Chapter 141

The awkward, silent, and subtly strange atmosphere in the captain's cabin lasted for quite a while. Finally, Duncan broke the silence, shifting his gaze from A Gou and looking very seriously at old Mr. Morris beside him, "Logically speaking, do you think this is reasonable?"

Morris blinked dully, his face as confused and conflicted as if someone had dragged him out of bed at 2:30 AM to revise a thesis. He felt that even the trials he faced when ascending to sainthood were much simpler than the dilemma he faced now. After struggling for a long time, he finally managed to say, "Nothing like this has ever been heard of in history. This is beyond my cognitive scope."

"It's definitely beyond it. A Deep Sea Ember who can read has probably only ever been A Gou," Duncan pinched his brow with a complicated expression. "Does your doctrine say that the God of Wisdom would bestow blessings upon a Deep Sea Ember?"

"How could there be such a thing?"

Morris's expression immediately turned ghostly. "Deep Sea Embers are the great enemies of civilized society. Let alone the God of Wisdom, the doctrines of the other three gods couldn't possibly have such a condition..."

Before he could finish speaking, Vanna, who had been stunned for a long time, suddenly remembered something and added quietly, "But the doctrine of the God of Wisdom also says that Lachem equally favors every sentient being, both bestowing upon them the wisdom to understand the world and protecting them from those crazy and terrifying realities with a veil of foolishness... It doesn't explicitly exclude Deep Sea Embers from sentient beings."

"What Deep Sea Ember has sentience?"

Morris blurted out subconsciously, but then turned his head with a strange expression, looking at A Gou, who was honestly趴在地板上 (趴在地板上 - lying prone on the floor).

"At A Gou's current learning progress, we can almost arrange for him to take the junior high school entrance exam around this time next year," Duncan said quietly. "Maybe one day he'll even be classmates with Nina. I'm a bit of a mess; I need to calm down."

Morris finally swayed slightly, rubbed his forehead, and slowly came to the chair beside him. After holding onto the armrest and slowly sitting down, he raised his head and looked at the dog in the center of the room with a complicated expression. "Besides having those images appear in your mind, what else did you feel? Did you hear Him speaking to you? Or did you suddenly gain a new understanding of certain knowledge?"

"No," A Gou shook his head vigorously. "I just saw those lights twice in a row. I was startled both times. Other than that, I didn't hear anything or feel anything. I just saw Him."

"No revelations?"

"Morris seemed to have calmed down and began to think seriously. "Then do you feel any improvement in your calculation or memory abilities? After staring at those 'lights' for a long time, did you feel that your vision was different when you returned to the real world?"

A Gou continued to shake his head. "No, nothing. And I didn't stare at those lights for a long time. I just glanced at them and was pulled back to the real world."

Morris was stunned, obviously contradicting his understanding. "That's not right... The God of Wisdom's gaze is accompanied by a long period of mental communication. Even if mortals can't understand this communication, the whole process is definitely not that short... How were you pulled back?"

"It felt like Sherry pulled me back," A Gou thought for a moment, then raised his head and rubbed against Sherry's arm. "I just had the feeling that I was about to be taken away by those lights, and then I felt a great force coming from the symbiotic chain, and then I woke up. But Sherry herself doesn't seem to remember."

The gazes in the room immediately fell on Sherry again. The girl, who became the focus of everyone's attention, subconsciously shrank her neck, but then smiled triumphantly, like a child showing off after doing something amazing. Only Duncan's expression became more and more strange after several changes.

Vanna, on the other hand, was still puzzled. "I haven't heard of a symbiotic relationship between a Deep Sea Ember and a human that has the power to block the gaze of a god. Is it because the symbiotic relationship between Sherry and A Gou is closer than that of ordinary Annihilation cultists?"

"Ahem, maybe it wasn't the power of the symbiotic contract that pulled A Gou back," Duncan coughed twice, pointed at Sherry, who was still giggling, "Maybe it was the power of illiteracy."

Vanna: "?"

Sherry...

Several people were dumbfounded, and Sherry's expression became visibly wonderful. Morris looked at Duncan with a stunned expression. He always knew that the captain's thinking was broader than that of ordinary people, but he had never thought that it could be so broad in this direction!

However, after a short period of astonishment, Morris couldn't help but follow this line of thought, and the more he thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed.

"Perhaps at that moment, a struggle in the transcendent realm occurred on A Gou's body, one side being the gaze of the God of Wisdom, and the other being his illiterate partner, and the final fact proves..." Duncan rubbed his forehead, his tone filled with叹息 (tan xi - sighing), "The desperate illiterate defeated the god who wanted to recruit students, logic... logic..."

Morris opened his mouth, chanted a few times, but could only spread his hands. "Forget it, I don't know how to calculate this logic. If I write a paper on this, it's enough for the scholars of Mokha to fight to the death in the city center. Let's just assume that things are really like this."

An unspeakable and difficult-to-bear atmosphere lingered in the captain's cabin. Sherry stood in the center of the room as if she was about to cry. She looked at Duncan and then at Morris, and finally pointed at A Gou with a mournful face! "Then... then am I holding A Gou back? He's... he's clearly..."

At this moment, perhaps the only moment in her life, Sherry actually had the idea that she should study hard. However, the next moment, Duncan's voice interrupted her, "Don't rush to conclusions. Maybe things aren't as simple as we think?"

Sherry immediately stopped feeling沮丧 (ju sang - discouraged): "Huh?"

Duncan didn't answer her question immediately, but looked at A Gou. "A Gou, you said that when you were staring at those lights, you had the feeling that you were going to be 'taken away'?"

A Gou immediately nodded.

Duncan turned to Morris again. "Do people blessed by the God of Wisdom have this feeling of being taken away?"

"No," Morris seemed to vaguely realize something at this time, shaking his head while his tone gradually became serious. "The normal blessing process is a friendly mental exchange and enlightenment. The mind of the blessed person is clear and happy, and there is absolutely no feeling of losing control."

"If a Deep Sea Ember is really wisdom-infused by the God of Wisdom Lachem—in other words, receives some kind of divine favor—what will happen?" Duncan then asked.

"I don't know. This has never happened before, but judging from logic, this may be a very dangerous process," Morris's mind worked quickly, and he immediately understood Duncan's meaning. "The Four True Gods and the crazy and out-of-control 'Ancient Gods' have a natural conflict. This conflict is not limited to the literal meaning of the struggle, but is a fundamental mutual repulsion between the creations or dependents of both sides. As a derivative of the Deep Sea Primordial, Deep Sea Embers naturally possess the characteristics of chaos and corruption. Even A Gou is no exception to this. And for the God of Wisdom..." Morris paused, looking at Sherry with a serious expression. "Even if Our Lord has no malice, His glory will naturally destroy A Gou's mind."

The result was... Morris didn't continue, and the others in the room fell into their own thoughts for a while. But Ai, who was originally resting on the nautical chart table with her eyes closed, suddenly jumped up like she was having some kind of fit, flapping her wings vigorously while making sharp and strange cries: "锟斤拷烫烫烫烫烫烫烫!" (Kun Jin Kao Tang Tang Tang Tang Tang Tang Tang! - Gibberish characters resulting from encoding errors).

After yelling so hard a few times, it suddenly窜 (cuan - darted) up, and then fell on the table with a bang like a stone. Then, flapping its wings, it stood up again as if nothing had happened, took a few steps, came to the side of the goat head, and歪 (wai - tilted) its head: "Bu?"

Everyone was startled by the pigeon spirit's strange and erratic behavior, and no one could understand what it was yelling. However, Duncan's expression changed slightly.

The next second, a sentence popped into his mind for some reason: Two incompatible operating systems, data intercommunication will cause fatal errors. With a moment of恍然 (huang ran - realization) and a lot of乱七八糟 (luan qi ba zao - messy) associations in his mind, he slowly turned his head and looked at A Gou.

"Could there be a data conflict between the Deep Sea Primordial and Lh-02?"

"Ah?" A Gou didn't react for a moment. "Captain, what are you saying?"

"No, it's nothing." Duncan knew that it was difficult to explain to others how much he had associated with in that instant. He could only wave his hand and look at Sherry, who was still looking at him with a茫然 (mang ran - blank) expression. He reorganized the vocabulary in his mind several times, and finally came up with a sentence, "Sherry, it may be beneficial that you pulled A Gou back. I mean, only 'maybe'. This avoided A Gou being polluted or devoured by the will of the God of Wisdom Lachem."

Sherry's mind instantly ran a few times, and she seemed to finally understand Duncan's meaning. Her eyes immediately regained their brightness. "Ah, so... keeping my distance from that God of Wisdom is a good thing?"

Duncan... what else could he say? He could only nod.

As a result, as soon as he nodded, the expression on Sherry's face immediately became happy. "Then I have a reason not to do homework in the future? I have to pull A Gou back!"

Duncan: He never expected that this girl's first thought would be this! However, before he could speak, Morris reacted first, "It's not that simple."

Sherry was stunned. "Huh?"

The old gentleman looked serious. "Our Lord bestows blessings not only based on the level of knowledge, and vice versa. From my observation during this period, even if you do your homework every day, it won't affect you being rejected by the God of Wisdom."

Sherry: "???"