Hao Ren vaguely remembered Raven 12345 once giving him a lesson in this respect. However, everyone knew that he slept through the lesson. He was pathetic when it came to study motivation.
So, he put on an act. "Did you?"
"I remember telling you this before, or did I mess up? Fortunately, Raven 12345's memory did not serve her well and she had given up on treatment. She wondered for a while and said, "Anyway, a true god doesn't need help from believers. Whether it's the Galacticus Lords, Xi Ling Celestials, or the distant Xylonic Pantheon and fellows opposite the void, external help is not needed. That's we are the origins ourselves. We are the origin of all evolution, we control everything in the universe and we create things out of nothing. If you were a money-printing machine yourself, would you still need your salary?"
Raven 12345 paused for a second and then continued. "One more reason; the 'power' we use is very different from what the ordinary races think. For example, the secondary psionic energy that I let youuse, you find it unreal because it works on all things in all dimensions at the same time, and it unconditionally affects everything in the universe. But the power the celestials use is at another level. The prayer of the believers is mere mortal power. They couldn't recharge their power source."
Hao Ren scratched his jaw. "So it's like lighting up a nuclear reactor with a torch."
"The Goddess of the Plane of Dreams possessed the characteristics of a true God, but she needed the prayers of the believers to give her strength..." Raven 12345's brows knit together. "There seems to be only two possibilities; either her "true-god" characteristics were fake and we were all wrong from the beginning, or she was a true god but she did not know how to control her power. She had the divinity of a god, but she did not know how to use it. She was running in the lower power cycle all this while... so much so that she needed help from believers."
Hao Ren looked at Raven 12345 expectantly. "What do you think?"
Raven 12345 beat on the chest. "I swear on my dignity, I would say it's the second scenario."
"...You serious?"
"Trust me. You don't have anyone else to trust, do you?" Raven 12345 raised a finger and waved it in front of Hao Ren's eyes. "It must have been the second scenario. After losing her memory and forgetting her own skills, she had to fumble through the basics and learn from scratch…"
Hao Ren's face suddenly became solemn. "This happened in the celestial world too?"
The goddess' answer was rather anticlimax. "None I've heard of. But I have seen it on TV."
Hao Ren could no longer stand it. "Dang you! Can't you be more serious—"
"Bang!"
Hao Ren looked at the goddess with his lightning-fried hair. The goddess shrugged. "Don't look at me. It was the will of the universe to punish you."
Hao Ren had given up arguing. He endured the nonsensicality of the Goddess and began to consider seriously the possibility that the Goddess of Creation had lost her power because she lost her memory. After all, according to Raven, true Gods always knew how to replenish their powers in a more advanced way. While the Goddess of the Plane of Dreams possessed a true god's characteristics, she was still dependent on the believer's prayer for help. That only reinforced the view that she was a half-baked Goddess.
After all, Hao Ren, too, did not want to believe that his and Raven 12345's analyses were wrong.
The matter was so concluded, for now. Hao Ren folded his arms across his chest. "I've another question. It's about the silence from all the races on the distress call of the Goddess of the Plane of Dreams. The guardian claims that the treacherous children had incited rebellion among the mortal races so that they could gain the power of eternal life after the Goddess died. But I've pondered that point for quite a while…"
"There are always some bad apple in every bunch, and by the same token, not all children in the family are scoundrels," said Raven 12345. She knew exactly what was vexing Hao Ren. "The Plane of Dreams is a very broad universe. According to my analysis about the goddess' ability, if she were really obsessed with exploring the universe, she would have at least sown hundreds of thousand, if not millions of civilisations. And those who still remembered their mother was still by the tens of thousands. It's impossible that no children have ever remembered her name."
"Although how you put that across is a bit weird...but basically that's how it is."
"The goddess did call for help, and according to record, the Hollettans did indeed receive the distress call. After the deicidal incident, they willfully altered the history by hiding their sins against the creator," Raven 12345 tapped her finger on the round table as if she was knocking out the key points. "These points are all consistent with the Guardian's statement. But there's a problem that you can't verify just as the guardian couldn't—there's no way to confirm that the other planets have heard the distress call."
Hao Ren's face turned somber. "You mean…"
"Without adequate information, give them the benefit of the doubt. As long as it is logical, it is possible," Raven 12345 said, lecturing her immature assistant, "The distress call could have been intercepted, or the power of the goddess was so weak that her message had only reached to a limited range of the universe, or the mortal races had heard the distress call and responded but their prayers were intercepted. So the guardian mistakenly thought that all races had betrayed the goddess. There could have even more ridiculous possibilities out there, as long as you dared to think. After all, time has scraped away the truth."
The Goddess words had opened Hao Ren's eyes. He finally knew what was going on in his f*cked up mind all day long yesterday. He knocked on his head. "What is wrong with my imagination…"
Raven 12345 looked at Hao Ren, giggling. "You've stressed yourself too much. You can't be creative and make sound judgment when you're stressed out."
Hao Ren was surprised. "How do you know? The intuition of God?"
"Intuition my foot! By just looking at your face, I've already known you had a sleepless night last night. Try to pray when you can't sleep, I don't expect you to have faith in me…"
Hao Ren was very touched. He did not expect the Goddess was so concerned for him. But Raven continued. "But I hope you can trust my lullaby. It was my mistake to have sung it out of tune last time. Let's try again next time..."
"Oh, God, shall we stick to business, please" Hao Ren wiped the cold sweat off his forehead and steered away from the conversation. "What you said is possible. But how could have the guardian never thought of that? Had he done a little investigation in his head, he should have realised it was impossible for all mortals to be in betrayal of the Goddess at the same time..."
Raven 12345 stared straight into Hao Ren's eyes until a chill ran up his spine. "You mean he should be calm when his mother was blown up before him?"
"…"
"The guardian giants you mentioned might be stronger in power than the ordinary mortals, but I know them. They are only mortals, albeit stronger, in my eyes," Raven 12345 exhaled. "Sensual, fragile, capable of emotions and humanity, have weak concepts of good and evil and attitudes, and more importantly, none of the above are controllable... except for the divine nature, they are not much different from mortals."
Raven 12345 paused again before she sighed as if talking to herself this time. "Anyway, the situation at that time must have been so chaotic that investigation was impossible. The entire kingdom of Godwas blown away, the First Born's network collapsed, every mortal species was devastated by natural disasters, and the heart of the universe was in a mess... The guardians who survived could have donenothing to investigate. Even today, even the slightest clues must have been scraped clean by the passing of time."
After a few seconds of silence, Hao Ren nodded. "No matter what, he should calm down now. After all, ten thousand years have passed, and I have talked with him a lot ... I'll tell him about this when we meet next. Well, I hope he would listen."
"You have other questions, don't you?" Raven 12345 asked, looking into Hao Ren's eyes, smiling. "You looks hesitant. It's okay, you can ask anything you like. Worse comes to worst, there would be only lightning strike, but you will survive."
"You are such a..." Hao Ren shook his head helplessly, unsure of his Goddess' intention. "In fact, yes, Ihave a question that I don't know whether I should ask. But I will still ask— what would you do if your creation decides to forsake you one day?"