Lian Yao did not answer the old man.
Everything has its cause and effect, and he and Ye Chen used this place to rest and repay the favor with a timely rain, which is equivalent to settling the score.
If you tell these people their Taoist names and let them build shrines and statues for them in this world, it's equivalent to establishing a connection with this world and becoming the new master of this small world.
Just as Lian Yao was about to refuse, Ye Chen stepped forward and said, "He is Divine Lord Lian Yao, and I am Divine Lord Ye Chen. We are Daoist partners! Daoist partners who will be together forever!"
"So it is Lord Lianyao and Lord Yechen! Greetings to both of you! After the rain stops, I will immediately arrange for people to build a temple for you two and create statues of your deities, so that incense may burn continuously and we may pray for your protection!"
"We beseech the two divine lords to protect us!"
Ye Chen nodded in satisfaction. "Okay."
Lian Yao looked at him speechlessly.
Oh well, it's just a small world that's operating at a loss!
After declining the invitations from the residents of Handan to stay, Lian Yao took Ye Chen to the outskirts of the city.
Ye Chen cleared a patch of grass on the ground, and the two of them lay down on the grass together, watching the stars and the moon.
Lian Yao pointed to the moon and told him, "That's the moon, also called Taiyin Star. It's the main divine realm of the Goddess Guanghan. The Goddess Guanghan doesn't like to manage things. After becoming a goddess, she only created one world. It's so cold there that plants can't survive. Only the golden osmanthus tree can live there. Our true forms are all plants, so we don't go to Taiyin Star."
“That’s the Big Dipper, seven worlds created by seven celestial lords. Although none of them are great worlds, they are interconnected and complementary, and together they are stronger than great worlds. My eldest brother is a close friend of the Big Dipper. They have been very eager to invite me to visit them. After we’ve been to the Underworld, I’ll take you to see the Big Dipper Realm…”
That is the main realm of the Vermilion Bird God of the South. Below it are seven intermediate realms, governed by seven celestial lords under its command, named Well, Ghost, Willow, Star, Extended Net, Wings, and Chariot, collectively known as the Seven Mansions of the South..."
As Lian Yao was talking, he suddenly felt a head leaning against his shoulder. He looked down and saw that Ye Chen had fallen asleep against him.
He shook his head with a slight chuckle, sat up from the lawn, and rested his head on his lap.
This person must have exhausted a lot of his spiritual power by taking out his own life-bound soul core today. It's amazing that he was able to hold on until now before falling asleep!
That's absolutely outrageous.
I must keep a closer eye on him in the future, lest his spendthrift partner give away rare treasures to others everywhere.
Lian Yao raised her hand to touch Ye Chen's face when her divine sense suddenly sensed a thread connecting them.
His divine sense followed the silk thread and saw a newly renovated temple.
In the center of the temple, there is a painting depicting him and Ye Chen standing side by side.
The source of that connection is the little figure in the painting that resembles oneself.
Inside the temple, the old man who had previously said he would build a temple and sculpt a statue for Lianyao was leading the crowd in kneeling in worship. Because there were so many people, many had to kneel outside the temple.
"Due to time constraints, we can only offer the portraits of the two deities for now. Once the statues are completed, we will replace them. Please forgive any negligence."
After the old man finished speaking, he led everyone in kneeling and bowing nine times before standing up.
He instructed a few of them to quickly carve an image of the deity for worship, and also asked the others to fully cooperate with the matter.
Everyone agreed and went about their business.
There were also some devout women who remained in the temple, kneeling devoutly, the power of their faith flowing continuously from them into the portraits.
Half of this power of faith resided in Ye Chen within the painting, while the other half went to Lian Yao, returning to his body along the outstretched threads of divine thought.
Lian Yao's divine power increased by an extremely small, barely perceptible amount, not even enough to replenish the little bit of divine power he had consumed when activating the rain-making talisman during the day.
At this rate, the people of Handan will need to worship him for at least two years to replenish the divine power he consumed by bringing rain.
But let alone two years, Handan will need rain again in less than two months.
By expending one's own divine power to help believers, the resulting faith and merit cannot fully offset the expenditure, which is clearly not a long-term solution.
However, the resentment in this small world is too strong, which affects the operation of the laws of nature, making it impossible for it to rain automatically according to the seasons.
If no rain is brought down, these believers will die in large numbers, accumulating resentment and further accelerating the world's demise.
It felt like we were stuck in a vicious cycle.
Purifying resentment and restoring the natural order to function is a thankless and troublesome task.
Gods are not omnipotent; they also have things they fear, namely the resentment of mortal beings who die unjustly.
Once this resentment clings to you, it follows you like a shadow, impossible to purify or get rid of; you can only constantly expend your divine power to resist its erosion.
Of course, resentment will not increase on its own. If the amount is small, it will not have any impact on them, but if the amount is too large, it will drag them down until they perish and their life is extinguished.
This resentment can only be purified by the Heavenly Dao of each world, but the purification process is not very fast.
The world before us is a result of resentment accumulating faster than the Heavenly Dao can purify it, leading to various disasters.
Most of the small worlds are abandoned by their owners for this reason: their owners fear being entangled by the resentment of these mortal beings, so they sever their karmic ties with the small world.
The most sensible thing for Lian Yao to do now is to immediately return to Handan City, destroy the painting and the temple, and erase those people's memories of him and Ye Chen.
However, these were their first followers.
Lian Yao looked at the two little figures cuddling together intimately in the painting, and her heart was filled with sweetness.
Fine, I'll just keep them.
At this moment, d001 in the sea of consciousness suddenly spoke up: "Master, I can replicate a clone in this world to solve the problems that have arisen in the Heavenly Dao, and also maintain it regularly, but I need you to provide me with some divine power to condense the clone."
"Oh?" Lian Yao then remembered that d001 was a subsystem given to him by Zero God.
Zero God, that's a little world that specializes in curing all sorts of difficult and complicated diseases!
"good."
Lian Yao felt a slight depletion of his divine power, and a system exactly like d001 appeared in his mind, except that the symbol on the chest of this system was "d031".
"Can you create a maximum of 998 extensions?"
"My current mental strength is only enough to control this much, but as my mental strength increases, the upper limit will also increase," d001 said.
Lian Yao understood, and he looked at d031: "How do you plan to fix the loopholes in this world?"
d031 said, "I will bind Zhang Tian, the illegitimate son of the Prime Minister of Daxing Kingdom, and make him the sycophant of the most powerful woman in Daxing in the future—the Seventh Princess of Daxing. After the Seventh Princess falls in love with Zhang Tian, she will do everything she can to help him rebel, seize the throne, change the dynasty, and eliminate the old evils."
Seeing Lian Yao's skeptical expression, as if to say, "This can save the world?", d001 explained:
"The small world will perish because too many lives have died unjustly within it. These unjustly killed beings do not enter the underworld; instead, they become vengeful spirits that wander in their original world."
"Originally, as time went by, the wronged souls would be automatically purified by the Heavenly Dao of the world. However, the Heavenly Dao's purification speed is limited. When the speed at which resentment appears exceeds the Heavenly Dao's purification speed, it will accumulate. When it accumulates too much, it will hinder the normal operation of the Heavenly Dao, causing various disasters. These disasters will cause more living beings to die unjustly and generate resentment, thus entering a vicious cycle until destruction."
"My former master once said that the power of mortals is great, and that if they unite, they can overcome any difficulty."
"The master expends his own divine power to save the creatures of this world, which only makes them feel better temporarily, but it is not a cure. It will also make him fall into the karma of this small world."
"This is just a small world and will not affect you much. But the master is a god-king and will surely rule countless worlds, large and small, in the future. These are countless bottomless pits. Even the strongest god will be dragged down."
d001 continued, "Master, I am not exaggerating, but there are precedents to prove it."
"Does Master know how my former master, Zero God, attained godhood?"
Lian Yao nodded, "I heard that it was because a great immortal lord who controlled many worlds in the chaos did not cultivate personal morality and abused his believers, which caused the believers to turn against him and kill him. When he died, he did not have time to destroy the world he created, so the main world and other small worlds became no-owner lands. In the end, those worlds were taken over and repaired by the Zero God, who recognized him as his master. The Zero God saved so many worlds, and his merits are immeasurable. He was enshrined as a god by the righteous path."
d001 said, "Actually, that immortal lord was not as immoral as rumored, abusing his believers and causing them to turn against him and kill him. On the contrary, it was quite the opposite."
Lian Yao's brows twitched slightly; a terrifying thought vaguely formed in his mind.
d001 continued, “He couldn’t bear to disconnect and let the small worlds he created fend for themselves. He kept using his magic power to make up for the lack of resources in those small worlds to support his believers. In the end, his magic power was insufficient, his cultivation regressed, and his vitality was greatly damaged. He could only reduce the supply, and he was still very foolish to reduce the supply to all the worlds he controlled in the same way.”
"Those believers who were used to being fed by him turned evil instantly when they found that the supply had been halved. They smashed his idols, burned his temples, and spread rumors everywhere, distorting the beliefs of ordinary believers. This left him, who was already exhausted of his magic power, without his only source of faith, and death was the only option left for him."
"But this immortal lord was too kind. Until his death, he did not use divine punishment to punish those who blasphemed him. He couldn't bear to see the main world collapse and all living beings perish after his death. He used his last divine power to stabilize the laws of the main world so that it could be maintained for a long time. At the same time, he sent a message to other gods and immortal lords, hoping that someone could take over his world and take care of the believers in it."
"Ah!" Lian Yao never expected that the truth behind the various versions of the Holy Eye Immortal Lord's fall was actually like this!
If that's true, then the Holy Eye Immortal Lord is both admirable and pitiful.
He was compassionate and devoted himself to the sake of his believers, but in the end, he was killed by the very believers who had fed him with their own flesh and blood!
Lian Yao shook his head with a sigh: "Then how could your method save this small world without depleting my divine power?"
He had already used up his divine power to create a clone of the system.
d001 said, “Our method is to select one person from the humans of this world, reside in his sea of consciousness, give him tasks, and cultivate him step by step into the strongest person in this world. In the process of becoming stronger, he will slowly unite the creatures of this world to his side to fight against disasters together.”
"If a deity kills a mortal who has not blasphemed or offended him, he will be haunted by the resentment that the mortal has transformed into after death. But if a mortal kills another mortal, as long as it is in accordance with cause and effect, there will be no resentment. Even if there is a small amount of resentment, it can be offset by the merit of doing good for the world."
"This is why we must choose people from this world to do the mission. It wouldn't work if it were gods. For gods, believers are their children. The children provide them with faith, and it is in accordance with cause and effect for them to feed the children. They can abandon the children when they can no longer afford to raise them and let them go out to fend for themselves, but they cannot beat, scold, or kill children who have not made any mistakes."
"Of course, killing is not the goal; it is an essential means to unite the power of all people in the world."
"As long as we unite, reduce internal resource consumption, and decrease the number of unjustly killed lives, the rate at which resentment increases will gradually slow down."
"Of course, as long as there are living beings in the world, resentment cannot be completely eliminated, but as long as the resentment level is kept below the threshold, the Heavenly Dao of the small world can operate normally, and there will be no more crisis of destruction."
"The powerful being we cultivate will generally have absolute dominion over the beings in this world in the later stages, and the beings' faith in him will be extremely deep. My clone resides in his sea of consciousness, and can easily absorb the faith provided by these believers and the merits of his saving the world."
"We only pay a small portion of it to the host as payment and to upgrade and maintain the extension; the rest is our profit."
"The faith gained in this way will far exceed the faith that believers obtain by worshipping idols, because it is the hosts chosen by the extension that have freed them from a life of despair and led them to a new life, and they will basically not betray them."
"Moreover, those hosts will not have any complaints, and will even actively accumulate merit for the reward, trying to make the living beings strengthen their faith."
"In addition, some hosts do not want to grow old in their original world. They yearn to become stronger and live forever. They will continue to cooperate with us. The branch can take them to other worlds to carry out rescue missions. This can save us the trouble of selecting and cultivating new hosts and the initial process of building a relationship."
"After the resentment in a small world is purified, if there is no external interference, it will take a long time for the resentment value in this world to accumulate to the critical point. The extension does not need to stay in that small world. It can go to other worlds to bind with other hosts to do tasks."
“One extension machine can generally be responsible for 5-6 small worlds. If there is a high-quality and experienced host who can cooperate with us for a long time, then he can be responsible for dozens of worlds by himself. We only need to give a small part of the merit we receive to the host to improve himself and to upgrade and maintain the extension machine, and we can get a return that far exceeds the investment.”
"This is the win-win path to godhood created by Zero God himself!"
Although he was no longer Zero God's subordinate, d001 still couldn't help but feel a bit of admiration when Zero God was mentioned.
Lian Yao was shocked.
He finally understood why Zero God could become a god in just tens of thousands of years, when godhood was so difficult to obtain!
Not just because he saved countless abandoned little worlds!
Furthermore, he created a unique cultivation system that could fill the gaps in the method of becoming a god passed down by his master, Honglin!
This is a great act of merit!
Of course, it should be recognized by the Heavenly Dao of the Origin Realm!
This path to godhood can even complement the traditional path to godhood through creation!
Lian Yao's heart pounded with excitement, while Ye Chen, as if sensing something, frowned and opened his eyes.
Suddenly, he pulled Lian Yao down and held him in his arms.
"Lian Yao is thinking about someone else, and his heart is beating so fast!"
"I'm not happy!"
"I want a kiss! I want a hug!"
Lian Yao: "..."
This guy gave me his natal soul pill, probably to monitor my emotions!
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