But how could the secret be brought out?
They had all entered the Sea of Desire, yet not a single one had ever shared the specifics of what they saw and heard inside!
It wasn't that they couldn't rember — Drasilco's dying words clearly showed he recalled everything. And it wasn't fear of death — neither Deceit nor Order had revealed anything even before they resolved to die.
This forced Cheng Shi to entertain a possibility:
A rule prevented them from speaking!
So rule had forced their silence — perhaps a compulsory block, perhaps so other chanism.
This was the one piece Cheng Shi hadn't been able to puzzle through. But during his parting conversation with Big Cat, sothing she said had sparked a flash of insight.
Hong Lin, wielding the Origin's power, had stared at the iridescent divine energy on her hands and mused:
"I can feel the imnse power contained within. And I can feel it clinging to
like maggots on bone.
It fills my flesh with Abundance and enriches my spirit, yet it also gnaws at my will and devours my reason.
Every now and then, I fantasize about drawing closer to It — about wanting to beco Its puppet.
The Origin's power is truly terrifying. This thing must never be left in the world!"
It was those very words that made Cheng Shi suddenly wonder: could what lay inside the Sea of Desire be the sa kind of contamination as the Origin's power — sothing that turned people into the Origin's "puppets"?
Or could the contamination not only infect those who entered the Sea, but also spread further using the contaminated individuals as vectors?
If so, that would explain everything the universe had witnessed. But it also raised a problem: no matter who discovered the secret inside the Sea of Desire, there was no way to bring it out!
Because they could not speak of it!
Based on this hypothesis, Cheng Shi had spoken those words to Poison before she entered the Sea.
He had told her that if she found anything connected to the Origin — anything contagious — she must not utter another word. If Poison could make it out alive and remain silent, that alone would confirm his guess!
The elegance of this thod was that Poison's silence perfectly satisfied whatever unknowable speech-prohibition rule was in place, while still revealing a corner of the Sea of Desire's secret to the world.
Of course, the true nature of the secret might never be known to anyone outside the Sea. But as he'd been thinking — knowing the principle behind the ticking bomb was enough to help the universe avoid countless crises.
This approach was also inspired by the Will of Silence.
Silence was never truly without expression — His expressions were simply all rendered silent.
Wait!
At this thought, Cheng Shi froze — because he suddenly recalled the massive, drifting corpse of the Leaking World Silent Puppet in the Real Universe!
Could that wandering Silence have been expressing this very aning?
Draw close, and you will be contaminated?!
Cheng Shi's pupils contracted sharply. He stared in alarm toward the distance, but the Sea of Desire's surging tides had long since swallowed Poison's figure, dragging her mortal body into the ocean of desire.
...
Deep within the Sea of Desire.
Strangely enough, from the Sinking Land the Sea of Desire appeared ferocious — desire surging in terrifying waves. But only from within could you discover that beneath the roaring surface, desire was startlingly orderly.
And the deeper you went, the clearer it beca — the waters grew thicker near the top but more transparent below. Poison, descending all the while, was bewildered. She even wondered whether Order, upon setting foot here, had remarked that this place felt more like a domain of Order than of Corruption.
She followed the guidance that lay before her — guidance that ca in the form of corpses, all manner of them, drifting through the Sea of Desire!
Corpses, yes!
Since the Sea of Desire had always been here, a steady stream of living creatures had inevitably discovered it since the dawn of life and "accidentally stumbled in."
From the grotesque expressions frozen on their faces, most had clearly died of different desires. Perhaps because her own heart held no desire, Poison felt no resonance with the flowing tides of want.
It didn't feel like exploring a deadly maelstrom. It felt like deep-sea diving beneath a calm surface. As she sank deeper, the corpses grew fewer and the flowing desires grew more "transparent."
The descent wasn't entirely uneventful. Every so often, a tidal wave of desire would churn up from the seabed, muddying the path behind her and pushing the desire upward toward the surface.
Fortunately, Poison was a decent "swimr." She wasn't swept up by desire, and after gritting her teeth through several tidal surges, she dove ever deeper.
Until, after so ti, she saw the ocean floor — a vast expanse of blood-red soil. She touched down. And there she found the very last corpse.
She recognized it.
But without desire, she felt little emotion at finding soone she knew. She walked over quietly, looked upon the fallen comrade who had taken his own life here with a smile, the Torchbearer elite who had let go with a grin — and nodded in wordless acknowledgnt before pressing on.
After walking for a while longer, Poison had no idea where she was. The surroundings were monotonously unchanging — the transparent desire had vanished like the water itself. She felt as though she were strolling through a Void that happened to have a floor of crimson earth. In every direction — empty, barren, devoid of landmarks.
No wonder no one had ever found Corruption. With the Sea of Desire this vast, how could anyone find the so-called secret?
She didn't know. She just kept walking.
The blood-red soil beneath her feet would quake like an earthquake from ti to ti, kicking up clouds of sedint and sending new tidal waves surging toward the surface.
Poison kept her balance nimbly and marched on in silence.
She had been walking for a very long ti — so long that she grew tired. She sat down right where she was on the seabed to rest.
But as luck would have it, another tremor struck at that very mont. The crimson ground heaved violently. A massive upwelling burst from the surface, sedint exploding everywhere. Caught off guard, Poison was finally swept up by a vortex of desire and flung far from the seabed. She hurtled upward — but her reflexes were quick. She soon gritted her teeth, broke free from the rising vortex, and began swimming back toward the bottom.
And then she froze.
An instant later — even she, devoid of desire and emotion — trembled violently from head to toe as an overwhelming terror surged through her.
"!!!!!"
Because from her current vantage point, looking down, that seabed coated in blood-red sedint — that faintly murky ocean floor — looked unmistakably like...
An enormous, crimson eye staring right at her!
"BOOM—"
Poison's consciousness shattered to blank static. The next instant, she began plumting toward the seabed.
When she regained awareness and saw the blood-red earth inches from her face, she clawed upward in a frenzy, swimming for her life. She could feel the desires around her — desires that didn't belong to this world — sliding past her sides. She wished she had two extra arms so she could flee the seabed faster.
She didn't know where the terror ca from. She only knew she had to run — run now — get away from here!
She swam harder, harder — but mid-stroke, she lurched to a halt. Her gaze snapped to her own arms.
On skin that had been snow-white monts ago, countless blood-red veins had spread at so unknown point, tracing pattern after pattern of eyes across her flesh. Those eyes blinked in unison and, in the sa instant, turned to look at her.
"..."
It was a terrifying exchange of gazes.
From that single glance, Poison understood. She had been "contaminated."
She had beco the Origin's eyes.
That's right — the Origin!
Ha. Who could have imagined? The Experint Master sitting high above in the Real Universe wasn't rely observing the entire experint from out there. He had hidden His eyes at the bottom of the Sea of Desire...
He cared that much about His experint — enough to use this thod for up-close observation of every world's evolution.
And in that mont, Poison finally understood why those gods had sought death so desperately.
Because the Origin could not be looked upon, and could not be spoken of!
The rule that had forcibly seized her consciousness told her: the mont she revealed this to any other living being, all that awaited them was contamination!
Until every creature in this petri dish beca His eyes — and the experint failed, and the world collapsed.
Poison fell silent.
She swam toward the surface with all her might. She would use her silence to tell everyone the secret of this place.
...
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