Chapter 676

Chapter 676: Haipa Incident

A bird?

Duncan had indeed thought about where he should start when he tried to explain the truth of the Great Annihilation and the current state of the Deep Sea era. After all, the collision of worlds and their “incompatibility” were such abstract ideas that not everyone could understand them in a short time. But he had never expected Rune to begin this topic with a small, ordinary-looking bird.

He looked up and saw that Morris, who sat beside him, had already grown thoughtful the moment he saw that “Madbird”.

Under the curious gazes of everyone present, Rune set the bird down on the table in front of him. His voice was calm and clear, like a patient mentor in a classroom, as he explained the ultimate truth of this world to the bishops who were gathered there:

“The black-feathered short-beaked auk is probably one of the oldest and most widespread bird species in this world. They lived along the safe coasts of the city-states, and also on lonely islands far out in the dangerous open sea. Explorers even found traces of them living in some dreadful waters that we classified as Visions. But if you only looked at their bodies and their habits, the black-feathered short-beaked auk had nothing special at all. It was only a very tough little bird. That was all.

“Until 1723, when some scholars suddenly put forward a very interesting, or rather very creative, idea: those animals that lived in this world together with humans but had senses different from humans—what did ‘all things’ look like in their eyes?

“The first person who raised this idea was a famous scholar of the Truth Academy, Haipa Strumm. The thought came to him while he was playing with his pet dog at home. He gazed into the dog’s eyes and suddenly thought of how its eyes and brain were built differently from those of humans. He thought of how this special set of senses must understand and know the world in a strange way, different from humans. When that curiosity grew so strong he could no longer suppress it, he designed the famous ‘Haipa Experiment’.

“By using a series of complex occult studies rituals, he linked his own senses with those of an animal. The first test was carried out between him and his pet dog.

“The first experiment failed. The dog almost died in the process. Later examination showed that, in the instant the link formed, the dog suffered enormous mental pressure. It was completely beyond what an animal could endure.

“So Haipa Strumm designed a second test. This time, he decided to choose a slightly ‘lower’ life form, a creature with a simpler brain structure. He only needed to share this creature’s senses. He did not want it to die early from pressure because its brain was too complex. The creature he finally chose… was the black-feathered short-beaked auk.

“In the afternoon of a day in August 1726, Haipa Strumm finished all his preparations. He put the little bird in a special cage, where it could see the sky outside, and then he lay down on the experimental bed beside the cage. The ritual began.

“One hour later, Haipa Strumm was dead. His terrible screams and a strange roaring sound shattered every window in the laboratory. When his soul collapsed at the moment of death, it triggered a howl in the Spirit Realm. As a result, twelve assistants and apprentices were harmed by that howl.

“Compared with many other experimental accidents and supernatural disasters that caused far more serious losses, the ‘Haipa Incident’ did not actually kill many people. However, some of the… chilling ‘facts’ that it revealed left a long shadow over the academic world. From that experiment onward, every attempt to build Shared Senses between different species was listed as an absolute taboo.

“And this is the ‘fact’ that was revealed in that accident.”

As Rune spoke, he reached into his robe and took out something. It seemed to be nothing more than a folded, ordinary piece of paper.

He unfolded the paper, and dense, crowded patterns came into Duncan’s view.

“People found a torn-off page of notes beside Haipa’s corpse. When they discovered his body, it was already terribly twisted. All his flesh had warped into a horrifying form, as if it had been corrupted by the power of the Elder Gods. This page of notes was clutched in the scholar’s right hand, the only part of his body that still kept a human shape. investigators judged that he probably drew these things in great haste, during his rapid fall into madness, using the last fragment of his sanity.

“Please do not worry. This is only a replica, copied from the original file. The parts that carried corruption have already been removed. It is safe for everyone to look at it.”

Rune lifted the paper and showed it to everyone in the hall.

What was on that page? What had Haipa Strumm actually seen before he died?

To be honest, even Duncan could not connect those abstract, tangled lines with the “Haipa Experiment” Rune had mentioned. He only saw a mass of curved lines that looked like spasms drawn on paper. Trembling shadows lay over a series of strange geometric shapes. Countless eye-like or hollow structures spread across the page. The first feeling it gave him… was nothing but eerie confusion.

The hall fell silent. The Haipa Incident was not a secret, but not everyone knew as much about it as the scholars did. Many bishops from the Deep Sea, from the Death Church, and from the Flamebearer Church were hearing these details for the first time. The strange and suspicious parts of this event made everyone sink into deep thought.

“This is what Haipa Strumm saw at the moment of his death through the Shared Senses,” Rune’s voice sounded in the quiet hall. “What you are looking at is the ‘world’ in the eyes of a black-feathered short-beaked auk. And that trembling cluster of lines piled near the edge… that is Haipa Strumm himself.”

A low buzzing of voices rose at once around the room. The bishops sitting along the edges of the hall began to whisper to one another. Some people looked at the still-ordinary-looking black seabird on the table with shock or deep thought in their eyes.

The “Madbird” seemed frightened. It hopped in the cage, beat its wings, and let out a series of sharp, clear cries.

Rune pulled the dark cloth back over the cage.

“This is what once happened in our world, and what still keeps happening in the ‘underlying essence’ of all things,” he said as he raised his head and calmly swept his gaze across the hall. “The essence of corruption lies in the ‘incompatibility’ of all things. What is only a simple thing in our view, under another view—or under another set of ‘rules’—is deadly corruption piled upon corruption.”

In the time that followed, Rune slowly described everything he had seen in the deepest part of the Nameless One’s dream.

He spoke of the true nature of the Great Annihilation, the truth behind the collision of worlds, the reasons behind the many corruptions and twisted phenomena of the Deep Sea era today, and those “eternal conflicts” that still remained in the laws at the bottom of the world.

“…On the day the Great Annihilation took place, many worlds ‘collided’ with each other,” Rune said. “We still do not know why this collision happened. But the result… was a ‘Haipa Incident’ spread across countless civilizations, countless races, countless worlds. In that collision, every world was both a ‘Madbird’ to all the others and a ‘Haipa Strumm’ to all the others. Under the view of the ‘basic rules of the worlds’, unspeakable corruption twisted everything. All the old order vanished. And the survivors…”

Rune stopped. He slowly stood up and looked around at every person there.

“We, and everything around us, even the entire Deep Sea era,” he said, “are nothing more than Haipa Strumm’s last scream at the moment of his death. That scream is still echoing to this day, but it is already close to its end.”

The old man let out a soft breath and slowly sat back down in his seat.

“I am finished,” he said. “Does anyone wish to add anything?”

As he spoke, his gaze fell on Duncan, who sat opposite him.

“You spoke very fully,” Duncan said. “This is all we currently know about the Great Annihilation. Next, we should talk about the gods—the guesses about their true nature, and what you have been doing recently. That is what I care about most.”

The bishops around them stirred again. The four popes sitting on the other side of the table exchanged a brief look when Duncan finished speaking. The noise quickly faded, and the Flamebearer Pope—the tall figure in simple robes, with skin gray-white like stone—gave a small nod.

“From the clues we have, the gods should be the powerful or special beings that remained after each world was destroyed in the Great Annihilation,” Frem said in his low voice. “They are like ‘charred cores’ left after a great burning, carrying the last glow of a world.”

As he spoke, Frem raised his hand and traced the outline of the Flamebearer emblem over his chest, as if confessing his offense in ‘judging the gods’. But he went on:

“…The Great Annihilation destroyed everything of the Old World. Strictly speaking, the gods also did not survive that disaster. And as for this… we actually noticed it a very long time ago.”

When he heard Frem’s words, Duncan’s eyes widened a little: “You had noticed this before?”

At the same time, he saw shock flash across the faces of Morris and Vanna beside him. Clearly, even as Saints, this was the first time they had heard such words from the mouth of a pope.

This was a “secret” kept only inside the Pilgrimage Arks.

Frem gave a small nod.

“Yes,” he said. “We noticed it long ago. It is only now that we understand the reason behind it all.

“The gods are dead and have already begun to enter their ‘decay phase’… but only a few high-ranking church members who patrol the border on the Pilgrimage Arks know this truth. And there is another truth…”

Frem paused for a moment. He raised his head and gazed into Duncan’s eyes.

“The Pilgrimage Arks were created to slow the gods’ rot,” he said. “And now, this ‘slowing’ is almost at its limit.

“The filth born from the gods’ decay… is about to seep into the mortal world.”