[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-the-dragon-of-a-thousand-faces":3,"chapter-the-dragon-of-a-thousand-faces-the-dragon-of-a-thousand-faces-chapter-295":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","The Dragon of a Thousand Faces",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2269941,4431,"Chapter 295","the-dragon-of-a-thousand-faces-chapter-295",295,"\u003Cp>When Li En awoke again from sleep, he was still dazed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He opened his eyes as if blind; the memory of the starry sky’s destruction would haunt his mind for a long time.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He no longer doubted whether one could truly die in a dream.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“The soul’s damage is more lethal than the body’s; when the soul dies, you are truly dead. If that’s the case, I don’t need to worry about dying in a dream.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Li En vaguely sensed that if the Thousand-Faced Dragon truly had any special quality, it was likely its soul—unchanged and unblemished through countless reincarnations.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Finally over.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This ancestral spirit’s legacy was probably the earliest to arrive—even earlier than Kuku.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But the experience seemed the worst; its excessive entanglement with the mortal world gave Li En too much trouble.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Unlike other ancestral spirits, Lex was overly “ordinary” in personality and character.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He gave Li En the most difficult karmic burden, yet he also provided Li En with the greatest possible aid.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>【Ancestral Spirit Card (Type Locked)】.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This Ancestral Spirit Card is locked and will only randomly select from one type of “Li Ensu.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“I hope for someone normal…”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But Li En thought again; given the type he’d locked, a normal person was unlikely—even a normal god would be a stretch.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>【Locked Type: Deity】.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yes, a deity—this was precisely what Li En most lacked, yet could never reasonably obtain under normal circumstances.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Li En’s greatest asset right now was the Dock District—its knightly order, those former slave-warrior Oath Knights in their early days, were his entire military force.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>For his former self, this had been enough: a reliable force lurking in the shadows, weak but cultivatable over time.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But now that Li En had a frontier town, a dock district, and a tiny independent state, and these knights had taken on policing duties and stepped onto the kingdom’s political stage, it was clearly no longer enough.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Wealth and land without power as a guarantee become disasters.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Before, when you were unseen and unmeasured, others saw you only as an “excellent Classical Holy Knight,” and maintained basic respect for you as an individual.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But once you entered this pool, joined the struggle for interests, and began competing with other factions, that faint respect vanished—they only despised yet another upstart trying to climb the table for a share of the meat.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>For such “junior” rivals, eliminating them preemptively is almost certain.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Correct, our greatest hypothetical enemy is the Churches of the Good Deity.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Though frustrating, when entities occupy the same ecological niche, the weak are inevitably consumed by the strong; Li En must grow rapidly to prove his right to independence.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Under this environment, the Weavers’ Knight Order and other Li En factions face decisive disadvantages against the Churches of the Good Deity—their growth rates are not even in the same league.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Classical Oath Holy Knights are good—they are trustworthy people—but being a Classical Oath Holy Knight is not something a human should endure.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It’s not merely the path of pure goodness; its progress is excruciatingly slow, each step requiring arduous cultivation and the slaying of demons and monsters—harsh, self-torturing oaths are the very foundation of their advancement.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yet even the highest-grade cultivation and oaths still fall short of the average growth rate of ordinary Holy Knights.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After all, divine power is, in some sense, inexhaustible; allocating even a portion to a Holy Knight can accelerate their growth rapidly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Though I hate to admit it, this is truly the age of faith and deities.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Faith—Li En had none of it—but most people in this world possessed at least some, at minimum a basic reverence and longing for deities.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In essence, divine authority and royal authority run parallel; a territory might lack a tangible lord, but it almost always has its own deity of worship.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Priests—or so-called shepherds—are, ultimately, humans who shepherd “people” on behalf of deities.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Li En had his Holy Knight Order, yet lacked his own faith; in an era when ordinary people craved belief, this was like leaving his soft power defense wide open, inviting other churches to invade.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“I might trust the Good Deity to some degree, but I have zero trust in the Churches of the Good Deity.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Solving this problem is actually simple: just find a Good Deity to pledge allegiance to. No deity could refuse such a brilliant, rare “treasure” as a Classical Oath Holy Knight Order.\u003C\u002Fp>",735,"2026-06-19T21:45:42.084Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","fd8867c7160fed16277b87f11a24ffb1eac94a9cdb33040b6069e545471e84cc","the-dragon-of-a-thousand-faces-chapter-296","the-dragon-of-a-thousand-faces-chapter-294",362,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fthe-dragon-of-a-thousand-faces-cover.jpg"]