Chapter 1661: The Goddess of Creation
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Standing upon the broken ruins of the Star of Creation, everything they saw was the true face of the Umbral Realm.
It was a universe engulfed by chaos and darkness. Of course, most universes were dark, but here, darkness was not a state, but a perceptible, perceivable substance.
The remnants after the rupture of the Star of Creation floated in the center of the dimension. The powerful energies that remained in the area for 10,000 years still kept the debris together. And that prevented the shattered continents from drifting away into the void. Yet, the polluted atmosphere seemed to be maintained by some sort of energy field around the debris. It cast a misty pall upon the already desolate land, like a shroud over a corpse.
However, these were not the only objects within the Umbral Realm.
After looking at the broken planet in the distance, Hao Ren started to scan the entire skyline as he tried to look for more debris and ruins. He then caught on to the ethereal shadows within the dark chaos. The shadows were covered by a clearly unnatural black mist, and that made discerning the distance difficult. Some of them were in the form of a torn star, while some were massive temple complexes or battleships. Hao Ren noticed that all of them had a physical presence: some of the shadows were clear semi-transparent trails, and the unusual phenomenon showed that most of the objects dragged into the Umbral Realm alongside the Star of Creation had probably met a very terrifying fate.
He then recalled the Gate of Solenne, which was once dragged into the Umbral Realm, but miraculously returned into the material universe. Hao Ren gave his thoughts on the matter, “This dimension is probably wider than we thought, but the area that we can detect is very limited. Many things are being covered by that black mist, and it seems like maintaining a physical shape is not an easy thing in the Umbral Realm.”
“But there are lucky ones that could return to the main material universe and reconstruct itself.” Vivian looked at the sky as she said, “Like the Gate of Solenne right?”
“Seems like the crimson moon you summoned on L’Haronne cannot shine up this place.” Hao Ren looked at Vivian, no wonder Nolan’s signal transmission had failed… The crossing between two worlds is difficult enough, especially if it is between reality and dream, and if the dream is created by a god, it is even harder.”
At that same moment, Nolan gave Hao Ren the report that he was waiting for. “Boss, I have detected a stable divinity release point. It’s close to your location.”
“Seems like we’ve found our sleeping goddess.” Hao Ren smiled as he looked at his friends. “Hope she doesn’t have a grouchy mood. We had after all just forcefully kicked her out of the dream.”
“The ones that woke her up were you two! I have nothing to do with that!” Lily hissed at Hao Ren.
As expected, after “entering” and “exiting” the dream, the team’s “landing point” was near the place where the goddess of creation was slumbering. The distance was so close, and the goddess’ position was on a floating continent right underneath them.
With Nolan’s guidance, Hao Ren and the team went past a series of small hills before ascending a charred mountain peak. Finally, they arrived at a place that was jarringly different from its surroundings.
A circular rock formation enveloped a piece of flatland, and in the middle of the flatland were a patch of green. It was a few meters wide grassland. To think that there were vestiges of life in this already dead planet, that left Hao Ren dumbfounded.
In the middle of the grassland stood a rock about half of a human’s height, and a girl in a white dress was lying on the rock and slept soundly in this posture.
The girl in the white dress looked similar to Rheia, even her height was almost similar. The difference was, she had a long silver hair that reached the grass, and even in her slumber, her expression bore a hard-to-describe sense of divinity.
Of course, that was pointless for Hao Ren. Since he found out that Raven 12345 would slap on a regal and divine emoji pack just to pass her superior’s inspection, no supernatural expressions would faze him anymore…
A several-meters-wide grassland, a cold hard rock, a torn-apart planet, and endless darkness… This was the final resting place of she who had once sealed the Mad Lord, created the garden that was the Plane of Dreams, nurtured it to life and greatness—the goddess of creation.
Hao Ren had wondered many times on how he would be meeting this goddess, and now he realized that his concerns from before were all meaningless.
Vivian gently bumped his shoulder as she pointed upwards, “Is that… the temple complex you say in the illusion?”
Hao Ren followed the direction where Vivian was pointing and looked up, and saw the tattered ruins of a building was floating above. The ruin’s past glorious, majestic facade was still visible, and between the pillars and the embossing, Hao Ren recognized some of the lines.
“Yes, those are the temple complexes that once floated above the Sea of Origin. Now that the sea is gone, the place we are standing on is actually the seabed.” Hao Ren nodded, speaking in a hushed manner as he led the rest towards the goddess of creation. “Divine powers bound the ruined planet together and allowed it to retain its previous structure even after the explosion. So the ruins of the temple complexes floated around here, just like it did above the surface of the Sea of Origin in the past.”
They were standing at the edge of the grassland now as Lily gave the sleeping goddess a wary glance. “Mr. Landlord, shouldn’t she be awake by now? Why does she look like she’s still sleeping?”
Hao Ren did not answer her and simply motioned for the rest to stay put while he came before the sleeping goddess. He bent down to be on face level with the latter, “Submerging in the dream is indeed comforting, but I know you did not create that dream to escape reality. The dream has ended, accident or not, the end of the dream is a reality, and prolonging won’t be helpful.”
The seemingly sleeping goddess opened her eyes as she heard that. It seemed like she was never asleep, and was cautiously awake all the time. A pair of ruby-like eyes silently looked at Hao Ren, “The dream will come to an end someday. I know that very well, but I never thought it would end like this. I’m curious, how did you realize the truth? That dream… in a sense, it was a real world. I can’t make out what sort of flaw it had to let someone see through it, especially when you were deep in the dream itself.”
“Whoa! She’s awake? She was just pretending to be asleep!!” Lily yelped from afar.
Nangong Sanba immediately dragged the clueless husky aside…
Hao Ren ignored the voices from behind him. He was not surprised at the goddess suddenly waking up. He was however curious that the first question she asked was not their identity. “I thought you’d be interested in who we are.”
“That is immaterial,” the silver-haired, crimson-eyed goddess said softly. “While I’m weakened, I can still sense something within all of you… At least I can confirm that you are not ‘its’ minions. I’m still curious as to how you saw through the dream.”
Hao Ren stood up and sighed. “You’re right. The dream was as real as it could get. At least for the beings within the dream. Calling it a real world is not wrong either, but a dream is a dream, and at least for the dream you created… there was a repetitive pattern.”
“Every since I entered the world of L’Haronne, I had never dreamt, I have asked my friends and they were the same as well. This was the first point of my suspicion. And come to think of it, we are unable to dream as we are already in someone else’s dream.
“The next clue was the weird ecosystem on L’Haronne. Every race within the Plane of Dream are there, and they originated from your memories, right? This was enough to raise my suspicion. Of course, the unusual ecosystem was not the key reason, as I know that the divine kingdom had an organism repository, and on that basis, the presence of the beings within the ecosystem can be explained, but the unusual history was something else…”
“The ruins, that varied ruins, even the godslayers; if I’m not wrong, it is also from your memories, but it was added unconsciously into the dream right? That’s why the scholars of L’Haronne had called those the ‘Ruins of Annor’, and deem it the biggest unsolved mysteries. Even if they were to exhaust themselves they are unable to explain the origins of the ruins, as there were no contextual explanation set for those objects.”
“The Great Pit, those broken, floating fragments floating within the endless dimension… that reminded me of the sub-consciousness, both the presentation or the rhythmic motion was similar, an abstract sub-consciousness being turned into a physical dimension would be difficult to see through at first glance. But for me… I’ve been dealing with these sort of abstract stuff for almost two years now, I’m just tad sensitive towards them. Those are the deepest part of your dream, the most chaotic, the most trivial corner of your memories, and they in some way became the basis of L’Haronne in this dream world. But on the other hand, the truth and the chaotic amount of data was dangerous to the citizens of L’Haronne. Facing the truth meant the end of the dream. So the Great Pit became the most treacherous place in L’Haronne’s point of view. Such was the danger that the scholars explained wrongly. And this continued until an outside observer, me, personally saw what was in the pit. Only then were the memory fragments were restored.
“But that was not the decisive factor either, it could only allow us to come guess that L’Haronne is either an illusion or a dream. The real factor in allowing me to confirm that it was a dream, was this little one.”
As Hao Ren said, he motioned towards Vivian.
Understanding what he wanted, Vivian let Noobie out.
With a puff of black-red blood mist, Noobie appeared in the air as she shook about and flew around Hao Ren’s side. She then noticed the goddess of creation before her, and her instincts told her that this stranger needed a face full of “biubiu”.
And thus, she “biubiu-ed”.
The goddess of creation simply swept the weak energy bolts away as she looked curiously at the menacing Noobie. Curiosity was apparent in her tone, “I’m actually most curious about her… What… is she? How did she allow you to ascertain that L’Harrone was a dream?”
“Explaining her origin will need a boatload of time, but I can answer your second question.” Hao Ren grinned. “While she may be weak, but she has a special trait no one has, at least at this stage. She is a chaotic being, a conceptually different being, so she will not enter any dream state of an intelligent being as it is an anathema to it. Her glue-like spiritual world could not be affected by an orderly dream world like L’Harrone, so…”
Hao Ren’s gaze descended to Noobie who was busy picking grass, his expression conflicted. “She had never entered L’Harrone, she did not dream, did not see, did not feel the dream. In her eyes, this was the true Umbral Realm, and in her eyes, we were either in a stupor or in a hilarious sleepwalking state the whole time… I’m glad that she does not have a brain, don’t need to worry about getting laughed at until the end of time.”
“So, seeing how easily she entered the Great Pit and moved about there. I understood everything.”