Start Praying!

Granted, Yan Fei wasn't wrong. Beyond alienating the very meaning of prayer, sowing the seeds of schism, and driving faith toward the realm of Stagnant Rot through pointless rat-racing... the existence of the fully automatic prayer machine undoubtedly also enhanced prayer efficiency, accelerating the exploitation and erosion wrought by the Holy God and the Order—and even increasing the Holy God's absorption rate! In the end, it was a hundred and twenty percent aiding and abetting the enemy. Yet he had overlooked one problem... when you want to feed resources to the enemy, is the enemy actually willing to let you? So-called prayer and faith was in truth a feeding process wherein the Holy God progressively devoured the selves of all believers. Through this process, the faithful steadily lost their humanity and desires, slowly turning into hollow husks beneath a steady, continuous siphon, while the ego and self-nature nurtured within countless souls merged into the Holy God, becoming the fuel for Metamorphosis. This dream of Huangliang was nothing less than an invisible, gluttonous feast... Since it tasted good, since he loved eating it, since he fancied it so much—then eat up! No fear that you won't get enough to eat; the only fear is that you can't stomach it all. Eating more did not necessarily mean growing better; more often than not, it led to indigestion... Unrestrained gorging would only catalyze an overgrown, bloated mountain of flesh unable to move. Ascension in particular demanded absolute purity, singular focus, an exclusive and solitary self. If one failed to digest promptly and absorb thoroughly, the more self-nature and ego gathered, the more it would sow the seeds of a fractured consciousness. Having seen the parish with his own eyes, Ji Jue was already certain: the so-called Holy God possessed hypocrisy beneath the splendor, fragility behind the might, and an ultimate limit concealed behind the facade of omnipotence! Praying through focused meditation was already the maximum effort to peel away contamination from consciousness and excise one's self-nature as purely as possible—and yet, the reaping still had to be conducted through such a slow, continuous trickle. The reason, besides maximizing yield by harvesting while allowing the crop to regrow, was likely that this was already the absolute limit it could endure while preserving the purity of its own self! This was no baseless conjecture, but a joint conclusion reached by Ji Jue and old fogey Bao after thoroughly understanding the workings of the Church of Chongguang through Yu Shu. Since it was formed from the aggregate of the multitude, it must inevitably be shackled by the multitude! After all, before this dream of Huangliang, an exceedingly concrete precedent had already existed in the waking world: the Holy Spirit of the Church of Chongguang! An entity formed from countless acts of goodness and righteous fruits, built upon the voluntary offerings of numerous Ascension predecessors, had never once actively collected any faith. On the contrary, the Church of Chongguang repeatedly preached both internally and externally: *Better to rely on oneself than pray to gods; better to love others than revere saints.* "The Holy Spirit is not a god." If one came for the sake of faith, one shouldn't have embarked upon this path in the first place! Beneath the sugar coating of this 'panacea' called faith lay an inseparable poison from the start. Once one took a sip, one couldn't stop drinking more and more, until eventually, there was no stopping at all. Whatever state that Holy God was currently in, it was utterly unable to attend to anything else. Otherwise, it would not have remained hidden for so long, and it would not have failed to respond even after Wen Wen repeatedly caused massive destruction. "To put it simply, Mr. Ji, you want to stuff him to death?" Yan Fei asked, half-comprehending. "Unfortunately, he can't be stuffed to death," Ji Jue said with a regretful shake of his head. "At most, he'll lose his self-nature and plunge into chaos. That said, before reaching that point, we can't rule out the possibility that he might cruelly cut off his own flesh—destroying a portion of believers beforehand to lower the efficiency of prayer and sacrifice." "Huh?" Yan Fei grew increasingly confused. "But can't... can't he just not eat?" "That's precisely the problem..." Bao Dachai grinned, letting out a cackling laugh. As a craftsman specialized in this field, he was even more certain than Ji Jue: "Things like faith and prayer rely on mutual consent, just like marriage. Once a relationship is forged, it's impossible for him to unilaterally refuse to pay his marital dues. Even if he doesn't want to eat, the sacrifices offered by the believers during prayer will still be shoved down his throat, stuffed in continuously until he pukes it back up! If he rejects their prayers, faith will be shaken in return... Once a marriage falls apart, you can't mend it just by using children as an excuse." "I don't get it, and now it sounds even more complicated!" Yan Fei flared up out of habit, feeling as if his intelligence was being insulted. This young fogey and old geezer were always spouting things he couldn't understand! Bao Dachai sighed in pity. "That's what being uneducated gets you." "Mm, indeed," Ji Jue agreed, nodding. "Communicating with someone who's never gone to school really is difficult." "So what if I've never gone to school?!" Yan Fei glared furiously. "Then let's make up for lost time," Ji Jue casually decided. "We've got nothing better to do anyway. Reviewing the old helps grasp the new. Shall we start with mathematics? Old fogey, you joining in?" "Me?" Bao Dachai shrugged. "I forgot all of that ages ago. Tale Alchemy doesn't bother with that sort of thing." "Oh, almost forgot, you're a relic of ancient alchemy." Ji Jue, an orthodox modern craftsman, waved a hand in disdain. "Fine then. I'll take math. Physics and chemistry don't quite apply here either, so we'll set up a machining class in the camp. You handle grammar and foreign languages?" "Fine by me," Bao Dachai agreed, nodding. "It matters to me!" The brat flew into a rage, panicked and breaking out in a cold sweat. "When did I ever say I wanted classes?!" "If you don't take classes, what will you do once you get out? Imitate street thugs and join a triad?" Walking ahead, Ji Jue glanced back at him. "Living on the streets without an education just gets you killed faster. Someone who can't even handle college entrance exams has zero hope of ever becoming a crime boss in this life. At the very least, you ought to be able to find a factory job turning screws, right? Otherwise, if you haven't made an ounce of progress after all these years, do you want your little brother to look down on you too?" "I..." Yan Fei's expression stiffened. Stunned, a mixture of rage and hope twisted across his features. "My brother... he..." "If we can snatch back his self from the Holy God, he might still recover," Ji Jue said nonchalantly as he walked ahead. "But there will inevitably be aftereffects. He'll probably need care, and he'll need money—perhaps a very large sum of money." Ji Jue counted on his fingers. "Mm, roughly an amount that you, as you are now, probably couldn't scrape together even by selling blood and organs. After all, a kid who's good for nothing except throwing tantrums and fighting won't fetch much of a price. You'll just have to develop some other strengths. Of course, if you're unwilling, I won't waste my time flattering myself..." "I'll study!" Yan Fei raised his voice, grabbing Ji Jue's sleeve. "I'll learn whatever it takes! Don't worry, Mr. Ji, I... I can take hardship!" Ji Jue turned back to look at that expectant face. Amid the fire in the boy's eyes, a gentle glimmer of light seemed to surface once more. At once, he smiled silently. Ruffling his hair, Ji Jue pressed the last piece of maltose into his hand. "Have some candy first," he said. "Kids ought to eat more candy." "Mr. Ji..." Yan Fei chewed on the candy, hesitating. "What is it?" "The candy doesn't taste good..." "That's fine." Ji Jue smiled warmly. "Soon enough, you'll think it tastes great." "Huh?" At the time, Yan Fei was blissfully oblivious. He chewed the candy, an innocent light still shining in his eyes. Utterly unaware that his truly bitter days... were yet to come. *** One week later, the light had vanished from Yan Fei's eyes. Countless tragic precedents teach us that when adults get bored, children become their playthings. Especially when both adults happened to be craftsmen, the ways to play multiplied exponentially. Trampling the mind, torturing the body, cramming the intellect... From spoon-feeding to corporal punishment, the little brat—whom even the stray dogs in camp used to avoid—now spent every day foaming at the mouth. One moment he plunged to his death in the deep pits of the Imperial tongue and Federation language, the next he drowned in the vast ocean of mathematics and principles of mechanical engineering. Unable to live, unable to die, even Limbo began to look like paradise to him. In the past, holding a hammer in hand, everyone looked like a nail. Now, with his head crammed full of formulas, he could calculate axial tension even while foaming at the mouth. Progress had certainly been made. It was just that the boy seemed somewhat dead inside. And just as the light died in the boy's eyes, the Hierophant's eyes were practically ablaze with light! His watery, wide eyes held only a thirst for faith and a burning yearning for performance quotas. "Brother! Brother..." He gripped Ji Jue's hands, weeping so hard he could barely speak. "I was wrong before, please don't hold it against me! That sacred seal... do you have more? Give me some more... please, just a few more!" In the span of just one week, the once aloof and unapproachable Hierophant was now clinging to Ji Jue's hands, snot and tears streaming down his face in ravenous hunger, twitching as though ants were crawling all over his body. In his bright, open heart at this moment, there was no room for himself—his mind was entirely consumed by thoughts of how to make others pray even more! After finding random test subjects to test the effects of the fully automatic prayer machine, he had tossed and turned all night in deep deliberation before beginning to distribute the sacred seals to the believers in his cathedral. Who would have thought that in less than a week, the faith quota that usually took an entire month was already nearly fulfilled! The results Ji Jue had supposedly 'boasted' of were now transformed into staggering reality right before his eyes. No longer could he ignore it or remain silent. Before this, even for a zealot, maintaining focused prayer for eight or nine hours a day was an extraordinary feat of efficiency. But ever since they put on Ji Jue's fully automatic prayer machine, they could fucking pray twenty-four hours a day! Walking, sitting, lying down, eating, drinking, shitting, and pissing—they were furiously praying, praying, praying nonstop! Calculated like this, over the course of a single year, they could scrape together at least an entire week's worth of redemption time in the Realm of Ultimate Bliss! That was nearly on par with a Hierophant's perks! When had anyone ever experienced such a terrifying rate?! How could they not work overtime, skipping meals and sleep, praying themselves to death?! Even with the Hierophant issuing repeated stern commands, he could only get them to take off the sacred seals while sleeping. Moreover, once anyone tasted the absurd stamina and massive throughput of the fully automatic prayer machine even once, there was simply no going back! In just a few short days. When users were deprived of the sacred seal and had to press their own hands together in prayer, it always felt dull and tasteless. Yearning for the copious rush they felt when the sacred seal was attached, their hearts itched worse and worse, longing more and more, craving the seal's return... To make matters worse, the sacred seals in their hands seemed to grow less and less effective. With ever more frequent use, they gradually lost their luster. As if worn out. So much so that the more they prayed, the more flavorless it felt, and whenever they remembered that brute, terrifying efficiency from the start, they could no longer suppress their craving... So, are there more? Give me some, give me some! "Rest easy, brother, there are plenty." Ji Jue's smile took on a profound meaning. "You never brought it up, so I thought you didn't want them. Given our relationship, all you had to do was ask, right? "Though... you do want them, don't you?"