Chapter 374: The Descent Technique of the Uma Sinners |
"If there is any record of blasphemy in the history of Birth's faithful, then the Uma were undoubtedly the first group of blasphemers ever documented.
But they didn't abandon Him. Rather, they worshipped Him too fervently — so fervently that their methods of devotion became extreme and distorted, gradually veering off the proper course of faith until they devolved into outright sacrilege.
As everyone knows, His will is reproduction and procreation. Since ancient times, every tribe that followed Him — even if only for the sake of their own growth and expansion — had to align themselves with His will.
Until one day civilization was established. Tribes and clans no longer had to worry about population — and that was when fanatical worship took a different turn.
The Wulun people discovered that blindly following Birth only made their tribe grow ever larger, yet the resources they could extract from the land were finite. More people meant less for each individual. So they abandoned Birth and converted to Prosperity, seeking to ensure that every living person could fully enjoy their long lives.
The Uda were craftier still. They fabricated a so-called 'Child of Birth' identity in an attempt to monopolize resources. This foolish act drew the hatred of every other tribe, and they were hunted nearly to extinction. You all probably know about that.
As for the Uma, their blasphemous thoughts predated the Wulun people's by far.
Even during the era of tribal expansion, they realized their population growth couldn't keep pace with the speed of territorial expansion. Gestation took too long, newborns were too fragile, and maturation was too slow.
With vast unclaimed lands beckoning, they couldn't afford to wait for so many of their people to lose combat capability to pregnancy. So they drew upon His divine power and developed the first forbidden art in the history of Birth — the Descent Technique.
Though they had no method to accelerate the newborn's growth, they had at least shortened the next generation's timeline by nearly a full year compared to other tribes.
That was the miracle of the Descent Technique. With this secret art, the Uma quickly became the dominant power of those lands."
Turadin's explanation was thorough, and Cheng Shi listened attentively — yet he still didn't understand.
"From what you're describing, this Descent Technique sounds perfectly normal. Procreation is something He welcomes. They merely accelerated the process. How is that blasphemy?"
Even as he spoke, Cheng Shi thought: if that counted as blasphemy, then where did all those bizarre talents that modern Birth players possessed come from? Weren't they all gifts from Him?
Turadin wasn't finished. She continued:
"Since you've all forsaken Him, you should be familiar with His will. The ancient tribes have always passed down interpretations of His will.
All devout believers held that 'birth' was the process by which a newborn drew closer to Him. They believed the fetus was nearest to Him — that before a fetus developed consciousness, its nascent awareness was filled entirely with His image. They could clearly perceive His truest form.
The fetus would then strive to evolve toward His likeness. But since the divine power humans carried was limited, this evolution almost always failed. After birth, the newborn could only reproduce a tiny fraction of Birth's appearance.
And precisely because the newborn didn't resemble Him, He would withdraw His favor, strip the memory of His appearance from the human mind, and bestow upon them independent intellect and personality.
The worshippers believed that the more intelligent a person was, the more closely they had evolved toward His likeness during the fetal stage. This process of evolution was regarded by the ancient tribes as the most devout offering to Him.
But the Descent Technique profaned that offering, because it rendered evolution entirely useless.
When someone used the Descent Technique to birth a child, that child was indeed born rapidly — but when it grew up...
it became an exact copy of the person who had cast the Descent Technique!
This art severed the fetus's opportunity to draw closer to Him, replaying the caster's already-determined evolutionary process a second time.
The Uma people intended to use this method to artificially select their smartest and most valiant members. They copied themselves over and over, until they became the strongest tribe!
They stole Birth's divine power but instead of offering it back, they used it for territorial conquest and tribal subjugation — to satisfy their own hunger for domination. It ran directly counter to His will.
And so, after conquering the entire North, the Three Wu Tribes fractured under divine punishment."
"..."
Cheng Shi understood immediately. So the Uma were the original Corruption believers?
Even if they weren't, seeds of Corruption's delusions had certainly taken root in their hearts. But then again, all humans harbored desire — it was unavoidable.
Except...
Cheng Shi turned to Gao Ya with a thoughtful look. "So the reason for the Three Wu Tribes' split that you said you didn't know about — it was divine punishment?"
Gao Ya nodded with a frown, then turned to Turadin. "What kind of divine punishment?"
"The desires of the human heart.
The Uma united the North through desire, yet they couldn't control the diverging desires within their own people, and so they were torn apart.
He used the very means by which they had forsaken Him to punish them in return.
To Birth's faithful, this is perhaps terrifying. But for us, it should be a history worth celebrating, wouldn't you say?
It was also because of this that the Uma, stripped of their dominion, sank into perpetual dread. Generation after generation, they begged for His forgiveness.
The invention of the Umbilical Shackles was meant to return themselves to a fetal state and once again earn His gaze — because they still clung to the belief that fetuses were closest to Him."
"..."
Cheng Shi suddenly felt like laughing. He thought he'd figured out the real reason the Three Wu Tribes had splintered — and it probably had nothing to do with divine punishment from Birth. It was simply...
What is long united must divide; what is long divided must unite.
When contradictions of governance gradually surfaced due to insufficient ruling power, civilization naturally fractured. The same old path the Civilization Era had taken to its end.
The irony was that Birth's faithful believed their god had punished the blasphemers, never realizing He might not have paid them any attention at all — might not even have cared.
Because Brother Mouth had once said that fetal evolution didn't occur because fetuses perceived His appearance and tried to approach Him. Rather, they were guessing what appearance He preferred and trying to take that form to please Him.
So if Brother Mouth hadn't been lying, then every interpretation of Birth's will throughout the Life Era's history — all of it — was wrong.
No wonder most players' understanding of Him had gone astray; the history they'd learned was riddled with errors from the very foundation. Everything passed down through the generations had been flawed from the start.
How... pitiable.
And there was something even more pitiable — because this legendary forbidden blasphemous art had apparently been adopted by the Benefactor they worshipped as a talent to bestow upon players in the Faith Game.
The Chieftain's blessing, or those various "birth oneself" talents — weren't they just different versions of the Descent Technique?
So He never considered it blasphemy at all. The ones who branded it sacrilege were... His own followers. Those ignorant, fanatical believers.
Cheng Shi's expression was complicated, his heart heavy with emotion.
'Faith... what an impossible thing to pin down.'
But to return to the matter at hand — if everything Turadin said was true, then whose child was she carrying?
Who had stolen the Descent Technique?
And who had used it on her?
Surely it couldn't be that vagrant from the deduced future... Aph Ros?
Cheng Shi's gaze turned somewhat peculiar. He looked at Turadin, uncertain, and asked:
"Are you satisfied with the title 'Miss Moon'?"
Turadin burst into laughter, utterly unbothered by his teasing.
"Satisfied. Completely satisfied."
Cheng Shi's face stiffened slightly, and understanding dawned.
'No question about it — the child is Aph Ros's!'
'Then where is he?'
'Dead in the library?' Quite possibly — because a faint shadow of sorrow had flickered across Turadin's eyes when she spoke of the Descent Technique.
'Hold on — you two met once, and that was enough to spark feelings?'
'Or did you already know each other? Who exactly is he?'
How bizarre. A vagrant from a deduced future had somehow conceived a child labeled as Corruption's offspring with Turadin in the present!
'Wonderful, wonderful. So the "insider" Scorpio's contact claimed to be — this is what "insider knowledge" meant!'
'Truly magnificent!'
So had this unexpected ripple in Time helped them find the life that should never have been born — or had it personally created one?
What exactly had the Aph Ros of that deduced future experienced? And what had Turadin, the Holy Infant's mother in that future timeline, been through?
Cheng Shi was burning with curiosity. His eyes gleamed as he addressed Turadin:
"The child is Aph Ros's. Very well. I'm dying to know what happened between you two to produce this crystal of life.
Don't tell me you fell for some vagrant Casanova's 'moon praise.' Go on — don't stop. Tell me your story.
I simply must know."
...
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