"Chip! Pull up the soul research chart from before!"
As time trickled by, the elder's expression shifted continuously—joy, pain, and above all, bewilderment...
The other native slaves backed away, watching Leylin, this 'divine being,' bestow his 'blessing' upon one of their own.
In the eyes of these natives, the slave drivers and overseers were already formidable figures. As for someone like Leylin, who could command tens of thousands of pirates and possessed hundreds of great ships beneath him—their original tribal chieftains and priest-elders were surely far beneath such a person. Only the totemic faiths could be compared to his power.
*Ding! Soul chart analysis complete! Beginning comparative analysis!* Chip projected a color-coded chart before Leylin's eyes, set against that of an ordinary person, with several shadowed regions specifically highlighted.
Discarding the now-useless test subject, Leylin returned alone to his quarters. Streams of data scrolled through his eyes, and the expression on his face grew increasingly solemn.
"As expected... there really is something wrong with these natives' souls..."
Long before this, Leylin had stumbled upon a most curious phenomenon.
Out in the outer seas, not a single one of these native tribes worshipped any true god! This was truly something inconceivable!
Given how desperately the gods craved faith—beings who would sometimes not even spurn followers of Chimeshoot Fiends and Sludge Beasts—how could they possibly abandon these natives, who at least appeared to possess some measure of intelligence?
Even if these natives' souls were feeble, with ten of them not equalling a single ordinary commoner—the gods understood the principle of accumulated small gains just as well as anyone!
Yet in every tribe Leylin had conquered, the natives worshipped nothing but nature spirits and totems. There was no sign of any god from the continental pantheon.
The only explanation was that there was some fatal flaw in these natives' faith, one that forced the gods to reluctantly cast them aside—even discarding them like refuse, leaving them to live and die in the outer seas as they saw fit, too indifferent to bother even knowing that a great native empire existed here.
Now, through extensive comparative research and his own nature as a divine being, Leylin had finally caught a glimpse of one facet of this secret.
"This kind of soul... rather than being flawed, it's more accurate to say it's been 'contaminated'..."
Leylin's gaze was heavy with gravity. "And furthermore... this familiar mutation appears to carry traces of both arcane and
The power of faith was, in essence, the soul energy unconsciously released by believers during prayer and religious ceremonies, when their emotions reached a state of extreme fervor!
"The gods draw upon these specific soul energies through their respective divine domains and godheads, converting them into divine power!"
Whether it was minor divine power or mighty divine power, the underlying process was fundamentally the same. Nothing changed at all!
But what would happen if the soul energy from after the mutation were to be absorbed?
"Chip! Based on the soul vibrations of the natives, simulate the faith absorption scenario..." Leylin stroked his chin, ordering with great interest.
[Ding! Task established. Initiating virtual scenario... Model preparation in progress...]
Vast streams of data flashed past Leylin's eyes. Then they transformed into a completely different scene.
At the altar of a native tribe, the Mara statue from before was enshrined right at the center, while the rest of the natives prostrated themselves ceaselessly under the lead of the high priest.
Wave after wave of faith power—visible only to beings of divinity or higher—continued to converge upon the stone statue.
In the beginning, Mara's statue showed no change whatsoever. In fact, its divine power only continued to grow stronger.
Ten years passed. Mara's statue began to turn hazy, with faint dark-red hues roiling across its surface. And Mara himself grew increasingly violent, constantly demanding flesh and sacrifices.
One hundred years passed. Amid Mara's desperate roars, its divine domain suddenly shattered. A massive ape true form plummeted straight from the divine domain into the main Material World, firmly bound within the confines of the native priests' territory.
After five hundred years, Mara had already become a mindless beast, transformed into a golden banner bearing the silhouette of an ape monster.
"Because I was most familiar with Mara's divine power, I used it as the template... I didn't expect it would turn out like this..."
The virtual scenario dissipated, and Leylin recalled the scene with lingering trepidation.
"The faith power of these natives is clearly problematic! There is an enormous amount of contamination in it—it can cause a true god to fall in rank, even drag its body into the main Material World, merge it with the sacrificial rites to form a 'land-bound spirit' state, and continuously erode its consciousness until nothing remains but the purest primal instincts..."
Such a devastating consequence was no different from suicide. No wonder the gods regarded the natives as utterly worthless.
"Losing the divine domain, bound to a specific region, consciousness continuously destroyed... it's even worse than being locked in prison... The faith of these natives seems to contain a source of corruption—it is determined by their very genetics and simply cannot be altered..."
A contemplative look flickered through Leylin's eyes. "If that's the case, then during the conquest of the native empires, I won't need to worry at all about interference from the gods... but every last bit of the burden will have to be shouldered by me alone..."
Although the flaws in native faith meant that these land-bound spirits were not as powerful as true gods, the combination of a sacrificial domain and a demigod could still project power that was by no means inferior to that of an actual god!
Within their respective domains, the demigod totems worshipped by the natives absolutely possessed might rivalling that of true gods!
Of course, once outside their domains, those demigods' abilities would rapidly decline.
"Overall, there's a chance! A great chance!" Leylin's gaze merely flickered, and several plans already surfaced in his mind, just waiting to be implemented later.
"However... this kind of soul defect and contamination, if I don't figure it out clearly, it's still somewhat unsettling..."
Leylin brought up the diagrams of the previous few samples, his divine sense seeming to follow these genes into ancient layers of memory...
Flames of war blazed everywhere... Massive floating cities plummeted like meteors!
Normally wise and brilliant, the Great Arcanists who seemed to hold all the truths of the world were slain one after another, and the culprits were the gods above!
"The fire of Nether Arcana will never be extinguished! We will never submit..."
Finally, the numerous Nether remnants gathered together, letting out a roar of unwilling defiance...
Countless fragmented memory fragments came through. Even with Leylin's means, he could only obtain a small portion of the information. Yet even the secrets conveyed within this information were enough to move Leylin deeply.
"Nether Remnants? So these natives are actually remnants from the Nether Arcana era!!!"
Leylin exclaimed in surprise. He had once met a few remnants of the Arcane era, like
"Who would have thought that even those civilized, advanced, proud, and arrogant commoners of the Nether Arcane Empire would, after tens of thousands of years, degenerate into natives, become synonymous with barbarism and ignorance, and even be captured in large numbers as slaves..."
Leylin sighed inwardly.
With what had happened before, he could now roughly sketch out a contour.
In the ancient Nether Arcane era, the gods were dissatisfied with the arcanists' fearlessness and their research into forbidden topics. War erupted directly, annihilating almost all the arcanists, causing most of the floating cities to fall, and causing the entire Nether Arcane Empire to collapse overnight.
And at that time, a portion of the Nether remnants gathered together.
Perhaps to resist the gods' enslavement and strengthen their resolve to fight, they took drugs to resist faith. Or perhaps they were simply caught up in some high-level confrontation and unlucky enough to be affected by contamination. In any case, those Nether remnants' souls thereafter underwent a mutation. The faith power they generated became an absolute poison to the gods!
This portion of Nether remnants naturally would not be accepted by the gods. Perhaps they fled, or were exiled to the outer seas, where they survived and multiplied.
During this process, due to the gods' blockade, and perhaps other hidden hands and reasons, these Nether remnants continuously degenerated. The original traces of civilization gradually disappeared, until finally they turned into barbaric and ignorant native tribes...
"If my guess is correct, then these natives' original ancestors modified their own souls to resist the gods' faith, but their descendants directly degenerated into savages. This modification even made them unable to align with a true god. How tragic is that..."
At this moment, in the depths of Lin Lei's heart, he truly felt as though he were listening to the elegy of a lost civilization.
"But… since things have already come to this, your blood and tears, your hatred, and your faith — I will take it all upon myself…"
A crimson light blazed in Lin Lei's eyes.
For the gods, the corruption of Wizards was an unsolvable problem, but for Lin Lei, there were ways to find a workaround.
Moreover, in his hands he held the Nightmare Energy Absorption Body — an ancient Wizard physique capable of absorbing the power of emotions! Once he gathered the emotions of a million natives, the resulting force would be enough to shock even the gods themselves!
"Of course… this kind of thing still needs to remain low-profile… At least before my apotheosis, the secret of purifying native faith must never leak out…"
Lin Lei rubbed his head, feeling that his secrets were growing ever more numerous.
"This will require a meticulous plan. Fortunately, the entire Bankzi Island is isolated overseas, with almost no contact with the mainland — there is still a chance to keep it hidden!"