Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 1141: Chapter 1140: Second-Type Boundary Breach and Observer Exile

The content that Enya spoke of wasn’t difficult for Gawain to understand, yet after hearing it, he still fell into a long period of contemplation. During this process, some long-pending theories were confirmed, some key points he previously couldn’t grasp were supplemented, and most importantly—he finally confirmed a suspicion he had long ago, but never dared to ascertain.

Gods are a kind of "Closed System," or rather, the premise for the existence of gods within a civilization’s system is the "closure" in its corresponding knowledge domain. When no new cognition is generated in a system, when the members of this system stop trying to seek answers to certain questions from outside and instead direct all interpretations inward, the foundation for the birth of gods takes shape.

Therefore, once this system becomes open and external information can be an "answer" to certain questions within, the gods born from this system will immediately be impacted, rapidly descending into madness under a fatal contradiction.

This is similar to a process where a bug crashes the system or external contamination injected into the system causes a collapse.

"So, when the Final Defiance occurs, the group’s currents of thought do not actually change drastically—because only a few ’Observer’ individuals break free from the system, the information they see cannot immediately act upon the entire population," Gawain slowly ended his contemplation, looking at the golden egg before him and said, "’Currents of thought change’ during the Final Defiance is not a main reason, not even an effective one; the truly effective reason is... the gods themselves are denied."

"From my own experience, it is indeed like that," Enya’s voice said gently, as if discussing something unrelated to herself, "The relationship between currents of thought and gods is extremely close. It’s far more than just ’incubation bed’ and ’product’—in some sense, gods are the materialization and integration of currents of thought—gods are currents of thought. Therefore, as long as a stream of thoughts within the currents touches certain information from outside the system, it is equivalent to the gods encountering this information. And if this information cannot be negated by the system’s logic, then... the system’s collapse is inevitable."

At this point, the voice coming from the golden egg suddenly paused, as if she was piecing together her fragmented memories. Gawain patiently waited a few seconds before he heard Enya’s voice rise again: "...I still remember what happened at that final moment, when the Dragonkin’s ship broke through the atmosphere and entered the area untouched during the Age of Mythology... Even though I could no longer control anything and even my thoughts had completely halted, that feeling still deeply imprinted in my memory through the link between divinity and humanity.

"It was a cold and painful tearing sensation, filled with immense panic from being suddenly thrown from a warm, comfortable environment into an icy, unfamiliar one, like a newborn baby suddenly being separated from the mother’s body and confronted with a perilous external world—my divine aspect had to acknowledge the existence of the stars, admit there was no kingdom beyond the celestial bodies, recognize the vastness of the ’Lands beyond governance’ beyond the planet, understand its own immense power was but a tiny glimmer atop a speck of dust in the universe, concede its utter meaninglessness in the vastness of space... In a very short period, the mythological system built by mortals over millions of years was shattered by the cold, hard realities, rendering the myths untenable, and thus the gods untenable too."

Enya’s voice stopped, and Gawain, sitting across from her, propped his chin with his hand. After a long period of thought, he slowly said, "So, if we view civilization as an ever-evolving system, then as long as this system develops to a certain stage, ’divinity’ is bound to perish—because divinity is inherently closed-loop, it doesn’t align with the system’s evolutionary direction. At most, we can only preserve the human aspect like yours."

"That’s an obvious conclusion," Enya said softly.

"It’s too cruel for the gods," Gawain sighed lightly, "It seems everyone else gets to survive; only the gods must die—don’t you think it’s unfair? Even though your human aspect still ’lives on,’ as a god, you have died..."

Enya was silent for a few seconds before softly saying, "Even gods can die, and that is the greatest fairness."

Gawain was moved and couldn’t help but say, "Although discussing this now might be a bit off-topic, many of our technologies are indeed pursuing immortality for mortals..."

"I know, yet even by the standards of the oldest Silver Empire on the Loren Continent, this current epoch of civilization history extends merely a few tens of thousands of years, and by mortal time scales, these tens of thousands of years can be called eternal—for mortals, immortality pursued isn’t meaningful against an astronomical time scale, there is no true eternal immortality," Enya said solemnly, "Yet conversely, what’s meaningless on an astronomical scale holds meaning before an individual mortal, and that’s why civilization advances... Look up at the sky, look down at the ground, never forget either, only then will civilization have a chance to reach further."

"The relationship between astronomical scales and mortal scales, huh..." Gawain mused for a moment, then suddenly laughed, "We were discussing practical issues like ultimate divine disasters and Final Defiance, but in the end, it seems we’ve delved into philosophy."

He shook his head as he spoke and, after briefly organizing his thoughts, said, "Thus we can conclude, it was the sudden opening of this originally closed-loop system of civilization that caused the ’ultimate divine disaster,’ and this ’opening’ only requires a small but ’certain’ breach, even just one or two individuals within the civilizational group breaking the system lock can achieve the condition... The essence of this process is not ’humans glancing outward,’ but rather ’gods glancing outward’?"

"It can be understood that way. It’s like using a needle to puncture an airbag; the needle may be tiny, but for the airbag at its limit, the entire collapse just requires that small breach."

"Then the theocracy Authority Council’s research institute can finally make a determination," Gawain exhaled softly, "We’ve been contemplating the division between a ’divine disaster’ caused by a single god’s loss of control and the ’ultimate divine disaster’ that leads to the extinction of civilizations. Now it seems... The key to all this is what specifically leads to the collapse of the ’closed-loop system’ of gods.

"Under the condition that the Closed System remains undisturbed, if a large number of individuals within the civilization continuously and extensively change their currents of thought and gradually exceed the system’s critical threshold, the corresponding gods will lose control, and what happens can be termed a ’divine disaster.’ We might call it the ’first type of border crossing.’

"Under the condition that the Closed System is disturbed, if any individual from the civilization—provided they are part of the ’currents of thought’—directly and incontrovertibly encounters information from outside the system, and the internal system logic cannot negate this encounter, then this encounter will lead to the collapse of systems established under closed-loop premises. Since all gods are established under closed-loop premises, uncontrolled behavior at the multilateral goddess level is bound to occur at this stage. We should call this... the ’second type of border crossing.’

"That’s a good summary," Enya’s gentle voice resonated from within the golden egg, "So far, except for those lucky ones snatched away by the Voyagers of the Ancient Era, in all the known histories of this world, more than one civilization has survived the first type of border crossing, but after the second type of border crossing occurred, the only civilization to survive... was Talronde."

Gawain gazed at the golden egg in front of him, after a long pause, he solemnly said, "Indeed, so far."

"I’m glad to see you haven’t been deterred by this cold reality, though I had known from the start that someone like you would never stop before such difficulties," Enya’s voice seemed to carry a smile, mixed with feelings of admiration and solace, "Confirming the margin of the ’second type of border crossing’—will this help with your next plans?"

"It was very enlightening," Gawain nodded immediately, "At least now we can confirm that launching unmanned probes into space won’t cause a ’system collapse’—only the individuals with wisdom in the current of thought can complete the transgression, in other words, only rational beings have the qualification to become ’Observers.’ This allows us to proceed with certain endeavors courageously, but..."

He frowned as he spoke here, his expression turning somewhat peculiar: "Perhaps I’m being pedantic, but I’m now quite curious about one thing—even if there really is an ’Observer’ acting as the eyes of the gods, jumping out of the Closed System and making substantial contact with information from outside the system, is this contact truly undeniable? The divine ’nature’ of God could still argue that everything seen by the Observer is false, consider it a grand illusion and deceit, assume some force has altered all the sensory perceptions and cognition of the Observer, and fundamentally deny the occurrence of ’jumping out of the system’ ever happened..."

"Are you suggesting... ’sophistry’?" Enya seemed not at all surprised by Gawain’s convoluted question, as if she had thought about it similarly, "Like burying one’s head in the sand and turning a blind eye to the facts, refusing to acknowledge the information injected from outside the system by deceiving oneself, in order to maintain the self-recognition and logical establishment of their own divinity?"

Gawain looked serious: "Is this not possible?"

"For individuals among mortals, ’self-deception’ is a very effective means of escape, sometimes even allowing people to survive in desperate situations, but for gods..." Enya laughed lightly, seemingly with heavy self-mockery, "Gods can’t deceive themselves. We are essentially a vast logical system, everything we have is built on the process of ’cognition-interpretation-feedback,’ which means that once a piece of information stimulus occurs, even if our self-will denies it, the feedback triggered by this stimulus... has already happened."

Gawain gazed at Enya: "An uncontrollable natural response?"

A certain voice came from the golden giant egg: "An uncontrollable natural response."

"Then I’m curious—do you, as you are now, remain subject to such uncontrollable natural responses?" Gawain asked suddenly in a very serious tone, "Is there any stimulus that could make you lose control of your will, causing your instincts to deviate from your true nature?"

"If my human nature part had not truly achieved freedom, I wouldn’t be here discussing with you these topics sufficient to catalyze self-collapse," Enya said calmly, "I know what you’re worried about, but rest assured—you are facing the freedom gained by the Dragonkin of Talronde at the cost of millions of years of patience and the fate of the entire clan. If even such a desperate strike cannot break away from the dark destiny, then there is no need for this world to pursue any hope."

Gawain pondered for a moment, then nodded gently: "...You’re right."

He then took a breath, bringing the topic back to the original point: "I remember we originally started by discussing those signals that suddenly went dark in the starry sky. We mentioned that there are two ’filter factors’ that caused our universe, which should be exceptionally prosperous, to become barren, so that apart from the Voyager, there are no other civilizations breaking the planetary bonds between the stars. One factor is the out-of-control gods, and the other... is the chaotic wave.

"Now let’s talk about the chaotic wave.

"What exactly is the essence of the chaotic wave? How did it sweep through and reshape this world? The disaster that befell the Gondor Empire seven hundred years ago, how does it differ from the truly world-destroying ’Great Magic Tide’?"

"Are these questions something you can address now?"

The Hatching Room fell into a period of silence, as if Enya was carefully considering what she was going to say next. The slight hum of low-power operation from the ventilation device and Magic-Guide Device became noticeable in the quiet, like the breeze of a summer afternoon surrounding the area—until Enya finally broke the silence.

"I know you have realized that the chaotic wave faced by the old Gondor Empire and the real chaotic wave are actually two different things. You refer to the former as ’Small Magic Tide,’ and the latter as ’Great Magic Tide,’ but in fact, the difference between the two is greater than you imagine, so much so that the former shouldn’t be considered a magical tide at all—it indeed relates to the magical tide, but in nature, it was just an unformed ’pre-tremble.’

"And regarding your perception of the chaotic wave, there’s something I need to correct: you think that the chaotic wave changes the fundamental nature of everything in the world, but that’s incorrect.

"The real chaotic wave... which you call the ’Great Magic Tide,’ actually it doesn’t change the material world at all—in fact, it doesn’t even interact with any tangible matter. It’s merely an invisible wind, blowing across the entire stellar body."

Gawain’s eyes widened in an instant, the enormous astonishment even causing him to lose his usual composure: "What did you say?! You said the ’Great Magic Tide’ actually doesn’t affect the material world? How is that possible?!"

"It is indeed the fact."

"Then what does the Great Magic Tide affect? What about those tangible apocalyptic events?"

"It doesn’t affect the macro world, but the ’Observer’ itself," Enya’s voice conveyed calmly from within the eggshell, laced with a coldness that endured for 1,870,000 years, "It skews all informational contacts between the Observer and the material world, causing the mind of the Observer to interact chaotically with reality, its essence isn’t a storm having a nature of physical devastation, but a celestial level... collective exile.

"Thus, what is destroyed is not the world, but the ’world in the eyes of the Observer,’ but if viewed from the Observer’s perspective, the two indeed appear to be the same thing."