The Master of Divine Seal did not directly admit or deny my outright question, but continued to remain silent.

He looked up, silently gazing upwards. There was nothing there, his gaze seemed to be fixed on a non-existent focal point. After a while, he finally made a sound again.

"That makes sense. Since I'm asking you to voluntarily hand over all your Divine Seal Fragments, I can't continue using my past attitude. Who I am, where I come from, where I'm going, all these things need to be openly shared with you. Simply understanding you unilaterally while maintaining a mysterious veil on myself is excessively self-centric," the Master of Divine Seal said slowly.

"—Are you planning to reveal your true background?"

I immediately focused my complete attention, even though I was already concentrating all my Spirit. At this moment, I straightened my ears, allowing myself not to miss any sound from him.

The Master of Divine Seal first nodded, then said, "The past No. 6... the Great Impermanence God Zhao, who died by my hand, he should have speculated about me to you and No. 5. From what he did afterward, if I'm not mistaken, he should have thought I was just an ordinary person who accidentally obtained the divine seal?"

When God Zhao conspired with Weichi and me to assassinate the Master of Divine Seal, it seemed he used Mana mixed with the Power of Divine Seal Fragments to form a Barrier. That Barrier seemed genuine in blocking the Master's quasi-omniscient power.

If the Master of Divine Seal is indeed Tai Sui, then God Zhao's prediction at that time was unquestionably wrong. However, there are hard-to-ignore doubts in this. In the historical records of Luo Mountain, Tai Sui and God Zhao had experiences working together and couldn't possibly not know each other. Furthermore, it's even less likely for God Zhao to mistakenly regard the Great Impermanence Tai Sui as an ordinary person without experience in using power. Even if Tai Sui was performing deliberately, it's hard to think of a reason to specifically act weak in front of God Zhao.

Meanwhile, without knowing if there's a connection involved, I recalled a past story a wandering soul once told me in the Post-mortem World, about Tai Sui.

It's said that Tai Sui hated being worshipped as a God by his Believers.

He always told his Believers that he was just a human being who just happened to possess extremely powerful strength.

"What God Zhao said was not wrong." The Master of Divine Seal said slowly, "I am but a common mortal, simply one among the multitude."

"So, you're indeed not an embodied consciousness of the divine seal itself but an external soul attached to the divine seal?" I said.

This was a speculation Little Bowl and I made through observing in the past, and the Master of Divine Seal readily admitted: "Yes."

"Then, even if you were just an ordinary person, that must have been in the past," I said. "Moreover, since you could acquire the divine seal, it shows you have a connection with the divine seal that transcends imagination. This is the Power of Fate beyond any ordained destiny; possessing such fate, you, even before obtaining the divine seal, are vastly different from ordinary mortal beings."

"Perhaps. Even in the 'past world,' there might also exist forces of cause and fate. This series of origins and cessation probably has corresponding explanations. At least to my knowledge, there's a good chance the past world had the concept of souls too. But now I can't trace back to the last world, unable to verify," the Master of Divine Seal said. "But one thing can be confirmed, the divine seal—this Divine Artifact surpassing all fantasies—exists even before it was infused with so much fantastical nature in this world."

Then he told me about how he became the Master of Divine Seal.

-

The world we live in, in the past, neither had supernatural phenomena nor demon hunters, nor concepts like Mana and Spell.

The past Master of Divine Seal wasn't the Master of Divine Seal, but just an ordinary person.

What his name was at the time has become meaningless now. Though he was "ordinary" relative to the concept of demon hunters, he was absolutely not ordinary in human society then. He was a highly respected biologist in the academic world, with extremely deep research on the existing Earth ecosystem, even expanding his research into the ancient Earth ecosystem, becoming a very accomplished archaeologist and geologist.

He hoped to comprehensively and in detail deduce the entire course of Earth's natural ecosystem from its budding period to the present within his lifetime, overcoming countless unresolved mysteries in the related field. During this process, he realized an unknown variable subtly influenced Earth's biological evolution history spanning billions of years during the development and evolution of the ancient ecosystem.

—The soul.

While a scientist shouldn't casually discuss such matters, the more he researched, the more he believed the soul to be the unknown variable in biological evolution history. If the soul genuinely is a life element, it certainly also participates in the evolutionary process. Ignoring this element would certainly lead to deviation in constructed evolutionary models, and natural ecosystem models designed on this basis would show significant flaws.

Unfortunately, due to a lack of related evidence, his hypothesis could only exist as a hypothesis. It couldn't be presented to the academic world and couldn't even convince himself. Thus, to find evidence supporting his hypothetical theoretical model, he tried using his archaeological and geological knowledge and skills to search for clues.

From Earth's first emergence of life to now, numerous deaths accumulated. According to his theoretical speculation, if the soul actually exists, they should be everywhere. The reason they cannot be found is that souls, like the last remnants of ancient plants turning into present-day coal, may have sedimented underground due to certain factors.

This factor could be gravity or other reasons. In his speculation, Earth's souls may have sedimented underground to an uncollectible extent.

Even though scientific instruments typically cannot detect souls, otherwise souls would have been confirmed long ago, anything, if accumulated to a sufficiently massive extent, would reveal some distinctive properties. Even so-called undetectable dark matter and dark energy, due to gravitational effects and spacetime expansion on large spatial scales, expose traces. If souls are compressed and deposited deep underground to the extent he imagined, they would show extreme changes.

Humans use geological methods to analyze the structure of the mantle and the physical composition of the core. Through the same methods, he believed he could detect the clues he sought.

However, he failed. Even using his geological methods as planned, the soul did not reveal its existence. Faced with this, he had two options before him.

One was to admit his soul hypothesis was merely daydreaming, and that the unknown element influencing Earth's biological evolution history was something else; the other was to stubbornly cling to his 'delusion,' proposing another hypothesis atop the first hypothesis.

Namely: the sedimenting process of the first unknown element 'soul' within Earth might have been interrupted or diminished by the presence of a second unknown element, hence not reaching his theoretical expectation.

"—Thinking back now, I really should have admitted my 'failure' back then." The present Master of Divine Seal spoke in an empty tone, "Sometimes scientists, to back their theories, can come up with all kinds of stupid ideas. Propose a hypothesis on top of a hypothesis, a second unknown element beyond souls... How is this what a serious researcher should think? It's like something out of a fantasy novel. If I could go back to that time, I should probably strangle myself."

"So... did you verify this 'second unknown element'?" I asked. "What did you think this element was?"

"It's the 'Post-mortem World.'" The Master of Divine Seal spoke as if recalling his past contemplation, "Isn't it about right? If there are souls, certainly, you'd also think of the Post-mortem World. If the souls of the deceased inexplicably disappear from our living world, it's easily understood to regard them as having gone to a dimension different from the living."

"But I found that if I want to embed such an unknown dimension into my theoretical model, a problem arises. Based on my inferred Earth natural ecosystem evolutionary history, even if the Post-mortem World exists, it probably began between sixty-six million and one hundred forty-five million years ago, during the Cretaceous period.

"I had to answer this question—why would the Post-mortem World suddenly arise in that period?"

After excluding countless possibilities, the last possibility was presented to him, who was just a scientist at the time.

—The Post-mortem World was created by a completely unknown super-ancient civilization with unimaginable unknown super-technology.

—This super-ancient civilization self-destructed for unknown reasons, so thoroughly that modern human civilization can't even prove its existence.

Honestly, when he came up with this hypothesis, he even amused himself. What kind of ridiculous hypotheses were these? Lost super-ancient civilization? Post-mortem World and souls? It's just too fanciful. But as the last possibility after overcoming numerous difficulties himself, he felt he had the obligation to disprove it.

However, after some time, some mysterious clues were unearthed by the scientist himself, and he could no longer laugh.