Extraordinary Pedigree.

Chapter 998 [Missing Number: θ]

The Patriarch's face flushed red instantly, and his eyes became bloodshot.

Xia Xiu's sarcastic remarks were like knives, severing the beliefs he was so proud of.

The Fifth Truth is the absolute truth he believes in, but now it's been compared to Patrick Star and called a brainless joke—for donuts, the hardest thing to argue about is someone insulting their illegitimate father.

He roared, his voice booming through the cage bound by clouds and mist:
"Blasphemy! How dare you blaspheme Him! You damned bastard, you know absolutely nothing...!"

No matter how much he struggled, the fog binding remained tight.

The water elemental's body churned wildly, yet it was like a caged beast, unable to break free. Anger within it manifested as a powerless roar, the more it howled, the more futile and ineffective it seemed.

Xia Xiu didn't even bother to glance at the donut, which was raging in a fit of impotence.

His gaze had already shifted indifferently, as if the Patriarch's anger was nothing more than an insignificant noise.

He reached out, his fingertips protruding from the lining of his black suit to reveal a small, round disc—a golden potion radiating an undeniable, strange glow.

Category X: Panacea.

It can temporarily reverse aging, restore all suppressed life functions, and even bring back deeply buried memories.

But the price is...

The moment you turn back, your body and mind will pay the ultimate price together.

Xia Xiu held the golden disc between his fingertips. The surface of the disc reflected a faint light, like a miniature sun shining brightly in the dim ruins of the sanctuary.

He looked at the pills, a meaningful smile slowly curving his lips, and walked steadily and firmly to the Patriarch.

"You think you can keep your little secret by refusing to tell?"

The Patriarch suddenly realized something, his pupils contracted, and his whole body trembled violently. He struggled frantically, a clear fear appearing in his eyes for the first time: "What...what is that in your hand? What do you want to do?!"

Xia Xiu merely smiled, his eyes crinkling slightly, his expression nonchalant, like a cat toying with a mouse caught in its paws.

"You'll know once you eat it."

Before he finished speaking, he suddenly reached out and gripped the Patriarch's jaw with his five fingers like iron clamps. The knuckles cracked, forcing the other man's mouth open to its limit.

The next instant, the golden disc was forcibly shoved inside.

"Swallow it," Xia Xiu commanded in a low voice.

The pill dissolved instantly upon contact with the back of the tongue, transforming into a stream of intense light that slid down the throat. The scorching energy, like magma, surged directly into the Patriarch's body.

"You...I...this..." The Patriarch's voice suddenly broke apart, his throat felt like it was on fire, his words were intermittent and he stammered, his eyes unfocused.

Bound by the mist, his figure trembled violently, his entire body being pulled between light and water simultaneously.

The moment the golden disc melted away, the Patriarch let out a suppressed roar. It wasn't ordinary pain, but the torment of being skinned alive by time itself.

The scorching light flowed backward along the flesh and blood, through the bones and meridians, and wherever it reached, the activity of the cells suddenly reversed.

Wrinkles disappeared at a visible speed, the withered skin gradually tightened, the gray hair at the temples turned black, and the back straightened in spasms... but could no longer straighten, and instead contracted rapidly.

"Ahhh—! This, this is...!!"

His voice grew increasingly shrill and childish, accompanied by the cracking sounds of his bones, as if he were being cruelly shrunk back into his old shell. His tall figure shrank inch by inch, his clothes drooping, his robes like an old curtain thrown on the ground, wrapping around a smaller and smaller form.

At the same time, his avatar, Crocel, also underwent an incredible transformation.

Originally tall, slender, and transparent like a crystal, the geometric avatar suddenly disintegrated under the forceful pull of the drug's effects. When it reformed, it turned into a cute, chibi-style water sprite.

The hexagonal geometric ring shrank into a large, cartoonish circle, spinning around behind it; the azure eyes became large teardrop shapes, shimmering with exaggerated points of light; the hands that could originally turn mist into walls were now just a pair of round little claws, constantly dripping water with a "plop plop".

The Patriarch collapsed to the ground, his height no greater than that of a ten-year-old child. His eyelids felt as heavy as lead, his consciousness blurred, his thoughts chaotic, and his words began to break down: "No... I... how..."

The world spun in his eyes, blurring into a shimmering interplay of light and shadow. He couldn't even tell if he was the patriarch or the child hiding behind the church wall, secretly counting stars.

Just then, a gentle voice came from the end of the darkness.

"Yes, you're awake."

The blond youth half-knelt before him, a seemingly gentle smile playing on his lips, his golden eyes reflecting his youthful figure. The silver cane in his hand trembled slightly, exuding an aura that brooked no refusal.

"It seems the medicine is very effective."

The voice was gentle, like a teacher praising a child who had finished their homework. But in the Patriarch's heart, he felt a chill creeping over him.

The Patriarch slumped to the ground, his body trembling slightly, his vision blurred and disoriented.

When he looked down, he saw his own hands—slender, fair, with even the nails still rounded and not fully grown. They were clearly a child's hands, yet they stirred up a huge sense of disorientation in his mind.

"This...isn't right..." His voice was high-pitched, like that of a boy whose voice hadn't broken, but his tone was full of adult panic, "I...I'm not three hundred and forty-two years old this year...?"

Fragments of memory surged through my mind.

He remembered leading hundreds of night prayers in the main temple, remembered the sharp arguments he had made with heretics, remembered...

"Ouch, my head hurts so much."

When he tried to get up from the ground, all he could see was an empty, loose ceremonial robe. The large fabric wrapped him up like a child who had stolen his father's clothes, his toes barely touching the ground.

The child's fear and the adult's terror erupted at the same moment.

On one hand, he wanted to cry, to escape, and to have someone hold his hand and lead him away from this terrible ruin; on the other hand, he knew clearly that he had once been a three-hundred-year-old patriarch, a spokesperson who possessed countless secrets and bore the responsibility of the Fifth Truth.

This sense of being torn apart began to throw his thoughts into disarray.

"Who am I? How old am I?"

He clutched his head, burying his fingertips in his disheveled black hair. His childlike body couldn't bear the contrast; instead of a cry, a heart-wrenching sob escaped his chest.

The scariest thing is that he has almost no recollection of what just happened.

Xia Xiu gazed quietly at the figure before him, shrunk to less than ten years old, and stroked his chin thoughtfully, concluding:
"Class X Panacea... This is how it works. This medicine feels similar to the medicine that a certain elementary school student who is a death god took, except that this medicine is more mysterious."

"In the early stages of rejuvenation, there will be memory confusion, with adult consciousness overlapping with childhood perceptions. Thoughts will be torn apart, logic will be disordered, and speech will be hesitant, as if one is a three-hundred-year-old person on one side and a child who has not yet finished learning to read on the other."

As he said this, his smile deepened, like a cat catching a small mouse that was half-dead.

"And this stage is the best time to ask questions."

He slowly squatted down, his golden eyes meeting those innocent yet terrified pupils.

"Come on, little friend, let me test you."

Xia Xiu spoke softly, his voice steady:

"Where was the first Mass you presided over before you became Patriarch?"

The Patriarch huddled inside his robes, his small fingers gripping the fabric tightly, his eyes unfocused. After a long while, he stammered out a sentence:
“I…I remember…it was in the North…a small chapel with a stone roof…”

The voice was childish, yet carried the inertia of adult memories, chaotic and vague. Xia Xiu nodded, then asked:
"In your earliest lecture notes, whose scriptures did you quote? Do you remember?"

The childlike patriarch blinked, seemingly trying to recall, his lips trembling:

“It’s…Saint Cuthbert’s…Morning Prayer…I copied it…very slowly, and my hands were shaking…”

Xia Xiu curled the corners of his lips and continued asking in a casual tone:

"When did you first see the so-called Fifth Truth?"

This time, the Patriarch shuddered, his small body shrinking like a child awakened by a splash of cold water. His eyes widened, his mouth opened and closed, but he uttered only a muffled whisper:

“That day… I shouldn’t have… I shouldn’t have gone to see him… but he was already there… he was already there…”

The voice gradually faded, the words became fragmented, as if being pulled into an abyss by memories.

The Patriarch's speech gradually slowed, but his youthful voice carried the heaviness and despair of an adult. His gaze froze in the mist and light, as if he had returned to that unspeakable moment.

"...I discovered it while copying an arithmetic scripture."

His voice trembled slightly.

“That day I wrote a common recursive formula on the edge of the manuscript… and then I found that it was missing a link, like a star that must exist in the orbit of a celestial body, but was forcibly erased from its orbit.”

“I continued my deduction and came to a symbol… a number that shouldn’t exist in human mathematics. I gave it a code name—θ.”

"θ is not in any sequence, yet it can cause all sequences to collapse. It can penetrate any system, like a grain of sand that can shatter an entire machine. It is a missing number, a blank that is not allowed to be written. But once you see it, it will exist."

He clutched his head, his voice growing increasingly urgent: "I only saw it for a moment... it was as if the entire world's order instantly cracked. My notes, my memories, my language—it all began to erode them. Can you understand? It's not a number, it's an existence!"

"We all know that 2 + 2 = 4, which is an absolute mathematical statement. But this formula proves that we've missed a number. We imagine technology jumping from 4 to 6, but we haven't even considered 5."

“I know… it’s obscure and difficult to understand, but it does exist. It’s a means by which the Great Fifth Truth imposes a civilizational blockade on peaceful nations.”

He was breathing heavily, his childlike chest heaving violently, and his eyes were filled with chaotic tears.

"At that moment, I felt what true powerlessness meant for the first time."

The Patriarch's voice grew softer and softer, his eyes glistening with tears, his tone almost choked with sobs.

"No matter how I try to hide it, θ is always there. It needs no proof, no summoning. It's like... His shadow."

His voice trembled, and he covered his head with both hands, his nails scratching his skin, but he couldn't stop the fear from surging out.

"All human knowledge is like a child building a sandcastle on the beach in the face of θ. No matter how ingenious, it will collapse with a crash when the tide comes."

He raised his head, his face contorted, his childish voice crackling with hysterical rage:

"When Theta arrives, all of humanity's science and resistance will be meaningless! To the Fifth Truth, we are insects—you know what? Insects! Insects! Damn it, we are all insects!"

In the end, his voice turned into a near-desperate roar, his eyes were bloodshot, and tears and cold sweat streamed down his face.

"Now look what's happened! You've unleashed the first monster from my mind—θ—and it's already got its eyes on you!"

Xia Xiu's brows furrowed suddenly. As the information integrator, he felt a chill run down his spine when the Patriarch mentioned "θ".

Has the Mother of the Nether invaded my body?

He subconsciously began to examine the information around him, but found nothing unusual.

Just then, in the void, the phantom of Amund slowly appeared.

The Demon King's expression turned solemn. With a wave of his hands, the genealogical network unfolded in Xia Xiu's mind, like a giant chessboard filled with light and nodes.

"You have to see this thing for yourself. It has unknowingly infiltrated the genealogical network. Fortunately, the Wailing Wall and the Ophiuchus Protocol have stopped it from spreading widely."

Armand's voice was low and unusually serious.

"However, your personal lineage terminal has been partially contaminated. Fortunately, you are now an information integration entity, so this contamination cannot penetrate inward... Nevertheless, there are still some problems with your lineage."

As he spoke, he flicked his finger, and the light from the genealogical network flickered, quickly converging into a simple interface—a block game.

The genealogy game that Amund programmed directly in 0.01 seconds, Xia Xiu, as a sharer of the genealogy, could clearly perceive the game's initial programming logic:

All blocks must be composed of four blocks: strip, Z-shape, T-shape, each strictly following this rule.

The game then started running.

The first piece: a four-square grid.

The second piece: a four-section long strip.

The third piece: a four-grid Z-shape.

The fourth piece: a four-compartment T-shape.

Everything was normal until the fifth piece appeared.

Xia Xiu's pupils suddenly contracted.

What fell was a five-square diamond-shaped block.

It shouldn't exist.

It's not in the program.

It's not in the code.

It is not in the logical chain.

But it was there, falling as if it were mocking all of humanity's mathematical order.

The interface suddenly trembled, and the data rows flickered wildly.

[Error!]

[Error!]

[Error!]

Error messages poured down like an avalanche.

The next second, the entire game interface collapsed with a bang, as if glass had been shattered by a hammer, cracks spreading everywhere, and finally turning into endless darkness.

……

……

The above-mentioned prototype is numbered 033. If used properly, this thing can be used as a sophon to paralyze the mathematical system of a civilization. The principle of paralysis is roughly 2 + 2 = θ + 2. θ actually exists, θ is not equal to 2, θ can be equal to 5. θ exists in the form of a mimetic, not in the form of a linguistic definition.

It's a paradoxical mathematics, meaning that any system will have θ; unless θ is contained, mathematics will be in an unnatural state of "mathematics does not exist," which is just as ridiculous as "physics does not exist."

Mathematics no longer exists!