Fanatics of the Magic Academy

After the fourth Gulong killed the gods, only about one-tenth of the believers grasped those three sentences and survived in the abyss of the collapse of faith.

Ninety percent of them perished along with their gods. The fourth Ancient Dragon lamented that those like the first Ancient Dragon were ultimately a minority.

But the real gain comes from those superficial believers whose bodies have not undergone alienation.

In the pantheon, they are defined as "sacrifices," comprising two-thirds or more of the total population.

The gods are dead, but they will not die.

Gu Long's followers launched a campaign to reform their thinking.

They told these people: You don't need to kneel and worship gods to develop the power of your own faith;

Those rules that have been taken for granted for generations—that gods are superior to humans and that sacrifices are born to be sacrifices—can all be broken.

The irrefutable proof is that Gu Long's followers truly killed gods with their mortal bodies.

Faced with undeniable facts, more and more people are embarking on the path of becoming followers of Gu Long.

This population growth brought about by the liberation of thought far exceeds natural reproduction.

Based on this, the fourth Gu Long promulgated a brand-new policy—"Liberate thought, kill the gods."

Core idea: Gods, beings who are born needing to be superior to humans in order to maintain their own existence, are a desecration of "human supremacy" every single moment of their existence.

This is not the sin of any particular deity, but the original sin of the very being of "deity." Countless fellow human beings in the world are still being exploited, sacrificed, and enslaved by those lofty, illusory figures.

What Gu Long's followers need to do is not to conquer them, but to liberate them—liberate their minds, liberate their beliefs, and liberate their right to be born as human beings.

Liberate all compatriots, slaughter the gods.

Rose fell silent upon hearing this.

Did the idea of ​​"liberating all mankind" come about 30,000 years ago?

The pantheon is indeed cannibalistic, literally cannibalistic.

Although the society of the Magic Federation was equally perverse—Kenneth died in the slums, Hans was tied to the operating table, and homeless people were covered in eyeballs and tiny hands—the Age of Gods was clearly much bloodier.

However, the followers of Gu Long ultimately failed.

The era of gods was ended by magicians, who used special methods to castrate the gods, severing the source of power for the divine system.

But Gu Long's followers did not completely fail.

At least, in the more than six years that Rose has lived in this world, he has never heard of any alien beasts, nor has he seen any beings that are superior to humans.

Under the banner of "liberating thought and killing gods," the number of Gu Long's followers expanded at an alarming rate.

God-killing, liberation, digestion, expansion—a perfect positive cycle.

Each time a temple was breached, tens of thousands of casual believers were liberated and absorbed into the ranks of the new Ancient Dragon followers.

The population growth has led to a surge in the number of fourth-tier powerhouses.

However, climbing to higher levels is far more difficult than expected.

The power curve in this world explodes exponentially. In the early stages, the gap is not large, but as you go further, every step becomes like an insurmountable chasm.

Even in the year the fourth Gu Long stepped down, which was exactly eighty years after he took the position of Gu Long, the Gu Long followers had only managed to push the path to the middle of the fourth tier.

That wasn't even a mature inheritance; it was just a desperate means that allowed a lower-level fourth-tier fighter to temporarily gain the combat power of a mid-level fourth-tier fighter.

Even after abdicating, the fourth generation continued to fight alongside the fifth generation on the front lines.

He lived to be 204 years old—for a fourth-tier powerhouse, the theoretical lifespan is 400 years, so this age is not even considered old.

But for someone who has been fighting monsters since he was a teenager and whose body has never been without a broken bone, this is already the limit.

On his deathbed, he held the hand of the fifth ancient dragon. That hand, which had once crushed the heads of countless beasts, was now withered and thin, like a weathered old tree root.

His voice was hoarse and indistinct, yet he spoke each word clearly:

"The fifth generation... what exactly is it like to be a fourth-tier upper-level, fourth-tier peak, or even a fifth-tier?"

He did not ask about the future of Gu Long's followers.

The movement he personally initiated is rolling forward on the main road, and that vehicle will not stop.

He never asked himself whether his life was worthwhile—he had never asked that question since he was very young.

He was asking about something higher, a place he had never been able to reach in his entire life.

Wu Dai stood silently, holding that withered hand in one hand.

He did not answer.

It wasn't that he didn't want to, it was that he didn't know. That was a height that even the first generation of ancient dragons had never reached.

But in the end, Godai nodded.

It means "I will take a look for you".

I understood it in the fourth generation.

He smiled.

Looking at the silent young man before him, he seemed to see himself back then, receiving the heart handed to him by the second generation in the same way.

On that face, etched with the wrinkles of time and war, regret and longing had transformed into satisfaction.

His hand slowly loosened.

Those gilded vertical pupils slowly dimmed, revealing the original color of the pupils: a pair of ordinary, dark brown, human eyes.

Even after the fourth generation died, the gears he assembled by hand continued to rumble.

The number of fourth-tier powerhouses continued to grow, with dozens or even hundreds of fourth-tier powerhouses deducing the path of the Ancient Dragon Followers through countless collisions and trials.

This process lasted for a full 1,120 years. It wasn't until the reign of the eighth Ancient Dragon that the Ancient Dragon followers finally pushed this path to the peak of the fourth tier.

"Huh? Over 1,100 years ago?"

Rose lamented the difficulty of developing extraordinary paths in this world. The fifteenth Gu Long nodded.

"The peak of the fourth tier is almost the limit of the replicable path."

Moving up to the fifth level, it possesses extremely strong non-replicability.

Every person who achieves the fifth level has a unique mindset, experience, and power.

You can't copy anyone's path; at most, you can learn from it, but you can only forge your own.

Rose remained silent.

He had read it in the book "The Principles of the Economics of Lending in Magical Schools" that Mason had given him.

Fifth-circle mages can escape the social death trap; no sophisticated model can predict their future.

Below the Fifth Ring Road, everyone is an ant.

"Two hundred years after the eighth Gu Long advanced to the peak of the fourth rank, he found his own opportunity."

He relinquished his position as an ancient dragon and went to find a fifth-tier ancient dragon on his own.

The accumulation of eight generations was enough; what he lacked was the ultimate sublimation of his faith.

For devotees of the Ancient Dragons, what could be more fulfilling of that final leap than slaying a real Ancient Dragon?

He returned with serious injuries.

It failed, but it also succeeded.

In the moment of near death, he did indeed seize the opportunity to advance to the fifth rank and reached that level; otherwise, he could not have survived the claws of a fifth-rank ancient dragon.

But it was only for a moment.

He chose to return, clinging to his last breath, and meticulously recorded his insights from that moment and all his deductions about the fifth-order path, word by word.

Only after doing all this did he close his eyes.

"Since then, more and more ancient dragon believers have embarked on the path of exploring the fifth tier."

Everyone's circumstances are different.

Ultimately, the followers of the ancient dragon gave birth to the first truly powerful fifth-tier expert.

He became the tenth Gu Long.

"The power of the fifth rank is enough to change the world order."

Under the leadership of the Tenth Generation, the first alien beast race to be completely wiped out of the world by the Ancient Dragon Cultists was born—from the progenitor to the last cub, from territory to ruins, everything was wiped clean.

This, in turn, strengthened the believers' convictions.

The second fifth order, the third fifth order.

From this moment on, the followers of the Ancient Dragon truly possessed the right to challenge the Ancient Dragon, the beast that wielded thunder and time.

Rose keenly grasped the word: thunder and time.

After becoming a follower of Gu Long, he did indeed perceive that sensitivity to time.

The path of the Ancient Dragon followers has indeed stolen the power of the Ancient Dragon.

"More than two thousand years later, by the time of the thirteenth generation of the Ancient Dragon, almost all the strange beasts that had once surpassed humans in the world had been wiped out."

The only ones left are those races with sixth-order leaders.

The most powerful of them all are the ancient dragons.

An emotion that Rose had never seen on the fifteenth Gu Long appeared on his face.

"In these two thousand years, the ancient dragon believers have given birth to that one and only one - the one who can advance to the sixth rank."

If the fourth order represents the limit of replicability, then the fifth order represents forging one's own path and climbing to the summit.

So, the sixth tier is like building a castle in the air atop a mountain peak at the pinnacle of the extraordinary.

"He is the fourteenth Gu Long."

"After hundreds of years of preparation, the fourteenth generation led the elite of the ancient dragon's followers to attack the ancient dragon's lair."

A city suspended in the sky, enveloped by thunder and storms.

No one knows the details of that war. Because none of the fourteenth generation and everyone he led returned.

"At the same time, Gu Long never appeared in this world again."