Chapter 904: Chapter 679: Tilian’s Doubts
At this time, both the Azure Sky Empire and the Hong En Empire, two of the most prestigious empires within these planes, had begun their respective plans. The Emperor of the Azure Sky Empire was utilizing Ruosha to regain control of the Imperial Army and reclaim the rights that originally belonged to the Emperor. Meanwhile, the Hong En Empire was attempting to use the Giant Beast Empress to expand its military force, aiming to make the Hong En Empire strong enough to counter or even surpass the Azure Sky Empire.
No matter how it was viewed, both Ruosha and Isrile had secured their footing within their respective empires. They had become indispensable forces in their empires, receiving treatment beyond the rules; all their demands were met.
This was exactly the aim of both Ruosha and Isrile: to use their formidable power to control the military movements of their empires, making the empires rely on them, just as Long Yi had once done in the White Dragon Empire.
At that time, it was precisely because of Long Yi’s strong ability to almost single-handedly support the entire military power of the White Dragon Empire that everyone in the White Dragon Empire was full of respect for Long Yi. The Emperor even nearly handed over all authority to Long Yi.
Now, Ruosha and Isrile were merely repeating these steps.
They both saw themselves as Long Yi, while regarding each other as Tyl, Long Yi’s archenemy during his time in the White Dragon Empire.
Although they now both understood that Tyl was actually a good person, no one wanted to play the role of Tyl. In their struggle over who was the real Long Yi and who was Tyl, they had even come to blows; of course, the result was still inconclusive. Nevertheless, they each silently considered the other as Tyl.
"Achoo!"
At this moment, in the deepest reaches of Hell, within a majestic library, Tyl, who was holding an ancient tome, suddenly sneezed.
He looked around, slightly puzzled. The place was very warm, and the air was filled with a pleasant scent of blood, with no dust to be found.
"Strange."
Tyl shook his head and then set down the very old scroll he was holding.
The Eternal Emperor Rongka’s thirst for knowledge was astonishing. In this library, he had collected all sorts of books from various planes. These books were written in different languages, but Tyl was by now fluent in many languages.
Ever since his arrival in Hell, after getting through the initial busy period, with everything around Rongka gradually settling into order, Tyl found himself with increasing leisure time. His favorite activity now was to hide in Rongka’s enormous library, reading books. Recently, he had been reading about Giants. Tyl knew that Long Yi was a Giant, and he was filled with curiosity about this race. The different documents from various planes described Giants as a near-divine, powerful race. They could create planes at will or extinguish them just as easily. They were keen on assisting other lifeforms to evolve and imparted knowledge to them without seeking any repayment. It felt as if this race, formidable in a way that seemed almost unnatural, differed from gods in name only.
This was nothing like the Long Yi he knew.
Long Yi was someone brimming with violent tendencies, large and strong, and very fond of punching others. This was why Tyl had originally seen Long Yi as his breakthrough in entering the Black Dragon Empire. Even though Tyl now knew Long Yi was a Pioneer, did that so-called title change a person’s nature? Shouldn’t Giants be an amiable image?
Curiosity about Giants led Tyl to read extensively about them, and the more he read, the more puzzled he became about them, finding inconsistencies everywhere.
For example, the Giants had created a tool capable of destroying a planet with a single shot, with the intended purpose of preventing the planet from interfering with the gravitational forces of newly created ones. Yet, the Giants also defined this tool as a weapon, only to be used in battle against the Dragon Clan. At the end, the Giants created a set of powerful Golems. Being weapons made by Giants, of course, they were strong. However, compared to those planet-destroying tools, these weapons seemed somewhat less potent.
Why?
Were the Giants unwilling to harm the Dragon Clan? But many Dragons had perished at the hands of the Golems. Did the Giants not have more efficient weapons? They did! Certainly! There were over a hundred different tools mentioned in the documentation alone that could be used as weapons, each filled with efficiency.
And at last, the most perplexing question: where did the Giants go?
Everyone knew that the Giants had left this world. But it made no sense. The Giants were indifferent to the Dragon Clan’s assaults; the Dragons had not inflicted any substantial losses on them. So what exactly were the Giants afraid of? In that age, what could possibly scare the Giants?
Could it be, the gods?
Tyl contemplated a possibility he himself was hardly willing to believe.
The gods first created the Giants, endowing them with wisdom; then the gods created the Dragon Clan, granting them strength. This is a known story to all. After that, the gods created many other life forms, as well as numerous planes and planets, and the gods cast the life forms they disliked into Hell.
That was pretty much the entire narrative about the gods, with no judgment of them, no insight into their impact on the Giants and the Dragon Clan, as if Giants and Dragons were born with intelligence right from the start.
The whole affair was filled with a baffling strangeness.
The more Tyl pondered, the more intrigued he became about this issue. Perhaps, a lot of interesting findings could be unearthed from it.
"Don’t you think so, Tyl?"
Tyl looked up and addressed Tyl, who was sitting on the other side.
"From the beginning, you’ve been prattling on and on, and I wasn’t paying any attention to what you were saying at all."
Black Dragon Tyl said.
At this moment, Black Dragon Tyl had taken on a completely human form, except that his complexion was pale and ghostfire burned in his eyes. He was levitating in the air, weaving through the bookshelves and organizing this particular shelf.
Ever since arriving in Hell, Tyl had gone through a period of cooling down. Gradually, he also came to accept things, as his revenge had nearly destroyed the Dragon Island, allowing his anger to fade away. Now, he no longer thought about these things, focusing instead on sorting the books here.
To tell the truth, Eternal Emperor Rongka was never an orderly person. Although he had acquired many books, he basically only read what he liked and cast the rest aside. Moreover, they were often carelessly stuffed onto some shelf or another. Searching for a book on the shelves was almost like hunting for treasure. Tyl, who at the time needed something to fill the void in his mind, took on this task, and now, he was thoroughly enjoying it.
Hardly any creatures from Hell would visit the library, so Tilian might well be considered a fellow villager.
"I’m asking you, aren’t you curious about the matters concerning the Dragon Clan and the Giants? Why is it that although they were equally created by the gods, the Giants started off on par with Dragon Clan, but later became as powerful as the gods themselves?" Tilian, putting a book back on the shelf, asked Tyl.
"Heavenly Kingdom’s descent," Tyl said.
"Yes, we all know about the Heavenly Kingdom’s descent, and all the literature speaks of it. But what is the Heavenly Kingdom? Where did it descend to? What exactly is inside the Heavenly Kingdom? Is that so-called descending Heavenly Kingdom even more powerful than the gods?" Tilian asked a string of questions.
"Gods are not necessarily the most powerful," Tyl said, and with a wave of his hand, a book on one of the shelves slid out automatically and landed in Tilian’s hands.
"What is this?" Tilian looked down, noting the cover adorned with strange runes, which appeared very ancient.
"This is a description of the gods from the perspective of a now-extinct race. You would surely be surprised if you read this book," Tyl said with a chuckle.
Tilian immediately opened the cover. The book was large, and the text inside was even larger. Tilian couldn’t understand the odd text at all, but fortunately, Rongka had left translations beneath it.
"Gods are always pondering. They might suddenly laugh or suddenly cry. We all fear the gods and honor the Spirit. Sometimes, they order us to commit suicide. Some of us are revived, some become something else, and some just die. So, God says, we must fear them, and so we do."
Despite the book’s thickness, its contents were only this much.
"What does this mean?"
Tilian was somewhat baffled.
"Interesting, isn’t it? Look, in just a short sentence, the description of ’God’ used ’she,’ ’he,’ and ’it.’ And with sudden crying, sudden laughing, and ordering people to commit suicide, reviving people, or turning them into something else, what does that imply?" Tyl asked, staring at Tilian.
"The God is mad," Tilian said.
"That’s what I think too," Tyl said. "This race appeared quite late, emerging thirty years after the Giants left. They lasted for no more than three hundred years before they went extinct. What do you guess was the cause of their extinction?"
As he spoke, Tyl pulled out another very thick book.
"How did they go extinct?"
"One day, their planet exploded," Tyl said, opening the book. "But fortunately, a member of the Celestial Clan devoted to exploration and adventure left behind an image of that race."
Tilian leaned in for a look and was astounded.
"Are these Humans?"
The beings depicted in the book were indeed humans!
Among the many races created by the gods, there are countless humanoid life-forms. However, only Giants shared a similar form with humans, because humans were created by Giants in their own image, but on a reduced scale! As for other humanoid life-forms, they either differed in size or appearance. If humans used themselves as the standard, they were a kind of life that was not as tall as Giants, didn’t have ears as long as the Elves, lacked wings on their backs, didn’t possess the physical strength of Beastmen, didn’t excel in smithing as Dwarves did, and even lacked both Magic and Fighting Aura.
Yet, it was humans that the Giants placed their great hopes in. The Giants believed that creating humans was the most important step towards drawing closer to the gods.
"Are you trying to tell me that a god, of all beings, actually imitated the Giants and created another batch of humans?" Tilian asked, not understanding. (To be continued. If you like this work, you’re welcomed to vote for it at Qidian [qidian.com]. Your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users please read at m.qidian.com.)
