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Ian felt as if he were traversing a long tunnel, surrounded by distorted fragments of light and shadow.

The [Multiverse Projection Descent Technique] is now in effect, and subconscious runes are silently enveloping a wisp of his consciousness as it travels stealthily.

Light Continent, Erion Province, Holy Light Monastery.

An unassuming ascetic bedroom, small, dark, and musty.

The only decent piece of furniture was a hardwood bed, next to which was a chipped wooden table with a small stone slab about the size of half a palm on it, its surface covered with indistinct carvings.

In front of the stone slab, a young man dressed in gray linen clothes knelt on the ground.

He clasped his hands together, pressed his forehead to the ground, and silently moved his lips, reciting the prayer of the God of Light.

"By the God of Light...please grant me a moment of favor..."

Anson's voice was hoarse as he poured his last bit of spiritual energy into the holy stigma slab in front of him.

The sacred markings on the stone slab glowed faintly, emitting a warm white light.

This is his daily ritual: praying to the stone slab, accumulating devotion, and waiting for the day he will receive divine grace and break through his bottleneck.

But today, just like the past six thousand days and nights.

The stone slabs gleamed faintly; there was no divine grace, no infusion of power, only the cold ground and an ever-growing sense of despair.

"The Holy Light... has abandoned me!"

Anson raised his head, his eyes bloodshot, looking at the stone slab and at the patterns that were etched into his soul but could never be understood.

Eighteen years, six thousand five hundred and seventy days and nights.

He knelt here to pray, practice asceticism, and dedicate his faith, only to find his body growing weaker and his hope becoming increasingly faint.

"What...did I do wrong..." Anson murmured, his voice breaking into a suppressed sigh.

My vision started to go black, and the aftereffects of my complete mental exhaustion began to strike.

He tried to support himself, but his arms went limp and he fell forward, his forehead hitting the stone slab hard.

Thump! A dull sound echoed in the small room, and then consciousness sank into darkness.

Just as Anson fainted, a ripple appeared in the space, and an invisible consciousness silently entered Anson's body.

There was no resistance, no struggle, just like a drop of water merging into the ocean.

Ian's consciousness officially took over the body.

[Projection blending complete]

[Current Projection: Anson (Original Consciousness Has Dissipated)]

[Special Status: Mental Exhaustion (On the Verge of Collapse)]

[WARNING: The rules of this world are very different from those of the Wizarding World. The magic system is suppressed and needs to be readjusted and adapted.]

The pale gold lettering appeared at the corner of his eye.

Anson slowly opened his eyes, first feeling the weakness in his body.

This body has been completely drained of its strength; even breathing causes a burning pain in its lungs. Its mental energy is also depleted, and its sea of ​​consciousness is dry and cracked.

"This is a terrible state," Anson muttered to himself, his voice hoarse.

He braced himself against the ground and struggled to sit up. His body was so weak that even sitting up was difficult.

But he didn't rush. He closed his eyes and began to receive the fragments of memories left over from the original body. The images flashed through his consciousness frame by frame.

When he was seven years old, his village was destroyed by war, and his parents died under the iron hooves of cavalry.

Afterwards, a clergyman in white robes lifted him from the ruins and took him back to the Holy Light Monastery.

Life in the monastery was monotonous and austere. We had to get up at four in the morning, pray for two hours, and have breakfast at six: coarse black bread and water.

Work begins at seven o'clock: sweeping the courtyard, moving supplies, and tending the vegetable garden.

The afternoon is for scripture study, reciting scriptures of light and learning theories of magic.

Evenings are for personal prayer, where one meditates before the stigmata and accumulates devotion.

Day after day, year after year.

In Anson's memory, the most vivid images are of this small bedroom and that cold stone slab.

He tried, he worked hard, he gave it his all.

But his aptitude was like an insurmountable chasm, keeping him firmly outside the threshold of the extraordinary.

One by one, the cultivators of his generation were promoted to become trainee priests and deacons, but he was still stuck in the same place.

"Ansen, you are not devout enough." The cold words of the deputy deacon, Kaspian, echoed in his memory.

He was a man in his forties with a harsh face who always looked him up and down with a critical eye.

"Pray for two more hours each day, and perhaps the God of Light will have mercy on you."

"Yes... Lord Kaspian." Anson always kept his head down, his voice weak.

He dared not refute, for Caspian was a second-level priest who held the monastery's discipline.

Dean Anselm, the kind old man with white hair and beard, was fair, but he wouldn't stand up for a mediocre ascetic.

"Anson, don't be discouraged."

Peter, his roommate, a kind-hearted fat man, would occasionally pat him on the shoulder.

"The God of Light will see your efforts."

Peter was promoted to first-class novice priest last year and is now in charge of managing the monastery's library, but he has never looked down on Anson. On the contrary, he often secretly brings him some food.

"Thank you, Peter," Anson would always reply, then continue praying to the stone slab.

Fragments of memory continued to surge.

The divine court's extraordinary system gradually became clear to Anson within his limited understanding.

The novice priests here are roughly equivalent to wizard apprentices, and from deacon, bishop, archbishop to the final pope, they roughly correspond to the first to fourth levels in the wizarding world.

The power of a divine mage comes from prayer, borrowing divine power from the gods. The higher the level of piety, the more divine power can be borrowed.

In addition to the esteemed divine mages, there is also a warrior system.

However, they held a low position in the divine court and usually served as guards, knights, or similar roles.

The most powerful legendary warriors can rival archbishops, and a very few exceptionally gifted individuals can even challenge demigods.

What is a demigod? Anson heard in the songs of some bards that the legend of igniting the divine fire was called a demigod.

Their most prominent characteristic is that they possess divinity; they are the representatives of the gods on earth and usually reside in various parishes.

The gods reside high in the Star Realm and rarely descend upon the Continent of Light.

Ansen worships the God of Light, an extremely powerful deity who rules over the entire pantheon of light.

The fragments of memory end here.

Anson's life was like a blank sheet of paper, filled with nothing but prayer and labor.

There were no ups and downs, no surprises, only the daily repetition and despair.

"Mediocre talent, low status, utterly insignificant." Anson slowly opened his eyes, a slight smile playing on his lips.

"What a perfect identity."

Who would give a second glance to a good-for-nothing who has been struggling for eighteen years and is still stuck at the threshold?

He looked down at his hands; his palms were rough, calloused, and there was dirt under his fingernails.

His body was very weak, but his skeleton was still quite sturdy and he had no hidden injuries; his mental energy was exhausted, but the structure of his sea of ​​consciousness was intact, only it was dried up.

"Get back to normal first."

Anson sat cross-legged, closed his eyes, and in his mind's eye, the panel vibrated slightly.

[Abnormal host condition detected: Mental exhaustion]

[Beginning to guide the power of the rules to repair...]

[WARNING: The rules of this realm suppress witchcraft; the efficiency of regular meditation is reduced by 87%]

A ray of golden light flowed from the edge of the panel, seeping into the parched sea of ​​consciousness, and the depleted spiritual power began to slowly recover.

But it's very slow.

The world's suppression of witchcraft is more severe than anticipated.

The air was thick with the aura of faith, and the surrounding rules were like sticky glue, firmly binding the energy flow of any non-divine system.

The laws of gravity and thermal energy can still be manipulated, but their power is less than one-tenth of that in the wizarding world.

Other rules were suppressed even more severely, and the purification rules were completely unusable.

"The suppression of faith is indeed powerful," Anson thought to himself.

He is currently just a projection; apart from the wisp of his own soul essence, his strength is no different from that of an ordinary person.

"But that's fine too. If my strength increases gradually, no one will suspect anything."

He looked toward the corner of the room, where a small stone slab, about the size of half a palm, lay quietly on a straw mat.

The Stigmata Tablets are possessed by every ascetic, who touches them daily in prayer to purify their souls.

In Anson's memory, this stone slab was given to him when he was admitted to the hospital eighteen years ago.

It was originally a single piece, but it broke in two in an accident. The monastery did not replace it for him, but simply allowed him to continue using the half he had.

"Anyway, you're not that devout," Kaspian said at the time.

Anson reached out and picked up the stone slab. It was cold to the touch, the surface was rough, and the patterns of the holy marks were worn away and could not be seen clearly.

But in his perception, the stone slab was slightly warm, and some kind of energy was flowing within it.

He closed his eyes and probed the stone slab with a faint trace of his spiritual energy.

With a buzzing sound, the panel suddenly vibrated!

[Unknown energy aggregate detected, type: Faith Power Container]

[Scanning...]

The pale gold lettering kept flashing at the corner of his eye. He was engrossed in reading Chapter 420 of the novel "The Secret of the Ansen Slate," completely absorbed in it.

The internal structure of the stone slab is no secret once the panel is analyzed.

The rough stone surface is just a disguise; the inner layer contains a dense array of tiny runes that are invisible to the naked eye.

The array's structure is extremely ingenious, with each pattern containing a certain rule or logic.

[Hidden rune array discovered; function: Faith harvesting, conversion, and transfer]

[Array Level: Level 4 Divine Art Structure]

[Energy Flow Analysis: Power of Faith → Stone Slab → Convergence → Transformation → Void Transmission → Unknown Coordinates]

[WARNING: This array has a soul connection with a certain consciousness; touching it may attract the other party's attention.]

Anson's fingers trembled, and he immediately loosened the stone slab, which fell onto the straw mat with a thud, thankfully without breaking.

He took a deep breath, a hint of excitement flashing in his eyes.

Sure enough, this stone slab was not meant to purify the soul, but to harvest faith.

Every time a monk touches the stone slab each day, the faith power generated within his body is drawn out by the stone slab.

Then, through a hidden array of runes, it is transported to an unknown location to collect the data, most likely a nearby church.

Ordinary believers, though without stone slabs, still have their faith power collected by the statues and relics in the church when they pray, donate, and repent.

The entire belief system of the Divine Court is a massive harvesting network covering countless worlds!

Believers offer their devotion, the divine court collects faith, and the gods transform it into divine power.

"What a cruel world," Anson muttered to himself, his eyes icy cold.

This is treating living people like batteries; no wonder Anson died at such a young age.

As the rule-maker of the wizarding world, rune arrays are as simple as a primary school textbook to him.

Although these are runes based on divine magic and their underlying logic differs from that of wizard runes, they all share the same fundamental principle: as long as there is a flow of energy, there must be a pattern to follow.

As long as there is a pattern, it can be analyzed, cracked, and even... tampered with.

He sat back down on the hard wooden bed, closed his eyes, and let his consciousness sink into the panel.

The panel has recorded the entire structure of the rune array on the stone slab surface from that brief touch.

Including energy frequency, transmission path, and encryption method, what we need to do now is to study the underlying logic of this rune array.

Then find the vulnerability and fix it.

[Analyzing the target rune array...]

[Progress: 1%...5%...8%...]

The panel's parsing speed was very slow, and the rune array on the slab was much more complex than expected.

The fourth-level divine magic framework is equivalent to the fourth-level Morning Star level in the Wizarding World.

It wouldn't be difficult to decipher with the original body's level of power, but now this projection's strength is severely suppressed, making the analysis speed much slower.

Time ticked by, and the chanting of the monks' prayers drifted from outside the room, melodious and solemn.

Anson closed his eyes, his consciousness sinking into his mental sea, where the panel had already completed the full analysis of the rune array.

[Analysis complete, target: Cult of Light - Holy Marksman Stone Tablet Rune Array]

[Level: Fourth-Tier Divine Spell Structure]

[Function: Absorbs the faith power within the holder, possessing preliminary purification, compression, encryption, and transmission capabilities.]

[Vulnerability: None]

"No vulnerabilities?" Anson frowned slightly.

The panel doesn't lie; this rune array truly has no exploitable vulnerabilities.

The Church of Light has been operating for countless years, and this harvesting system has been optimized to its extreme.

But Anson's lips curled into a smile: "No loopholes don't mean they can't be bypassed."

The array of runes on the stone slab gradually unfolded in my consciousness, forming a three-dimensional map.

The power of faith flowed from the cultivator's body and entered the surface of the stone slab.

There is an ingenious filter array here that removes the impurities of emotions and retains only pure faith.

The subsequent convergence and transmission array will gather the power of faith to a nearby location.

This simple stone slab serves only these functions, but there must be more to it, though Anson has no access to them.

Anson speculated that the transformation phase and the final void teleportation were likely more complex and secretive.

He soon noticed a detail: the monastery was not large and did not generate much faith each day, so it was not collected immediately.

He delved into the panel to examine the runes closely and discovered that there was a brief interval of about three seconds every twenty-four hours.

Within these three seconds, the transmission array will perform a self-check and calibration, and then restart, resulting in a slight interruption in the energy flow.

Although it was only three seconds, it was enough for Anson to do something.

"Panel, simulating the possibility of inserting interfering runes during maintenance windows."

[In simulation... Probability: 72.3%]

[Risk: 17.8% probability of triggering an alarm]

[Recommendation: Employ a layered, penetrating interference method, implanting micro-runes in three stages to reduce the probability of detection.]

Anson's eyes lit up. Layered penetration was indeed a good method.

It's like adding dye to a river, adding only a tiny amount each time, letting the dye spread naturally with the water flow.

Once the dye has spread throughout the entire river, the monitoring system will only recognize it as a natural fluctuation and will not trigger an alarm.

"Very good." He opened his eyes and looked at the stone slab on the ground.

The next step is to implant a "backdoor" inside the stone slab without triggering an alarm.

One who can intercept the power of faith and secretly direct it through their own back door.

But before that, he needs to recover some of his strength, at least enough mental energy to inscribe the runes.

Anson closed his eyes again and began to slowly mobilize the remaining life energy in the body.

Although the rules are very restrictive, the most basic life energy can still function.

Time passed slowly, and the night outside the window deepened.

The bells of the Holy Light Monastery rang nine times, and the monks ended their evening prayers and returned to their respective bedrooms.

Footsteps, conversations, and the sound of doors closing echoed down the corridor before everything fell silent again.

Anson opened his eyes. His mental energy had recovered to about 10%, which was barely enough.

He picked up the stone slab again and gently ran his fingertips across its surface.

This time, he did not inject his spiritual power, but instead let a trace of life energy seep into the crack in the stone slab.

Inside the crack, the hidden array of runes glowed faintly, but quickly dimmed again.

The life energy is too weak; it doesn't even reach the threshold to trigger an alarm.

Anson's lips curled into a slight smile; this was exactly the effect he wanted.

He carefully controlled this wisp of life energy, letting it slowly travel within the crack, carving the first layer of disguise runes into the gaps between the runes.

Its function is to make subsequently implanted runes appear as naturally worn-out in the monitoring system.

Next, the second layer of diversion runes was inscribed, which was used to subtly intercept a portion of the power of faith as it flowed through, about one millionth.

The third layer is for storing runes, which temporarily stores the intercepted power of faith, waiting to be extracted.

Three layers of runes, each as small as a speck of dust, hidden in the shadow of the original runes.

Even if someone were to examine it carefully with divine magic, they would only conclude that it was a natural crack caused by the stone slab being neglected over the years.

For three whole hours, fine beads of sweat appeared on Anson's forehead, and his fingers trembled slightly.

Inscribing runes consumed a great deal of mental energy, and his body was too weak, but he gritted his teeth and persevered.

When the last rune was inscribed, the holy markings on the stone slab surface flickered slightly before returning to normal.

But Anson could sense that there was a tiny "pocket" inside the stone slab.

It's like digging a small puddle next to a river; every time the river flows, a very small amount of water will flow into the puddle.

Over time, the puddle will fill up.

He put down the stone slab, let out a long breath, and his eyes showed fatigue, but even more so, excitement.

Successful.

Although it is only the first step, and although the intercepted power of faith is negligible, it is a beginning.

On his very first day, he quietly tore open a small gap in the divine court's network of faith-harvesting and reaped a delightful harvest.

Anson lay back on the hard wooden bed, closed his eyes, and let his consciousness sink into his mental sea, looking at the panel.

[The implantation of the Faith Power Interception Rune is complete]

Current interception efficiency: 0.01%

[Estimated daily yield: Approximately 0.03 standard units]

[WARNING: Intercepting data carries a risk of being detected. It is recommended to keep daily data extraction within the maintenance window.]

0.01% efficiency is pitifully small, but it doesn't matter.

As his understanding of divine runes deepens and his strength recovers, this efficiency will increase exponentially.

Moreover, he wasn't the only one in the monastery with a stone slab.

Forty-seven cultivators, forty-seven stone slabs—if each one were implanted with a backdoor…

"It's not feasible yet; we need to improve our strength to be on the safe side."

Outside the window, moonlight streamed into the small room, casting a soft glow on the floor.

The Holy Light Monastery, bathed in the night, appeared tranquil and peaceful.

Anson closed his eyes and began to slowly recover his mental strength; he still had homework to do tomorrow.