Chapter 604: The Final Discussion

These two scholars' earlier claims about being forced were all bluff—they just didn't want to be punished and wanted to escape responsibility. In reality, they knew a lot.

At this moment, it was clear they couldn't escape. The Traveler knew far more intelligence than they imagined.

It even made Morgi a bit confused—since you all know, why ask me?

The other scholar directly chose to confess. At this point, continuing to conceal was worse than confessing for leniency.

[Judar: "The Akademiya is executing a great plan that could change the world. They want to create a new god belonging to themselves—to Sumeru."]

["Though it still appears prosperous on the surface, after Greater Lord Rukkhadevata's passing, there have been almost no qualitative breakthroughs in Sumeru's academics..."]

After imprisoning Nahida, the Grand Sage began controlling Sumeru. Unfortunately, the successive Grand Sages were too incompetent or too cowardly—there were no breakthroughs in five hundred years.

They didn't dare advance into unknown fields. After losing divine guidance, they turned into cowards.

So the Akademiya once again developed the impulse to seek divine knowledge, but they certainly didn't dare release the imprisoned Dendro Archon.

Narrow-minded, they judged others by themselves and naturally didn't dare bet that the Dendro Archon would spare them.

Thus, the Akademiya planned to create a new god to obtain divine wisdom.

Abandoning gods on one hand while creating gods on the other; claiming human wisdom on one hand while pursuing divine wisdom on the other—the Akademiya was simply contradictory.

Judar confessed for leniency—he spilled everything he knew in one go.

For example, the Akademiya had noticed the limitations of knowledge and the withering of the World Tree, but they had no solution, so they wanted to seek divine wisdom.

Conveniently, that's when the Doctor arrived. It was like sexual repression meeting sexual starvation—the two groups hit it off immediately.

At first, the Akademiya people looked down on the Doctor and rejected him because he was a scholar expelled by the Akademiya.

But the Doctor changed the Akademiya scholars' attitude with just one sentence.

[Midar: "He asked them: 'Do you want to create a god?'"]

The charm of this sentence to the Akademiya was no less than a desired partner stripping naked and beckoning with a finger.

Precisely targeting market pain points, hitting customer needs, grasping user perception, building a new ecosystem—the Fatui's top seller in Snezhnaya.

Tartaglia: In front of the Doctor, I'm like a rookie.

What the Doctor said was exactly what the Akademiya needed. Then the Akademiya became the Doctor's "subordinates."

[Alhaitham: "...This is the folly and arrogance at the end of academia."]

Though Alhaitham seemed free and unfettered, he actually disliked breaking rules and overstepping boundaries.

Breaking rules wasn't necessarily bad, but not all rules should be broken.

Now the Akademiya had broken rules, putting Sumeru's people in peril. With everyone in fear, the social structure would fall apart.

This was why the Sumeru people in the story didn't know the "cycle" was caused by the Akademiya—otherwise, having lost credibility and legitimacy, the Akademiya couldn't provide security to Sumeru's people, and Sumeru would chaos on its own.

So the readers wholeheartedly agreed with Alhaitham's sharp comment—these sages seemed too extreme.

[Midar: "The Akademiya first spent a long time building the 'body of a god' based on an exquisite biomimetic puppet."]

This line made the readers a bit puzzled. Everyone already knew the one becoming a god was Scaramouche—wasn't he puzzled that Scaramouche had his own consciousness?

Building a god's body from a puppet? What about his original consciousness?

At this moment, the readers still didn't know that Scaramouche did have self-consciousness, but according to the Akademiya's plan, "he" was not the god's consciousness.

After absorbing the canned divine knowledge, the "god's" consciousness would occupy Scaramouche's body—at that point, the new god would truly be born.

As for Scaramouche himself, he seemed to have no objections.

[Midar continued: "With the 'Doctor's' help, the highest-output Akasha successfully extracted the power contained in the 'Gnosis,' making it the 'core of the god.'"]

["Then, they proposed to give the new god 'divine wisdom.' For this, they needed... a large amount of canned divine knowledge."]

Now everything connected. But one point puzzled Alhaitham—how did the Akademiya determine that the canned divine knowledge truly contained divine knowledge?

To this, Midar said the Akademiya had researched for centuries without knowing why scholars went mad—whatever humans couldn't understand must be divine knowledge!

Little did they know it was actually "forbidden knowledge," remnants of Crazy Thursday. If spread to the world, "black water" would flood Sumeru again, faster than Fontaine.

From his words, it was clear most Akademiya scholars blindly believed in "divine wisdom."

They thought divine wisdom far surpassed mortals', something mortals could never understand—in other words, they never truly believed in mortal wisdom.

"Divine wisdom"—having just seen the ruins story, everyone clearly knew it wasn't divine wisdom; it was forbidden knowledge.

Unintelligible not because it was profound, but because it was all "garbled code"!

Scholars didn't go mad because divine wisdom was beyond human understanding—they went mad from contact with forbidden knowledge.

The Traveler in the story also spotted the blind spot. Whether they could create a god aside, even if they could, it wouldn't be Greater Lord Rukkhadevata, right?

The Akademiya kept claiming how much they adored Greater Lord Rukkhadevata, imprisoning Little Dendro God out of that adoration—yet this was their adoration?

[Alhaitham: "The Akademiya doesn't care who the god is—they merely crave the authority gods use to control wisdom."]

Alhaitham's another sharp comment truly let everyone see the Akademiya's true face.

No—the Akademiya's face was already seen through; now they were nearly seeing its asshole.

The Akademiya craved gods' authority and wisdom—things Little Dendro God actually possessed.

However, when she first awoke, Little Dendro God didn't have them. At that time, Nahida's wisdom and power resembled a child's, so she was imprisoned without resistance.

But the current Nahida had long possessed them. Unfortunately, she herself was imprisoned, and the Gnosis was used to run the Akasha.

Naturally kind Nahida used her divine power to protect Sumeru's people—and those she protected were almost all ordinary rainforest and desert folk. The Akademiya people had never seen Nahida's divine power.

Thus, the Akademiya never looked at this god properly. When craving divine wisdom, out of fear, they never considered Nahida.

Poor Nahida was like a non-existent radish.

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Character Voice · Nahida: About "Radish"

"Do I really look like a radish?"