World version update

Chapter 296 Retrospection! The Truth! The Past!

On the rooftop terrace of the palace, Lu Yan stared at the starry sky, his face extremely grim.

The chanting of countless believers seemed to merge into the great Dao of Heaven and Earth, unknown to ordinary people, but for someone of Lu Yan's stature, everything was so clear.

Every syllable of that sacred chant was like a heavy hammer blow, slamming into his heart and shattering all his previous pride and plans.

The gods have returned to their places, the gods have awakened!
This is by no means good news for Lu Yan now; it could even be described as a catastrophe!
Everything he meticulously constructed was built upon a delicate balance and information asymmetry.

The reason why the union has been able to so easily gain popularity, make the nobles of the Kingdom of Victoria bow down, and make the powerful Steam God Cult choose to back down is not only due to the power shown by Lu Yan, but also because of the deterrent effect brought about by the mystery, unknown and unfathomable nature of the underworld.

It was this intimidation from the underworld and the Emperor of Fengdu that allowed the expansion of the guild to proceed smoothly, enabling him to subdue the entire Kingdom of Victoria in a near-authoritarian manner and support Elizabeth's ascension to the throne.

Otherwise, with the deep-rooted strength of the Steam Cult, how could they tolerate an outside force so easily taking root and expanding in their core religious area, and even encroaching on secular royal power?

Lu Yan had no doubt that the Steam Cult definitely harbored a terrifying existence within its ranks: a Sequence Two Hidden Angel who possessed the unique and incomplete power of the Sequence One Angel King.

While the Hidden Angel may not be as strong individually as the Undying King in full condition, as long as he doesn't enter the Underworld, he is far beyond what the King can easily contend with now.

Especially the Angel King of Sequence One, who truly stands at the pinnacle of the mortal realm, only one step away from the throne of God.

If such a powerful being were to descend upon the underworld in his true form, even the complete order of the divine court and the underworld would find it difficult to contend with him.

That's why Lu Yan tried every means to create momentum, carefully maintaining this situation, and using information asymmetry and the partial strength he displayed to carry out strategic intimidation to get to where he is today.

But now that the stars have returned to their places and the gods have been revived, this dramatic change originating from the world's underlying rules is like a giant hand overturning a chessboard, instantly disrupting all his plans.

The true God behind those seven major orthodox churches is the only one of its kind in this world.

Their understanding and control over this world far exceeds imagination; they can see through the essence of version updates and are more likely to easily see through his disguise as an outsider.

Once Lu Yan falls into the eyes of these true deities, his unchanging nature will be almost impossible to hide.

For Lu Yan, who possesses the essence of the Unchanging One, colliding head-on with the mysterious version of the One and Only in This World is definitely the last thing he wants to happen.

That would mean complete exposure, and could potentially attract the siege of the world's highest-level forces.

The previous plan was to proceed gradually, to strengthen the Underworld as much as possible and consolidate its own power, so as to ensure that the guild and the Underworld faith could continue after the version update.

However, facing the gods who are about to awaken, and those unique beings of this world who are about to turn their gaze to the mortal realm, Lu Yan's current power is simply insufficient.

All schemes and plans appear pale and powerless in the face of absolute power and rank difference.

Lu Yan's eyes flickered rapidly, his brain working at an unprecedented speed, frantically trying to figure out a way to break the deadlock.

However, no matter how he deduced it, it seemed to point to a possibility that he least wanted to accept, yet was extremely real.

Staying behind to fight? That would be like a mantis trying to stop a chariot.

To continue pretending? In the face of the soon-to-awaken gods and the One, it would likely be nothing more than self-deception.

So it seems that the only solution is...
A thought filled with endless bitterness and humiliation sprouted and spread in his heart like a poisonous weed.

"escape?"

This is not nonsense, but a practical and feasible option.

In the previous major version of Honkai Impact, Lu Yan helped the Honkai Heavenly Dao, thus unlocking a new privilege: he could initiate version updates ahead of time and forcibly break away from the current version.

As long as he uses this authority now, no matter how the stars in this mysterious version return to their places, or how the gods awaken, they will not be able to cross the chasm between versions to hunt him down.

Lu Yan instinctively wanted to seize this glimmer of hope, but the next moment he was suddenly jolted awake from his longing.

Launching the version ahead of time can indeed protect oneself, but what is the cost?
The mysterious version won't be paused because of someone's disappearance; it will continue running along its predetermined path.

Lu Yan's sudden disappearance means that this seemingly promising situation will vanish in an instant, like a carefully built castle on the beach being washed away by the first wave.

The resurgence of the gods will inevitably bring about a violent upheaval in the entire mysterious world order.

Against this backdrop, the unions that lost his backing and the nascent faith in the underworld will be extinguished in an instant, like a candle flickering in a storm.

Elizabeth, who had just ascended the throne with his support and whose power base was not yet secure, would face an even more dire fate if she lost him as her biggest backer and was subjected to a fierce backlash from the old forces.

At that time, let alone maintaining the current situation, it is uncertain whether she can even survive the meat grinder of power and the wrath of the church.

More importantly, Anna, whose Netherworld sequence is the foundation for Lu Yan's future construction of a complete Divine Court Netherworld system.

Once Anna perishes in the storm, the creation of the Underworld sequence will be restricted, and it will be almost impossible for Lu Yan to find such a suitable system with such great potential again.

All his previous efforts and hard work will be in vain.

Thinking about these things, the desire to escape quickly cooled down, replaced by a heavy sense of responsibility and an indescribable sense of resentment.

Just as Lu Yan's eyes were shifting and his mind was in turmoil, a figure carrying a faint fragrance quietly approached.

Elizabeth wore only a light silk dress, and her light steps outlined her languid and alluring curves.

But her expression was somewhat solemn as she slowly walked to Lu Yan's side and stood shoulder to shoulder with him, gazing at the strange phenomena in the night sky.

"The starry sky tonight is brighter than ever before."

She spoke softly, breaking the silence on the terrace, her voice carrying a hint of barely perceptible confusion and awe, "And I always feel that there's something hidden behind those stars."

Hearing Elizabeth's sharp yet somewhat bewildered whisper, Lu Yan forced himself to calm his turbulent mind and turned his gaze away from the distant stars.

Logically speaking, as a Sequence Five extraordinary being, Elizabeth herself was not capable of touching the Great Dao of Heaven and Earth and knowing the essence of the return of the stars.

However, she noticed some clues with her queenly intuition, which made Lu Yan think for a moment, and he asked in a deep voice:

"Elizabeth, have you ever heard the legend about the stars returning to their proper places?"

Elizabeth's delicate eyebrows furrowed slightly, her beautiful face filled with doubt. She thought carefully, but finally shook her head gently.
"I have never heard of such a celestial phenomenon as the alignment of stars, and there seems to be no clear record of it in the royal archives."

Lu Yan's heart sank even further.

Elizabeth is now Queen Victoria. Even though her ascension to the throne was controversial, she has access to far more royal secrets and ancient texts than the average person.

If even she is completely unaware of the stars returning to their rightful place, then the root of this claim probably only exists among the high-ranking members of the church who possess the core secrets, or even among beings at a higher level.

He changed his question, his tone becoming more serious: "How much do you know about the slumber of the gods?" "The gods?" This time, Elizabeth's expression clearly changed.

She was no longer completely bewildered, but fell into deep contemplation, as if searching for relevant clues in the vast palace of memories.

After a moment, she slowly spoke:

“In the ancient royal books, there are indeed very few records about the gods themselves, and they are vague and even full of contradictions and taboos.”

Even in the publicly available scriptures and documents of the seven major churches, descriptions of the gods are extremely rare, as if they had been deliberately forgotten.

Her voice lowered, carrying the caution characteristic of speaking of forbidden knowledge:

"Legend has it that any attempt to directly record or explore the affairs of the gods in writing or language may attract their gaze across time and space, or even bring down pollution from the conceptual level, causing the extraordinary path to go out of control and the soul to become distorted."

Therefore, only those extraordinary individuals who pursue knowledge itself without fear of madness or death, the true path, will deliberately seek out those secrets related to the gods.

Elizabeth looked up at Lu Yan, a complex light flashing in her eyes:

"During the period when I was completely out of the running for the throne, I was in despair and tried to turn to the path of truth in order to find another way of being in the long river of knowledge."

To this end, I consulted numerous ancient texts that were sealed away or even listed as taboo.

"It was from those fragmented records and minor details that I seemed to glimpse a chilling truth."

At this point, Elizabeth's expression became more serious and earnest than ever before.

The platinum crown atop her head, a symbol of royal power, silently emitted a soft, shimmering light that spread out like a tangible entity, forming an invisible barrier that separated the inside from the outside, ensuring that her next words would not be revealed in the slightest.

"In some fragmented historical records spanning thousands of years or even longer, I discovered a strange phenomenon."

The power of the church seems to exhibit a cyclical pattern of rise and fall.

She subconsciously lowered her voice: "It seems that every so often, in a period of time that is too long to be precisely calculated, the authority and influence of the seven churches inexplicably decline, and their control over the secular world decreases significantly."

In contrast, the power of secular monarchy grew, allowing the kingdom to breathe, develop, and even undergo some limited reforms.

"But such periods of royal power are always short-lived. Once that mysterious period of decline is over, the power of the Church will grow stronger again and firmly occupy the dominant position, suppressing the power of the royal family back to its original position, as if nothing had ever changed."

"Furthermore, according to the hints from those incomplete records, each period of change in the church's power was often accompanied by changes in the church's internal scriptures and subtle shifts in the believers' faith."

Elizabeth's voice trembled slightly, as if she were thinking of something extremely terrible. "It is this information that makes me think of the era we live in now and the so-called slumber of the gods."

"The church declined, the monarchy grew stronger, the canon was changed, and the faith shifted."

How similar these phenomena are to the Industrial Revolution, social changes, and doctrinal conflicts within the Steam Cult we are currently experiencing?

“Although there is no direct evidence to definitively prove this,” Elizabeth suddenly looked up at Lu Yan, her eyes filled with shock and fear, but her tone was unusually certain, “I am almost certain that this is not the first time the gods have fallen asleep! Their slumber and awakening are cyclical!”

She took a deep breath and uttered the ultimate conclusion that sent shivers down her spine:

"When they are asleep, the world is as if it has broken free of its shackles, and is able to move forward and evolve through the power of the monarchy or the spontaneous awakening of the people."

And when they awaken, the world's development will be forcibly halted, permanently frozen at the point in time they desired.

Elizabeth's last words exploded like a thunderclap deep in Lu Yan's mind.

That seemingly absurd yet logically consistent reasoning was like a key, unlocking the many doubts he had long held about the inconsistencies in this world.

Almost at the same instant Elizabeth finished speaking, an invisible yet absolutely majestic force of order suddenly spread out from Lu Yan as the center.

This is not a simple energy barrier, but a blockade originating from the divine court and the order of the underworld.

The entire palace terrace and the vast space and time surrounding it are shrouded in the divine order, and neither sound, light, nor information or concepts can leak out from here.

This is a higher level of spacetime blockade, ensuring that their conversation at this moment cannot be spied on by any being.

After doing all this, Lu Yan murmured to himself:

"Periodic slumber, the fall of the old, and a mysterious gray fog."

Lu Yan raised his head, his gaze seemingly trying to pierce through the sky sealed by the divine order, looking at the countless stars that were still slowly returning to their places, his tone filled with the shock of sudden realization.

"If that's the case, then everything makes sense!"

When Lu Yan entered the Mysterious Version, he wondered why it took tens of thousands of years of history for the Mysterious Version to barely reach the Industrial Revolution.

It's important to understand that the Mysterious version didn't experience any major catastrophes or the end of civilizations. The Seven Kingdoms have existed for tens of thousands of years, and the Churches have an even longer history. Under these circumstances, it was almost inevitable that society would move forward.

The mysterious version presented to Lu Yan seemed to have undergone an extremely long period of stagnation, only reaching the industrial age at an extremely slow pace.

This is different from those unchanging supernatural worlds, because the supernatural system of the Mysterious Version itself is independent of mortals and has almost no interaction with ordinary people.

In this situation, it is almost impossible for society to stagnate.

But combining Elizabeth's information, Lu Yan suddenly understood.

It's not that development is slow at all; rather, the world's development process has been forcibly interrupted time and time again by the gods who sit on their thrones, and may have even undergone countless resets.

They do not mercifully allow the world to develop freely during their slumber. Instead, upon each awakening, they wield unimaginable power to erase the history of those who developed beyond their bounds during their slumber, modify reality, distort cognition, and may even directly rewind time or reshape the timeline.

They forcibly froze the progress of civilization at the point they desired, and then fell into slumber once again.

The problem was solved, but another question arose.

What is the purpose of the gods?

Lu Yan narrowed his eyes, gazing at the gradually returning stars in the sky.

As the celestial constellations came into Lu Yan's view, and the mist enveloping the avenue gradually dissipated, Lu Yan seemed to vaguely glimpse some traces.

Above infinitely high dimensions, the stars outline a colossal corpse, stretching across the entire mysterious version.

Lu Yan subconsciously uttered that name.

"The old days!"

(End of this chapter)