Chapter 356: The Theory of Imitation

"I have an idea. Everyone, listen to this..." Professor Hazel said, tapping his console to bring up a series of documents on the main holographic screen.

"Have you all noticed that throughout their long timeline of myths, the physical power of the ’Sea God’ seems to continuously increase?"

"From manifesting tiny fish and shrimp in their primitive era to generating massive quantities of precious metals and jewels later on, it seems the entity learned to replicate whatever the natives possessed, just on a much grander scale.

This gave the primitive natives the illusion that the Sea God Umorlu was omnipotent and possessed infinite wealth!"

"Could this timeline actually represent the intellectual maturation of the Gaia organism? We cannot measure the growth of such a massive, ancient entity by our own standards of time.

It progressed at an agonizingly slow pace over tens of thousands of years... and by their recent centuries, it could even replicate forged cold weapons! It’s incredible!"

Jason nodded, finding the logic sound. "Then what about the ’Wrath of the Sea God’—the great tsunami? Was it throwing a temper tantrum?"

Professor Hazel shook his head. "The tsunami was just a natural disaster triggered by a massive tectonic earthquake. My theory is that this nascent, fragile Gaia consciousness was physically shattered by the sheer kinetic force of the tsunami!

That explains why it couldn’t respond to the natives for ten thousand years. No miracles occurred because it was literally in pieces. If I am right, this Gaia entity is far more vulnerable than we imagined."

"I’ve got it! It’s imitation!"

Arthur Lambert suddenly shouted, jumping out of his seat and interrupting Professor Hazel.

"Everything it does is purely imitation! We are overcomplicating this! There is no grand mastermind or divine intellect, it’s just a giant, mindless copycat!"

"Think about it! The natives dug a small pit and buried a fraction of their food. Gaia simply mirrored their exact actions, dug a massive pit, and filled it with a huge amount of food.

And because of that simple biological mimicry, the natives worshipped it as a god! The idea that the Sea God blesses the devout is pure nonsense. It is just blind imitation!"

"As for the myths about curing illnesses, surviving shipwrecks, or mysterious glowing spheres falling from the sky... they are either complete fabrications or random natural coincidences that the natives desperately attributed to Gaia!"

Arthur Lambert’s passionate outburst echoed through the room. For a moment, the entire conference of senior scientists was stunned into absolute silence.

Of course, humanity wasn’t the only intelligent species to figure this out. The natives of Planet Dige had proposed this exact theory a long time ago.

Curiosity is a universal trait among all intelligent life. For millennia, the natives had asked: What exactly is the Sea God? Does it live in the ocean? Does it look like us? Is it truly all-powerful?

Attempting to uncover these truths was considered the ultimate heresy, as their religious doctrine demanded blind, unquestioning faith in the unknowable.

Still, some brave thinkers dared to analyze the Sea God’s actions. While some of their theories were twisted by the ruling class to solidify their own power and written into holy texts, others were immediately branded as extreme heresy.

The most famous and rebellious of these was the "Theory of Imitation," which first surfaced two thousand years ago.

This theory boldly claimed that the Sea God was merely mimicking thier behavior. It argued that the entity was incredibly powerful but lacked true self-awareness or original thought. The so-called miracles were nothing more than a biological mirror.

Naturally, in a deeply religious society, this provoked the absolute fury of the Holy Church. Both the commoners and the ruling elite believed their God was beyond comprehension; they were deeply insulted by the idea that their deity was just a mindless beast imitating them.

Consequently, the Church launched a brutal Inquisition. With overwhelming public support, the pioneers of the Theory of Imitation were burned at the stake.

However, ideas are hard to kill. The theory survived, circulating secretly in the shadows among underground scholars for centuries.

Fast forward to their modern era. A revolutionary scientist emerged, marking the greatest turning point in their world’s history.

Luther, a thirty-eight-year-old native, was one of their most brilliant theologians and biologists. Reaching such heights required immense intellect and undeniable luck. His most recent public research focused on complex marine algae.

What no one knew was that, despite his prestigious public title as a top theologian, Luther was actually a staunch atheist. More than that, he was the secret leader of a massive underground atheist syndicate.

Every civilization produces mavericks who try to change a broken world. Some succeed and become heroes. Most die as tragic failures.

Changing the world requires the perfect alignment of opportunity, luck, and timing.

Luther believed that with the rapid advancement of modern science, that opportunity had finally arrived.

As their civilization dug deeper into various scientific fields, the gaping flaws in their religious doctrines became impossible to ignore. The Church constantly reformed its texts to adapt, but a lie cannot be covered up forever.

More and more educated minds began to doubt the divine, and under Luther’s leadership, the underground syndicate slowly grew in power.

Yet, in a world heavily brainwashed by faith, they remained a tiny, persecuted minority. Their syndicate operated in deeper secrecy than any criminal cartel; discovery meant certain execution.

Luther’s ultimate goal was absolute: overthrow the Gods. He knew that religion had fundamentally crippled their scientific progress. "Without killing the Gods, there is no new world, and there is no future!"

Religion and science are both frameworks created by intelligent life to explain the universe, but they operate in opposite directions. Religion works top-down, starting with the ultimate answer: "God did it."

This grants instant comfort and security, but it breeds intellectual laziness, discouraging any deeper questioning. It is a primitive way of thinking that forces a species into passive reliance.

Science, on the other hand, works bottom-up, meticulously building complex truths from simple, proven foundations. It is a difficult, demanding path.

While science cannot yet explain everything, it refuses to lazily attribute the unknown to the divine.

Addressing his syndicate, Luther once declared, "This intellectual laziness kept our people in the dark ages for over a hundred thousand years! Modern science only managed to be born through sheer luck and an agonizing struggle. But even now, the shadow of the Gods is strangling it."

Luther firmly believed in the Theory of Imitation. He knew the "Gods" were simply massive, ancient organisms hiding in the ocean. But he had no hard evidence and couldn’t risk going public without it.

To shatter their faith forever, he needed undeniable, physical proof. The only way was to drag the true form of the Sea God out of the dark waters and into the light.