Chapter 965: The Mysterious Cosmic Progenitor
The vast Plane of Dreams have countless untold secrets, and even more dangers. Even before Hao Ren signed up for this, Raven 12345 had already warned him of the dangers. And everytime Hao Ren thought that he had met the biggest challenge in the Plane of Dreams, something even bigger, even scarier would pop out of nowhere and scare him shitless. So at times he do think that Raven 12345 at least have a dependable side to her. Well, at the very least, her horror stories at the beginning weren’t lies. She was even nonchalant when she described this god forsaken place.
Against this sorethumb called the Cosmic Progenitor, even the guardians, Vivian or Y’zaks, beings of vast knowledge had no idea where to start, but one thing for sure is that this ‘Cosmic Progenitor’ was definitely not some spiritual manifestion as the treacherous children had only started forming ideas about deicide, and the master of this voice had gave them forbidden knowledge and a part of their strength. This had created another question in Hao Ren’s mind. If the Cosmic Progenitor can allow mere mortals powers to slay gods, why did it not act on its own?
Hao Ren threw the question out to the rest, and Vivian took the opportunity to hyopthesize about the true form of the ‘Cosmic Progenitor’. “Based on the information we have, the treacherous children had only ‘heard’ somesort of voice, and have gotten their powers from that voice, so all their contact was indirect, and so we can assume that no one had actually seen the real ‘form’ of the Cosmic Room. Perhaps, that thing does not have a corporeal form, and is just a powerful will, something like a vengeful spirit or whatnot. It can corrupt mortal races, but as it does not have a form, it could not attack the holy kingdom.
“A vengeful spirit corrupted a mortal race, and drove that race to deicide….” Hao Ren murmured as he massaged his temple. “That sounds… a little cheap. A proper Goddess was killed by a plot of something that’s without a body, and that thing did not even deign to do the dirty work itself. What is that ‘Cosmic Progenitor’ thing really? To think that it is able to grant powers to a mortal race to kill a god?”
Lily was couched beside Hao Ren, her tail wagging. “Just look at the name, it’s the ‘Progenitor’. The name a lot makes it sounds like a big deal. Perhaps it is an old monster that survived since the birth of the universe? Don’t this world have Eternals? The Oldest of the Eternals may very well be stronger than the Goddess.”
Y’zaks then spoke as he crossed his arm over his chest, sarcastic venom seeped from his voice. “Those who loves to bluff would always give themselves a scary or awe-inspiring name. This cowardly bastard is probably not some origin of universes, and even if it was one, its powers surely would not be limited to a formless state?”
Hao Ren immediately threw Y’zak a curious glance. “Why does it sound like you are very familiar with this particular bluffing script?”
Awkwardness flashed across Y’zaks faced. “Lets keep the past…”
The old demon had wanted to preserve some dignity, but his daughter did not allow him the luxury as Y’lisabet blurted out her fathers chuunibyou exploits back in the day. “Papa was a young impulsive demon too, and I’ve heard from the chamberlain that Papa had let his shadow pop out of the flame of the fireplace in the human realms, claiming himself to be the flamelord who would burn the world into a cinder, and there was no hovel in the nine kingdoms that did not hear Papa…”
“The past is the past,” Y’zaks said as he nudged his dauhter’s head. “I was very young then, and wanted to show my powers, and thought that making a name for myself in the human realm was a good idea. But a real name does not need these sort of bluff, as years later when I mentioned my name before a royal city, the entire city knelt to me in submission.”
“Bullshit, you’d already almost ran the world into the ground. Even if you were to call yourself Big Hammer Wang no one would dare say a thing and engrave it on a coin.” Hao Ren shrugged. “Lets get back to the topic, like what old Y’zaks said, the Cosmic Progenitor cannot be some sort of universal will, and I’ve seen a real one to boot. Even when you are a void apart, gossiping about Raven12345 would still earn you a judgement bolt, so it is definitely not that as nothing happened when we talked about it. But for it to have such a reputation, it probably have some strength to back it up.”
Nangong Sanba then chimed. “Yet, there was no further movement after ten thousand years, and its own appearance was to set the treacherous children on the course of deicide.”
“Would it be possible that they were killed by the aftermath?” Vivian proposed. “After the treacherous children had slayed the Goddess they too were subjected to extermination by divine judgement. Those behind the scenes would not have escaped totally unscathed.”
“Or they could probably be asleep, like the Goddess herself, and entered a peculiar state of neither living nor dead…” Hao Ren was a little dizzy by now. “I really want to avoid getting entangled in things like this. When Gods fights worlds crumble, its just too troublesome for us normies being caught in the middle…”
As the hall quiet down, Nangong Wuyue snaked her tail around the table and prodded Hao Ren. “Mr Landlord, you actually have the cheek to call yourself a normie?”
Hao Ren gave a dry laugh before sighing. “Ugh… Never thought that the godslayers that time weren’t the real perpetrator, and there’s the real culprit hiding behind the scenes. After all these effort those fools are just mere puppets huh…”
As he finished, a thunderous voice rang “That does not absolve them of their sin. And I don’t think the treacherous children would need to be completely controlled by this Cosmic Progenitor to perform such an heinous act. They have shown that they had the ambition to become a god, and to reach that nonsense of a ‘Promised Land’. All these came from their own greed, and their sin is apparent to all.”
Hao Ren turned his head back and saw Muru’s gigantic face facing his back. And beside him was Lemedusa and Heve’s massive heads. Hao Ren nodded towards the three giants. “I know. It’s just some introspection.”
The group was actually still at the central control hall, but the hall itself had a new facility. It was a few meter tall platform and on it was a long table, chairs and some projection devices. This platform was made to facilitate discussion with the three giants as Muru and his kin were at least ten meters tall. To talk with him at eye level one would need to either fly, or to run up to the third floor, and Hao Ren’s usual way of talking to them was to look up and shout. After a while, even the space station’s mainframe computer took pity of its master and automatically sent up a meeting platform for Hao Ren to hold meetings with the giants…
But Hao Ren was not very used to this setup, as he felt that looking up to a head much bigger than his whole person was a terrifying thing, and it gets even more terrifying as soon as the head started speaking. When he stood by Muru’s leg he could still force himself to think of the thing before him as a building, but coming face to face with the latter’s head threw that out of the window.
But the more delibitating factor was, the wind. Yes, the wind. The last time around Lily climbed up onto Heve’s shoulder to chat with the lady giant and the latter had suddenly sneezed, sending the poor husky flying from through the room into the corridor…
A sudden chill crept from his hand and Hao Ren recovered to see that Nangong Wuyue’s tail was prodding at him again. The siren cast a curious glance at him. “Mr Landlord, you’re spacing out again.”
“Oh, oh, it’s nothing.” Hao Ren waved his hand as he struck the memory of Lily being thrown ten metres across the room by Heve’s sneezing out of his mind. “So that’s that. Since the Cosmic Progenitor will not just pop up all of the sudden, we’ll return to Earth. I’ll need to see the Siren Queen to discuss about letting the ark fleet stop on Io.”
Lemendusa, who was silent all this while suddenly spoke. His voice like thunder. “I wish to return to Solenne.”
“Solenne?” Hao Ren was surprised. “Isn’t that a wasteland now?”
“There are things still can be recovered in the wasteland.” Lemendusa’s expresion was stern. “That was a pivotal checkpoint in the holy kingdom, and a place where information and material were gathered. I want to see if there’s anything at all that had survived.”
“Oh, okay.” Hao Ren nodded. “Just so happen that the droids have already built an outpost there, so you’ll have somewhere to stay there. Then… I’ll give you, Heve and Muru.. I’ll leave you three with teleportation rights, you can move freely between CARS and the Solenne Gateway.”
The three giant spoke in unison. “You have our thanks.”
Hao Ren scrambled to held a hold of Lil Pea who was thrown about by a gale three times stronger than usual before turning to Vivian. “Seems like this platform is missing something…”
“Yeah, a windscreen…”