Soul of Burning Steel

The life of a light chaser is destined to be turbulent.

In the twilight area where there is no eternal light shining, light chasers must drive huge moving world cities, follow the trajectory of stars and move, absorbing their light and heat, and in the entire nine days, there are few stars that can be used by mobile cities. Less, not because it is too close to the steel continent, enough to turn everything into ashes, or because it is too far away from the mainland, the light cannot provide enough energy to move the mobile city and maintain the inner world ecosystem.

Even if you are lucky to find a suitable star, because of the terrifying and changeable gravity of the steel continent, these blazing suns will fall off the balance line due to its gravity at any time, and then fall to the earth-and at that time, the mobile city must be fast Change direction, avoid this area, avoid the destruction caused by the crash of the star.

Although the steel continent will absorb all the kinetic energy of the explosion when the star collides with the earth and destroys it, it will not cause a huge earthquake that lasts for a few light hours or even a few light days, and recondenses the gas from the collapse of the star into a new one. Stars, but in any case, this means that mobile cities will lose their energy source, and they must set sail as soon as possible to the next available star.

Chasing the light, chasing the stars, sometimes as long as a thousand years, sometimes only for dozens of years-a mobile city is a huge steel shell that eternally rushes across the continent, coming because of the stable movement of stars, and leaving because of the falling of stars. And the light chaser is the insect hiding in this shell. For most ordinary light chasers, the gravitational force of the steel continent and various external radiation and pollution are enough to threaten their lives. If Not in the city, accepting the protection of the artificial world barrier, ordinary people without extraordinary powers will die in a matter of minutes.

Therefore, even in the shining area, there is actually no ‘stable’. Even if it is because of the endless strong light brought by dense star clusters, all beings in the shining area do not have to worry about energy problems, but more and denser stars also mean more "star falls"—every year, there will be A certain mobile city accidentally encountered a'stellar rain' and was destroyed by hundreds or even thousands of star clusters that fell at the same time, and this natural disaster occurred in the shining area almost every day.

Stars rise, stars fall, and stars fall. In this steel continent, endless things are rotating and moving. There is absolutely no stability at all. Besides the glory, there are endless chaotic families from the end of the world. Coming, they are afraid of light, but they shuttle in the twilight—all those who chase light crave for stability, for eternal and peaceful light, and don’t have to move and flee forever.

This seemingly unremarkable desire is a problem that has never been solved in 100,000 years in history. Countless people have devoted themselves to astronomy and astronomy, or explored the distance of the stars in an attempt to find out the laws of the movement of the stars. I want to crack the reason behind all these turmoil, but until now, no one has found the answer.

Even no one can guess how this world was born and how it was created. Based on the models of stars, the basic nature of physics and extraordinary power, the most intelligent Alliance of Nations scholars have speculated that countless worlds may be born, but there has never been any model that can give birth to such a strange and weird world as the "Three Realms and Nine Heavens". In this regard, they can only admit reluctantly that there may really be a'creator' and a true'god' in this world.

It is not the gods of the age of the gods, but also the ‘powerful ones’ who cannot even reach the ‘Nine Heavens’, and neither the sword world nor the axe world can enter them. They are also creatures chasing light.

Therefore, everyone can only push the cause of all this to the almighty "Father", the creator of this endless steel continent, the creator of all living beings, and call all this suffering a "trial"-because Apart from this, they could not find any other reason.

But now, Alpha Falster, this ordinary Bachelor of Astronomy, a well-known explorer in the past, has discovered that he is now on the road to the'truth'-in this far, no light zone, He saw the black giant spinning in the center of the world, and saw countless dazzling stars immersed in it, turning into igniting lights, like fuelwood for fueling a fire.

"...Anyway, I have no choice. They took my Alice, my daughter and my son. I have lost everything and only the truth is left."

The silver-haired middle-aged man smiled bitterly. He shook his head, turned around, and looked behind him.

Instead of looking at the advanced exploration ship left by Karlis, what Alpha looked at was the origin of the ‘hill’ under his feet, the ultimate goal of his trip.

He is looking at a ‘high mountain’.

A ‘mountain’ that is more than 400 million kilometers long and requires light to walk for 24 minutes just to go straight up and down. It is extremely large and even larger than many stars.

However, on this infinitely huge continent, even such a huge mountain can not be called the highest. The'Big Heaven Mountain' in the shining area, the sanctuary where the gods lived in the past, is as high as two lights. But even so, such a mountain and the continuous mountains around it are nothing more than the wrinkles on human skin.

-And the light chasers live in such a huge world, they are small, struggling to struggle in this world.

It can be seen that at the top of this mountain, at the highest point that is completely beyond the sight of ordinary people, there is an extremely eye-catching point exposed-it is a sharp prismatic made of silvery, luminous crystals. The tip, and this tip is shining like a star, releasing a little bit of starlight.

Alpha stared at the light, he felt the blood in his body boiling, and an inexplicable induction began to appear...what was it like? What is in his blood? Why does oneself, who has always lived in the shining area, feel ‘familiar’ with the crystal tip on a high mountain in this distant, non-light zone?

Could it be that you are really not as ordinary as you think? Is it because of this that Teacher Karlis chose to be a student, and what does the so-called "Silver Fairy Son" mean?

Countless questions linger in the heart of the tired middle-aged man, but even if he loses his wife, child, and everything he has struggled for in the shining area, he has not lost his courage and curiosity yet—he has not yet lost his courage and curiosity. Lose the blood and impulse in the heart, and the will to move towards the'real'!

"let's go."

With that said, plucking up courage, Alpha once again entered his exploration ship, and as the light of the leap engine started, he began to head towards the top of that ‘high mountain’!

[—Alpha's Exploration Log—]

[In the dark and lifeless area of ​​the non-light zone, I found something puzzling. It was a prismatic tip entirely made of crystal, crystal clear, and emitting blue light.

It is located on the top of an unnamed mountain, emitting a bright, but without any temperature, cold light. I originally did a full set of heat insulation measures, but the result was completely in vain, but it can’t be said to be a bad thing, because I can leave the exploration ship. , And other shipboard artificial intelligence together with tools to observe closely and explore its situation. 】

[After several days of careful investigation, I can finally confirm with shock that the shining crystal prism at the top of the mountain is actually the top of a huge crystal obelisk! Its main body is buried under the mountain range, and this mountain range-completely, all! Consists of the corpses of chaotic monsters! Heavenly Father, it’s hard to imagine that the main body of such a huge mountain range is actually piled up by endless chaotic monster corpses. After a long time, these chaotic monsters have lost their strange and crazy toxicity and become only There is a little bit of soil and rock left by pollution, and this obelisk is buried in it.

I am sure that this obelisk has a way to enter. Teacher Karlis guided me here. There must be a purpose. It is definitely not just to surprise me, and such a huge obelisk, if it is not for me to enter, but Let me dig it out, it was really embarrassing... and I don't know why, I think there is something inside this obelisk that is attracting me. 】

[After searching for a long time—in fact, it was only two and a half hours before I found the way to enter this obelisk. The method is very simple, just don’t bring any protective equipment, enter the silver cold light, touch the crystal with your hands, it will naturally inhale me...seriously, if I don’t think the protective clothing is too stuffy, I’m just ready to breathe. , I would never do it like this. With my just golden mid-level strength, I would die without a place to bury my body if I encountered a random accident in the Wuguang zone, but when the cold light shone on me, I felt , I don’t even need to breathe, it will naturally provide me with all the energy I need to survive.

Anyway, there is no other choice, I enter it. At the moment I was inhaled, I felt that there was an extremely large force that far surpassed the stars, sweeping my whole body up and down-this force was far more than the supernova explosion that my teacher and I observed decades ago, and it was enough for an instant. Wipe out thousands of cities in the mobile world. Come to think of it, those chaotic family members must have touched this crystal obelisk rashly, so they were wiped out by this. They were piled up for tens of thousands of years or even longer, and the entire obelisk was buried in it. 】

[And I found that the light in this crystal is transforming my body—I gradually don’t need to breathe, and my hunger and thirst have disappeared. I can feel that the surrounding energy has gradually become closer to me, but with this At the same time, my ears began to become pointed, my skin began to become a bit like metal, and the demand for energy was greatly increased... This should have been a golden high-level, or even extreme-level elemental, psychic abilities. Appeared on his body... Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know. In short, when I wake up from the trance, I have come to an unusually vast crystal hall with many tiny caves all over it.

And at the center of the Crystal Hall, there is a staircase that is somewhat narrow for most light chasers, leading to the depths of the obelisk-it seems that the obelisk is made of a larger body than the average light chasers. It is a small creature to build, but this building is much larger than many stars. It has to be said that this is a shocking miracle.

Without hesitation, I chose to go deeper. 】

Stopping the recording pen and continuing to maintain this good habit of sticking to it for more than ten years, Alpha took a deep breath and walked to the central staircase of the Crystal Hall and continued to deepen below.

At the beginning, the hall appeared as a semicircle with a radius of about 15 kilometers. With optimized vision, Alpha could see that the walls of this crystal hall were full of many large and small cavities, and wind came out of it. It seems to lead somewhere else. And on the walls on both sides of the steps in the center, there are countless incomparably complicated runes, and many handwritings are neat and beautiful, but it is not clear what language the glyphs are.

Alpha felt that he could vaguely understand the meaning of this glyph. Maybe it was some kind of rare ancient language? The exploration ship happens to have translation equipment, then bring these pictures back to the ship and try it out to see what it is talking about.

After a long distance, the glyphs gradually disappeared, and layers of murals gradually appeared. Alpha quickly took out the shooting equipment and recorded the layers of murals.

Unlike language, murals can be understood by just looking at them. It can be seen that this series of murals seems to be about the life of a'cleric'. He was born into an ordinary farmer's family, because he was attacked by the demonic wave (Alpha feels like a chaotic monster attacked, but the murals He didn’t know any of the chaotic monsters) attacked, the priest’s parents died, and he was adopted by the good-hearted priest in the village, allowing him to practice extraordinary ways.

There are seven gods that the pastor served. This is a rare thing, because these seven gods form an alliance of gods and share the glory of equal status. The young priest has been devoted to practicing, traveling in the world's cities, helping poor civilians, until his middle age, he was unknown, and his deeds were at most extolled among some ordinary people. However, after the previous generation of Pope abdicated, he participated in the discourse meeting witnessed by the gods, and defeated all opponents in knowledge and strength to become the Pope.

A very inspirational story—Alpha was still a little envious when he saw this place. From ordinary people with nothing to the pope at the highest point in the entire world, this is not something that everyone can do. You must have courage. Great determination, great perseverance, and great wisdom are all things, and he himself, at best, has a little bit of courage, determination and perseverance, wisdom will not be discussed.

The mural is not over yet, and the story continues. After becoming the Pope, this priest has been trying to benefit everyone in the entire world. He once fought with giant lizard-like monsters and killed a lot of chaos. The monster, he once confronted other evil gods, and joined forces with the seven gods and many other powerful men to seal the black mist monster that surpassed the stars many times.

The first half of his life was silent, and the second half of his life was magnificent. In the end, this priest was standing shoulder to shoulder with a giant standing on the galaxy, and rushed to the eternal and endless darkness and chaos that seemed to be a lightless belt. In the cluster.

"This should be the end of the age of the gods, when the last remaining gods and their churches fought against the chaos that swarmed from the dull belt? This is the experience of which prehistoric mobile city is so legendary, but I never Haven't heard of it?"

Alpha has no doubts about the authenticity of this mural—who would be bored to build a huge star monument just to deceive latecomers? Compared to this, he is strange that the logic of this matter is a bit unclear.

Can the gods and their pope... really build this huge monument that is as large as twenty-four light points and unparalleled? If it were the gods, Alpha would reluctantly believe it, but what this mural tells is obviously just a pope.

And...in the end, the four-armed giant standing on the endless galaxy...who is he? It is not one of the seven gods, nor is it any deity in myths and legends, and there is no rumors and descriptions similar to him.

"It's strange to say that all the defenses inside this obelisk have failed?"

He shook his head, and temporarily left his doubts behind—Alpha recorded all the text and murals, and prepared to wait for the exploration ship to translate it with the help of the translation system. Compared to these academic problems, he was even more strange that he had seen many crystal sentry devices that were obviously used for defense along the way. They were shining and had energy flowing in the translucent gun body, but they didn’t. Knowing why, these sentry guns didn't move when they spotted him, as if they were broken.

However, as soon as the drone that Alfa brought into the obelisk was released, it disappeared instantly and was turned into ashes by the invisible light beam... This immediately made Alfa’s legs soft and almost kneeled. You know, that The drone is much harder than his head. It can burn the drone in an instant, and it can burn his head by the way.

Nowadays, it is advanced, can wipe out the gold rank in a flash, and hit the extreme intention-and this is not known whether it is the limit of micro weapon equipment, even the League of Nations, or even the mobile city relics of the Age of Gods!

What kind of architecture is it that has such a high technical force? On the Great God Mountain in the shining zone, the Pantheon Temple is not one percent of the grandeur of this building. Although their decorations are luxurious, they are far less powerful than the sense of power. The strongest deity of the Age of the Gods, the “Xinghai Voyager”, the God of Xinghai and Exploration, his temple does not have the solemnity of this ruin, not to mention that the extolled here is only a pope, a priest. Deeds are all.

"Could it be that...this is the...remains of the'beginning of the birth of all beings' before the age of the gods?"

Thinking of this possibility, Alpha couldn't help but shook his head. This middle-aged man with silver hair did not look chic, but very old and tired, but because of this, his serious expression appeared to be extraordinarily real. He murmured: "It is said that the'Father of Heaven' created the Three Realms and Nine Heavens. He expelled the original chaos in the darkness of nothingness and created endless stars, and in this first light, the gods were born from the stars."

"However, it is too difficult to expel chaos. Even the'Heavenly Father', after eliminating most of the chaos, can only sleep exhaustedly. He handed over the world to the management of the gods and then turned it into like this. All things in these three realms and nine heavens-this prehistoric mythological era, is'the beginning of the birth of all things and all beings'."

Could it be that... this relic is the creation of the ancient era that has been lost for a hundred thousand years? And what this mural is saying is that the original gods and their followers, together with the heavenly Father, counterattacked against the antigen?

But how is this possible!

"'Heavenly Father' is just a myth created by the light chaser to avoid despair... He does not exist at all, nor does he have any temples or relics...Well, this one in front of you may be half of it, but it does not prove that the Father I would rather believe that this is the creation of seven powerful prehistoric gods..."

Almost, approaching the end of this ladder, Alpha was shooting, but the thoughts in his heart floated to an endless distance. He muttered to himself with a bitter tone: "To put it bluntly,'Father' and'Trial' are just ancient times. The fig leaf created by scholars and scholars in order to explain the unreasonable problems for the time being. Just like when they encounter something they don’t understand, they put the answer away to God—the existence of the Heavenly Father is not important at all."

"No, you are wrong, the existence of Heavenly Father is very important."

Suddenly, a voice rang from behind Alpha. This voice was loud and serious, like a giant iron drum being struck, and with this sound, a series of footsteps appeared behind the middle-aged man.

Alpha turned his head in shock—he didn't know when this sound and those footsteps appeared behind him, and just after he turned his head, the man saw him, a man dressed in black and black, like The white-haired man in the coat of flame embers is standing on the ladder behind him. He is walking down the ladder step by step. Behind this man is a whole team of guard soldiers wearing the same "Ember Clothes". !

These people are all members of [Ash Order]!

Facing the dumbfounded and seemingly too late to react, the headed one should be the white-haired old man of the Ashes Order standing steadily on the steps—he has a strong figure and a majestic face. There is wind, except for the white hair and wrinkled face, no one can tell that his age has reached the senile stage.

"Alpha Falster, don't pretend about the Father and God-even if he has never manifested his miracles, he is extremely important to our civilization."

Ignoring Alpha’s move that seems to be evasive and seems to want to retreat, looking for a chance to escape, the senior of the Ashes looked around the murals on both sides of the stairs, then turned his head and looked at Alpha, his tone was solemn: "I know, for you all. For the bachelor, neither the heavenly father nor the gods are as important as "knowledge and truth". Compared to the ancient and false glory, you feel that everything that actually exists on this steel continent is true—but you Have you ever thought, if we lose the'gods' and lose the'Heavenly Father', would we be unable to develop the great civilization of today?"

"This…"

Although Alpha was flustered on the surface, he was actually very calm in his heart-he understood many things in an instant, such as why the Ashes had taken away his wife and children, but only warned himself not to come back and continue to explore the truth instead of taking himself. Also grabbed it. They are tracking themselves and finding the location of this huge ‘crystal obelisk’! The only thing he didn't quite understand was, why didn't the senior of the Ashes order in front of him ask his guard to arrest him, but instead looked at him and talked about these ‘quite weird’ problems?

As for hatred...a rational person would not show his anger casually when he was at a disadvantage. After all, he is a bachelor and cannot be that stupid.

And it seemed that after seeing Alpha's disguise and the hatred hidden under the other's calm expression, the white-haired old man smiled slightly and didn't care. He started, continued forward, passed Alpha, and came to him, at the end of the ladder—he continued to say in that solemn tone: "Many people nowadays, especially bachelors, are difficult to understand. In the beginning of civilization , "Rational thinking" does not actually bring progress. Do you understand? The reason of that ancient age was not used to explore truth and knowledge, but to think about how to defeat the beast, how to find food, and how to continue to descendants. How can I live as long as possible."

"'Rational thinking' does not allow ancient people and current scholars to explore the truth between the stars and the laws of the movement of all things-it is only used to summarize the knowledge that is actually used in life, such as farming and herding. , Build a house, make a trap. On the contrary, it is the original "perceptual thinking", the earliest romance, fantasy, and the original "imagination". Only these things can think about why the sun rises and why it sets , Why does the water flow toward the low place, not toward the sky? In the ancient times of suffering, rational people would not waste their energy to think about these meaningless questions for survival. Only the perceptual and impulsive existence can do this. All the unknown phenomena have fabricated various "story", which is the so-called "interpretation". Similarly, only the "gods and religions" need to explain to all living beings and their believers. Behind all these phenomena , What is the'why'."

"Only this kind of irrational thinking can think about the stories among the stars, and only the gods created by this primitive worship need to explain why fire can burn wood, why water can extinguish fire-why stir wings, Spraying flames can generate momentum to fly to high altitude. Why do the stars repeat the ups and downs of the cycle, so that we suffer so much."

With that said, the white-haired old man has already come to an arch, and this is the end of the ladder. The guards of the Ashes also followed. They completely ignored Alpha and left him behind, seemingly not caring at all. He ran or stayed-and Alpha had been fighting for a long time in his heart, and finally gritted his teeth and decided to keep up.

The old man seemed to have known that he would make such a choice, so, just like this, the Alpha and Ashes Order crossed the arch and came to a huge and incomparable grand hall with no end in sight.

It can be seen that this hall is flooded with mild silver light, but there are colorful spectrums lingering at the top of this hall, there are countless undulations, fusion and splitting of light bubbles emerging and disappearing at the highest point, and all this light , All the light bubbles, all surround a crystal column hanging in the center of this hall.

And in this crystal column, there is a beautiful young man with light golden long hair, curled up like a fetus, sleeping peacefully-the brilliance of endless colors enveloped its surroundings, presenting a dreamy and blurred holiness.

"God is the most romantic explanation of the truth behind the wisdom of life in the world! Because we are curious about the truth behind the flame, the **** of fire appeared. Because we worship the power of the sun, the sun **** was born. We respect water as life. The most important component, so the water **** appears on the **** seat—but all of this is far inferior to the existence of the heavenly Father!"

Looking up at the young man sleeping in this crystal column, staring at the huge and huge'life' bred in the huge obelisk, the tone of the gray-haired Ash Cultist old man began to get excited: "Believe in countless gods, in fact. It is tantamount to not believing in any gods. Human curiosity will be consumed by the false “interpretation” of the gods. After all, gods do not represent the truth. They only hold power as the final product of “perceptual thinking”. exist…"

"But the Father is different. It is different from the God who was'created' because of'we need'. The Father created this world but allowed us to endure suffering. This kind of'unwilling' or even'hate', this kind of Emotions that have nothing to do with belief and worship make countless people have to give an'explanation' from religion. After all, gods who don't even explain the'why' don't exist, and no one believes."

"So, the first pioneers, in order to explain the reason why Heavenly Father created all things, and to explain the laws of the movement of stars, they created the first mobile city. They chased the trajectory of the stars and discovered the'universal gravitation'. They analyzed the sun and decomposed it. Matter has discovered the'authority to split and merge'-but this is not the end. Gravity cannot explain the existence of the steel continent. The authority to split and merge is not the most efficient way to use energy. At least the creation of the Father, it does not. It may be the use of this method to gain energy, so above this, there is a higher truth!"

"Heavenly Father’s existence and belief are very important. Civilization must have a target, in constant doubt and constant debate, in order to be able to progress. Rational thinking must step on the emotional bones and pass the'negation' Imagine the method of spiraling upwards little by little, otherwise, it will never get out of the fence of reason, and will only live for the sake of alive like wise bugs."

"Heavenly Father is the only and supreme Creator. He who created God is naturally eternally correct, but where is he correct? Some people set up targets and begin to explain how the Father created the world, and then another group will refute , Pointing out the incorrectness of the other party, the wisdom of human beings at a loss and at a loss, will thus progress with the'struggle'."

"It is precisely because of this that in the endless struggle, one by one laws and regulations are discovered, and the world we know is getting closer to reality-because of this, society gradually progresses and productivity gradually develops, so that You rational bachelors, instead of thinking about'how to live', you can raise your head and use that wisdom to look up at the sky."

"...I don't deny that your theory is really interesting, but..."

Hearing this, UU read www.uukanshu. com Alpha frowned, his hatred was suppressed in his heart, and he wanted to reprimand the other party for nonsense, but not to mention that the other party was crowded and everyone was stronger than him, even if it was only for the safety of his wife and children. Can't be impulsive. So, after thinking about it, after thinking that the situation could not be worse, I couldn't help but ask: "But this old gentleman, what does everything you say has to do with the ruins where we are now? What does it matter if you and your Ashes kidnapped my wife and children, banished me from the Shining Zone, and followed me here?"

"It's a great relationship. And, don't call me old gentleman, I'm the chief judge of the Ashes, Gron Danis, you don't have to pretend, you can call me'damn old man' or 'Vicious kidnapper'."

The Grand Inquisitor Glorn turned his head. He was no longer looking at the light blond boy sleeping in the light, but at the silver-haired middle-aged man again. He squinted his eyes and said solemnly: "The academician of the capital of learning, Alpha Falster, I say this mainly to tell you that light chasers, and even any intelligent creatures, can never be Purely rational creatures, they are bound to be impulsive, emotional, and because of romance, impulsivity, and even various reasons, they will make'wrong' choices other than'right'—and these mistakes are the ladder of our progress, so don't be deceived. The Father does not have this kind of inertial bachelor's mindset. Only in this way can you understand the true truth."

"What's more, the'Heavenly Father' does exist—compared to the speed of light, the laws of physics, and all the so-called, these'truths' that may be changed. This is the only'truth' that can never be shaken. '! And whether it is you, me, or your teacher and boss who disappeared, they are all here for Him."