Chapter 191: The Heavenly God Reveals the Truth! The Thousand-Year Play!
The unprecedented mythological war had completely ended.
With the two divine staircases descending from the sky, the Sea God Poseidon and the Moon Goddess Artemis were almost certainly going to return to Tenkai.
Faced with this shocking result, the gods on Babel were undoubtedly filled with unprecedented thoughts.
Mortals had defeated gods with special powers. Regardless of the process, this result alone shocked the gods and plunged them into confusion.
For a moment, all the gods on Babel focused their gazes on the Heavenly God Ouranos, who was in the main seat.
A part of the gazes were also focused on the Goddess of Justice, Astraea.
Undoubtedly, most of the gods now clearly realized that they had to find a way to choose a side to avoid being cast aside by the new order of Genkai and Orario.
However, before the gods could form various thoughts and make their choices, the Heavenly God Ouranos suddenly raised his head. His gaze slowly swept across the faces of all the gods present, and he finally spoke slowly:
"Since long, long ago, we have always considered themselves to be gods. We, the gods, were born in immortality, and we have walked along the river of time, witnessing far too much. Although the essence of the world is cruel, for us gods, even the crueliest world is nothing more than a playground."
Ouranos suddenly began to speak.
His voice was steady, his tone was indifferent, and the words he spoke carried a strange influence, as if a religious teacher was preaching.
For Ouranos, his position as the Heavenly God made him extremely unique among the gods. The Authority he possessed, and everything he represented, was a supreme existence: the sky.
As something that covers all things and wraps the entire world like an eggshell, the sky can essentially be considered the cradle of the world.
On the same level as the earth, it is the guardian of all things.
And the Heavenly God Ouranos was the representative of the sky. He silently watched the gods present and spoke slowly:
"For us gods, the source that can demonstrate our uniqueness and make us immortal and everlasting is Divine Power, a power that is completely different from magic, and from any
other energy. It does not produce matter, but it can create concepts out of thin air, and even change the way the world exists and some of its laws.
So, for us gods, what is so important that it can even be called the foundation of our existence—this so-called 'power of the gods'—where does it come from? Why are gods born with Divine Power? Where is the answer?"
Ouranos's words gradually led the gods present to start thinking.
Every god on the scene was affected by Ouranos's words and began to ponder this question that they had never considered before.
After all, for gods who were born with Divine Power and used it freely, where Divine Power came from was like a human thinking about where the air they breathe comes from. Unless one was a truly outstanding researcher, ordinary people would never think about such a meaningless question.
But the Heavenly God Ouranos had brought up this question.
He not only raised the question but also conducted a thousand-year-long investigation and search to find the answer.
His purpose was unknown for now, but his patience, perseverance, and his willingness to go to any lengths to achieve his goal were something that any person or god could truly feel.
At the same time, this also made people feel a sense of dread.
After all, most people were destined to be unable to understand this kind of obsession, and it was even more difficult to have too much trust in a Ouranos who possessed this kind of obsession.
But Ouranos clearly did not care about the gods' attitudes. He simply spoke in a clear and steady, low voice, continuing his narration:
"During my time in Tenkai, I have always had doubts about the essence of Divine Power. But because Tenkai is filled with gods and Divine Power everywhere, it made it impossible for me to conduct proper research.
Too much interference could easily lead to chaotic experimental results and make it impossible to get the right answer.
That is why I placed my hope in Genkai.
Compared to Tenkai, Genkai has almost no Divine Power and no gods. It is a perfect and stable experimental ground. The first thing I did after coming to Genkai was to try and create Divine Power in Genkai."
"Create Divine Power in Genkai?"
Hearing Ouranos's words, Astraea's eyes widened. She had obviously not expected this to be Ouranos's original purpose for coming to Genkai.
Ouranos, however, spoke quietly:
"You may not believe it, but this was indeed my original purpose and the reason for my actions—I came to Genkai specifically to investigate the essence of Divine Power and to find the source of its birth, and to conduct numerous experiments here.
For this, I created the Xenos race and also tried to make Genkai creatures that had no Divine Power at all give birth to Divine Power out of thin air.
But my experiment ultimately failed.
Except for the Xenos, who were created by injecting Divine Power that already existed into Genkai creatures, it became an impossible thing for Genkai creatures to spontaneously give birth to Divine Power.
No matter how much potential a race had, or how similar a tribe was in structure to gods, it was almost impossible for them to spontaneously generate Divine Power.
At that time, I even gave up, and began to doubt that it was impossible for any creature other than a god to give birth to any Divine Power, and that there was no way for me to understand the source of Divine Power's birth.
However, just as my mind was stuck in a bottleneck, Thanatos's research enlightened me.
It allowed me to think that the biggest difference between a god and a human might not be their physical body, or whether they can use Divine Power, but the different level of their souls.
The source of the greatest distinction between gods and mortals is the soul. And only truly powerful souls can give rise to true Divine Power."
Ouranos spoke quietly, continuing his story. "So I did an unprecedented thing in private.
With my Authority, I cut off the passage for the God of Death, Thanatos, to return to Tenkai, isolating the God of Death from Tenkai.
This was to prevent him from returning to Tenkai and from affecting the River Styx. My purpose was not to prevent Thanatos himself from returning to Tenkai, but to cause chaos in the River Styx."
"Cause chaos in the River Styx?" Loki and the other gods were somewhat confused by Ouranos's words and couldn't help but question him. "Ouranos, what exactly are you trying to do?!"
"Many of the gods present here descended to Genkai one after another after the era of a thousand years ago." Ouranos disregarded the gods' gazes and continued to speak on his own. "So you definitely don't know how big the difference was between the Orario that was just established a thousand years ago and the Orario of today."
"Difference..."
The gods present truly had no way to answer Ouranos's words.
Because in today's Orario, besides Ouranos, only the God of Death, Thanatos, came from the era of a thousand years ago, but Thanatos was an evil god and was basically unable to appear in public.
So none of the gods on Babel had witnessed the sight of Orario from a thousand years ago.
Ouranos then spoke slowly: "You truly don't understand, so I will tell you. In the era of a thousand years ago, the average level of adventurers in Orario was only Lv.1 and Lv.2. Even the strongest was only at Lv.3, far from the rare examples we see now!"
"What!?"
Hearing Ouranos's words, the gods were immediately stunned.
And Ouranos continued to speak on his own: "In fact, the quality of adventurers' levels in Orario has been improving little by little with the changes of the times.
I think there should be some gods here who descended a hundred years ago.
You should be able to feel that as the times have changed, the strength of the adventurers in Orario has been continuously increasing little by little, until the era of Zeus and Hera, where it completely reached its peak, giving birth to the Lv.9 Empress and many adventurers of Lv.7 and Lv.8."
"This... isn't this because the mortals of Genkai gradually became stronger on their own!?"
Astraea subconsciously spoke.
But she quickly denied her own thought.
Because the overall level of mortals had not actually changed over the past thousand years. Without any major systemic changes in the entire Orario over the past thousand years, it was normally unlikely for the level of Orario's adventurers to change significantly, and such a huge shift should not have occurred.
"Wait, Ouranos, could it be that you...!"
Loki was the first god among those present to realize what Ouranos had done.
She widened her eyes for a moment, looking at Ouranos with an expression of disbelief, which then gradually turned into one of stupor.
And Ouranos responded indifferently: "Yes, Loki, you guessed correctly.
Everything was my doing.
The prosperity of Orario, the prosperity of mortals, and even the birth of more and more high-level powerhouses in Orario, everything comes from me. Because I did something that the
gods of Genkai would not know about: I cut off the channel for the souls of Genkai mortals to ascend to Tenkai and reach the River Styx!"
"..."
"Yes, cutting off the heavenly staircase for Thanatos to return to Tenkai was done precisely for this purpose.
Because only by preventing Thanatos, the God of Death who manages the River Styx, from returning to Tenkai, and leaving the management of the River Styx completely vacant, could I completely interfere with the cycle of reincarnation in Genkai.
This would prevent the souls of Genkai mortals from being 'completely washed away' after death.
Instead, they would drift aimlessly in Genkai until their memories were completely lost, and then they would be reincarnated into new bodies."
Ouranos spoke an unprecedented truth. "It is precisely because of this that there are so many high-level adventurers in today's Orario, and even in today's Genkai.
The reason is not that they have gained so much experience themselves, nor is it a change of the times.
It is purely because their souls never enter the River Styx and are not completely cleansed to become new souls. Instead, they undergo 'internal reincarnation' in Genkai. As a result, the souls of Genkai would only lose their memories but not their original levels."
"..."
Ouranos's words had left all the gods dumbfounded.
Not a single god present could understand Ouranos's words, and they were even more unable to comprehend why he would take such actions.
Only Loki, after a long period of contemplation, spoke slowly: "No wonder... I see. I always felt that the level-up of the adventurers under my command was very strange.
They often leveled up very quickly in the beginning, but they would suddenly get stuck at a certain point and would not be able to easily level up... So it wasn't the influence of talent, but your doing, Ouranos..."
"This is indeed my doing. My actions have completely benefited Genkai, haven't they?" Ouranos said with a smile. "So, in essence, all the adventurers in Orario were once the reincarnations of adventurers from the previous era, and the adventurers of the previous era were the reincarnations of the era before that.
Everything can be traced back a thousand years.
All the adventurers in Orario are essentially just the same group of adventurers from a thousand years ago, constantly cycling and evolving!"
Ouranos's words made the gods feel truly insane.
After all, this meant that the so-called Orario, the so-called Dungeon City, was nothing more than a play manipulated by Ouranos.
This play was constantly being performed in Orario, cycling almost countless times, and lasting for a thousand years.
Such a fact deeply shocked and confused even the gods...
"Ouranos, why would you do this?" Astraea, after absorbing all the shocking facts, was the first to ask. "You created Orario, created the Falna system, created adventurers, and even prevented their souls from being cleansed by the River Styx, letting them continuously undergo a cycle called 'reincarnation' in Genkai. What exactly was all that you did for? To achieve what purpose!?"
"Purpose... Didn't I already say it from the beginning?" Ouranos frankly met Astraea's gaze. "Everything I did was just to find the source of Divine Power's birth. Yes, to understand how Divine Power is born, I must make a creature of Genkai spontaneously give birth to Divine Power!"
"Spontaneously give birth to Divine Power?!"
"Simply put, I need a creature that is not a god to become a god and observe the process of them becoming a god, thereby understanding the true source of Divine Power and reaching the essence and origin of what it means to be a god."
Ouranos's simple sentence plunged all the gods on Babel into silence.
The gods were completely unable to understand the thoughts of this old Heavenly God.
They only felt an unprecedented confusion, and even a strange sense of fear, enveloping them!
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