Professor Atkinson and Dolores spent the next two weeks in the underground temple, reading through all the remaining scriptures written on the walls and trying to make sense of them.
The information stopped being very useful after the first few days, because just like many spiritual scriptures of worship, they mostly just described the greatness and glory of the god and called for the worship of the followers, and with some decrees and commandments detailing the desired and forbidden deeds for the believers.
And combining this information, with the information they gathered from the Spring of Knowledge, the archives from the Edgelands as well as lore records from the Grant Academy collected by past travelers to the Edgelands and elemental realms, the professor and Dolores were able to deduce that Xyn, being the first of the voidborns to have ascended to Godhood, was extremely special, or in the scriptures’ words: “blessed” because he had the gift of tapping into a source of “blessings” from the void, of which he later tried to harvest more and more in order to share this gift with other voidborns. The “blessings”, whatever they were, were apparently crucial to the stability of the void, and the overharvesting of them was one of the most important and substantial reasons for the rupture, and in turn the fall of Xyn, an actual God, and apparently quite a powerful one.
Even after years and years of research, neither Professor Atkinson nor Dolores could say they know very much about Godfalls, for one, this was an area of very heavy knowledge, and for two, there were very limited records, relics or sites of them. They were the elephant graveyards of magical excavation. In fact, this temple of Xyn was the biggest site of Godfall that had ever been found in the history of the Grant Academy and perhaps even the entire world. Yet, not much resources and organizational efforts were put into its excavation due to many reasons, including but not limited to the limited practical usage of the knowledge and how little information can be dug up compared to the vast amount of resources that needed to be invested.
Right now, both the Professor and Dolores found themselves at the cusp of their biggest breakthrough, but they were not able to share it with the others just yet, because this breakthrough came from the their attempt to fulfill their contractual obligation to find Xyn’s descendant, they were allowed to keep this knowledge, but it is not fully theirs until the descendant was found.
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At this point, their findings had already diverged quite a bit from their task. But as they progressed, they seemed to have discovered more and more about the nature of the void, and how the void was torn apart in the rupture. Still, they had very little clue on how they could possibly locate the descendant.
“We’ve been to the edgelands already. But … that wasn’t helpful at all.” Dolores took a bite from a piece of the “elemental bread” they purchased from edgelands: “Gosh, I hope Lin’Er doesn’t take too much heat from what happened.”
“They are reasonable, they should know that we mere humans would never possess that kind of power to damage their ancient artifacts.” Professor Atkinson shook his head as he flipped through some of the books he brought here: “Hmm … wait - I couldn’t help but wonder: is it possible that Xyn’s descendant isn’t born like the other voidborns at all? Xyn himself is a special one, and the way the elementals are born, they look just… just kinda formulaic.”
“What I was thinking was - what if the descendant was created?” Dolores said: “Xyn’s special, and I think the descendant would be as well. What if - I mean what if, the descendant was actually created?”
“I - I am not sure I understand your point.”
“Yeah yeah yeah what I was thinking was - last time we saw Xyn - he was in the shape of one of its avatars. ” Dolores pointed at one of the relief sculptures at one corner of the underground temple: “This form is his form of the judge and truth seeker. There’s also the avatar of the healer and, and creator - ”
“But if that avatar survived - wouldn’t Xyn know?” Professor Atkinson scratched his jaw and asked.
“Yes, maybe. But remember what Mr. Yu told us - the more independent the avatar, the longer the distance, the harder it is to keep different avatars in sync in terms of knowledge and experience.” Dolores stood up and started pacing around: “What if the rupture tore apart the void, and also forced the different avatars of Xyn to be scattered?”
“That’s a solid idea. ” Professor Atkinson stood up as well: “Let’s ask.”
“What? Ask directly? Wouldn’t that be very sensitive?”
“But … I don’t think there’s a better way.”