Negary had conducted some experiments regarding this world's Cede to learn of its nature. Similar to Mana, Cede was a type of inferior energy created through the world's Source Energy.
The main difference was that Cede was created through the act of offering.
This power gained through offering was significantly more useful compared to what Negary had initially thought. While it wasn't exactly an individual's own power, it was still the use of one's 'wish' to assimilate oneself into the world's operation and create a Wishscape. In essence, it was taking advantage of the world's rules and laws.
This was related to the Principles and Ideals of the concept of 'wishing', from which Negary was able to develop a Wishing technique. By paying a corresponding price, one would be able to gain the world's support, borrowing its power to create real-life miracles.
As long as it was something that the world could do, the Wishing technique would be able to do it as well, as for whether or not they could actually pay the price, that was the individual's own issue.
An offering had always been an act of living beings praying to the Ancestral Wild, either asking for an ability that they did not possess, or fortune that they lacked.
In the Desolate Sacrifice world, there had only ever been one target for all acts of offering, which was the Ancestral Wild that controlled this entire Desolate Sacrifice world. Even an offering to one's own Totem was actually an offering to the Ancestral Wild for its power to refine those Totems.
Totems were supernatural phenomena that the world had manifested using the raw Source Energy it had absorbed from space, so if the Ancestral Wild wanted to refine them, it needed to expend its own supply of Source Energy. While the world's own power was vast, it wasn't unlimited.
Absorbing Source Energy from space, refining Source Energy, maintaining the world's operation, obtaining new [Origins], creating new lifeforms, patching up loopholes and shortcomings.
There were simply too many things that required the world's natural Source Energy, making it difficult for the majority of worlds to grow. For this reason, the Desolate Sacrifice world had derived the Totem offering system from its own characteristics as a means of delegating the task of refining raw Source Energy to the act of offering, it wasn't simply a system of power.
The individuals of the world turned the outer-world supernatural into a part of themselves, but their feeble nature made it impossible for individuals to discover the true nature of these supernatural phenomena. They could only 'wish' to the Ancestral Wild through their offerings, and the Ancestral Wild would respond to their 'wishes' in the form of Wishscape, which was refining the supernatural phenomena into their Totems.
During this process, while an individual obtained power, they had also refined the Source Energy in place of the world. At the same time, since the result was only a Wishscape, they only gained the right to use the Totem, and it would eventually return to the Ancestral Wild.
The only issue within this was Cede. By borrowing human hands to refine Source Energy, a portion of it would naturally become polluted, which would turn into Cede during offerings. In essence, this was the salary that individuals got from working for the world.
However, the Ancestral Wild still had the highest authority over Cede, similar to how parents would help keep your lucky money after New Year was over, Cede was usually kept inside the Ancestral Wild.
Whenever anyone wanted to use it, they could draw it out using their Totem or a treasure, but unless there was a war, the Desolates usually had a lot more Cede than they knew what to do with, so the majority of Desolates simply died old without being able to use up all of their Cede, which ended up in the Ancestral Wild's reserve.
Of course, everything above was the norm, if the world's operation wasn't profitable, then it would be the world that got destroyed.
If everyone acted like those old cultivators in stories and used the world's rules to strengthen themselves, but decides to 'ascend' with all their resources instead of giving them back to the world, it would also be the norm for the world to initiate a 'great tribulation' to kill off the majority of them.
Negary actually rated the Desolate Sacrifice world's system quite highly, if not for the fact that it was too small-scale. Never mind the fact that there wasn't any hope for the workers to ascend to a higher class, it also wasn't willing to nurture any of these workers, this might be a stable system, but it was also a highly inefficient one.
After understanding how Cede was created, one would also understand its characteristics. By itself, Cede was a kind of salary that the Ancestral Wild paid individual living beings for their work.
Whenever the Desolates used this Cede to perform ritual curses, in essence, they were using it to pay the Ancestral Wild and borrow its absolute control over the world. Through manipulating the natural energy and materials in the world, they would create corresponding Wishscapes, which would then manifest as Cede having an absorption characteristic, capable of absorbing natural energy or materials.
For example, a certain ritual curse had the effect of getting hot water. The process would basically involve releasing Cede and wishing to the Ancestral Wild, after which the Ancestral Wild's offering rules would be activated. The released Cede would draw out moisture from the air within a certain range, then speed up these molecules' activity to result in heat, and finally, solidify the effect in a limited area as a sphere of hot water. Since the entire process was accomplished through the Ancestral Wild using Cede, the amount of Cede required for this would naturally be quite a bit.
On the other hand, if you simply carried a jug of water and performed a ritual curse to ask the Ancestral Wild to heat it up, then the amount of Cede required would be significantly lower.
This was similar to how some countries had to export a large amount of precious raw resources just to import high-tech products that were made from those same raw resources at a higher price.
In the current situation where the majority of the world's resources had been pooled towards the Desolates, the Celestials would naturally not be able to endure this level of waste, and so Negary had drafted a 5-year plan for scientific and technology while also teaching them the characteristics of Cede.
This resulted in the creation of fantasy technology. Utilizing Cede at high efficiency was the core ideal behind fantasy technology. Celestial scientists would first prepare everything they could as much as possible and only use the Wishing technique when they had truly hit a wall that was completely impossible to pass due to technical issues, paying a heavy price in the form of Cede to get the Ancestral Wild's help.
Furthermore, in order to further save up on using Cede, fantasy scientists must have a real understanding of their science, as they would first build up the entire frame of the technology through their fantasies before they wished for this 'frame' to become feasible.
After that, what was previously unfeasible would become feasible, and since it was an entire technological frame that had been made feasible through the Wishscape, they would be able to save more Cede from being used for building later on.
For outsiders, this part of technology would appear completely incomprehensible, since the majority of it was indeed just a fantasy whose operation was being fueled by Cede.
However, there was a difference between an individual and the Ancestral Wild. Since they provided a large portion of the materials and technology, only using Cede to subside a part of the complete product, there was a possibility of the Wishscape becoming distorted from what they had intended, which resulted in fantasy technology being prone to alterations.
Regardless, the fact that the fantasy technology tree had been completed and was playing such a huge role in a short 5 years proved that this kind of technology was correct, at least, under the current circumstances, they were suitable to the uniqueness of the Desolate Sacrifice world.
…
Yun Yi was heading to the frontlines on a railcar running on rails that had all been set up by railway robots. Fantasy scientists had first drafted the route as well as destinations of the railway, then tried their best to make up for the lacking technical aspects, before finally fantasizing to create these terrifyingly efficient robots.
In 5 years, the Celestials' territory had been filled with these primitive railways that greatly improved the inner-territory mobility.
Yun Yi was still observing the armor-piercing laser that he had built. This technology was naturally made through a Wishscape that had been wished into existence, but it also contained technology that the Ancestral Wild had provided.
If the core ideal of fantasy technology was to use Cede in a highly efficient manner, then re-analyzing, researching, rediscovering, and finally grasping the true nature of these fantasized products to turn them from a fantasy into reality would be the future of fantasy technology.
TN: I spent a lot longer on this chapter than I'd like to admit, trying to wrap my head around how this is supposed to work. Essentially, fantasy tech isn't fantasy because it's impossible, it's fantasy because the ones who created them don't fully understand how it works, they just know that it does and it's working on some sort of principles.
In the same way that genie wishes don't go away after the genie disappear, the technology frames that had been wished into existence doesn't disappear after the Wishscapes do, they just need to pay a huge amount of Cede to turn a fantasy into reality once before they can just copy it infinite times.
