The garden became quiet for a moment.

Now Gao Wen knows why Belsetia wants to shut down the unrelated personnel.

"You were surprised," the Silver Queen looked at Gao Wen, who was sitting opposite him. "It seems that this is not the answer you want to hear."

"No, this answer is actually even good news in a sense - but I was really surprised," Gao Wen exhaled softly, while calming down his thoughts, thinking about the various meanings behind Belsetia's answer. "Can you tell me in detail? What kind of gods did they communicate with and what phenomena did they cause?"

"Of course," Belsetia smiled, and then seemed to be trapped in a long-standing memory. She said slowly in a low voice while thinking, "Everything began with the fall of White Star... As you know, in the fall of White Star, the druids lost the gods they believed in for generations, and the original church group gradually transformed into various academic institutions and secret meetings of extraordinary people. In history books, this transformation process is simply summarized as a "hard transformation" - but in fact the struggles the elves experienced in accepting this fact are far more difficult than the understatement of the history books.

"A race such as humans and other short-lived lifespans should not be able to understand all this - Uncle Gaowen, I'm just telling the truth, because for humans, no matter how difficult and painful things are, they only take a little time to forget and get used to them. Sometimes they only need one or two generations, and sometimes they can't even use one generation. But for the elves, our lives have lasted for two or three thousand years or even longer, so even now, there are still druids during the fall of the White Star in the world. The long lifespan allows us to remember those difficult things for a long time, and for some devout servants... even if the years pass by centuries, they cannot accept the fact that the gods fall.

"Some stubborn druids were born under this situation - people always believe that the Holy Spirit Sect druids were the most determined 'primitive faithists', but in fact, those druids who were not recognized by history were. Most of them were high-level priests and monks from the 'Divine Age', and their belief in gods had become their basic way of thinking and the meaning of life. After the fall of White Star, the primitive gods of nature fell into chaos and faced a doomed great division. These extremely pious people took away a large number of sacred books for the purpose of protecting the sacred heritage and scattered into the depths of the forest. In the following centuries, they formed several major sacred groups."

Hearing this, Gao Wen couldn't help but interject: "What was the elf royal court doing at that time?"

"In coping with our own chaos," said Belsetia, "you probably can't imagine how deeply the belief in the God of Nature had had on the elves more than three thousand years ago - a deeper quagmire than the human gods. Therefore, when it suddenly disappeared, the chaos caused immediately occupied all the energy of the elves' royal court, and the Druids took root in the deep mountains and dense forests without any control, and... began to try to restore their former glory in various ways.

"At that time, although many druids saw the fall of the White Star in the illusion, many people speculated that this meant the 'death' of the God of Nature, there were still believers who believed that the God of Nature had just temporarily interrupted the connection with mortals, believed that this was a test brought down by the gods, and even believed that this was a new 'divine revelation' - they used various reasons to explain the desperate situation. At the same time, driven by these reasons, those esoteric groups were constantly exploring new prayer rituals, building a new belief system, and even modifying the past church classics to explain the situation in front of them.

"This kind of thing lasted for centuries - in the first few hundred years, they were just making small fusses, and even because they were too low-key, they did not alert the royal court. We just thought they were hermit groups who lived in seclusion in the forest because they could not bear the blow of the gods' departure, but as time went by, the situation gradually changed.

"Some secret sect groups reunited because they were difficult to support themselves, forming a larger scale of the "Junny Forest Sect". Their exploration of the secret rituals became increasingly deep and dangerous. Finally, disturbing visions began to appear in the forest, and elves began to report seeing mentally confusing phantoms near the "House of Hermits", hearing whispers in their minds, and even seeing huge creatures that had never appeared in the real world walked out of the forest.

"What initially aroused the alertness of the Elves' Court was a report from the backpackers of that year. A forest hunter mistakenly entered the stronghold of the Secret Druid, where he saw thousands of people gathering to hold ceremonies, including residents from nearby villages and even missing travelers on the road. He saw those Secret Druids carved some huge animal on the wall as idol worship, and regarded it as the new incarnation of the God of Nature. After a disturbing long ceremony, the forest hunter saw the animals on the stone wall walk down from the stone and began to receive worship and prayer from the believers."

Gao Wen held his breath and heard this without saying a word, and finally couldn't help asking: "Then... did the elf royal court at that time destroy this secret organization?"

"Yes, and no one knows about this," said Belsetia calmly, "that was an unquestionable heretic sect. The 'gods' they communicated and summoned were dangerous and unknown existences. The royal court could not allow such dangerous factors to continue to develop. Therefore, the queen at that time, my grandmother, issued an order at the first time--the main members of the Secret Cult were arrested, and the shallow believers scattered. After a long interrogation, the royal court found that the core members had been completely influenced by the fanatical and distorted belief in the God of Nature, and even tried to preach among the soldiers responsible for the detention, so they were executed without leaving any one.

"What is disturbing is that after destroying this secret organization, the royal court sent several people to search their former strongholds, trying to find the whereabouts of the 'god', but only found the broken and collapsed relief murals and many unexplainable ashes. The 'god' disappeared and nothing was left behind.

"After this, similar things happened several times, from my grandmother to my father, to my generation... Five centuries ago, I personally ordered the destruction of the last esoteric group, and since then no new esoteric and 'gods' have emerged, and the forest has calmed down - but I am still not sure if this dangerous organization has really been completely and permanently eliminated. They always seem to have the ability to rekindle and always find new hiding places in the vast jungle."

Belsetia's story came to an end. She looked at Gao Wen with a calm look, and Gao Wen's thoughts fluctuated.

He digested the amazing information that the Silver Queen told him, and at the same time he couldn't help but think of many things.

The first thing he thought of was the "gods" that disappeared with the extermination of the secret sects, and the "thinking products" born from collective worship and rigorous rituals disappeared like a dream, which made him unable to help but think of the information that Amoen of Julu once revealed to him:

The God who was born was extremely weak, and perhaps a few big enough sticks and sharp spears could destroy it...

The second thing he thought of was that Amoen's decision to fake death for three thousand years was indeed very correct. The long lifespan of the elves really led to their different "persistence" from human beings. Tens of centuries have passed, and the "remembrance" of the God of Nature has not been cut off. This is really an amazing thing. If Amoen did not choose to fake death, then maybe He would be forced to reconnect by those "loyal believers"...

In addition, the information brought by Belsetia was also confirmed by many achievements of the disobedience plan. Many of Gao Wen’s speculations about the god mechanism were also confirmed, and all of this was an extremely huge gain!

"It seems you have a lot to ask me," the Silver Queen smiled. "Although this is beyond our Q&A exchange, I am still happy to continue answering."

Gao Wen asked immediately: "After dealing with those secret sect groups so many times, does the Elf Royal Court still define those secret sects as a simple 'hestic cult'?"

"Of course, they are heresy," the Silver Queen replied calmly, "Please don't forget that I am the supreme priestess of the Druid Orthodox Church, so those secret religions that try to establish the "New God of Nature" must be heresy..."

Gao Wen looked at the other party's eyes: "At the same time, you are the Queen of Silver, the ruler of an empire, so those secret religions must not only be heresy, but also heresy."

The Silver Queen was stunned for a moment and sighed slightly: "Uncle Gao Wen, so many years have passed, and you are still so merciless in your words."

"I have been sleeping for more than seven hundred years, and for me, it has not been too long. And even if seven hundred years have passed, the rules of operation of this world have not changed much," Gao Wen said, shaking his head. "What those secret sect groups do is undoubtedly a huge threat, not only to other druid factions, but also to the imperial order. I have already deeply understood this. And for the **** Silver Empire, this threat is even more deadly - the god of nature has fallen, and the royal family without the support of the gods cannot sit idly by and watch a group of uncontrolled druids really create a new god..."

The Silver Queen frowned slightly: "So, what they created is indeed a 'god'..."

"If the theoretical model I know is correct, it should be a prototype, or an earlier psychological phantom created by group thoughts, which is in the process of transformation to the real world, but due to the small number of believers and the short time, this process has been greatly extended, which gives you the opportunity to interrupt it," Gao Wen nodded, and then he was a little confused, "Did you never realize that those are really 'gods'? Haven't you conducted formal research?"

"There are some speculations, but no one dares to draw conclusions," said the Silver Queen frankly. "After contacting the first secret religion, the Elf King Court vaguely realized the danger and sensitivity of this matter. Therefore, only members of the royal family have known the complete information about the secret religion for thousands of years. The relevant research was also carried out secretly under strict confidentiality. Outsiders only knew that the royal court had sent troops to eliminate cult groups in the forest several times, but no one knew what we had destroyed at the same time - even so, we only regarded those mysterious existences as similar evil gods or 'cross-border spirits'. The relevant research was also carried out on this basis. Moreover, because those 'spirits' always dissipated quickly, our internal research has made almost no progress, and in recent centuries it has been almost gone."

Gao Wen was a little stunned. He couldn't help feeling regret, because the Silver Empire was so close to the truth that they even came into contact with the terrible truth behind the gods earlier than the Gondor Empire - but in the end they were wandering on the edge of the truth and never crossed the critical point of "disobedience". If they were more bold, if they did not hide these secrets so deep and long, if they participated in the human plan of disobedience during the Gondor era...will the situation in this world be different now?

But soon he dispelled these meaningless assumptions, because all this was impossible, and even if time went back, it would be difficult to achieve-

The Silver Empire is a country that is the best. Even if their original state religion has been in name only, the special identity of its rulers and the complex and difficult political structure also determine that they cannot go too far on this road, and even if this is not considered... under normal circumstances, if it were not for the opportunity to get a lot of information from the gods, who could imagine that the gods were born from the "trend of thoughts" out of thin air?

The elves can only regard the "spirits" created by the secret sect groups as evil gods or "transcendent spirits" with unknown bodies.

Thinking of this, Gao Wen suddenly had a new question: "I suddenly became a little curious. After so many years, the Elf King Court had been dealing with those secret sects so many times. Even if the relevant research progressed slowly, you have never considered it yourself... Are you also "creating" a god like them, or trying to communicate with the gods of nature? The identity of the Silver Queen and the Silver Emperor are the highest priests of the Druid Orthodox Church, so in a sense, the divine power also affects your orthodox nature. If you have a real god behind you..."

"We didn't do this, the reason is very simple," the Silver Queen smiled and shook her head without waiting for Gao Wen to finish her speech. "After the gods left, we suddenly realized that there was no God standing behind us, and we could be orthodox."

"...I understand." Gao Wen was stunned for a moment, then said in a deep voice.

Then he couldn't help laughing: "Who could have thought that as the supreme priestess of the druids, the Silver Queen is actually the one who least wants the God of Nature to return."

"You are wrong," the Silver Queen shook her head, "In fact, it is not me who least wants the God of Nature to return, but those secret leaders who really summoned the 'gods' and found that the 'gods' were not the leaders of the God of Nature. They showed fanatical and pious at any time, and they called the 'gods' they summoned as the new incarnation of Amoen's God of Nature. However, when we bring them to Amoen's temple to execute the ruling, they will eventually be filled with tension and fear - this sad twist, which will be unforgettable if you see it once."

Gao Wen chewed the other person's words carefully and fell into thought in silence. The Silver Queen sitting opposite him smiled and gently pushed the black tea in front of Gao Wen forward a little.
Chapter completed!