At the edge of the Sea of Desire. The Sinking Land.
Not long after Poison entered the Sea of Desire, word arrived from Dolgod.
The Doctor and several "lab assistants" rushed over, their faces flushed with excitent. The mont they touched down, they asked everyone:
"For a god, what is the most important thing?
Praise Yu Xi."
"..."
'You had better not be setting up a rhetorical question.'
Cheng Shi furrowed his brow, thought for a mont, and gave his answer. "Faith."
"Exactly! It's faith!"
The Doctor's elation was uncontainable. "Praise Yu Xi! Change is what an experint pursues — the unexpected is the engine that advances results.
I found it!
I found that mont in ti! And as it happens, this discovery also ca from an accident.
While I was contemplating the experint's progress, my gaze drifted unconsciously toward the Ritual of Truth nearby. The Ritual of Truth isn't purely a creation of Truth — it's also Truth's Container. Since faith in Truth still exists, I could see Divinity dripping inside the Container.
Perhaps because the entire universe is thirsting for truth, the drip rate wasn't slow — but it certainly wasn't fast either. And what's more remarkable: neither stretching nor compressing ti changes the rate at which Divinity drips!
At that mont, watching one drop of Divinity fall while the next began to coalesce, a bolt of insight struck :
If ti is discontinuous, then existence is also discontinuous. And if that's the case... could faith be discontinuous as well?!
Faith is a god's very foundation. If faith isn't continuous, might there be a single instant when the faith goes blank — when a god has no 'connection' with His followers?
And wouldn't the absence of connection an the absence of observation — or even complete irrelevance?!
If they're completely irrelevant, then drawing near or pulling away wouldn't affect two 'independent' 'individuals.' Isn't that precisely the 'mont of negligence' we've been searching for?
Praise Yu Xi!
This instantly inspired . I pulled Long Jing in and we began observing the temporal pattern of Divinity drips in the Container. The overall drip ti varies with the strength of faith, and Ti's power can't accelerate faith's coalescence. But our focus wasn't on the dripping process — it was on the 'blank' ti between the fall of one drop and the coalescence of the next!
I call it the Faith Interval.
And then sothing fascinating occurred: no matter the drip speed, the Faith Interval is absolutely fixed!
While Ti's power can't influence faith itself, with Ti's precision we can absolutely pinpoint this interval. And in Long Jing's words..."
The Doctor knew exactly when to step aside. He understood this was the mont to hand the stage to Long Jing, so he trailed off and turned to look at him.
Every gaze shifted to Long Jing. Unable to suppress the grin tugging at his lips, he gave the group an extravagant bow, then said with theatrical mystery:
"221!
It's not just a duration — it's also the number of Ti Knots. A Ti Knot doesn't stretch ti infinitely; each one has an upper limit. Exceed it and the knot can't be completed — the folded ti collapses entirely. But that didn't stump !
Through my painstakingly delicate operation, after 221 consecutive Ti Knots, I finally observed the instant within the Container when old Divinity had dripped away and new Divinity hadn't yet followed.
Put simply: if you imagine ti as a black line drawn on a canvas, then in observing that line, I magnified the viewing window 221 tis — and finally found a single pixel on that canvas that hadn't been painted black!
And it wasn't just the Truth Container. We checked Ti, mory, Folly... every Container we could get our hands on. The Faith Interval is 'absolute' — it doesn't vary between Containers!
So..."
Long Jing's burning gaze turned to Cheng Shi. He knew Cheng Shi held a Dyeing Container capable of activating every faith.
"If all faiths combined can forge a Container that perfectly mimics the Origin's Container, then in the very instant Divinity drips from the Origin's Container — in that Faith Interval called 221 — we would have the chance to escape the Origin's gaze, sever our connection to the Origin, and break free of this experint!
I believe THAT is the greatest legacy Deceit left for us!
Cheng Shi — is the Container in your hands... the Origin's Container?"
"..."
It was. Of course it was.
Cheng Shi had already determined the Dyeing Container's purpose. He just hadn't realized that the hourglass's function was simply "keeping ti."
With a complicated expression, Cheng Shi produced the Container. It had already been dyed with many faiths, but so remained inactive.
Looking at its puppet-like form, the remaining few gods stepped forward one by one under Cheng Shi's gaze, dyeing the Container in turn.
Truth, Folly, Prosperity, Order...
Yes — Prosperity. In the end, Hong Lin had passed her Divine Throne to the little fox before leaving. Tao Yi, cradling a tiny jade-green sprout, gazed at Hong Lin from afar, tears streaming down her face in a silent farewell.
As faith after faith poured in, the Container shifted form again and again. Until An Mingyu stepped forward and channeled the power of Fate — and the Dyeing Container abruptly stopped changing. It did not assu Fate's Container form. Instead, it began rapidly cycling through its previous forms.
No — more precisely, it was flashing through the forms of all fourteen faiths in sequence, following the order of the Paths: Life, Descent, Civilization, Chaos, Existence, and Void. It skipped Corruption, and it did not settle on Fate.
It was as though Fate's power hadn't dyed it at all. Rather, it had brought "Change."
The Dyeing Container lifted free of Cheng Shi's hand and floated into the air. As it cycled through its forms, tangible faith began spreading outward like a physical substance.
Cheng Shi's eyes darkened. Unable to determine whether this Change was good or bad, he could only watch and wait.
Everyone else reacted as though facing a dire threat, surging forward to shield Fixed Destiny behind them.
Countless divine powers erupted skyward, isolating the Dyeing Container from the universe. Yet the tangible faith emanating from the Container began resonating with the surrounding divine power, accelerating its spread.
Before long, the faith-substance wove a crude outline around the Container. Only then did everyone realize the Container seed to be Reconstructing — and as for what it was about to Reconstruct into...
Looking at that vaguely familiar outline, every Joker present lost the ability to speak.
"!!!!!"
"A Divine Throne?!"
Yes!
The Container, floating in mid-air and infused with fourteen faiths, had used tangible faith to assemble itself into a Divine Throne — one whose shape was nearly identical to the one Cheng Shi had brought back from the Corpse Field of Gods in the Real Universe!
Except this one wasn't shattered. On the contrary, it looked extraordinarily complete.
Perhaps this was what that throne truly looked like.
Though the faith had solidified into sothing almost real, the mont the Container finished Reconstructing, that solidified faith burst apart and dissipated, leaving only traces that faith had once been there. The Container shrank back to its normal size and drifted gently into Cheng Shi's hand.
Cheng Shi's pupils contracted sharply. Looking at the "blank" miniature Divine Throne in his palm, he finally understood what this object truly was.
"This is...?"
"A blueprint." Cheng Shi clutched the object tightly. "A blueprint for assembling that throne.
And that throne isn't rely a throne. It is exactly what we've been looking for —
The Origin's Container."
...
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