Chapter 1580: Faith Trap

A few seconds later, looking at Lin An's icy eyes, Hai En gulped, as if he also knew just how perverse the fugitives' practice was.

Yes... Lord Lin...

We are indeed self-reproducing.

I'm doing okay here, but there are still many primitive humans; I haven't had time to spread 'myself' yet.

If you go to the Irradiated Land and see for yourself, you'll know; the situation there is even more exaggerated. Out of the world's over 300 million people, another over 100 million are 'God-born...', and that guy even likes self-mating...

Not daring to meet Lin An's gaze, Hai En gave a bitter smile in his heart.

Rather than saying he hasn't had time to spread himself, it's more like this thing's taste is just too heavy.

Enslaving oneself, mating with oneself, giving birth to oneself, believing in oneself...

This practice is indeed somewhat perverse.

His face slightly sank, Lin An asked coldly.

You're doing this to obtain higher-quality faith?

Cutting off humans' reproductive ability... to make replacement easier?

What's the principle?

To be honest, he doesn't quite understand why the fugitives do this.

Is it because human genes, or rather talent, are too poor? To produce high-level Awakened Ones without too many deaths, the only way is to modify the 'genes'?

But is the faith power obtained this way really without issue?

【17) Or perhaps...

Or perhaps...

It seemed to see Lin An's doubt.

Hai En, wincing, began to explain, not caring that this was supposed to be their secret.

Lord Lin, you haven't guessed wrong.

You should also be absorbing faith power, right? I believe you must have noticed its drawbacks when absorbing.

That's because people's personalities and emotions are all kinds. Among hundreds of millions or billions of believers, there's always a batch that's 'problematic'. You can't distinguish this faith power, but absorbing it will greatly affect you...

But it's different with oneself. Who knows oneself best? Oneself. Targeting oneself, we know what kind of environment and encounters can maximally evoke more faith...

Just like taming oneself... that yields the highest success rate.

Hai En gave a bitter smile; this method of harvesting faith was actually learned from other fugitives.

Brutal, crazy, but very effective.

After hearing Hai En's explanation, Lin An couldn't help but fall into a brief silence.

He admitted that after hearing it, he was indeed somewhat surprised.

Self-taming oneself? Then those so-called God-born are actually the descendants of these fugitives.

Through continual inbreeding and self-reproduction, eventually obtaining a batch of high-quality 'selves'. This way, aside from some being insane, it indeed yields a batch of excellent believers.

The fugitives' method also reminded Lin An of early nobility in human history.

Whether East or West, early human nobility advocated inbreeding marriage to preserve bloodline purity.

No! Even in modern times, there are still people who do this!

Now, thinking about it...

You've done this in reality too, right?

Isn't it just for easier control? Do you plan to one day regrow your civilization?

His voice was cold.

Hai En's words made Lin An, as a human, instantly feel an ineffable killing intent.

He had long known that the fugitives had been hiding among humans, secretly controlling human development.

Treating humans as test subjects is perfectly normal.

Although these fugitives are trash, among their original race, those who survived and escaped to now are essentially the finest elite.

They are merely cowardly and afraid of death, not lacking potential.

Yes... Lord Lin...

Faced with Lin An's questioning, Hai En gave a strange look and furtively glanced at Lin An.

Sensing Lin An's anger, he hurried to explain.

We only did this in reality early on, after all the instance wasn't fully formed yet. We did it for only a short time, just a slight test.

Lord Lin! Later humans choosing inbreeding and such actually have little to do with us!

Have you ever raised a dog?

Sometimes, when a dog sees a human reach out for food, it learns to do the same!

Especially after tasting the sweetness and finding it effective, it naturally continues.

In fact, inbreeding really works; many geniuses in your history are offspring of inbreeding. With gene repetition, it's easy to produce extreme excellence! Of course, it's also easy to produce deformities...

After a pause, Hai En looked at Lin An with a complex expression.

As for whether you think we want to re-propagate our civilization...

One could say, sort of...

"After all, doing this has a chance to birth another kind of perfect being. Maybe a 'self' will mutate, and perhaps someday we won't need to flee anymore...."

Seeing Lin An fall into a brief silence.

Without waiting for Lin An to ask again, Hai En cautiously spoke first:

Lord Lin, if I'm not mistaken, you probably also want to walk the path of achieving Fifth Stage through faith?

You want to seize... uh... collect our accumulated faith power? To save time?

Desperate to survive, Hai En felt that Lin An's intrusion was partly for revenge and partly to seize their accumulated faith power.

In his view, the only way for him to survive was to prove his own worth, and also prove that the Term: Faith Power he had accumulated was useless against Lin An.

Otherwise, if the faith target is him, Lin An will definitely kill him no matter what!

Especially, not knowing what Lin An had done in the Alien Species World, he instinctively believed that Lin An could become strong so quickly only by having consumed a large amount of accumulated resources in the Alien Species World! Having tasted the benefits, he naturally set his sights on them!

"So what if it is?"

Seeing Hai En guessing his thoughts, Lin An gave no explanation.

What he wanted was not the things this group of refugees had gathered; although, he had also wondered whether he could seize what was already there.

With ready-made believers present, killing this so-called goddesses and being a bit ruthless, it wouldn't be impossible to replace the faith target.

Just like the amoeba worm world, doing this would indeed save him a lot of time.

Mistakenly thinking he had guessed Lin An's thoughts, Hai En hurriedly spoke:

"Lord Lin! You absolutely must not do this!"

"You might still not understand the Term: Faith Power enough! In fact, if it's not faith provided by the same species, it's essentially poison!"

"Perhaps one can become strong in a short time! But one definitely cannot break through to Fifth Stage! Even if one does break through, it would be a dead Fifth Stage!"

As his words fell, Lin An's eyes narrowed instantly.

Same species? A dead Fifth Stage?

Hai En's words reminded him of the situation when he absorbed the amoeba worm faith.

Is non-same-species faith like poison?

He had always felt that his breakthrough to Fifth Stage nearly killed him, purely because he couldn't digest it!

"Go on."

His voice cold, faced with something completely different from what he had guessed, Lin An couldn't help but become serious.

"That's how it is, Lord Lin!"

"Actually, it's just like how we, to gather faith, chose to be our own believers. The higher the homogeneity, the better it blends—like the same water."

"The soul, or rather the genetic difference, between each race is enormous! Don't think that many races merely look human; perhaps there's only a subtle difference, but in reality this difference is unimaginably large!"

"Let me give you an example!"

"If a person has faith in you, their thoughts' needs are just to eat their fill, stay warm, and reproduce."

"But what if it's a dog that has faith in you!? Dogs like to eat feces; you say, how would you handle such a need!?"

The metaphor might not be entirely appropriate, but Lin An instantly grasped Hai En's meaning.

If the target of his faith inherently craves slaughter, he will inevitably be affected.

Once a conflict occurs, and it clashes with his own spiritual will, thought logic, concepts, etc., it will inevitably lead to collapse!

"While a god controls believers, believers also control the god!"

Under super-effective thinking, Lin An suddenly understood many things!

No wonder religion needs to spread doctrine, no wonder gods need to limit what believers can and cannot do.

Essentially, this is about controlling variables to avoid being affected oneself.

But if one thinks this way..

The refugees have struggled this long, even not hesitating to enslave themselves to gather faith, yet still cannot break through to Fifth Stage...

Lin An's heart sank.

"So, is it extremely difficult to gather faith and break through to Fifth Stage?"

Upon Lin An grasping his meaning, Hai En listened to Lin An's question, shrank his head, and hesitated before nodding.

"Yes.. Lord Lin.."

"Rather than saying it's extremely large, it's basically impossible."

"You really don't need to kill us.. whether we exist or not, you'll probably find it hard to get through this path."

"Achieving Fifth Stage through faith is the most clever, most mysterious, simplest, yet also the rarest path."

"Theoretically speaking, even an ordinary person, if he can absorb pure faith without impurity, can instantly achieve Fifth Stage! Such a simple thing—do you think it's realistic?"

"Don't think that out of ten billion people, 999,990,000 people all have faith in you; even if some don't believe, or the Term: Faith Power they provide is impure... that doesn't matter."

"The closer to the final step, the closer to the final stage of condensation, perhaps even a few hundred or few dozen people could cause the Term: Faith Power to acquire impurities."

"Humans are a whole; no matter what, they will influence each other."

"Unless you constantly screen, killing all who don't meet the conditions and don't believe in you... but if you do that, you'll be surprised to find that among the remaining believers who have clearly been purified, new impurities will still suddenly appear."

"Humans, are extremely complex creatures."

"Unless the entire Earth is just you, even if these humans are your same species, no matter how hard you try, some aspects of human nature are things you can never erase..."

"As far as I know, civilizations that achieve Fifth Stage through Term: Faith Power are basically very bizarre races, either they have spent a lot of time slowly assimilating and producing... or rather, they have spontaneously emerged..."

"Moreover, even if a species can achieve mind-sharing and thought-sharing, they themselves must not be too crazy."

Otherwise, such a condensed Fifth Stage is merely a madman who has power but cannot control himself... In the Apocalypse crisis, he would die even faster... and might even turn around and slaughter 'himself'.

After saying it all in one breath about the trap of Term: Faith Power, Hai En anxiously looked at Lin An.

On this matter, he didn't dare utter a single false word.

But he didn't know that, as soon as he finished speaking, Lin An's heart was instantly overwhelmed by tumultuous waves.

The reason is simple.

He just suddenly thought of the amoeba.

Everyone..

They are all myself!?

We are...

One entity?