Chapter Ninety-One

How long has this been going on?

Is it too late to treat it now?

Is this true of all dragons, or am I the only one like this?

The black dragon’s mood became noticeably complicated. It suddenly realized that even with its formidable mastery over its own body, it was still extremely difficult to urge certain organs to secrete more dragon essence. It was as though some unseen will were forcibly restricting its output.

Hmm... It seemed this world really did have a deity in charge of fertility.

On closer thought, as a powerful, long-lived, and promiscuous extraordinary species, it actually made sense for dragons’ reproductive capacity to be limited by the Goddess of Life.

After all, if dragons were like humans and could produce hundreds of millions in a single go... no, not even hundreds of millions; even if they could only produce a few million healthy, normal offspring, the entire material world would probably descend into chaos, teeming with all sorts of bizarre creatures like dragons, draconic beasts, and dragon-kin.

“Maybe it’s not just dragons. Other extraordinary creatures are probably the same... After all, the more extraordinary creatures there are, the greater the strain on resources and the environment. If their numbers weren’t restricted, the material world’s ecological chain would have long since collapsed.”

“So... the Goddess of Life is basically doing population control, and she’s very advanced about it too. She doesn’t use fines, and she doesn’t use physical sterilization. She just seals off your quota at the mystical source.”

“As expected of a great divine power on the same level as the Sun God. She really does have something going on...”

The black dragon could not help but sigh. To be fair, if the Goddess of Life’s methods could be a little more humane, this approach would actually be quite good.

After all, parents are true love, children are accidents. Many couples in the heat of romance are faced with the same worry: they are terribly afraid of accidentally making a baby, and thus must frequently take precautions.

But precautions are troublesome, and uncomfortable besides. Countless people have lamented how wonderful it would be if there were a safer, more convenient form of contraception.

That was where the Goddess of Life’s powerful population-control ability showed its value.

She would only need to adjust her working style and attitude, become more transparent, more approachable, more humane, and allow users to apply on their own accord to turn their bodies’ fertility on or off according to their wishes... Undoubtedly, this would be an extremely safe and efficient form of contraception, and would surely be beloved by the masses.

Unfortunately, the Goddess of Life was a very traditional and very stubborn deity. No one, and no god, could interfere with her authority. Otherwise, opening a fertility treatment clinic with her divine power would surely make a fortune.

It was said that many deities’ authority over their respective domains was almost absolute monopoly within those fields. If they wished, they could fully exploit their power to extort the intelligent beings of the material world for enormous profits...

The black dragon could not help but think. For example, the Sun God could use His monopoly over sunlight to run a forced commercial system; anyone who wanted to bask in the sun would have to pay Him regularly.

Or the Goddess of Life could fully use her control over life itself; any intelligent being that wanted to have children would have to transfer money to her.

...

“Why didn’t they do that? Don’t they love gold so much?”

“Wouldn’t it be far more lucrative to squeeze the faithful directly through divine authority, instead of waiting for them to offer sacrifices of their own accord?”

The black dragon was puzzled. In truth, this was not the only question it had never been able to figure out. Since those native gods loved gold so much, why did they not dig it up and mine it themselves? Why insist that humans, that other intelligent races, present it with their own hands?

After all, the power of gods far exceeded that of humans. Their efficiency in finding and excavating gold mines was who knew how many times greater than mankind’s—

Even Earth people could use satellites to search for veins of ore. If the gods in the sky put their minds to it, they would certainly find gold far more easily than any foreign intelligent race!

“Could it be because their power cannot interfere too much with the material world?”

The black dragon gnawed at gold while thinking, “But that doesn’t quite make sense either. Even if they can’t go down in person, they could always send their underlings.”

“Doesn’t that God of Light send angels to the mortal world? If He just dispatched a hundred or so angels to descend and mine, or seize mines, wouldn’t that be far more efficient than using humans?”

Rather than slowly collecting gold from believers, they would not even think to mine gold themselves... Were those gods idiots, or did they have some unavoidable reason, some necessity that made things have to be done this way for the process to count as correct?

The black dragon faintly felt that there was probably a great deal of hidden wisdom in this.

...

It took the black dragon an entire night to absorb the ton of gold.

“Having a full ton suddenly on my head really does feel a bit unbalanced.”

The black dragon kept shaking its head, trying to help its mind quickly adapt to the new data and establish a new equilibrium.

“Come to think of it... my body suddenly gained a ton of gold. Since we are so intimately connected, I wonder whether Hyperion will sense it and summon me to meet Him again in dreams?”

“Right now... I don’t really have any particular need to see Him. Contacting Him would not only bring me no real benefit, it might also expose the secrets I’m hiding.”

Thinking this, the black dragon asked its brain... no, wrong person. It was asking its heart whether there was any way to block and blacklist Hyperion, so that He could no longer casually send it dreams.

The heart quickly gave a reassuring response.

This morning the brain had just paid it wages, and the research team, in order to study golden dragon blood, had also contributed several hundred grams of gold to it. So at the moment it was quite satisfied, and its work attitude was excellent.

The heart could feel a settled contentment.

“If only you could always be this obedient,” the black dragon sighed like a father, gently patting the heart with an invisible hand.

The reason this fellow was so well-behaved was largely because of that. The black dragon had successfully learned Mage Hand from the Undying Bird. If the heart dared to misbehave, it would be beaten senseless on the spot.

Still, the black dragon understood that this was only harmony on the surface. After all, with a heart so mysterious, how could a few old-fashioned punches truly subdue it? It was only being temporarily compliant to spare the brain’s dignity.

“Sigh, why are you so stubborn? Why won’t you tell me where you came from? We’re in the same company... the same body. Naturally we ought to think as one and work together with one heart.”

“Always stirring up suspicion and internal friction—how is that supposed to count as anything?”

The brain could not help but chat with the heart again. Lately, whenever it had nothing to do, it liked to grumble a little to the heart, to build and maintain its image of leadership.