Volume 11: Memetic Crisis Chapter 556: Heaven and Earth Are Unkind
Ke Lan pointed the muzzle of the shotgun at the face of "Seraphim" and pulled the trigger.
Not only the large-caliber shotgun in his hand, all the weapons on the power armor were activated at the same time. Various gun muzzles, cannon muzzles and launch nests protruded from the hidden grooves inside the armor, and the trail of the induced missile even opened up a fan-shaped smoke screen behind him.
The recoil generated by the full launch of the bullets made Ke Lan take several steps back, and the anchor claws plowed several grooves about half an inch deep on the alloy ground.
All of them hit the target, without a single miss… However, when the fire and smoke from the explosion dissipated, only a pair of huge wings could be seen blocking the front, taking all the bombardment.
The wings were intact, only the eyes embedded between the feathers were closed.
"I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up. The train of his garment filled the temple. Above him stood seraphim, each with six wings. With two wings he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he was flying."
What the other party was reciting was a description of the Seraphim from the Book of Isaiah, and this description of the Seraphim was almost exactly the same as its current appearance.
"It seems that among the people infected by this guy, there are still devout Christians." Ke Lan complained in his heart. This believer must not be from the institute - this group of lunatics believes in nothing except science. Even if God and angels really exist, they must be thinking about how to get a living specimen for dissection.
"It's useless to talk to me about this. I'm an atheist." Ke Lan said - he was waiting for the weapons of the power armor to be loaded with ammunition. Although these weapons had little effect on the "Seraphim", it was his strongest means of attack besides the "Holy Word".
"But you believe in the existence of 'God'." Chitian said in a mocking tone, "You even regard His power as your last trump card."
"I don't know if you have found this sentence in the memories of those infected people: 'The end of science is theology'... The reason why theology can exist is that there will always be things in this world that are beyond the current scope of human cognition." Ke Lan said, "After the Industrial Revolution, many things that humans originally thought that only 'God' could do became common scenes in reality, so the number of blind believers in religion has decreased sharply... And now, as human vision gradually expands to the universe outside the Milky Way, and comes into contact with more things that cannot be explained by existing scientific theories, organizations like heretical sects have the opportunity to rise..."
"As for me," Ke Lan changed the subject and said, "The reason why I call Him God is that I haven't found a more suitable name yet. I never believe in a personified God, and the will of the universe does not have a personality. Ancient Chinese philosophers have already figured this out - 'Heaven and earth are not benevolent, and treat all things as straw dogs.'"
Ke Lan would rather believe that the "great gods" mentioned by heretical sects and Alpha civilization are extremely powerful creatures, creatures whose power far exceeds the limits of human imagination. Just like the primitive species, in the eyes of humans in the ignorant era, the primitive species are god-like existences, and their power cannot be described in words - but now, humans have the ability to kill them.
Despite the high price, they have fallen from the so-called throne of God and turned into beast-like existences.
The "god" who can cross countless dimensions with just his sight is actually a primitive species that is countless times more powerful. His ability is so strong that many people think that he is an "omnipotent" being.
But as a classic joke goes, "God cannot create a rock that he cannot lift"...Except the universe itself, nothing can truly be called "God".
The Seraphim did not respond to Ke Lan's words. It closed its eyes - the eyes on its face and all the eyes on its wings - and fell into silence. It seemed to be thinking, or as if it had fallen into a deep sleep.
Ke Lan took a deep breath. The weapons in his power armor were already loaded and ready to fire at any time... He didn't think he could defeat such a BOSS just by talking... If the real world was a novel, then the author's ability to construct a plot was really too poor.
“Heaven and earth are not benevolent, and treat all things as straw dogs… Who said this?”
What Ke Lan didn't expect was that the Seraphim suddenly opened his eyes and asked such a question.
Could it be that among so many people who have been infected by it… including Christians, who are now very rare, there is not a single person who knows this “famous saying”?
Even though few people are interested in ancient Chinese Taoist culture now, this "famous saying" has always appeared frequently in various online novels. Even some people who can't speak Chinese fluently can occasionally utter a few similar classic lines. Ke Lan absolutely doesn't believe that none of these infected people have heard this sentence.
Or maybe the memory absorbed by the "meme" subject is incomplete, and this part is missing... But is it really such a coincidence? The part of everyone's memory related to this sentence is exactly in the missing part?
Or was this sentence erased "consciously"?
Because this sentence denies the existence of "God", does that mean the "great God" also denies this sentence?
Isn't this "great god" too narrow-minded? It's like a group of ants shouting "The human species does not exist, it's all our illusion." A normal person would either laugh it off or step on the ants to death to let them know that this is a fallacy - but no one would brainwash the ants and delete all the parts of their memory related to this point of view.
Unless this person has reached a certain level of idleness...
Wait a minute?
Are you bored and anxious?
If we go by what the little boy said before, then this "great god" is simply bored to death, right?
No matter how long a person's life span is, as long as he has humanized emotions, he will never be able to completely get rid of the emotion of "loneliness". And all the means of killing time known to humans, added together, are just a blink of an eye for him.
This "bored" god might actually do such a thing.
He had responded to the "prayers" of Ke Lan and the black-robed cardinals, and now he had given this mutant clone the power to "fuse" with the Yinglong egg...
Ke Lan finally understood: this universe is his chessboard. No matter it is the Alpha civilization, the heretical sect, the Undead Crew, or Ke Lan, they are just chess pieces on the board... As for the chess players, they are the left and right hands of this god... Of course, they may also be two of his countless hands.
Ke Lan suddenly felt that what the little boy had just said was a little ridiculous - he said that he was the "unstable factor" that jumped out of the chessboard, but now it seemed that at best he had just jumped from the Chinese chess board to the international chess board.
It is still a chess piece, just like myself.
"This sentence comes from the fifth chapter of the Tao Te Ching. It was said by Lao Tzu, the founder of the Chinese Taoist school." Ke Lan replied.
"So, this man called Laozi, is he denying the existence of God?" Seraph asked again.
"Of course, God does not exist... unless you consider the universe itself to be 'God'."
"Ridiculous!" The Seraph's face suddenly showed an extremely angry expression, "I am His messenger, the highest-ranking messenger under His seat, the Seraph Seraph!"
"......?" Ke Lan was stunned. Why did this guy suddenly start to act out his fake act?
"My mission is to carry out His instructions and spread His light throughout this world!" the other party said again.
"You...are you out of your mind?" Ke Lan's mouth twitched. "The Seraph is a fiction created by humans in the old era...and you are just a clone fused with the egg of the primitive species 'Yinglong'. Maybe you still have some genetic fragments of the Seed of Corrosion in your body, but in any case, you are not the same as that fictional creature."
"Anyone who blasphemes Him is unforgivable!" The rage on the Seraph's face grew stronger, and three pairs of wings opened at the same time, almost occupying most of the space in the hall. Ke Lan noticed that below the little boy's face, there were three other faces. The appearance, expressions and eyes of the four faces were exactly the same. They were all glaring at Ke Lan, "sentencing" his "crimes" in unison.
"Are you... getting too deep into the role?" Ke Lan took a step back and hammered the anchor hook into the ground again. "You only look very similar to that fictional creature... I don't have time to play role-playing games with you!"
Could it be that this guy got angry and embarrassed because he couldn't win the argument?
"Liquidation!"
The opponent suddenly shouted loudly, and three pairs of wings flapped forward at the same time. Fortunately, Ke Lan put up the energy shield in time, so he was not beaten into a meat paste by this distance.
But the energy shield did not burn the wings of the Seraph, and the two collided firmly - in theory, the energy shield has no entity. In terms of the familiarity of game players, it has no collision volume. Anything that touches it will either be burned to ashes or penetrate the shield...
Unless the thing that comes into contact with it is also an energy body.
The lifelike wings of Seraph are actually energy bodies?
"The Seraph of Seraph... is the servant closest to God, and is the messenger who sings praises to God. It has no physical body, only a spiritual body made of light and flame. When it wants to show its power before humans, it will transform into a figure with six wings and four heads..." Ke Lan recalled the description of the Seraph of Seraph in the religious texts he had seen on the Internet. If this thing in front of him was really an "angel", then it should indeed be a ball of "energy" - but the problem is, it's a fake!
That was not a Seraph at all, but an "egg" of a primitive species found from the depths of the sea!
Ke Lan was holding up the energy shield. Dazzling sparks kept spurting out from where the shield and wings touched. His brain was working rapidly, thinking of feasible countermeasures.
Is it because of the "meme"? The "meme" changed my perception of it... and even, to some extent, changed its perception of itself?
It firmly believes that it is the Seraph in the Bible, so it has the same characteristics and abilities as the Seraph?
If the ability of "memes" is to influence reality through cognition, then where is the limit of this ability?
Can it affect that "god"? Can the power of that "god"... suppress its power?
The output power of the shield generator is plummeting, and the luster of the energy shield is rapidly becoming dim. In no more than ten seconds, the entire shield will collapse, and Ke Lan will be trapped in the middle of this pair of huge energy wings.
Ke Lan had no idea what the consequences would be if he directly came into contact with the wings that could collide head-on with the energy shield, but he knew without much thought that he would definitely not survive. Perhaps, he would not even be able to leave behind a relatively intact body.
"The trump card... still has to be used!" Ke Lan gritted his teeth. Although he had already realized this when he entered the underground ice storage, no matter how to say it, borrowing the power of "Him" still made Ke Lan feel a little uncomfortable.
Especially the sight that penetrated countless parallel time and space and was projected onto himself. Even though it was only for a very short moment, in that moment, time and space seemed to have disappeared. Ke Lan's consciousness exploded like a supernova, and all his senses, thoughts, and cognition stagnated... That short moment was no less than trillions of years.
The phrase "love at first sight" that literary young people like to use probably describes this feeling, but that was love, while Ke Lan was in jail.
So much so that when his consciousness was released from the "prison", he would have a sense of being reborn as a human being.
No normal person would want to experience this feeling a second time... not only normal people, but even crazy people probably wouldn't want to either.
But conventional weapons had no effect on the "Seraphim". The only weapons Ke Lan had not used yet were the two folding knives hidden in his arm armor. But in terms of close combat ability, he might not even have one-tenth of Asano Akira's.
The "Holy Word" is the only way to break the impasse.
Ke Lan began to recite the "prayer" that he usually didn't even dare to recite silently in his heart: "Please, great God, let one of His thousands of eyes be fixed on me..."
But before he finished reading the first sentence, Ke Lan realized the problem.
That familiar yet strange feeling did not come, it was as if he was saying some insignificant sentences in the language of the Alpha civilization... The gaze of that "great god" did not fall on Ke Lan again.
The "Holy Word"...is no longer effective!
