforms even earlier, and the Silver Empire... those councilors have become much clearer over the years."

Gawain didn’t respond for a moment, just staring absentmindedly into the distance, watching the edges of the Sorin Giant Tree’s canopy slowly tinged with silver by starlight. After a moment, he suddenly said: "From a certain perspective, that chaotic wave in Gundor back then... might have instead saved the lives of every mortal in the entire world."

Beltira was momentarily stunned and instinctively asked: "Why do you say that?"

"Before the outbreak of the chaotic wave, Gondor and the Silver Empire were already on the brink of exploring the stars, the mages had theoretically analyzed too much knowledge about the stars — just not taking that substantive step," Gawain furrowed his brow, his voice steady and thought-provoking under the night sky, "And once that step is taken, the greatest ’veil’ would be lifted in mortals’ cognition of this world, leading to the ceremonial ’Final Defiance’ occurring prematurely, and at that time mortals..."

Gawain didn’t continue, but Queen Belsetia already felt a chill, at this moment the night wind had stopped, the sound of leaves trembling deep in the canopy of the Sorin Giant Tree came over, and Beltira was the first to break the silence: "So if the chaotic wave hadn’t erupted back then, the scholars of Gondor or Silver Empire would likely attempt to explore the stars... what happened to the Dragonkin a hundred thousand years ago would befall us!"

Gawain slowly nodded, his voice becoming exceptionally deep: "But we might not have the Dragonkin’s luck in surviving the threshold of annihilation from the gods’ fusion and timely finding an opportunity to bow their heads and survive."

"So was the chaotic wave back then actually saving the entire mortal civilization from a macro perspective?" Queen Belsetia widened her eyes, "It sacrificed the Gondor Empire, but spared all the Mortal Nations except Gondor Empire, is that what you mean?"

"Thinking this way makes it seem like the chaotic wave was a meticulously planned action. It’s best not to make such assumptions in the absence of evidence," Gawain immediately shook his head, "Besides, even if it is the ’work’ of some entity, we’re destined not to get an answer—such an ’action’ can only be carried out by a god, and we have no way of asking the gods what’s going on."

Here he paused for a moment, saying in a somewhat strange tone, "At least for now, there’s no way..."

As he spoke, he was secretly calculating in his mind, thinking that although this matter seemed impossible to find out, perhaps he could try to ask Enya about the situation after returning... Despite the retired Dragon God not being able to casually share everything, at least compared to her time in office, her freedom of speech is now much higher, and some things can be directly asked.

Beltira didn’t know what Gawain was thinking during those few seconds of silence; she just curiously asked, "So are we considered ’prepared’ now?"

"...Nobody knows, not even I," Gawain could have used his "Outland Wanderer" identity to be enigmatic here, but looking at Beltira’s now alienated figure, he chose to speak frankly, "I’ve said before that when it comes to divine disasters, many things can’t have an exact ’variable.’ We cannot predict the madness threshold of the gods, nor can we calculate precisely how far mortals need to prepare for the ’Final Defiance’... All we can do is patch up the gaps as best as we can in our development, so when ’that day’ arrives, our survival chances would be just a bit higher."

"Those don’t sound like words a fearsome ’Outland Wanderer’ would say," Queen Belsetia suddenly remarked, "But hearing you say that, I actually felt a little more at ease."

Gawain smiled but didn’t respond, while Beltira, after pondering for a moment, brought the topic back to the "signal": "Do you think... if the signal indeed came from the Frost Throne Constellation, what kind of civilization would its sender be? I mean... how threatening would it be?"

"That’s hard to determine," Gawain frowned, "From a logical perspective, if they have the ability to send signals across such vast distances to our planet, it implies they possess more advanced technology than us, at least more advanced communication and detection technology. But before we decode those signals’ transmission methods and advance our understanding of the stars, no one can be sure if those ’senders’ simply relied on powerful technology or if there were coincidental environmental factors. Additionally, communication and detection technology is just one of many technologies, and it cannot be used to judge the senders’ technical prowess in other areas."

"To take an extreme example, perhaps this way of communicating across the starry sky is so simple it’s unbelievable, that even a primitive person holding a stick could project their ideas onto distant stars, and it’s just that we haven’t discovered this simple principle..."

Queen Belsetia thought for a moment and couldn’t help but laugh, "That’s too extreme an example."

"An example is just an example," Gawain waved his hand, "I just don’t want you all to be too tense. Besides, I need to correct or rather, inform you, although the signal appeared after the main antenna pointed at the Frost Throne, it doesn’t necessarily mean it came from the ’Frost Throne.’"

"The Frost Throne is merely a constellation, and the celestial bodies that constitute it are likely distributed across a very vast sky, and in a three-dimensional distribution. The celestial body sending the signal can only be said to be in the ’direction of the Frost Throne,’ but where exactly it comes from... requires our astrologers to work hard to calculate. Saying the signal is from the Frost Throne is astronomically incorrect."

Listening to Gawain, Beltira couldn’t help but rub her forehead, while Queen Belsetia whispered softly, "It’s been so many years since I’ve heard Uncle Gawain’s lectures..."

Gawain: "..."

Feeling somewhat amused and helpless, but as a gust of night wind swept over the treetops, his mood gradually relaxed a bit.

"Perhaps we’re too on edge," he said, "It’s just a voice that suddenly visited our world, and from the abundance of mathematical concepts it carries, it seems more like a self-introducing ’greeting,’ expressing to another intelligent species in this vast, dark universe that it, too, is a community of communicable intelligent beings—I know this idea seems overly optimistic, but until we figure out what the symbols at the end of that message mean, everyone can remain a bit optimistic."

"Alright then, I indeed prefer an optimistic attitude," Queen Belsetia said with a breath of relief, thinking as she spoke, "I’ll also take those symbols back for the scholars at the Sacred Stars Temple to look at. The elves are no less talented in cryptography and linguistics than humans, and perhaps there are parts of our ancient records that might be helpful... You wouldn’t mind if the silver elves participated in this matter, would you?"

"Of course not," Gawain immediately said, "As I’ve mentioned from the beginning—this is a significant matter for all mortals. I plan to make this project public within the entire alliance."

His tone was earnest, but he didn’t reveal everything he was thinking.

Currently, all the technology of the listening system is in the hands of the Cecil Clan, and the core secrets of the main antenna array certainly won’t be shared. Moreover, even if other countries got hold of the technology, they probably wouldn’t be able to recreate such an advanced Mage device—under the premise that the only listening channel is completely monopolized by the Cecil Clan, publicly announcing the project to the world essentially means that each nation would contribute their experts in cryptography, linguistics, and astrology, exchanging a spot for "participation" with a large number of technical personnel.

But such matters, even if all participants can see through them, wouldn’t be openly discussed.