Silent Ark

Chapter 36: The Bet

There are many things that humans don't know.

For example, the gods are in a group.

It wasn't a WeChat group—although Zeus did try to create one, Odin disbanded it at the cost of one of his eyes after Hera cursed Athena in the group for three days and three nights.

It's not some sacred council, pantheon, or Olympian council.

Those were made up by humans.

The reality is far more unpredictable than people imagine.

Every so often—and this "time" has no fixed unit for the gods, it could be a thousand years for humans, or it could be an afternoon—there would always be a god who got bored and would call the other gods together.

The way they gather is also very casual.

Sometimes it's atop Mount Olympus, sometimes at the end of the Rainbow Bridge in Asgard, and sometimes in some unnoticed corner of Mount Sumeru.

Location doesn't matter.

The important thing is—there has to be a betting game.

The gods do nothing else.

They do not save the world, judge souls, or issue divine pronouncements.

Those were all made up by humans.

The gods do only one thing: look.

See how humans live, how they die, and how they create all sorts of interesting scenarios within their inevitable fate of death.

Then place your bet.

Today's betting is taking place in Kunlun Mountain, the land of all gods.

It's not the Kunlun Mountains on the human map.

It's the Kunlun Mountain seventeen stories below, the one where the laws of physics have completely broken down.

There, the concept of "mountain" itself is a proposition that is being repeatedly defined and overturned—it is sometimes a solid, sometimes a sound, and sometimes a forgotten memory.

The gods don't care.

They sat on the "mountain" as if they were sitting on their own sofa.

There were exactly twelve gods present.

But not the twelve that represented us last time.

Those twelve—the five constants of the Order faction and the seven deadly sins of the Chaos faction.

They are not specific gods.

They are representatives of God, messengers sent by two systems far beyond human comprehension.

The twelve present today are true gods.

Gods in human mythology.

They exist because humans believe in them.

Humanity has forged these existences from "possibility" into "reality" through stories, fear, hope, and countless nights of narration around the campfire.

Faith is the most powerful forging technique in the universe.

However, the immortals of Baiyujing did not intend to participate in the gambling this time. They believed that participating in gambling at this level was too low-class, while the Western gods used it for amusement.

Zeus sat in the highest position.

It wasn't because he was the strongest—in fact, all the gods present knew that if they really fought, Odin might be a tiny bit stronger than him.

But Zeus sat in the highest position because he arrived first, and he made his chair three times larger so that the gods next to him could not sit higher than him.

Odin sat opposite him.

One-eyed.

Gray robe.

Two crows on the shoulder—Fokine and Wuni—were whispering the odds of today's betting.

"The probability of human survival is 47.3%," Fokine said, "a decrease of two percentage points from last month."

"The water stains are shrinking," Wuni said. "The laws of physics mean that the skin is getting thinner."

"Suggested bet: Humanity's extinction, odds 1:1.2"

"I object. Chen Dunli's legacy is still in operation, and the Silence Ark project has not stopped."

"Chen Dunli is dead."

"Death does not change the information carrier."

Both crows turned to look at Odin at the same time.

Odin did not respond.

He was staring at a point in the void with his only remaining eye—that was Yao Chong's location.

It is not a physical location.

It is a probability position.

In Odin's view, every life is a probability cloud, and Yao Chong's probability cloud is pulsating in a very abnormal way.

"Let's begin," said Zeus.

He raised his right hand.

Lightning bolts shot from the fingertips and condensed into a table in the void.

It's not an ordinary table.

The desktop is transparent, like a flattened piece of spacetime.

The desktop is projecting a real-time image of the Earth—a gray sky, shrunken water stains, and a gigantic shape slowly floating in the sky.

"As before," Zeus said, "each person chooses a human and bets on his or her fate, with the loser bearing the stakes."

"What is the stake?" asked Ra, the Egyptian sun god.

His voice was like the midday desert—dry, scorching, and unquestionable.

"The loser will serve the winner for a thousand years," Zeus said.

"You clung to that for eight hundred years after you lost last time," Hera said.

"That is—"

"Eight hundred years, I've counted."

Zeus cleared his throat.

"Not bad this time."

"You always say that."

"Quiet," Odin said.

Only two words.

But the entire Kunlun Mountains—or rather, the concept that was once Kunlun Mountains—became quiet.

Odin doesn't speak often.

It wasn't because silence made him appear wiser—though it certainly did—but because every word he uttered consumed a portion of wisdom drawn from the roots of the World Tree.

Wisdom comes at a cost.

"The rules of the game," Odin said, "are that each person chooses one human, no more than one. The bet is whether that human survives until the water stains completely disappear. Survival means a win, death means a loss."

"What if the water stains never disappear?" asked Isis, the Egyptian goddess of magic.

"The probability is 0.7%," Fokin said on Odin's shoulder, "which is negligible."

"Shut up," Odin said.

Fujin shut up.

Zeus was the first to place his bet.

"I choose the one named Liu Pan," Zeus said. "Chinese national, former CERN researcher. Bet: Survival."

"Reason?" Hera asked.

"He possesses the frequency of a Connector, enabling him to sense the presence of other life forms. This ability provides a survival advantage in environments where the laws of physics are collapsing—he can anticipate the direction of the 'dry zone's' spread."

“You said the same thing last time,” Hera said. “The Greek fisherman you chose was devoured on the third day.”

"That was an accident."

"Bingeing doesn't cause accidents, it causes digestion."

Zeus ignored her.

The second is Odin.

"Yao Chong," said Odin.

"Why?" Zeus asked.

Odin remained silent for five seconds.

Five seconds.

For a crow, five seconds is enough to fly halfway around the world.

For Odin, five seconds meant he had expended five segments of the World Tree's wisdom to formulate this answer.

"His probability cloud is wrong," Odin said.

"What do you mean?"

"The probability cloud for normal humans is diffuse—there are countless possibilities for the future, and the probability of each possibility is roughly equal."

However, Yao Chong's probability cloud is shrinking.

It's not contraction in a specific direction—it's overall contraction.

It's like something is compressing his potential from the outside.

"Isn't that even more dangerous?" Isis asked.

“No,” Odin said, “that means someone is making choices for him. Or rather—something is making choices through him.”

"What is it?"

Odin did not answer.

His single eye stared at the probability cloud in the void, a line of text he shouldn't have seen reflected deep within his pupil: [ENTITY_INTEGRATED: ID_CHENDL_001→ CORE_REGISTRY]

Chen Dunli.

Odin knew the name.

He knew what the name meant.