Chapter 634: Azar’s “Grand Words”

Sumeru's scholars fell into contemplation. Although they were sharply critiqued by Alhaitham, what he said was correct.

This made everyone very depressed. They had clearly been critiqued, yet they couldn't even refute it.

If they said anything in rebuttal now, wouldn't that just prove Alhaitham's words were right? All the "output" would hit themselves.

In the end, the scholars started complaining about Viraf. It was all his "stupidity" that exposed the fact that they were also "stupid."

Fortunately, not all scholars were that stupid. There was still a witness who reported the situation to the Grand Sage after seeing Alhaitham.

The scholars breathed a sigh of relief. Good thing they weren't completely stupid—they almost let the "enemy" swagger around in their own home.

As soon as they relaxed, they immediately reacted: Wait, is this right? This isn't right! How did we end up empathizing with the Akademiya side?

It's all because of our own identities—too much immersion!

Oh no, oh no—Alhaitham and the Traveler are about to be caught. Who's going to save them?

No one came to save them. They were surrounded inside and out by guards. The Traveler and Alhaitham were already at a dead end. Perhaps the only path left now was the path of Shibarak.

No—right now, the only path was to negotiate with the Grand Sage.

The Traveler opened with "The Fatui cannot be trusted," trying to sow discord between the Grand Sage and the Fatui.

Lumine: The Fatui are absolutely untrustworthy, and the Akademiya also fills me with hatred; I abandon everything, deny and scoff at all human affairs.

Just like what the owner of this line, Scaramouche, said—the Traveler really wasn't good at sowing discord. Such pale and powerless words definitely couldn't shake the Grand Sage even a little.

Whether the Fatui could be trusted or not—Azar didn't care at all. Anyway, he and the Fatui were just "mutually using" each other.

Although in the end, Sumeru was completely drained, at least the Grand Sage thought he had used the other side.

Just like the stupid scholars Alhaitham mentioned—he had at least convinced himself.

As the one who used the other side, the Grand Sage naturally didn't care about the Traveler's words. He even thought he had profited and should say thank you.

Right now, there was only one thing in the Grand Sage's mind: creating a god!

[Azar said emotionally: "Creating a god… We are using human wisdom to create a god!"]

When saying this line, the movie gave many close-ups of Azar from various angles.

The audience felt a bit uncomfortable watching. What was there to look at with this mad old man?

Previously, close-ups were of handsome guys and beautiful girls. Now suddenly making everyone look at Azar—the audience suspected if Lucian had some psychological perversion.

Although they knew this was an animated movie, unlike light novels that select specific characters and scenes for illustration, there would definitely be such shots.

But so what? It's still your fault, Lucian.

As for Azar's claim of creating a god with human wisdom—it was even more laughable.

Human wisdom? Referring to the vessel being a divine creation, the energy being the Gnosis, and even the algorithms and computing power being realized through divine creations?

The audience found it ridiculous, but Azar didn't think so. He was completely immersed in his great undertaking.

[Azar continued praising himself and others' greatness: "If humans cannot touch 'omniscience and omnipotence,' then create a god to reveal it! This is the pinnacle of wisdom that humans can reach."]

["We will finally regain the guidance of a god once more, and no longer have to grope endlessly in the darkness of consciousness and wisdom…"]

Azar's mad and narcissistic appearance made it seem like he was just short of hugging himself and twisting around.

His view was that human wisdom is limited, so they should create an "omniscient and omnipotent" god to guide humans—this is human wisdom.

This baffling logic left the audience confused. It always felt like his ideas and actions were slapping his own face—what kind of left-brain-right-brain fight?

The audience was a bit baffled. Did the Grand Sage want to prove human wisdom, or prove "human incompetence"?

The underlying logic in the Grand Sage's words was full of contempt for human wisdom, everywhere seeming to say that human wisdom was nothing much—only gods possess true wisdom.

Yet he said his actions were to prove human wisdom—this was the pinnacle of human wisdom.

Denying humans from the bottom of his heart on one hand, while saying it's for humans on the other—this wasn't wisdom; this was pure idiocy, right?

And calling this a "great undertaking"? Practice more if you suck! All this undertaking that undertaking—even if you were Kaedehara Kazuha, it wouldn't help. Too stupid.

But Azar didn't think so. Azar thought he was awesome.

What could the little Dendro Archon do? Console the people? Manage sandstorms? Or fabricate those fairy-tale-like nonsense stories? These were all things the Akademiya could easily do.

Azar meant that what Nahida did could also be done by humans, and a god should do things that humans couldn't.

But for Azar's speech, the people of Sumeru booed incessantly. You can do jack shit.

Not to mention anything else—of the three things you mentioned, which one have you accomplished? Consoling the people? Managing sandstorms? Fairy tales?

You've done plenty in reverse: exploiting the people, worsening disasters, and conveniently banning "art" too. Damn, the less you say the better—you're just making us angrier.

Because the Grand Sage hadn't appeared for a while recently, everyone's anger had subsided a bit. Now it all came back.

Keqing especially looked down on the Grand Sage from the bottom of her heart. She had always wanted to prove that humans weren't inferior—that humans could survive even without gods.

So she worked hard for this, doing any job, going to the grassroots every day to work with the people. To prove humans weren't worse than gods, she hardly dared to rest.

But the Grand Sage? Completely opposite to Keqing's thinking—he wanted to prove that humans couldn't lose gods.

When talking about consoling the people and managing sandstorms, Azar had an attitude of disdain, as if these things could be done casually.

Perhaps in his view, even the poorest citizens ate fish and meat every meal—consoling them was just casually giving some "knowledge."

This really pissed off Keqing, Jean, and the others. They had actually done these things—helped the people, fought against nature—so they deeply knew how difficult it was.

The Grand Sage thought he could achieve these by sitting there without moving his butt and signing a couple of laws. It was clear he had never considered benefiting the people, nor gone to the grassroots.

It wasn't just him—probably most previous Grand Sages hadn't done so either, because if they had, they would know the hardship involved.

As for the third point about fairy tales, there was even less to say. At this moment, the audience still didn't know how amazing those "fairy tales" truly were.

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Character Voice Lines · Nahida: About Fairy Tales

"You mean this… Hmm, if I had to describe it, it's like the moon in the lake—seemingly false, but the reflection is indeed real."