Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Lu Zhiyu transformed into a stream of lights, then flew through the mountains and rivers of the Crete Empire as a Dream Controller. He darted through the skies, hidden among the clouds by the sunlight, before returning to the former Luhmann Kingdom, which was now known as the Black Forest of the Kingdom of Rosa d’Oro.
While he flew far above the clouds, Lu Zhiyu spotted the Black Forest. He entered the Wizard Tower through a window to his office. The Dream Controller template began to condense before converting back into Lu Zhiyu’s first life template.
Although he possessed the mythical life template of the Dream Controller, Lu Zhiyu kept his ordinary life template instead of deleting it. Although the Dream Controller template was far more powerful and not nearly as vulnerable, the living like an ordinary being suited Lu Zhiyu’s way of life and philosophy much more.
Lu Zhiyu emerged from the nothingness that was formed by the gathering of starlight, as if the specks of those dreamy lights had condensed to form a human being. After he landed, he turned around and lowered himself down to lounge on his chair with ease. The light faded gradually, condensing into Lu Zhiyu’s features.
“The Dream Controller mythical template isn’t bad at all. It has already met its initial goals. There are no defects while using it and the convenient data storage is also up to par. But, I didn’t expect to have Kelly drawn into my dreams. Oh well, at least this way I can progress with my other plans simultaneously. I can start implementing the first phase of the divine system!”
Lu Zhiyu had given the mask to Kelly, along with the a divine magical system he had developed at the same time. This was another system of special abilities that Lu Zhiyu had created while producing the Titan Dragons. It was still very rough, so it would definitely take some time to cultivate it.
Lu Zhiyu wanted to use the method of creating deities to turn his own special deified cells, the Dream Element, into divine seeds. But unlike deities, the divine seeds consumed a meager amount of deified cells. Thus, they would only grant a tiny amount of supernatural abilities. This meant that they needed to evolve over time in order to become stronger.
The divine seeds would assimilate with the consciousness of their possessor. They would then be able to completely upgrade their life template. In this way, even if the user only had a miniscule amount of divine seeds, they would still be able to strengthen themselves over time with certain techniques. By strengthening their consciousness with the divine seeds, they could potentially access the Source Form, allowing them to become mythical beings.
Whether or not they became mythical beings, their consciousness would essentially be under Lu Zhiyu’s control, since their consciousness would have assimilated with Lu Zhiyu’s divine seeds, which are derived from his cells. After they died, their consciousness would be automatically absorbed into Lu Zhiyu’s dream world. This process would strengthen Lu Zhiyu’s dream world, just like how Sakun did.
This was Lu Zhiyu’s goal. By creating his own kin, he was strengthening himself. As these spawn strengthened themselves through cultivation, they would then gradually fuse with Lu Zhiyu’s divine seeds. This way, the assimilation process would be skipped over, as they would become perfectly acclimated to his dream world, essentially becoming dream world information entities.
Moreover, the more devout these priests were, the higher their compatibilities with the divine seeds would be. They would also be faster at extracting Source Form from the magical network, which would allow their special abilities to awaken faster as well.
As they grew in strength, their consciousness would also be transformed. Upon their deaths, the consciousness of these divine seed users would be far beyond the realms of ordinary people!
Lu Zhiyu’s divine system was basically a cultivation tool. The more people cultivated with it, the more he could benefit. In this way, Lu Zhiyu would also be able to create his own dream world, according to his designs. It would be a world with an endless source of souls who believed in him!
“It feels like a Divine Kingdom!”
Lu Zhiyu felt that his dream world already resembled some aspects of Heaven, but the difference was still tremendous. Lu Zhiyu knew that he would need some time, since it required the souls of an unbelievable number of believers to create the dream world he imagined.
Lu Zhiyu pushed open the door, then walked down the corridor, passing several laboratories and his messy study. When he came to the great hall, he saw a sphinx inside with androgynous features.
When the sphinx reached its prime, it would automatically produce its heir through asexual reproduction. Their supernatural ability was Destruction, which Lu Zhiyu based his own special ability, Disintegration, on in the future.
“Hello, sir!”
“Hello, Pyros, good work.”
The sphinx, Pyros, shook his head. “This is my responsibility and duty, according to the contract that I signed with you. To us sphinxes, our contracts and missions are our greatest duties in life.”
Lu Zhiyu nodded. The wind raven was the first race that he had tried to modify with set species characteristics. The most successful case had to be the sphinx. They adhered to their contracts and missions, regarding them as their everything, even valuing them above their own lives.
As such, Lu Zhiyu was also completely horrified by the thought that he had created them this way. He questioned whether it was one’s wills or bodies and cells that controlled one’s emotions and desires…
He knew that hormones inside the human body controlled one’s feelings and desires. For instance, the secretion of phenylethylamine could make people fall in love, while dopamine controlled the feelings of excitement and joy.
Norepinephrine created the heart-throbbing effect within people in love, endorphin could make lovers feel lasting happiness. Also of note, the hormone from the posterior pituitary gland was the key hormone in regulating faithfulness within a relationship.
Thus, if your will rejected a person, but your body and its cells secreted phenylethylamine to your brain, you would still fall for that person because of your reproductive instincts!
Likewise, you may not like a song or a particular genre of music, but dopamine could give you a sense of elation, making you fall in love with the song instantly. In this way, many of your feelings weren’t really from your will but summoned when your body liked something, which could create an illusion that you actually like that same thing.
Are you really who you think you are? Do you really think that all of your thoughts are derived from your own will, instead of the physical and cellular instincts controlling you like a marionette?
Do you really like what you think that you like about your own will? Or, are you simply giving in to what your body is telling you that it likes?
“You can only control yourself after you have tamed your own body. Only then, will you be able to accurately understand your own desires and thoughts, thus gaining mastery over your own consciousness. Otherwise, you will always be a slave to your body.”
After he became a mythical lifeform, Lu Zhiyu felt as if he had broken free from some invisible shackles. He had achieved the freedom of the will, enabling him to start understanding why he had been so anxious to become a mythical lifeform. His will had craved liberation.
As he had told Kelly before, those were his real thoughts, after he broke free from the shackles. “In reality, human beings are full of desires and conflicts. They are always shackled to false ideals, never knowing what they truly desire.”
However, even after breaking the chains of his body and emotions, it didn’t necessarily mean that he had no feelings and desires. His character as an intelligent being had already been formed, and it was imprinted on the soul, unable to be erased. Yet, from then on, all of his thoughts and desires truly stemmed from himself.
Conversely, natural mythical creatures were extremely indifferent to their emotions and desires. Thus, their consciousness would be closer to Lu Zhiyu’s understanding of the gods from the myths and legends.