He raised his hand again and pressed it against the pedestal of the statue. This time, he allowed his Space Perception to penetrate the interior of the statue, carefully probing its structure.
The statue was made of some high-density black stone he couldn't name, and its interior was fully engraved with intricate rune lines.
The direction of those lines and the distribution of their nodes were completely different from the statues of the God of Holy Light he had seen. They were rougher and more primitive, but the underlying principle was the same. They had likely extended naturally within the statue upon receiving the power of faith, establishing a channel to connect with the deity.
He followed the rune lines all the way through, eventually locating the core of the statue.
Drawing upon the knowledge he had learned, Jiang Lin tried to channel his magic essence into these lines to leave a “backdoor” inside.
An anchor that could redirect the power of faith.
However, the moment his magic essence touched the surface of the lines, it encountered an extremely resilient resistance.
Like an invisible wall, it firmly blocked his magic essence, preventing any external forces from invading the core.
Jiang Lin intensified his efforts, alternating between his holy light magic essence and ice soul power to strike at it, but the resistance did not budge in the slightest.
Next, he tried using the power of the Demon Lord Seed. The moment the dark red energy surged from his palm and made contact with the resistance on the stone's surface, the barrier weakened noticeably, but it still did not completely vanish.
He could feel his magic essence slowly permeating inward, but the speed was excruciatingly slow.
At this rate, it would take him at least several days to successfully leave an anchor within these lines.
Furthermore, this was just a single statue.
And he had no idea if these anchors would still work once he left this planet.
He withdrew his hand, his brow furrowing slightly.
Cyrus walked up to his side at some point, pushed up his glasses, and asked in a low voice,
“What are you doing?”
“Studying the structure of this thing,” Jiang Lin replied without hiding anything. “To see if I can find a weakness.”
“Did you find one?”
“Not yet.” Jiang Lin shook his head and turned away from the statue. “Its core is protected by a barrier. I can't get in.”
Cyrus glanced at him but did not pry further.
The two walked back to the edge of the plaza, where Lothar was whispering with the others.
“The situation in this city is worse than we anticipated,” Lothar said in a hushed tone. “Out of four to five thousand people, at least seventy percent have already been infiltrated by the Demon God's power. Brute force won't work; we need another way.”
“Let's withdraw first,” Jiang Lin said. “We'll discuss this somewhere private.”
The eight of them did not linger in the city. They left through the city gates the way they came and headed south for about five miles before stopping in a relatively secluded valley among the hills.
Cyrus set up several soundproofing and warning runes around the valley. Once he confirmed it was safe, everyone sat down in a circle.
Leaning against a boulder, Jiang Lin was still pondering what had just happened.
While he had failed to penetrate the core of the array runes, he hadn't come away entirely empty-handed.
When he used the power of the Demon Lord Seed to strike at the barrier, he had felt an extremely faint energy seep out of the statue, flowing along his magic essence and into his body.
It was like squeezing a waterlogged sponge; some water was bound to trickle out.
That seeped energy was the power of faith accumulated on the Demon God statue that the Demon God had not yet had the chance to harvest.
He could only absorb this tiny fraction.
This “surplus” had leaked from the statue's core and lingered on its surface.
As for the power of faith currently flowing through the statue to the Demon God, he couldn't block it, nor could he redirect it.
The reason was simple: he lacked a “receiver.”
The reason the statue of the God of Holy Light could continuously send him a share of faith was due to the Apostle Brand linking him to the God of Holy Light.
The power of faith collected by the statue was “distributed” by the God of Holy Light, with one-thousandth of it flowing to him through the brand.
On the Demon God's side, he had no such channel.
Although the Demon Lord Seed allowed him to absorb the Demon God's power, it was merely a seed, not a fully functional receiving station.
It allowed him to “leech” a bit of the overflowing faith when touching the statue, but it could not establish a continuous, stable transmission link.
It was like two rivers.
On the holy light side, he had dug a small canal off the main riverbed, allowing the water to flow to him continuously.
On the Demon God's side, he was merely scooping up a ladle of water from the bank occasionally; once scooped, it was gone.
He wanted to dig a canal on this riverbed as well, but he lacked both the tools and the permission to excavate.
“I need to find a way to directly receive this power of faith without going through the Demon God.”
He pondered in his mind.
“Or, build a Demon God statue of my own?”
The moment this thought surfaced, he dismissed it.
“No.”
“My Demon Lord Seed was obtained by completing a system quest. Strictly speaking, it doesn't belong to the system of any specific Demon God.”
If he built a statue, who would it connect to? Himself?
He had no idea how to build a statue that could connect to himself.
Even if he did, he couldn't transmit that power of faith back to his body on his home planet.
Furthermore, as the object of faith, he would need to do something for his believers.
And right now, his power was far too weak to distribute power to believers on such a massive scale.
“What are you thinking about?”
Mavis's voice came from beside him, interrupting his train of thought.
“Thinking about how to deal with those Demon God statues,” Jiang Lin said, sitting up straight. “The believers in that city have almost been completely converted. If we directly destroy the statue, what will happen to them?”
Selene took up the conversation:
“At best, they will lose their power. At worst, their minds will shatter. The Demon God's power has already fused with their origin magic essence. Forcibly severing the connection is equivalent to tearing away a part of their bodies.”
“Is there any other way, then?”
Jiang Lin asked.
Mavis replied,
“There really is no other way. We can only leave them here to undergo transformation by the Demon God's power, eventually evolving their descendants into demons over generations.”
Selene added,
“Therefore, our best course of action right now is to find the Demon God Believers who are still spreading the faith, eliminate them all to stop the spread, and accelerate the propagation of our Temple's faith.”
Lothar squatted down and used the tip of his sword to draw a simple map in the soft, grayish-brown soil.
“The outpost is here, the rift is here, and we are currently here.” He tapped three spots with the tip of his sword and drew a few lines connecting them. “Two escaped yesterday. They've definitely reported our numbers, ranks, and combat styles. The enemy isn't stupid. If we go looking for them, they'll surely be prepared, and we'll lose more than we gain.”
“Then how do you think we should deal with them?”
Selene asked softly.
Lothar pondered for a moment before saying,
“However, they won't stay holed up in their outpost forever. They need to spread their faith; that is the task given to them by the Demon God.
“But they will be much more cautious now. They won't wander around completely unguarded like they did yesterday.”
Mavis crossed her arms, her fiery red curls losing some of their luster in the gathering dusk.
“So what do we do? Search the whole world for them? Although this planet isn't huge, it still has two hundred million people and tens of thousands of cities. If those ten hide somewhere, we'll never find them.”
“Then let's not look for them,” Jiang Lin spoke up. “We'll wait for them to come out on their own.”
Everyone's eyes fell upon him.
He continued,
“To spread their faith, they must interact with the natives.
“There are only so many cities on this planet suitable for establishing outposts. Those with decent size, concentrated populations, and convenient transport can be counted on one hand.
“We don't need to hunt them down. We just need to place eyes and ears at these key nodes and wait for them to deliver themselves to us.”
“Where will we get those eyes and ears?” Good scratched his bald head. “There are only eight of us, and the people on this planet don't even know who we are.”
“That's why we need to spread the faith of the righteous gods in these cities.” Jiang Lin looked up, his gaze sweeping over the hills toward the distant city shrouded in the Demon God's power. “Once a city has one or two thousand people who believe in the righteous gods, they will become our eyes and ears. Any black-robed individual carrying an unusual aura who approaches will be spotted immediately.”
“Indeed, that is the only viable approach,” Cyrus said, pushing up his glasses. “We spread the faith of the righteous gods. The wider and denser we spread it, the smaller their room for activity becomes. They will either have to give up spreading their faith or force their way into our territory. Either way, it works in our favor.”
Mavis's eyes lit up.
“If they force their way in, we encircle and kill them. If they give up, they wait to die. That's a good move.”
“But there is a prerequisite.” Lothar looked up, his dark brown eyes fixing on Jiang Lin. “We need to gain a foothold in that city and truly plant the seeds of the righteous gods' faith. Yet, in the city we just left, the Demon God's statue stands proud, and seventy percent of the four to five thousand inhabitants have already been converted.”
“So we start with the remaining thirty percent.” Jiang Lin stood up and patted the dust off his knees. “The city has four to five thousand people. With seventy percent converted, there are still over a thousand who haven't been corrupted by the Demon God's power. Those thousand-odd people will be our first targets.”
“What about those who have already been converted?” Selene asked. “Are we just going to leave them be?”
“We can't help them right now.” Jiang Lin glanced at her. “Forcible purification would kill them, and we don't have the authority to make that call. But we can show them another choice. Let them see those who weren't converted living better lives. Let them see that faith in the righteous gods brings dignity and hope, not servitude and fear. Human hearts can change, as long as they are shown a better path.”
Selene remained silent for a moment before nodding gently.
“So, are we heading back now?”
Good asked.
“No rush.” Lothar sheathed his sword and stood up. “Let's make a plan first. We still don't fully understand the situation in this city. We need to find out how many guards there are, who the city lord is, and whether those Demon God Apostles will return.”
“Victor and I will go,” Dorian spoke up, his voice low. “We'll enter the city after dark and return before dawn. Two of us will be enough.”
Lothar nodded, offering no objections.
Dorian and Victor's figures quickly vanished into the twilight—one sliding silently along the ravines, the other blending entirely into the shadows.
The remaining six stayed in the valley. Cyrus reinforced the soundproofing runes once more, and Selene retrieved dry rations and water from her spatial ring to distribute to everyone.
No campfire was lit. The dark purple sky grew even dimmer as night fell, with only two small moons hanging overhead, casting a faint, silver-gray glow.
Jiang Lin leaned against a rock, closing his eyes as his consciousness sank into his Apostle Brand.
【God of Holy Light Anchors: 7】
【Total Faith Value: 4127/10000】
【Activated Nodes: 0/10】
The growth of his faith value was slightly slower than before; the prayers of the new believers still needed time to settle.
He opened his eyes, retrieved a blank crystal sheet from his spatial ring, and placed it in his palm.
He had bought this at a magic materials shop in the Royal Capital before setting off. The quality was average, but it was sufficient to serve as a temporary recording medium.
Injecting his mental energy into the crystal sheet, he began sketching the structural diagram of a statue of the God of Holy Light.
Not its external appearance, but the internal rune lines and energy node distribution.
When he was studying the ancient teleportation array in the mansion's secret chamber earlier, he had discovered a pattern:
Any magic creation designed to run long-term—be it a teleportation array, a divine statue, or a protective array formation—possessed a similar internal energy circulation system.
It had inputs, outputs, storage, and conversion, much like the human circulatory system, except the medium was magic essence rather than blood.
Although the Demon God statue and the statue of the God of Holy Light represented different deities and had completely opposite energy attributes, their underlying architecture was identical.
It was like two rivers—one freshwater and one saltwater—sharing similar riverbed structures, flow directions, and tributary distributions.
If he could find the commonalities in the energy node distribution between the holy light and Demon God statues, he might find a way to weaken the latter's control over its believers without destroying it, thereby carving out a gap for the faith of the righteous gods to enter.
It was a bold idea, but not impossible.
He drew and erased, erased and drew on the crystal sheet until deep into the night.
The valley was quiet. Cyrus was dozing off against a rock, his glasses slipping to the tip of his nose, his breathing soft and even.
Good sat cross-legged on the ground, hands resting on his knees, resembling a silent mountain of flesh.
Mavis and Selene huddled together, Selene leaning against Mavis's shoulder, both with their eyes closed.
Lothar sat at the entrance of the valley, his back against a boulder, facing north, wide awake.
Jiang Lin's stylus paused on the crystal sheet.
A sudden question occurred to him.
If the core defensive barrier of the Demon God statue could only be slowly penetrated using the power of the Demon Lord Seed, what if he took a different approach?
Instead of attacking the core or trying to hijack the flow of the power of faith, what if he simply introduced a “tributary” into the statue's energy circulation system?
It would be like digging a small canal off a massive river; it wouldn't alter the flow of the main channel, but it would siphon off a tiny portion of the water.
...
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