I Forged the Myth of the Ancient Overlords
Chapter 640 - 640 639.Sublimation_1

Chapter 640: 639.Sublimation_1 Chapter 640: 639.Sublimation_1 Taoist Crane Cry.

For some reason, when Lu Ban heard this name, he didn’t feel any particular sentiment.

Perhaps it was because he already roughly knew the identity of the other person and had witnessed the process of how they had transformed from an ordinary person into their current form.

It was like when you see a gang leader ferocious and looking terrifying, as if they might start cutting off limbs at the slightest disagreement, but if you had watched them since they were in diapers and running around the neighborhood with a pacifier, you would feel similar to how Lu Ban felt now.

However, Taoist Crane Cry had clearly experienced many things, and he didn’t remember Lu Ban—it was just unknown whether there would be any reaction from the other person if Lu Ban mentioned that he used to run through the streets in split pants when he was a child.

“Are you Taoist Crane Cry?”

Lu Ban asked, as if seeking confirmation.

“What do you think Taoist Crane Cry is like? Ascended to become an Immortal? Or already decayed into dust?”

Bronning seemed to have misunderstood Lu Ban’s meaning and countered with a question. He didn’t wait for Lu Ban to answer before continuing to explain.

“Sublimation is a special kind of transformation that can allow a person to abandon the shackles of the flesh to become a truly higher existence. In this situation, my existence is no longer limited to the material.”

Bronning explained.

His words were tinged with Contamination, causing Shia to frown slightly, but for Shia, who had studied magic, Bronning’s statement wasn’t too preposterous and was still acceptable.

“Human consciousness also exists in reliance on matter. Without matter, there’s no talking about human consciousness. If one wants to attain eternal life, if one wants to sublimate oneself, one must first abandon one’s own flesh, including all of one’s material self.”

Bronning said and, from nowhere, produced a small knife. He picked up the knife and cut towards his own finger. The sharp blade sliced through the skin and dug into the flesh, screeching against the bone. Then, he severed the entire finger at the joint, placed it on his palm, and toyed with it.

“Flesh is weak and bitter, and even those monsters ultimately cannot escape destruction,” he said, referring to the Sludge Monsters. It seemed that Taoist Crane Cry had indeed used the content of the “Xuan Jun’s Seven Chapter Secret Scriptures” to summon Sludge Monsters and attempted to merge his will with them.

Yet, he was not successful, or he had preserved his will using some method, or he had proven through experimentation that the method was unreliable.

“As long as there’s a body that can be destroyed, one is quite far from immortality. Some people are foolish, blindly strengthening the body, wanting a body that is tempered through a thousand trials, wanting to rely on their own strength to crush everything, but they are mistaken.”

Bronning tossed the piece of finger into his mouth as if it were a biscuit, chewed it, and swallowed.

The old butler beside them, already with eyes full of blood, had collapsed to the ground, looking as if he had been struck dozens of times inside a bell, unable to react to the outside world.

Seeing the old butler like this, Shia delivered a punch, knocking him unconscious to spare him any further Contamination.

“The sublimation you speak of, does it refer to the process of transforming an ordinary person into a deity? How is that achieved?”

Lu Ban asked calmly.

He was very clear that Taoist Crane Cry posed no threat to them at the moment, otherwise, given Taoist Crane Cry’s own state, he would have had no need to chat with Lu Ban and the others here.

The fact that the other party was willing to communicate indicated that he had some sort of request.

Combining the fact that Taoist Crane Cry said he was hiding here, and using paintings of the Ancient Capital to suppress something, Lu Ban felt that there must be some missing link that he hadn’t discovered yet.

“You ask a good question,”

Bronning said with a smile. The wound where he had cut off his own finger healed quickly, and then a brand-new finger grew out, faster than Lu Ban’s growing of grass, showing no difference between the two.

“What is a god?”

Bronning asked in return. Without waiting for Lu Ban to ponder, he began to speak again, both posing and answering his own question.

“In ancient times, thunder and lightning were gods, torrential rains were gods, landslides were gods, and earthquakes were gods. People revered natural phenomena, and so they became gods, but we clearly know these are not gods. They lack their own will and are merely personifications of rules.”

Lu Ban had read about these contents in folklore and mythology books. The earliest beliefs and myths of humankind stemmed from the awe of nature.

“So, if thunder and lightning had will, would it be called a true god?”

Bronning asked.

“…Rules?”

Lu Ban almost instantaneously thought of the strange entities in his own world.

As everyone knows, those strange entities are personifications of rules; they cannot be destroyed but only transferred from one place to another. If these strange entities were to awaken to consciousness, then indeed they could be considered gods in their own right.

“What is called sublimation is the process of transforming oneself into a concept. Apart from those born as Ancient Overlords, Outer Domain Gods, or eldritch beings from ancient times, common creatures who wish to reign immortally inevitably have to turn themselves into concepts.”

Bronning snapped his fingers, and fire appeared in his hands.

“If I were to bestow the concept of Fire on a civilization, then I would be a fire god. But I do not exist by depending on these people; it is because I myself am an incarnation of fire. Of course, in the vast expanse of the Foreign Domain, there exist realms without the concept of fire, such as a realm composed only of endless abysses and seawater, where malevolence hides beneath the waves. Such a world lacks the concept of fire, and the influence of gods that depend on it would be diminished.”

“So, you exist in Abandoned Capital based on the concept of ‘Taoist Crane Cry’?”

Shia quickly grasped what Bronning meant.

Once Taoist Crane Cry became ‘Taoist Crane Cry,’ even if his physical body perished, as long as his name continued to be chanted, Taoist Crane Cry would be immortal. He could descend to any Foreign Domain where this name is chanted in any form desired. The more profound the understanding of the concept ‘Taoist Crane Cry’ in the Foreign Domain, the stronger his power would be.

And if Taoist Crane Cry possessed other concepts, such as fire, rain, or light, then indeed, he could be omnipresent and omnipotent, living through the long and vast stretches of time.

This might sound incredible, but one must understand that ‘Concepts’ are a form of ‘Knowledge,’ and ‘Knowledge’ carries ‘Contamination’ and ‘Power.’

To become a concept is akin to becoming contamination.

This is why those Ancient Overlords all carry strong contamination; even a single glance could cause one to lose sanity and fall into madness.

This is the essence of sublimation.

“You are very smart, and that’s precisely why I’m communicating with you,”

Bronning propped up his leg in a figure-four, leaning his head slightly forward as he asked.

“Do you want to make a bargain with me?”