You want me to take out a loan to practice cultivation? I'll just pay off the debt physically.

[As a representative of the Red Heart Society, Lin Xue maintained a very friendly attitude towards the various deities worshipped.]

As the second-in-command of the Red Heart Society, Lin Xue's attitude represents the society's attitude.

Therefore, when this friendly signal from the leadership of the Red Heart Society spread like a boulder thrown into a calm lake, it immediately triggered a positive chain reaction among the believers.

With the active promotion and mediation of several influential religious deities, the cold barrier and high level of vigilance that originally existed between the two sides due to differences in ideology and historical entanglements melted away rapidly than expected.

[Two powerful forces that should have been deeply at odds have surprisingly seen a significant improvement, with a fragile strategic trust based on a shared threat to survival beginning to emerge.]

To further solidify this hard-won cooperative atmosphere, demonstrate sincerity, and pave the way for deeper strategic collaboration in the future, Chixin Club has shown generosity commensurate with its strong capabilities.

Without hesitation, they opened up the legendary equipment production line, considered one of the organization's core strategic assets, to the gods of faith as a key resource.

[Of course, the Red Heart Society has made it clear that this fully automated production line is intended to help arm their large but generally unsupported grassroots believers.]

[This is to arm the grassroots forces!]

How can the power of faith generated by ordinary people as believers be compared to that of extraordinary individuals or those with nine-stage professional cultivation?

That's completely on a different level!

[As for legendary set equipment, for demigods or even true gods who possess the power to move mountains and fill seas and are themselves embodiments of laws, it may just be a toy, its symbolic significance far outweighing its actual combat power boost.]

But for the millions of ordinary believers who form the broadest foundation of a pantheon of faiths—those struggling at the bottom of the hierarchy of supernatural powers or simply being mortal—a legendary piece of equipment represents a power capable of overturning their destiny.

[Let alone legendary weapons, even an epic weapon, or even a fragment of an epic equipment, is enough to become a family heirloom for an extraordinary person.]

Therefore, legendary quality equipment is a divine weapon that can give them a greater chance of survival on the brutal battlefield and allow them to see a faint glimmer of light in the abyss of despair.

This divine weapon, high above and unattainable, is the ultimate blessing that countless believers dream of their entire lives but dare not even hope for.

The Red Heart Society's move precisely hits a long-standing, yet rarely acknowledged, near-paradoxical sore spot among those who believe in gods.

They need the continuous, pure power of faith generated by their believers as the foundation of their own strength and the existence of their divine kingdom; they even hope that their followers are powerful.

However, the vast majority of true Gods are actually indifferent to the living conditions, quality of life, and even the most basic dignity and well-being of individual believers.

Even within their cold and efficient divine logic, ensuring the well-being of believers is considered a strategic mistake.

Within any religious sect, there exists a cruel yet effective truth that is held as an inviolable principle.

[Believers struggling on the brink of life and death, suffering immense torment, often have their spiritual needs compressed to the extreme, leaving only the most primal and intense instinct for survival.]

【Live! 】

Under such extreme pressure to survive, their prayers to the gods became incredibly pure, and their devotion to their faith became exceptionally fervent.

These believers, facing life-or-death crises, are like drowning people clinging to the only piece of driftwood; the power of their faith they can extract is often more refined and more immense.

Conversely, if a believer is well-fed and clothed, lives a stable life, and even has a certain level of security, then their needs will inevitably become more diverse.

They will pursue dignity, freedom, and knowledge, and at times, even question divine authority; inevitably, the purity and output of their faith will decline significantly.

Therefore, the key is to cleverly, even deliberately, keep believers in a state of suffering for an extended period.

How to precisely control their threshold of suffering, keeping them teetering on the brink of unbearable despair without causing them complete collapse and extinction.

This is the unspoken, correct way and core art of governance for the gods of faith to efficiently gather the power of faith.

However, the terrifying combat power displayed by the Red Heart Society on the battlefield, especially the collective combat capabilities unleashed by its members through precise battle formations and unique combined tactics, made the true gods sitting high on their thrones feel an unprecedented sense of envy.

[If they wanted to emulate the Red Heart Society's model, arming their vast following with superior equipment and organizing and militarizing them, what astonishing power would they be able to gather?]

This could sow the seeds of future challenges to divine authority, as whether armed believers will awaken is a question that must be considered.

But the imminent annihilation brought by the abyss of hell, like the Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, left the true gods with no choice.

[We must not overlook any possibility that could enhance our overall combat strength!] [Moreover, within the near-eternal timescale and ruthless perspective of the true gods overlooking all living beings, future troubles are not insurmountable.]

[If all we have to do is survive in the end, then after the crisis is over, we can just meticulously plan a catastrophe that will engulf everyone who knows about it, right?]

An unexpected collapse of the world, and the eruption of an out-of-control abyssal rift.

If we completely erase the hidden dangers, along with the individuals who bear them, from both physical and historical perspectives, wouldn't the remaining, ignorant and uninformed masses of believers simply remain the same easily managed and easily exploited original believers?

Therefore, when the Red Heart Society generously offered its legendary equipment production line, representing a portion of its core military industrial capabilities, as a bargaining chip for cooperation, the gods of faith almost eagerly revealed their most treasured skills.

[This could be a divine art for individual enhancement, a blueprint for building a divine kingdom's defense system, or a technique for applying specific laws.]

They used this as a bargaining chip, and a massive exchange of resources and technology, based on immediate needs but harboring hidden future dangers, quickly unfolded under the tacit understanding of both sides, each with their own agenda.

[In May of the 555th year of the Extraordinary Calendar, the collaborative project between the Red Heart Society and the gods of faith had been rolled out vigorously, penetrating into various fields.]

[Amidst this seemingly close cooperative relationship, the Chixin Society has displayed a rather intriguing attitude.]

They didn't seem to value the divine power, status, or even the self-important divine strength displayed by the individual gods they worshipped.

While the reception etiquette was not impolite, it was by no means overly respectful; rather, it was a pragmatic exchange based on an equal footing of power.

[However, in stark contrast, Chixin Club includes a seemingly additional condition in the cooperation terms.]

[Dispatching large numbers of Red Heart Society working teams, observers, and even construction teams deep into the core heartland of the gods of faith—the world of faith directly controlled by them, and even the most sacred and inviolable divine kingdom itself.]

The composition, authority, and scope of activities of each team have been carefully considered to ensure that they can, to the greatest extent possible, access, observe, and even intervene in the grassroots operations and social structures of the target world.

This unusual shift in the center of gravity initially confused and even slightly disturbed some true gods.

However, considering the enormous benefits offered by the Red Heart Society and the fact that they did not show any intention to directly challenge divine authority, most deities chose to acquiesce or cooperate to a limited extent.

It was this deep-rooted observation that allowed the members of the Red Heart Society to tear through the magnificent veil woven from hymns and divine light of their pantheon, and witness firsthand the cold, hard truth beneath its foundations of rule.

[In some countries that believe in a true god and create a deliberately constructed divine kingdom or subordinate world, the scenes are suffocating.]

The land was deliberately sculpted into a desolate landscape, barren and extremely lacking in resources, as if it had endured perpetual drought and poverty, where survival itself was an endless torture.

Even more appalling, some other true gods used their power to control the fundamental rules of the world to forcibly modify the underlying laws within their realms.

In these worlds, even those who have awakened extraordinary powers and are theoretically able to draw energy from heaven and earth to sustain their lives, as well as powerful demigods born in divine realms and possessing partial divinity, are forcibly bound by mortal shackles.

They were forced by law to eat three meals a day, consuming specific foods provided by God, just like the weakest mortals.

[Even the more powerful a superhuman is, the more food they consume.]

The higher the standards and requirements for food quality, the more stringent they become.

Those who violate the rules of eating, no matter how powerful they are, will suffer the merciless backlash of the world's laws.

"Such a group of people will be tormented by a hunger curse originating from the very basic rules of the world within a very short period of time, until they starve to death in agony."

This trampling of basic human dignity and distortion of the extraordinary nature of life reveals its blatant purpose.

[By artificially creating the most primal and inescapable survival needs, believers are firmly bound to the bottom of the food chain.]

Believers have to give everything to obtain the meager amount of divine food that sustains their lives.

Time, labor, dignity, and even the last vestige of autonomy deep within the soul.

All the food was believed by the believers to be a supreme and merciful gift from the Most High God.

The entire world, from the lowest mortals to demigods with the power to move mountains and fill seas, is caught in a morbid and fanatical vortex of faith stemming from the complete monopoly of basic necessities by divine authority. (End of Chapter)