Sanctuary Paradise

Chapter 798 Faith and Dilemmas

On the branded interface, as a cold, mechanical electronic voice sounded, a series of data related to their faith power began to appear rapidly, and Xin Lailai nodded with great satisfaction as she looked at the data.

Excellent. As expected of the AI ​​developed by Xiaobai, it only took 1.03 seconds to complete a rough statistical analysis of the faith power generated by more than 8 million believers, and it can also accurately identify the origin of the faith land based on the data and information contained in their imprints.

"Speaking of which... are there really so many people on Dark Glow Star who believe in us?"

After initially confirming the formidable power of the 'God-version AI Unit-01', Xin Lailai looked at the compiled data, a hint of surprise flashing in her eyes.

No wonder their faith power exceeded the limit so quickly. It turns out that Dark Radiance Star actually managed to generate more than eight million believers for him in just three months.

It's important to know that they didn't perform any 'miracles' on Dark Star; they only left behind some legends as humans.

In other words, the believers who choose to follow them are simply worshipping them because of their deeds and reputation, rather than praying for blessings or anything like that between a normal deity and believer.

"Tsk tsk, if they really used the Divine Descent Technique to perform two miracles, wouldn't the number of believers double?"

[Ding! Calculation in progress... Based on the current social environment of Dark Glow Star, if the Pioneers choose to display a positive miracle during the current time period, there is a 93.8% probability of triggering a "super-massive" increase in the number of believers.]

As if hearing Xin Lailai's mutterings, almost at the same time as she was complaining in her mind, the divine soul in the soul space spoke expressionlessly under the control of 'Unit-01', causing Xin Lailai's face to twitch slightly.

Wow, is it that intelligent?

Realizing that Unit-01's capabilities were even more powerful than they had imagined, Xin Lailai glanced at the pop-up notification, her gaze shifting slightly to another function of the "Faith Power Management Interface":

[Ding! A large number of unprocessed Faith Power transactions have been detected. Do you want to enable wide-area computation and prioritize these unprocessed Faith Power transactions?]

Faith power enhances the ability to handle affairs.

This is arguably the most important reason why they wanted to create an 'AI version of a god'.

While the power of faith is almost omnipotent in its uses, its source is unusually fixed. Not only can it only be generated through the prayers and faith of believers, but its output efficiency is also greatly related to the life and mental state of believers.

Simply put, if a believer's state is not good, the faith power received by the deity will decrease. If this situation gradually accumulates from individual cases to a certain proportion, it will lead to the collapse of their entire faith.

Therefore, in order to prevent a large-scale collapse of their source of faith, a qualified deity must, under normal circumstances, be able to handle a certain proportion of matters related to faith power on time and with quality, so that believers realize that their deity has not abandoned them and further deepen their faith in the deity.

According to the experience summarized by the deities in the Sacred Paradise, the matters involving faith power that usually need to be handled can be roughly divided into four categories:

The first type is prayers for something for nothing driven by personal greed, such as wishing to become rich overnight, expecting a white-haired loli beauty to fall from the sky, being reincarnated into another world with a cheat code and living an overpowered life... and so on, which are standard fantasies.

The best way to deal with this kind of prayer is to ignore it, harvest the power of faith, and then walk away. If you are really foolish enough to help the other person fulfill their desires, you will only encourage the believer's greed and turn them into a useless person who only knows how to pray to the gods to give them a cheat code in everything.

Aside from the prayers mentioned above that don't require much attention, another type that also doesn't need much processing but accounts for the largest proportion of faith power output is prayers based on daily habits and needs.

For example, the sun god mass they had seen many times, and the habitual prayers for the gods to bless them so that nothing unexpected would happen that day, all belong to this type of faith-based affairs.

Compared to the prayers in the first type of faith power affairs, the faith power produced by this type of prayer is much purer, and in a sense, it can be regarded as the foundation of the entire faith power.

For the divine, once this type of prayer is discovered in the power of faith, it means that it has gained another high-quality believer who can reliably provide it with the power of faith every day and does not require much effort to manage.

For believers, they may simply treat this kind of daily prayer as a habit, but in fact, after performing this behavior for a long time, they will accumulate a rather remarkable 'merit' in the eyes of God.

Once a believer has this "merit," if they encounter any emergencies requiring divine assistance using the power of faith, as long as the situation isn't too outrageous, the divine will generally intervene unconditionally. Theoretically, even fulfilling the first type of prayer isn't impossible. It can be said that while the second type of faith-related matters only require following procedures and setting up "check-in rewards" for consistent believers, it is the most important interaction between the divine and the believers, and the cornerstone of the entire faith system. Over 99.5% of the 1.33 ounces of faith power they just harvested was accumulated in this way.

Aside from the two types of faith-related matters mentioned above, the remaining two types of faith-related matters, although they directly account for very little of the output of faith power, have a crucial impact on the efficiency of the spread of faith by the deity in a region and the steadfastness of that faith.

As for what it specifically is, the answer is quite simple. If we compare the process of managing a deity's faith to a market operation, the first and second types of faith-related matters can be seen as 'customer suggestions from non-audience members' and 'a stable customer base', while the third and fourth types of faith-related matters can be seen as 'customer needs that urgently need to be met' and 'word-of-mouth beyond service'.

The former is actually easy to understand. Just like what they have seen in the past, an excellent god, in addition to ordinary believers, must also have a group of core believers who can use his miracles and prayers. The need for faith power generated by these believers every time they use miracles and prayers is the third type of faith power affairs summarized in the data.

In terms of proportion, there are actually not many matters involving faith power. Even if we include those matters involving faith power that are simply due to accumulating enough 'merit' and thus not rewarded, they only account for less than 0.5% of the various prayers they have to deal with every day.

Yet this workload, which accounts for less than 0.5%, can occupy more than 90% of a deity's energy. Or rather, what truly drives the contracted deities in the Paradise who have applied for positions in major religious cults crazy is this less than 0.5% of prayer content.

Moreover, in terms of influence, the outcome of handling matters related to faith directly affects the stability of the deity's faith among believers and is the most important criterion for evaluating whether a deity is qualified.

Taking their past experiences as an example, as members of the Lai Lai Cult, they have enjoyed the feeling of being incredibly lucky countless times thanks to the luck buff provided by the Lai Lai Cult's team skills. Every time they triggered this buff, it was actually Shanxi's side that promptly processed their "applications" in the 'backstage' of the Lai Lai Cult's faith power, which allowed them to trigger this buff in time every time.

Including some unique skills of the divine religions that they had seen in the past from the Crimson Gold Cult and the Righteous Punishment Cult, all of which relied on the timely response of the gods to be effective.

Now, let's put ourselves in their shoes. What if a faith-based contractor found that prayers and miracles that they used to trigger consistently suddenly stopped working at certain times because the deity's processing ability was insufficient? Or what if, after worshipping a certain deity for a period of time, they discovered that the deity did not possess a stable ability to process prayers, resulting in extremely large fluctuations in the success rate of each prayer and miracle they released?

Without a doubt, over 99% of faith-based contractors, once they encounter this situation, will almost certainly consider switching to a more reliable deity rather than continuing to cling to that unstable, rotten tree.

After all, for those faith-based contractors whose core abilities are miracles and prayers, whether prayers and miracles can be reliably effective is something that can truly determine their lives, especially for those combat-based miracles and prayers. If they suddenly cannot be activated or their power is greatly reduced in battle due to insufficient divine power, it can be fatal.

As a deity, when faced with matters of faith power of the third type, one can frankly tell believers that due to limited abilities, one can only guarantee that a certain number of core believers can stably trigger miracles on one's side, but one must never allow believers who have already entered the quota to encounter such a situation.

It can be said that only by ensuring this point can believers who come together for various reasons truly become high-quality believers and begin to engage in the second type of faith-related activities that are beneficial to the divine, that is, to integrate faith in and prayer to the divine into their daily lives.

Using the marketing analogy mentioned earlier, it means that only by meeting the 'customer's needs' can they be transformed into 'stable customers'. This is the true essence of faith-based management.

As for the fourth type of matters involving faith power, namely the 'reputation beyond service' mentioned earlier, it involves another issue, and the content of this issue... is actually quite simple:
—If a believer, clinging to a last glimmer of hope, prays to a deity in dire straits, should they, as the deity the believer worships, save them or not?
—If we're going to save people, what if such situations happen simultaneously in a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand... or even a million cases? In that case, who should be saved and who should be ruthlessly abandoned?
Is it an infant still in swaddling clothes? Or a noble person with a strong sense of justice? Or perhaps a seasoned believer who has neither made any great achievements nor suffered any great losses, but possesses a devout faith?
This is the essence of the fourth type of faith power affairs. It has nothing to do with daily prayers or necessary needs. It exists merely as an additional question in the management of faith power. The real test of this question is not the believers, nor the neutral gods or evil gods who have only divinity left, but the benevolent gods who choose to maintain humanity and even firmly walk on the righteous path.

Life is inherently priceless, but on the path of the divine, we must weigh it to determine who is more deserving of salvation.

This is the truth written in "Three Years of Simulation, Five Years of Godhood," which silenced one benevolent deity after another who entered the path of the gods with lofty ideals.

Unless they want to become indifferent people who treat life as a bargaining chip and miracles as tools to suppress the power of faith; or hypnotize themselves to turn a blind eye to all of that and become escapists who forget everything... otherwise, as long as they still walk on the path of the gods with their principles and beliefs in their hearts, they will have to bear this sense of guilt at all times, and in one trolley problem after another, watch one vibrant life after another that could have survived depart.

This is the reality of the divine way.

In the early days, it might be possible to control the number of people who need to be saved by performing miracles within a manageable range by adding enough restrictions. However, as the number of believers expands, as long as they adhere to their principles and humanity, there will inevitably come a day when they encounter a number of fourth-type faith-related matters that exceed their capabilities.

Even now, during their interactions with Xiaobai, they've already managed to change the priority ranking of "Unit-01" for matters related to the power of the fourth kind of faith. This includes over ten criteria: "idealistic," "inherently kind," "pioneer," "steadfast," "noble," "child," "infant," etc. Yet, even so—

[Statistics complete. The current number of Faith Power-related matters is as follows]

……

Category 1 Faith Power Transactions: 139398 in total (automatically filtered)
Category 2 Faith Power Transactions: A total of 8606066 (already being processed automatically; due to the continuous increase in this type of transaction, the estimated average Faith Power consumption rate is 0.003 ounces/month).
Category 3 Faith Power Transactions: A total of 30983 (already being processed automatically; due to the continuous increase in this type of transaction, the estimated average Faith Power consumption rate is 0.0829 ounces/month).
The fourth category of matters involving the power of faith: a total of 2089 cases (currently unprocessed and dynamically changing; if all are processed, preliminary calculations indicate that 13.76 ounces of spacetime power + 19380 points of divine energy will be required).
……

(End of this chapter)