From the Soul Motion Machine onwards, the Mechanized Douluo

Chapter 245 Bone Spirit?! Soul Spirit?! Faith System! [Thanks to 'Wen Yuci' for the donation]

If we view Chen Hong's current actions from a divine perspective: believers offer their faith in exchange for knowledge from the divine.

Although Chen Hong currently plans to share some erotic content with his "believers" to increase sales and make them fall into a state of sexual addiction and spend money on him, his behavior is actually consistent with the root logic of the divine belief system.

Although in some myths, it is humans who need gods, but gods who do not need humans. In other words, gods do not need faith, but humans need gods.

Actually, this statement isn't quite right. Humans can live without gods, so by the same logic, gods can also need faith.

Technological civilizations do not have gods who directly govern the laws and rules. Therefore, they not only do not need gods, but also have an inexplicable fanaticism and ambition for them.

Gods should also be divided into innate and acquired. Innate gods are born powerful, and their power comes from the world's favor and the protection of its rules. Acquired gods also come in various forms. Some prove their divine power through force, while others, due to different world rules, need to gain the universal recognition (faith) of all living beings in the world in order to trigger the rules for ascension and become gods.

Therefore, the relationship between humans and gods varies in different environments, and this requires a pragmatic and dialectical understanding. If Chen Hong continues to use his previous life's technological understanding of civilization to understand this mysterious civilization, then he himself is engaging in "pseudoscience."

In the Douluo Continent, Chen Hong realized a problem from various legends: the gods of this world seemed to really need humans. (Chen Hong was unaware of the innate concept of gods that could destroy life.)

However, Chen Hong discovered that both the angel god and the sea god seemed to possess a certain arrogance characteristic of gods. In other words, mortals, you must believe in me! And I don't need to give you anything in return!

The Angel God in Douluo Continent can benefit mortals by ending wars and turmoil and establishing the Spirit Hall, a people-friendly organization. However, just because the Spirit Hall allows commoners to awaken their spirits for free, the soul masters of the continent also have an obligation to believe in the Angel God.

Therefore, the Angel God is slightly better. Although he is also a bit arrogant, the Spirit Hall he left behind has always responded to the faith of mortals. Mortals awaken their spirits and enjoy peace, and the Angel God is worthy of the faith.

Unlike the Angel God, Poseidon, the Sea God, took arrogance to the extreme. He employed a punishment mechanism: if sea spirit beasts didn't worship him, he would attack them. Surrendering their faith ensured peace. This punishment mechanism resulted in extremely low efficiency in the Sea God's acquisition of faith power, leading to slow growth in his strength within the divine realm. This, in turn, fueled his subsequent ambition to seize the Angel God's territory. (As discussed in the previous book, Poseidon's subsequent power increase was due to Tang Shenwang feeding him experience points, passively boosting Poseidon's strength, which shared the same origin as his divine essence.)

Do you want Poseidon, the god of the sea, to bestow some favors upon the sea spirit beast?

Poseidon: Impossible! Impossible! Absolutely impossible! *Smack!* (Rice bowl!)

Therefore, compared to the arrogance of the Angel God and the Sea God, who are born of divinity, Chen Hong is a human being, and a Great Soul Master with a Soul Power level of twenty-nine! (With the support of Ye Lingling and Ning Lu, he finally reached the same level as Grandmaster Yu Xiaogang)

As a human, Chen Hong lacked the arrogance of a god. He knew how to please (exploit) his followers (netizens), how to ignite their enthusiasm (turning passive exploitation into active spending), and he even knew what his "followers" liked most (sending them erotic videos). Well, the eroticism was only temporary. Since the Battle Soul Instrument possessed certain sage attributes, in order to achieve yin-yang balance, Chen Hong needed to compensate netizens for the eroticism they lacked in sage-type soul tools elsewhere.

As Chen Hong's cybersecurity technology matures, he will gradually strengthen cybersecurity and purify the online environment.

(Lewd netizens: No!!!)

Chen Hong's ultimate goal was to build the spiritual network into a knowledge exchange platform, where he could absorb and refine the spiritual essence while also absorbing the brainstorming of intelligent beings from all over the world.

As for the video function that was specifically added in the early stages for the sake of efficiency, after all, Chen Hong also needs to eat, and eating is not shameful.

Have you not seen in the early days of the Internet in some civilizations, when some big shots actively used female accounts to attract customers—cough, no, to attract people—in order to promote their software!

"If, according to your theory, a soul bone is a special kind of soul ring, and now that soul bone spirits, or bone spirits, can we also work backward to create soul ring spirits, or soul spirits?"

In Chen Hong's courtyard, Qian Daoliu silently asked about something that would only appear ten thousand years later in a certain parallel plane—the soul.

"Congratulations, senior, your guess is correct." Chen Hong smiled as he lay on the armchair. To be honest, Chen Hong was quite surprised that Qian Daoliu was able to raise this question and demonstrate his flexible thinking that allowed him to draw inferences from one instance to another.

After all, having lived in this world for fourteen years, Chen Hong had discovered that the people of this world seemed to have a slight intellectual disability. It felt as if their intelligence had been sealed off by a higher-dimensional civilization from the realm of the soul—no, it should be the mystical realm—causing the people of this world to always give people a... well, to put it more mildly: silly feeling.

Chen Hong was still quite surprised to see Qian Daoliu able to apply his knowledge to other situations.

It seems that this "slowness of judgment" is not insurmountable. Chen Hong thought to himself without showing any emotion.

"However, senior, the concept of a soul spirit actually conflicts somewhat with the three levels of the Soul Ring Realm in theory." Chen Hong's eyes flickered, as if he was deducing something.

"Oh?" Qian Daoliu asked in confusion, "There's a conflict? That makes sense. The main point of the three realms of Soul Rings is to become the master of one's own Soul Ring, while Soul Spirit is to transform one's own Soul Ring into a vessel for other soul entities. However..."

Qian Daoliu's eyes suddenly lit up, and he couldn't help but exclaim in surprise, "Your strange bone spirit, being able to appear in the form of a child, isn't that secretly in line with the Soul Ring Realm? Changing the form in which the Soul Ring manifests?"

Qian Daoliu had thoroughly examined Chen Hong's bone spirit. If Chen Hong didn't only have this one model, Qian Daoliu would have insisted on getting one to show off to the Douluo elders who were struggling to cultivate the Soul Ring Intent.

Furthermore, Qian Daoliu felt that collecting Chen Hong's original works was a very fulfilling thing.

Qian Daoliu: Look! A masterpiece of artificial soul creation!

(Douluo Grandmasters: Ah! Wait! Didn't you say you were in seclusion cultivating???)

Thank you to [Wen Yuci] for the 100-coin reward!

(End of this chapter)