From the end of the world

Chapter 718 The Truth About the Lord of the Divine Seal 1
When I directly questioned him, the Lord of the Seal did not admit or deny it, but remained silent.

He raised his head and gazed silently upwards. There was nothing there; his gaze seemed fixed on a non-existent point. After a long while, he spoke again.

“That’s true. Since I’m asking you to voluntarily hand over all your divine seal fragments, I can no longer use the same attitude as before. I need to be completely honest with you about who I am, where I came from, and where I’m going. It would be too self-centered of me to just understand you while I always maintain a veil of mystery.” The Lord of the Divine Seals said slowly.

"—Are you planning to reveal your true background?"

I immediately focused all my attention, even though I was already fully focused. At that moment, I strained my ears, not allowing myself to miss a single utterance from the other person.

The Lord of the Divine Seal nodded first, then said, "The former Number Six... the Great Impermanence Divine Illumination who died at my hands, he should have told you and Number Five about his speculations about me, right? Judging from what he did afterward, if I'm not mistaken, he should have thought that I was originally just an ordinary person who accidentally obtained the Divine Seal?"

When Shenzhao conspired with me and Yuchi to assassinate the Lord of the Divine Seal, it seems that he used magic mixed with the power of the Divine Seal fragments to form a barrier. It appears that the barrier truly possessed the power to prevent the Lord of the Divine Seal from having near-omniscience.

If the Lord of the Divine Seal is indeed Tai Sui, then Shen Zhao's prediction at the time was undoubtedly a grave mistake. However, there are some undeniable doubts. In the historical records of Luoshan, Tai Sui and Shen Zhao had worked together, so it's impossible that they wouldn't recognize each other. Furthermore, it's even less likely that Shen Zhao would mistake the Great Impermanence Tai Sui for an ordinary person with no experience in using power. Even if Tai Sui was deliberately acting, it's hard to imagine any reason for him to deliberately portray himself as weak in front of Shen Zhao.

At the same time, I don't know if there is any connection, but I recalled a story about Tai Sui that a wandering spirit told me in the afterlife.

It is said that Tai Sui dislikes being worshipped as a deity by believers.

He always told his followers that he was just a human being who happened to possess great power.

“What Shenzhao said is not wrong,” the Lord of the Divine Seal said slowly. “I am just an ordinary mortal, merely one of the masses.”

"So, you really aren't the manifestation of the divine seal itself, but rather an external soul attached to the divine seal?" I said.

This was a deduction that Xiaowan and I had made through our past observations, and the Lord of the Divine Seal readily admitted, "Yes."

“So, even if you really were just an ordinary person, that should be a thing of the past,” I said. “Besides, since you were able to obtain the Divine Seal, it means that you have an unimaginable connection with it. This is a power of destiny that transcends all fate. Even before you obtained the Divine Seal, you, who possess this destiny, are worlds apart from ordinary mortals.”

"Perhaps. Even in the 'past world,' the power of cause and effect and destiny might have existed. This series of arising and ceasing might also have corresponding explanations. At least as far as I know, the past world probably also had the concept of the soul. It's just that I can't go back to the previous world for the time being to verify it," said the Lord of the Divine Seal. "But one thing is certain: the Divine Seal—this divine artifact that transcends all fantasy—already existed in reality long before this world was mixed with so many fantastical elements."

Then, he told me how he became the Lord of the Divine Seal.
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The world we live in did not have strange creatures, witchers, or concepts like magic and spells in the past.

The former master of the Divine Seal was not the master of the Divine Seal, but an ordinary person.

His exact name back then is now irrelevant. And while he was described as an "ordinary person," that was only in comparison to the Witcher. In reality, he was far from ordinary in human society. He was a highly respected biological scientist in academia, possessing extremely in-depth knowledge of the existing Earth's ecosystem, and expanding his research towards the ancient Earth's ecosystem, in which he also became a highly accomplished archaeologist and geologist.

He hopes to be able to fully and meticulously deduce the entire history of Earth's natural ecosystems from their nascent stages to the present day during his lifetime, and to solve countless mysteries, large and small, that have remained unsolved in this field for the past. In the process, he realized that during the development and evolution of ancient ecosystems, there existed an unknown variable that subtly influenced the evolutionary history of life on Earth over billions of years.

--soul.

While scientists shouldn't casually discuss such matters, the more he researched, the more convinced he became that the soul was an unknown variable in the history of biological evolution. If the soul is a real, existing element of life, then it would certainly participate in the evolutionary process. Evolutionary models built upon ignoring this element would inevitably be biased, and models of natural ecosystems designed based on it would contain numerous flaws. Unfortunately, due to a lack of relevant evidence, his hypothesis could only remain a hypothesis. He couldn't even pass his own scrutiny, let alone present it to the academic community. Therefore, in order to find evidence to support his hypothetical theoretical model, he tried to use his knowledge and skills in archaeology and geology to find clues.

From the very first emergence of life on Earth to the present day, an astronomical number of deaths have accumulated. According to his theory, if the soul truly exists, its components and traces should be everywhere. The reason it cannot be found might be because the soul, like ancient extinct plants that eventually turned into coal, has been deposited underground due to certain factors.

This factor could be gravity, or it could be something else. In any case, in his speculation, the soul components of the Earth may have accumulated underground to a point where they are difficult to contain.

While scientific instruments are generally unable to detect the soul—otherwise, it would have been proven long ago—no matter how hidden something may be, it will exhibit different properties when it accumulates to a sufficiently large extent. Even so-called undetectable dark matter and dark energy will reveal themselves on a vast spatial scale due to gravity and the expansion of spacetime. If the components of the soul were deposited and compressed to the extent he envisioned deep underground, they would likely undergo extreme changes.

Humans can analyze the structure of the mantle and the physical composition of the core using geological methods, so they should be able to detect the clues they want using the same methods.

However, he failed. Even with his planned geological methods of exploration, the soul failed to reveal any sign of its existence. Thus, the scientist was faced with two options.

One option is to admit that one's hypothesis about the soul is ultimately just wishful thinking, and that there are other unknown factors influencing the history of biological evolution on Earth; the other option is to stubbornly cling to one's "delusion" and propose another hypothesis on top of the existing one.

In other words, because there is a second unknown factor, the deposition process of the first unknown factor, "soul," inside the Earth may have been interrupted or reduced, so it has not reached its theoretical expected value.

"Looking back now, I really should have admitted my 'failure' back then." The current Lord of the Divine Seal said in an empty tone, "Sometimes scientists can come up with all sorts of stupid ideas to justify their theories. What about proposing hypotheses on top of hypotheses, or a second unknown element besides the soul... Is this the kind of thinking a serious researcher should have? It's more like something out of a fantasy novel. If I could go back to that time, I should strangle myself with my own hands."

"So...you verified this 'second unknown element'?" I asked. "What did you think this element was at the time?"

“It’s the ‘afterlife’.” The Lord of the Divine Seal seemed to be recalling his past thoughts. “That’s not surprising, is it? Since there are souls, they will definitely think of the afterlife. If the souls of the dead disappear inexplicably in our world, it’s easy to understand that they went to a different dimension from the living.”

"However, I found that if I had to embed such an unknown dimension into my theoretical model, I would encounter another problem. That is, based on my speculation on the evolutionary history of Earth's natural ecosystem, even if this afterlife really exists, it would most likely have been created between 66 million and 145 million years ago, which is during the Cretaceous period."

"I must answer this question—why did the afterlife suddenly appear at that time?"

After eliminating countless possibilities, the last possibility presented itself to him, who was then just a scientist.

—The afterlife was created by a completely unknown ancient civilization with unimaginable advanced technology.

—This ancient civilization destroyed itself for some unknown reason, to such an extent that even modern human civilization cannot prove its existence.

Honestly, when he came up with this hypothesis, he even laughed at himself. What kind of nonsensical assumptions were these? Lost ancient civilizations? An afterlife and souls? They were simply too far-fetched. But since it was the last possibility he had found after overcoming countless difficulties, he felt obligated to personally disprove it.

However, after some time, the scientist discovered some mysterious clues himself, and he could no longer laugh.

(End of this chapter)