After leaving the planet that Raven 12345 created, the two of them continued to loiter among the stars and carry on with their conversations telepathically. Hao Ren did not expect the slaphappy goddess to be so exquisite. He expressed how pleasantly surprised he was, but the goddess just smiled carelessly. “Aha, I may be bold and rough, but I’m no slack when it comes to work.”
“Does a mortal’s religious attitude not matter to God?”
“How should I put it…? This is a very complicated issue. It could be a yes or no. It depends on the civilised form of the mortal race and whether the civilisation needs a religion,” Raven 12345 said slowly. It appeared that she was trying to find the best words to use in order for Hao Ren to understand the concept. “Xi Ling Celestials ‘value supremacism’. Only valuable things make sense. This value is varied, but basically it is to maintain the stability of a world and its cultural diversity.”
“Are the Galacticus Lords the same?” Hao Ren suddenly became interested in another celestial system.
“Not quite the same, they are more… well, emotional,” Raven 12345 shook her head. “Let me put it this way; they are milder than Xi Ling Celestials. And even Xi Ling Celestials was different more than ten thousand years ago, we were more rational, and in the eyes of many ordinary races, we were a little bit stereotypically detached from humanity. But there have been changes since. Bah, it’s all history; you don’t have to delve into it. It’s not that I could explain it all in a few sentences.”
Hao Ren did not really understand what she meant, he did not pursue further. “Oh… Well, if that’s the case, if the races in the Plane of Dreams don’t believe in the Goddess, or believe in other gods, aren’t they wrong in the eyes of most true gods?”
“They’re not. Because it’s a proposition that has no judgment value. It is as if discussing how nice or bad a house is without having a house at all. It is meaningless to discuss mortal offerings when God really does not need mortal worship in the first place,” Raven 12345 said, and suddenly switched the topic. “But the Goddess of the Plane of Dreams was a bit special; her ability as a true God was incomplete. So it’s worthy of studying it in detail. Please take note that what I told you today is based on the rules of judgement of the Galacticus Lords and Xi Ling Celestials standard value systems.”
Hao Ren thought for a moment. He found that the relationships between the Goddess, the Second Born, the guardian, and the First Born in the Plane of Dreams were still a mess. He realised that even after talking with Raven 12345, he could not understand things in the Plane of Dreams based on simple, general rule. He only scratched his head. “That’s a real mess…”
Raven knew what he was thinking. She patted on Hao Ren shoulder and said, “Don’t think too much. The diversity of civilisations is the highest priority. The First Borns and brain-monsters have gone crazy. They are threats to the diversity of civilisations. So you should kill whatever should be killed. The guardians are still awake, leave alone those should be left alone. And the mortal race… is all about the prior generations; don’t leave it to the later generations to shoulder the responsibility.”
The starry sky faded. A sense of weight came back. In the blink of an eye, Hao Ren had returned to the withered garden, sitting in front of him was the smiling Goddess.
“I feel sorry for those guardians that have gone mad,” Hao Ren looked at the dried leaves on the table and lamented. “But what can I do?”
After debrief what had transpired in the Plane of Dreams, the last command of the Goddess of Creation that the guardian had mentioned cut across Hao Ren’s brain. “Speaking of that, the Goddess had also let the guardians activate the security protocol before she died. If not for this command, I’m afraid the extinction in the Plane of Dreams would be much worse than it is today. But I don’t quite get it… Hadn’t she hated them?”
Raven 12345 blinked slightly. “Probably there were hate and anger, but there were also the instincts to protect one’s creation.”
Hao Ren scratched his chin. “The instinct to protect? That Goddess usually did not seem to interfere with the mortal civilisation…”
“Non-interference doesn’t mean not to care,” Raven 12345 gently shook her head. “Do you know what kind of experience it is to create a species? This job involves a lot of energy. Whether or not you actively interfere in them, they will continue to dangle before your eyes. You have to watch them grow from scratch little by little. In the course of millions of years or even tens of millions of years, you watch the little algae in the water, watch the single cells became multi-celled, watch the primitive amphibians creeping up and down on the mudflats, and see more and more colours appearing in the bare stones and sand. Suddenly, the bizarre creatures occupy your whole field of vision. One of two of the smartest creatures are doing something that surprises you. You are pleasantly surprised to find that those molecules that you have once thrown into the sea have learned to write and clothe themselves. They began to observe the world just as you observe them. They make some stupid mistakes, but there are always individuals who try to remedy them. They are weak, very weak but always try to survive… until they understand the earth and the sky and even begin to understand the stars. They even begin to study how to create new life as you did. You realise that everything began from the few seeds in the sea… Do you know how wonderful this process is?”
Hao Ren looked at the eyes of Raven 12345. The shimmering glare in those eyes aroused an indescribable feeling in him.
The Goddess smiled and seemed to be immersed in the achievement of a certain creation. “I have not seen an evolutionary process that starts from scratch because I was born only after the new empire was promoted as God. But even the races I created out of the primitive people, they gave me pleasant surprises. They might suffer setbacks for one reason or another, but I’m sure if anyone try to exterminate them, I swear to my head that I will find them and I will kill them even if they hide in the void.”
Hao Ren exhaled after a long while. “It’s really like a mother.”
“You’ll only feel the wonderfulness of things when you experience it,” Raven 12345 raised her finger and waved it again in front of Hao Ren. “Sometimes I wonder; we have never even thought about this before we became celestials… ”
“But what if what you have created is a treacherous child?” Hao Ren suddenly asked.
He immediately felt his question was a bit inappropriate that he should not spoil the atmosphere. But the answer of the Goddess was unexpectedly straightforward and without hesitation. “I promise I will not kill them, but I will make sure they learned the lesson the hard way. Do you think a loving mother like me would spare them the necessary whip?”
Hao Ren: “…”
“The Galacticus Lords and Xi Ling Celestials are similar in that they treat their creations like own children. The only difference is we are even more willing to whip our children.” Raven 12345 rolled her sleeves up. The poetic images that she projected a while ago shattered like glass falling onto the ground. “Punishment is a necessary to instil discipline. So I suspect that the Goddess of the Plane of Dreams is not Xi Ling Celestials, not characteristically. Even though she had lost her memory, she should not have been bullied by her children like this. Most likely she is of the Galacticus Lords.”
Cold sweat was trickling down Hao Ren’s forehead. “Okay, okay, I know. Would you please not roll your sleeves up? You’re spoiling your hard found good image… Oh yeah! I have something for you!”
The Goddess was startled. “What? You’re not finished yet?”
“It’s about Vivian,” Hao Ren said, pasting a smile. “I should have reported earlier, but the emergency situation of the Plane of Dreams had prevented me to do so. A while ago, we got a magic book that recorded the method of summoning the King of Blood. Later Vivian discovered that she was the King of Blood. When we tried to summon…”
Hao Ren reached into his dimensional pocket for a tube of blood sample. “A monster came out. It was identical to Vivian, but turned into a pool of menstrual flow after the thing died.”
Raven 12345’s face suddenly turned solemn. But she still sounded cocky. “The way you describe it does sound like my style. Let me take a look… well… this is it.”
“What do you see?” Hao Ren anxiously asked.
Raven 12345 looked up. “This blood sample was the residue of that ‘monster’? Free of contamination?”
Hao Ren nodded. “Yep. Is there a problem?”
He noticed that Raven 12345 did not seem surprised at all. He could not help but wondered. But before he could ask, what Raven said subsequently baffled him even more.
Raven 12345 shook the sample in her hand. “This is the lifeblood.”
Hao Ren was taken aback. “Lifeblood? It can’t be. I have a lifeblood sample over there, instrument analysis—”
“You instrument couldn’t detect it,” Raven 12345 looked up at the MDT on Hao Ren’s shoulder. “Because the lifeblood sample is dead. It has completely changed. You can only confirm its true nature through its information characteristics.”
Hao Ren was stunned.