Chapter 357

It's a pity.

Klinsoor only said that one world was false, and then he couldn't say anything else.

He was unable to join the Abyss Order.

As a result, he only understood the surface of many secrets, and the true situation he actually knew nothing about; it was pure nonsense based on his own imagination.

Anyway, in his words.

The Abyss Order is the righteous act, and all of Teyvat's history is a lie; their Khaenri'ah past has been smeared by people.

Regarding such a statement.

Luo De didn't know the inside story, so it was inappropriate to comment.

But the Great Merciful Tree King was clearly opposed.

However, she did not deny that the world was false.

Instead, she firmly refused to admit that they had smeared Khaenri'ah people.

The fact is indeed so.

Whether the Khaenri'ah people were deliberately smeared depends on different perspectives.

From the Teyvat people's perspective.

The Khaenri'ah people are a sinful nation.

Because the Abyssal pollution they released caused immeasurable heavy losses to all nations, like Natlan and Snezhnaya, and even now they are still engaged in endless confrontation with the Abyss.

Not to mention that several deities fell in this disaster.

But if viewed from the perspective of the self-proclaimed righteous Khaenri'ah people.

Then what Klinsoor said is correct.

In the eyes of all who joined the Abyss Order and those who did not, their actions were executing justice, a sacrifice made for this Teyvat world.

However, having paid the price of national destruction, they ultimately gained only infamy, and to this day everyone still shouts at them.

Thus, Khaenri'ah people like Haidura and Klinsoor developed distorted feelings in their hearts.

Originally, in the eyes of the Khaenri'ah people.

Those who believed in the gods and submitted to the heavenly principle system of Teyvat were puppets on strings, not even normal humans; even if they suffered casualties due to their great endeavors, that was merely a necessary sacrifice on the path to ultimate victory.

And in the eyes of these more extreme Khaenri'ah people.

Not to mention these Teyvat people, even those Khaenri'ah people who rescued Teyvat people are considered by them to be disposable sacrifices.

Essentially speaking.

Actually, neither side is wrong.

It's simply a difference in position.

But this does not prevent Luo De from kicking Klinsoor a few more times.

He doesn't know what is meant by a false world.

He only knows.

The current Teyvat is very comfortable for him to stay in.

So he cannot stand seeing someone like Klinsoor so wantonly harming this world.

If it weren't for this guy still being useful.

Luo De now wants to treat him like that Xianzhu-na, directly sending him to meet his ancestor Haidura.

"Are you preparing to use him to enter the gates of Khaenri'ah?"

On the way to the Sweet Floral Sea, the Great Merciful Tree King curiously asked.

She knows that the gates of Khaenri'ah are near the Sweet Floral Sea.

And that gate is precisely where Khaenri'ah once poured out Abyssal pollution, from which almost all Abyssal power emerged, and even today, severe Abyssal power still remains there.

Fortunately, the Great Merciful Tree King's current body is formed using the lingering spirit light left by the Flower God.

Therefore, she can still enter there.

If it were still her original Grass God body, she would have to be extremely careful.

Luo De and Ying are the same.

As Descenders, that bit of Abyssal pollution has no effect on them.

As for why Luo De wants to enter the gates of Khaenri'ah.

The Great Merciful Tree King also has a vague guess in her heart.

"Are you going to seek the Great Spirit Light?"

The Great Merciful Tree King thinks Luo De should also be heading for the Great Spirit Light.

This is not because Luo De wants to use this Great Spirit Light to reseal the Celestial Phenomenon of Burning Truth.

In fact.

As Luo De, who shares the same origin as Ximuoge, he himself can help cleanse the Abyssal pollution of myriad mother trees, and thus does not need the Great Spirit Light.

So Luo De going for the Great Spirit Light should have another purpose.

Just what exactly he wants to do with the Great Spirit Light.

The Great Merciful Tree King temporarily cannot guess.

Watching the Great Merciful Tree King lost in silent thought.

Luo De chuckled: "Don't think about it, I want that Great Spirit Light for the perpetual motion device."

"Perpetual motion device?"

This not only surprised the Great Merciful Tree King, but Klinsoor also angrily shouted: "Impossible! You filthy Teyvat people, it's absolutely impossible for you to create a perpetual motion device!!!"

Among the people present.

Only the confused Xingyun and Paimon were still dazed.

Having just arrived in Sumeru not long ago, they had not yet heard of this perpetual motion device revered as a treasure by both the people of Khaenri'ah and the Sumeru Akademiya.

Thus, regarding the conversation between Luo De and the Great Merciful Tree King,

they completely failed to understand what was actually going on.

In contrast, the Great Merciful Tree King

who was very clear about what the perpetual motion device was, directly asked: "Is it possible?"

The so-called perpetual motion device

is just as its name suggests.

It is a device that can provide perpetual motion energy.

Back then, the people of Khaenri'ah invested tremendous effort into researching this device.

For this purpose, they developed the Aesop device capable of drawing elemental energy from the ley lines.

Using this device and the ley line energy substance they called Aesop substance, Khaenri'ah built a vast technological civilization even without sunlight.

Since the essence of Aesop substance is elemental energy,

through this technology, the people of Khaenri'ah could, without relying on Visions, use only human strength to grant ordinary people the ability to wield elemental energy, and even command massive humanoid mechanisms, and produce elemental cannons capable of firing elemental energy, thus entering Teyvat's version of industrial civilization in one leap.

But this achievement could not satisfy the people of Khaenri'ah.

Because although Aesop substance was useful, it did not meet the demand for a perpetual motion device. No matter how they used or developed such energy, at best they could only establish a developed technological civilization, far from achieving the ability to break free from Teyvat, which remained far from what the people of Khaenri'ah sought.

When research into Aesop substance reached a bottleneck,

some scholars of Khaenri'ah believed that improving the usage efficiency of Aesop substance through technological iteration was still insufficiently efficient, and no matter how they refined Aesop substance—even compressing it to a super-high concentration of 60%—the gap to the demand for perpetual motion energy remained tragically wide.

Thus, in pursuit of a more efficient energy source,

these impatient scholars began seeking a new energy source centered on the power of the Abyss, and in a short time, they achieved very promising results.

As the development of Abyssal power progressed,

the new energy and technological route, compared to the energy supply efficiency provided by Aesop substance, opened up an increasingly insurmountable gap.

Considering the enormous, nearly unbridgeable gap in energy supply efficiency between the two, and the old technological route's temporary inability to solve the efficiency problem of highly complex power systems, the Khaenri'ah Kingdom's original functional route was quickly phased out, and the workshops using Aesop power systems for energy were shut down one after another, until even the royal workshops of Khaenri'ah were completely abandoned, leaving almost no workshops in all of Khaenri'ah following the old technological route.

At this point in time,

the entire Khaenri'ah had become utterly obsessed with Abyssal energy.

Even the conservative faction led by the court mage Pyerel believed that humanity need not rely on extraterrestrial grace, but through its own wisdom, patiently developing technology, would one day create a truly meaningful perpetual mechanism.

But in the end, the one-eyed king Ilmink of Khaenri'ah still chose to reuse the new energy faction led by Golden Rhein Dote.

From then on,

Khaenri'ah ventured ever deeper down the Abyssal path, until Pyerel's feared loss of control over the Abyss finally occurred.

All large machinery using Abyssal energy went out of control, except for the old-model mechs still in the hands of Marshal Anfathas, who had persisted in using the original energy source.

Later, the relic giants that came to aid Sumeru

were the old-technology-route mechs ridden by the White Swan Knights of Khaenri'ah led by Marshal Anfathas.

After Khaenri'ah fell and the White Swan Knights of Sumeru were all slain,

the Akademiya accepted the descendants of the White Swan Knights, such as Klinsoor, who joined the Akademiya at that time and became a patrol officer of the Nagajuna Brigade.

And the Akademiya's acceptance

was not limited to taking in the descendants of the White Swan Knights; it also included the technology mastered by the old-school Khaenri'ah people.

This included the Aesop technology and the structural prototype diagrams of the perpetual motion device.

After Nadixa ascended to power,

Luo De's authority in the Akademiya was raised to be on par with hers.

That is, he could unconditionally read all of the Akademiya's knowledge reserves, even the World Tree.

Coincidentally, at that time Luo De was researching technologies usable for city-building.

Then he came across this record, as thick as a book.

Regarding this record,

a subsequent passage from the Nagajuna manuscript.

Or rather,

it was a study jointly produced by the Nagajuna and some scholars from Fontaine.

In the view of those Fontaine scholars,

they believed the people of Khaenri'ah were bewitched when contacting Abyssal power, thinking that by listening to the whispers of the demon heavens, their power could be exponentially enhanced, and thus they saw no need to rely on human wisdom for slow technological accumulation.

This also led those Fontaine scholars to explicitly warn against the bewitching influence of Abyssal power on the human mind.

After all, in any ancient text,

the people of Khaenri'ah were extremely confident in humanity's own power, and consistently scoffed at the idea of borrowing power from the demon heavens.

But after contacting Abyssal power,

they changed.

Even that wise and martial one-eyed king was dazzled by the immense power brought by the Abyss, ultimately founding a great error.

But this does not mean that Abyssal power will inevitably lose control and become unusable.

In their research conducted in the Sweet Rain Flower Sea,

they surprisingly discovered that the legacy left by the Flower God to the Tree King—the purifying floral essence, that is, the divine light—could reverse the influence of Abyssal power, and the efficacy of this divine light bore an extremely similar trait to a certain mysterious crystal they had previously discovered.

Moreover, the versatility of divine light power far exceeded that of that mysterious crystal.

After extensive complex research, these Fontaine scholars speculated that divine light might be due to the influence of Sweet Rain, a substance they had never heard of before.

Although they did not realize that the essence of Sweet Rain was actually the corpse of the previous Hydro Archon.

But they were very certain.

If the Abyssal energy obtained is reacted with the luminous force processed in the manner of refining Asase materials using Khaenri'ah smelting, then perhaps a truly sustainable energy source ideal to the Khaenri'ah people could be created.

Theoretically speaking.

This research is highly feasible.

As long as they can obtain the support of the flower spirits and draw the sweet dew living water from the Sweet Dew Flower Sea, it will suffice.

Unfortunately.

The senior technical official of the Fontaine Academy of Sciences who led this research, Edwin Ise, did not have time to conduct this experiment due to the increasingly dangerous water level crisis in Fontaine, returned to the Fontaine Academy of Sciences, and was later blown to ashes in the primordial ore experiment, leaving only these manuscripts that had not yet been put into practice.

After the Academy obtained this experimental manuscript.

Although they were very eager for perpetual energy and perpetual motion devices, such epoch-making technology.

But after much deliberation, they still chose to abandon this research.

For no other reason.

Abyssal power is a double-edged sword.

With the lesson of Khaenri'ah before them, the Academy, knowing no god could wipe their backsides, had clear self-awareness.

Considering the temptation this technology poses to scholars.

After prolonged deliberation, the Academy decided to permanently seal this research manuscript, to be taken out only when all sages agree, and absolutely must not let Sumeru repeat Khaenri'ah's fate.

Luo De spent some time.

He carefully recounted the matter of perpetual energy to the Great Merciful Tree King.

After all, the Great Merciful Tree King died early back then, and many subsequent research achievements obtained by the Academy are unknown to her.

"So that's how it is."

The Great Merciful Tree King suddenly understood, comprehending Luo De's idea.

Shortly after, in just a few breaths.

She affirmed the feasibility of this experimental manuscript.

"From theory to feasibility and the significance of the experiment, everything on that manuscript is achievable." The Great Merciful Tree King nodded: "Worth a try."

"Right, you think so too."

Luo De rubbed his nose, somewhat embarrassed, saying: "However, I took the sole copy of that experimental manuscript, I do not intend to publish it, nor do I intend to let this manuscript be disseminated."

"A reasonable approach."

The Great Merciful Tree King again affirmed Luo De's action: "The power of the Abyss is too dangerous; even with the sweet dew living water from Erkogerya, it is hard to guarantee that manipulation will not be bewitched by Abyssal power and lose reason, as long as there is sufficient perpetual energy available."

Thus.

In the consensus reached by the two, they took Klingsor, this 'key' that can enter the gates of Khaenri'ah, and came together to that Sweet Dew Flower Sea which should have been splendidly beautiful but now appears somewhat lifeless and gloomy.

(End of chapter)