Chapter 450: Attempt

"Gods are actually a concept. They are a kind of imagination. They are the embodiment of humanity's own fear of the unknown."

"Therefore, gods as a whole cannot be killed."

On the long stone stairs, countless corpses lay all around. Murphy, holding a dripping greatsword, walked slowly up the stairs.

"However, your individuals will still die, will be swallowed up by other faiths. The human heart is like a depression; even if you drain the water in it, when the next rainy season comes, it will always accumulate a pond, but after all, the fish and shrimp that once lived in that pond will all die in this change."

"I have heard many stories about you. You have killed many gods. They also say you have a weapon that controls destiny." At the highest point of the stone stairs, on the throne of the Lord of Gods, a giant with three faces spoke, "You are indeed as arrogant as they say. Calling gods fish and shrimp, then what are you? A fisherman? A god-slayer?"

"Me?"

"I'm just a lost traveler, here to earn some travel expenses," Murphy said, gently waving the greatsword in his hand.

The blade suddenly vibrated 137 times between quantum and material states, precisely hitting the three-headed god who stood motionless as if frightened. The blade, thin to only one layer of atoms, easily broke through the god's skin, which was comparable to gold and iron, without any obstruction, just like slicing through air.

All three faces showed fear and disbelief.

"I made 136 prophecies, each time fleeing to a different position, but I was slashed by you every time. Why..."

Murphy grabbed the head with three faces, letting the giant's corpse fall with a bang, blood flowing down like a stream, as if laying a red carpet on the stone stairs behind him.

"Magic is useful, especially when it is in the hands of someone who knows how to use it," Murphy said. "The atomic structure of this sword is adjusted and made by magic. It is a nanomaterial without any flaws, and under the action of magic, it can possess both microscopic and macroscopic properties."

"When it is adjusted to a microscopic state by magic, all its atoms are within the uncollapsed probability cloud around me, which can be said to cover all the space within about ten meters around me. And when it aggregates into a macroscopic state, it can appear in any position."

"What determines where it will collapse is not my guess, but the quantum in your body that has entered an entangled state with part of the material in the sword."

"The 136 prophecies you made are, to me, just 136 possible probability collapses. But no matter where you choose to appear, this sword will inevitably cut off your neck."

"Blade of Destiny," the three-headed god murmured. "So this is the Blade of Destiny."

"Destiny?" Murphy laughed mockingly. "It's just a trick of probability."

Murphy said, completely shattering the three-headed god, while extending his right hand, his palm forming a vortex, looting the latter's divine power.

As he said, he was just here to scrape together travel expenses for time travel.

Since turning a group of wizards into gods in ancient times, Murphy had made several jumps through the time converter, but these few times were all time travel along the flow of time.

Murphy had not given up on the plan to eliminate the gods, just constantly trying various schemes, but the results were all unsatisfactory.

For example, during the last time travel, he tried to spread scientific thinking among Muggles, but it was just regarded as another kind of magic. Even though he painstakingly cultivated a few people with scientific thinking, after they passed away, the knowledge they possessed was indeed passed down as useful things, but the scientific methodology was still drowned in endless ignorance.

This made Murphy realize that without a broad educational foundation, it is almost impossible to promote scientific thinking. It requires a lot of practice and sufficient thinking training, which makes it destined to become a skill that only a very few people can master.

So this time, Murphy decided to settle for the next best thing. He traveled everywhere, trying to stimulate people's ability to understand themselves, guiding people to give up worshipping others in the way of "self-awakened ones," not outward, but inward, seeking spiritual liberation towards the true self, and becoming their own gods.

He had already spent five or six years on this matter, ensuring that the "Self-Awakening Path" he founded based on Buddhism and modern psychology had spread to a considerable extent. At this moment, he was preparing to turn time back one or two hundred years to see the results of this experiment.

Now, he had gathered enough "divine power," so he took out a time converter again.

He didn't have many time converters left, but as he absorbed the substances melted during each time travel, Murphy became more and more able to use the power of time more freely. This was manifested in his daily life, where he could already push himself into a double-speed time flow without relying on the time converter.

Even in the battle with the three-headed god just now, in order to counter its prophecy ability, he had actually used a part of the power of time.

From the perspective of time travel, prophecy, especially precise prophecy, can actually be regarded as "observation" of the future.

And once observed, things will inevitably change to a certain extent due to the act of observation, especially in the quantum field, where this change becomes very obvious and may significantly change the probability of various possibilities.

In order to prevent the three-headed god from "observing" a certain future through prophecy while changing the probability, "determining" this future to a certain extent, and then adopting different ways to avoid the ending of being killed, Murphy had also been using the power of time when swinging his sword, keeping himself in a superposition state of several seconds simultaneously to resist the collapse influence brought by the opponent's observation behavior.

At this moment, Murphy injected divine power into the time converter again, and then the same thing happened again. The time converter merged into his body, and he thus arrived two hundred years later.

He immediately began to visit the results of the last experiment.

But soon, he found that he had failed again.

After he left, his "Self-Awakening Path" was alienated into a religion. His apprentices preached everywhere in his name, and his image gradually changed from an enlightened one who advocated self-enlightenment to a deity who came from the divine realm to save the world.

Looking at the "Awakened God" who had been born for less than a hundred years, looked somewhat similar to himself, but had also begun to accept offerings like other gods, Murphy, in a fit of anger, slashed it.

Several attempts ended in failure, and Murphy couldn't help but feel a bit discouraged.

But this also made him thoroughly understand a truth: the overall "awakened" state of humanity changes with the level of material production and life. With the abilities of the current human group, there are indeed too many things in this world that are not under their control. It is impossible to make them leave the reality of living in a low-productivity society out of thin air and obtain higher ideological awakening.

Only when productivity is highly developed, technology is highly developed, and humanity has driven the unknown out of daily experience—that is, around the year 2000 AD when he was before—or even further into the future, will there be a chance for gods to disappear completely.

But in this way, eliminating gods requires a long time to develop technology, and under the premise of the existence of gods, how could humanity have too many opportunities to develop technology and civilization?

This seems to have become a contradictory spiral of which came first, the chicken or the egg.

"No, that's not right."

Murphy suddenly realized that he had entered a misunderstanding.

His original purpose in backtracking time was just to find a way to contain the gods.

The return of the gods in the future already shows that from around the 5th century to around 2000 AD, the gods just temporarily exited the stage, not eliminated.

Under the laws of time travel, the future that has already happened, even if one returns to the past, cannot be changed.

That is to say, he should give up the idea of completely solving the gods at this stage and turn to a more pragmatic containment route.

The important thing is to find a way to contain them, make them exit the stage from these one or two thousand years of time, and leave time for human society to develop technology and civilization, which is to leave time for humanity to accumulate resources that can truly eliminate them.

But, how to do it?

Murphy pondered for a long time.

Suddenly a thought jumped out.

He now roughly understood the birth process of gods and had enough experience with faith and divine power.

Now he already knew that humanity is the creator of gods, but at this stage, due to the limitation of productivity, from the perspective of humanity, it is not realistic to deal with gods by the way of extinguishing faith, which is too direct.

However, what if we change the perspective?

Humanity cannot deal with gods, so what about the gods themselves?

They have been swallowing each other, absorbing and evolving, and there are many contradictions among the gods.

Is there a possibility of using this contradiction to make them attack each other and contain each other?

Moreover, gods are born from legends.

Although after consciousness is generated, gods often reverse-enslave believers, but due to the existence of spiritual pollution, believers can actually influence gods to a certain extent.

Then, if some legends of gods are intentionally spread, is it possible to change their behavior and thus manipulate them?

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 451 =====