Seraphiel, the Lady Saintess of Lantern Dream, was currently sleeping with her followers in the process of renovating the church.
This was the first church constructed by Lantern Dream in the Royal Capital. It was very small, located in a remote area, and was simply a large house built in a corner of the Outer District without much decoration.
However, for Lantern Dream, it was the first outpost born in the light.
Although there were some bumps in the integration with the Central Church of the Royal Capital, with coordination from the Northern Border Church, Lantern Dream finally established its footing in the Royal Capital.
As a regular church, it also worshipped the Goddess, and under Lind’s strategy of converting believers by giving away eggs, many of the shallow believers from the Goddess Church, driven by the spirit of coming this far, joined Lantern Dream, becoming shallow followers of the Lantern Dream sect.
Currently, the Goddess Church was divided into three factions: one led by Lilith, adhering to the traditional notion of the Goddess and the Central Church; another led by Flora and Isha, which besides worshipping the Goddess, also believed in the Northern Border Church of Lind; and finally, no matter how revised, there was still the somewhat extremist Lantern Dream faction.
At present, there was no fundamental conflict among the three factions, as the Goddess had awakened, and all three had received divine revelations. In this context, regardless of how the three factions viewed each other, they could only maintain a mutually peaceful attitude.
Currently, the three factions had clear divisions of labor: the Northern Border Church reported directly to Lind, the Central Church was in charge of secular preaching and management, while Lantern Dream leaned more towards research.
After all, Lantern Dream was able to change its evil cult reputation, not simply relying on converting believers with eggs. It reverse-engineered brain servant technology, effectively helping many solve their psychological trauma, and most importantly, it did not charge for services.
“Thank you very much, Lady Saintess.”
A middle-aged man dressed as a worker thanked Seraphiel while awkwardly bowing in a stiff posture he had just learned.
“Thanks to you, my son’s hysteria was cured. I truly don’t know how to repay you.”
Seraphiel, still drowsy, replied, “It’s nothing. If you have time in the future, just pray at the church.”
Although it couldn’t directly cause harm to people’s brains anymore to build dreams like before, the increase in believers had brought about a qualitative change with the steady advancement of research. Lantern Dream had gained surplus computing power, helping the local community solve some mental issues.
In fact, many nobles, upon hearing this, deliberately came to the Lantern Dream church for a good sleep.
After sending off the final batch of shallow believers, Seraphiel led her followers into the dream.
Now, this public dream had started to take shape, with many believers working hard to construct this public dream, making its parameters closer to reality so that various experiments could be conducted in the dream in the future.
This was unimaginable for Seraphiel in the past. The public dream relied solely on the Goddess’s power, with a few people cramped in a small room, limited to using the simplest shadows to represent themselves to conserve computation.
But now, this dream had even made it somewhat difficult to distinguish between what was a dream and what was reality.
Indeed, as the Lord Governor said, the model of evil cults, which was destined to develop on a small scale, struggled to support systemic research.
However, the current dream was still far from sufficient for Seraphiel because her goal was the collective dream of all humankind, the so-called deep dream mentioned in legends, or the collective unconscious of humanity.
In the public dream church, Bernice suddenly woke up, and even in the dream, she felt her heart racing, as if she had just returned from the brink of death.
“Bernice, how do you feel? Have you entered the deep dream?”
Seeing Bernice awake, Seraphiel immediately gathered the followers around her in the dream.
To enter the deep dream, Bernice needed to dream within a dream, which was quite dangerous. One careless move could send her into the deep dream and never return. Even with the Goddess’s divine revelation of the Lantern as assistance, Lantern Dream had still lost a portion of its loyal followers.
“Lord… am I still dreaming?”
“Yes, you have returned to the shallow dream.”
Hearing Seraphiel say this, Bernice looked at the divine revelation lantern at her bedside and breathed a sigh of relief, realizing she had indeed come back.
“Lady Saintess…”
In the shared dream, Bernice caressed her heartbeat and said, “I saw the past, the present, and the future.”
“I witnessed my birth, my experiences, and even my death, along with countless versions of myself.”
…
In Lind’s study, there was now a blackboard filled with closely written information; one part had been erased by Lind, who wrote four large characters in its place: Alaya-vijnana.
After careful consideration, Lind erased those four characters again, rewriting the term “Sea of Consciousness” in the language of this world.
After all, this was only a religious concept from a previous life, whereas the Sea of Consciousness was a real existing entity worth exploring, its nature could not be completely the same.
Lind hoped to encapsulate the Sea of Consciousness with as comprehensible concepts as possible, rather than obscure religious notions.
After receiving help from 550C, Lind realized that this collective unconscious was far more dangerous than he had imagined. According to some assertions from his previous life, within this collective unconscious were all the life experiences and karmic imprints of humanity from ancient times to the present, even including a genetic library of human consciousness. Any small alteration of data within this Sea of Consciousness could have a tremendous impact on humans in reality.
Some long-standing human habits, even taboos, could be altered because of this.
No wonder the Tower and 550C were so eager to eliminate that ticking time bomb within the Sea of Consciousness.
At this moment, the familiar voice of 550C echoed in Lind’s mind again: “Lord, are you sure you want to open this Pandora’s Box?”
“It’s not that I want to open this box.”
Lind set down the chalk, wiped his hands, and said, “It’s just that without opening this box, there’s no way to solve the problem.”
“Moreover, someone has already opened the box before.”
Lind cast his gaze towards the direction where An Zhu was, realizing that it was not An Zhu who had opened the box but rather the Old Empire from the past. Lind had to prepare for the worst.
Then Lind passed the materials on the desk and the completed Holy Grail terminal to Lucanus in the shadows, saying: “Deliver it to Lady Saintess Seraphiel of Lantern Dream.”
Just as Lucanus was about to stand up and leave, Lind suddenly asked, “Lucanus, how far has the research of the Old Empire progressed?”
Lucanus looked at the information filled on the blackboard, wiped the sweat from his brow, and said, “My Lord, your research has gone a bit too far.”
