Chapter 1867: Dialogue Across Time and Space

At the outset, it speaks astonishingly.

"Are modern state powers also a religion?"

Lin An blinked slightly, unable to help repeating those words in his mind.

The passage Chu An wrote isn't complicated; although the wording is a bit odd, Lin An can clearly understand what Chu An is expressing.

But linking modern civilization with religion together gives him a faint sense of absurdity and dissonance.

In his view, modern state systems are advanced, representing human progress, while religion is barbaric and backward—basically restricting people's thoughts and exploiting humanity through deceit.

If it weren't for needing to gather Faith Power, deep down he wouldn't want to establish an earthly divine kingdom.

But in Chu An's view, the two are essentially the same thing.

Taking a deep breath, Lin An continued reading with a solemn gaze. He also wanted to see why Chu An said that.

"No matter how advanced the modern state system pretends to be, fundamentally, state power originates no differently from divine authority."

"The difference lies only in this: modern state power comes from citizens voluntarily surrendering their rights to violence, life, and freedom; whereas religious divine authority comes from intimidation, deception, and forcing believers to relinquish their own rights."

"Take the state's violent apparatus as an example: its power comes from citizens actively relinquishing their free use of violence, which the state then employs uniformly."

"Take injury and revenge as an example: humans are naturally able to retaliate when attacked, or even kill anyone. This is an innate 'power' of every human being."

"But after surrendering power to the state, the individual loses the freedom to use violence and becomes subject to legal restrictions."

"Once the state's violent apparatus has absorbed a large amount of such rights, it can uniformly employ them to build armies and enact violence against other individuals or groups."

"In essence, this is no different from concentrating power and resources, nor from a religious inquisition or divine legion."

"The former compels citizens to voluntarily surrender through cultural ideas like ideology, nation, and ethnic identity, whereas the latter uses spiritual terrors—hell after death, Apocalypse Judgment, heavenly Father's love—to deceive believers into passively giving up their rights."

After a brief pause, upon finishing the first paragraph, Lin An's heart jolted.

"State power comes from the rights citizens surrender... and its source is no different from that of religious authority."

Unable to resist, he softly repeated it; Lin An slightly opened his mouth, for a moment unable to rebut.

The reason is simple: he had seen this sentence in elementary school political textbooks. It's just that it wasn't as blunt as Chu An put it.

However...

Lin An frowned slightly; he still felt there was a difference between the two.

"Faith Power is substantive. Strictly speaking, although the faith power provided by believers makes the deity stronger, the deity also possesses power and does not make believers do everything."

"If we liken state will to divine will, divine will is more subjective and concrete."

"State will finds it hard, like divine will, to unilaterally decide what to do."

"Moreover, the former is material, while the latter already falls into the realm of supernatural power."

"Would absorbing faith through some state form work? The thing absorbed would hardly be called faith; even if a will coalesces, it couldn't be called a god."

He pondered associatively.

Vaguely, Lin An seemed to recall what Chu An had originally intended to do, and why he had delayed doing it.

"That Chu An fellow—was he originally trying to devise a new state constitution to replace religion in order for me to absorb faith?"

"Absorbing faith in the name of the state would encounter far less resistance than religion, and..."

In his contemplation, Lin An suddenly saw a flash of the batch of Fourth Stage beings brought by Hei Di and others.

He intended to unify the world and establish an empire, also referencing the civilization behind Hei Di.

"Now I see... I used to wonder, the path of faith is so powerful that essentially every civilization's leader should attempt it. Yet only few Fifth Stage beings actually walk that path. Logically, they should all be unwilling to give up."

"It's not that they didn't try; rather, knowing the difficulty is too great, unwilling to accept it, they chose a 'half-religion' approach."

He exhaled lightly, Lin An somewhat wearily rubbed his forehead.

Fifth Stage—indeed, it's not that simple.

"If I'm not pursuing all three paths, then these things Chu An wrote are still quite instructive for me."

"But I must gather Faith Power... replacing religion with the state would be far too ineffective for me—I can't take this route."

His heart sank; Lin An gave a bitter laugh, also roughly guessing why Chu An hadn't handed him this manual.

"If nothing unexpected happens, Chu An, after researching to the end, also realized this problem is unsolvable?"

As expected, Lin An lowered his head to look again; the opening sentence of the following content turned out to be nearly what he had thought.

"Indeed, the state is essentially the same as religion, but it cannot gather true Faith Power."

"This is a compromise product of the state's ruling class to avoid 'thought' division, or to prevent the birth of a god-like collective will."

"An individual finds it extremely hard to bear collective consciousness; although the power of collective consciousness becomes stronger when condensed into divinity, if the individual cannot maintain his integrity, he will inevitably spiral out of control and self-destruct."

"In human history, we can also see that humanity gradually recognized this point and made changes accordingly."

"As in the primitive social system, 【Heavenly God Guidance】: the ruler's very essence is a true god. Moving to the early feudal era's Son of Heaven (a divine incarnation), the ruler is an embodiment of the true god. Then to the mid-period's Mandate of Heaven, heaven-human response. The ruler is no longer a god, but receives the true god's messages."

"These changes all serve to weaken the binding between individual and divinity, no longer condensing divine spirit, to prevent the individual from being struck by the split impact of collective will."

"And modern states go even further, dissolving divine will to the extreme to avoid destruction—such as fascism, nationalism, imperialism, etc., a series of structures with high cohesion."

"People use federalism, parliamentary systems, separation of powers, military-civilian separation, eliminating personal worship, etc., a series of means to prevent faith from coalescing."

Whoosh

Lin An silently turned to the second page, feeling moved.

From the lines Chu An wrote, he seemed to see that man earnestly jotting down these thoughts, striving to probe the essence.

When he was unaware and had never even imagined how the future path should proceed, Chu An had already silently been behind him, day and night sleeplessly seeking a breakthrough for him.

"From the birth of human civilization to the present day..."

"Seeking answers in every step of humanity's footprints? I don't even know how much data that guy has looked up.."

A bitter smile appeared at the corner of Lin An's mouth; suddenly he felt a pang of longing for that guy.

"Chu An..."

He softly spoke that name.

Lin An's eyes were full of complexity; although he sometimes disliked Chu An and often suspected that guy of scheming against him, Chu An had always been as he said, never harming him all the way to now.

Lin An quickly glanced over the content of the second page, not holding much hope.

At a glance, it was almost all Chu An earnestly and rigorously analyzing the faith and cultural evolution of each era.

This might have research value, but it doesn't help much given his current situation.

Third page..

Tenth page..

Twentieth page..

"Chu An, even you can't do anything...?"

Not knowing how long he had looked, Lin An let out a soft sigh.

The notebook in his hand was almost halfway through, yet he still hadn't found the answer he wanted.

But just as Lin An was about to quickly finish and prepare to "give up",

With a rustle, the twenty‑first page, a line of red‑marked text, suddenly came into his view.

"In summary, although we cannot find a perfect way to consolidate faith from human history, any faith‑building path inevitably requires violent cleansing and enduring chaos."

"But this does not mean we have no way out."

"In human history, every emergence of ideological thought is a civilizational transformation; each ideology is a beacon of salvation likened to an apocalyptic disaster."

"These thoughts can guide human civilization to endure to this day, standing immutable; therein must lie the correct path to the very essence!"

"I think, I have found the answer!"

"Lin An."

"When you see this sentence.."

"I should still be alive."

Moonlight outside the window fell upon Lin An's suddenly constricted pupils.

Looking at the twenty‑first page, it seemed to transcend time and space, that sentence written in red ink.

Lin An:!?!