Witch Special

Lin Zhenxi herself had never encountered the concept of faith, but that didn't stop her from understanding it. After all, among the mystical paths to strength, igniting the divine fire and believing in deification was a crucial avenue. Although Teacher Patchouli didn't follow that path, it didn't stop her from mentioning it during her lessons.

Patchouli follows the traditional path to becoming a powerful magician: exploring mysteries, increasing knowledge, mastering the rules, forging one's own power, and achieving transcendence. Lin Zhenxi follows the same path: all her efforts are directed towards exploring her own potential, constantly strengthening her foundation, and increasing her depth, thereby becoming even stronger. However, this is by no means the only path; beyond the pursuit of personal strength, there are many other paths that can lead to transcendence.

Faith is the most common method, has the lowest threshold, is the simplest and most brutal, has a relatively high upper limit, but also has many disadvantages.

After all, faith only requires you to deify yourself, have others worship you, and then master the method of gathering the power of faith. It doesn't even require your own strength. As long as someone is willing to believe in you, and you have mastered the method of gathering faith, it doesn't matter where the method comes from, and it doesn't matter whether you are an ordinary person or whether you have mastered extraordinary powers. You can use this path of gathering faith to strengthen yourself and even become a god.

It sounds wonderful, right? As long as there are many believers, it seems that all you need to do is become a big star and you can become a god. However, this method of becoming stronger has a huge drawback. The "characteristics" of this kind of belief are attributed, and the attributes are the subjective impressions of the believers who provide the power of faith on the believer.

Let's take celebrities as an example. While being a star certainly brings immense popularity and drives countless people crazy, fans often mix their own desires with this adoration. For example, if you're a teenage idol, you can't swear, smoke, drink, date, or even poop. The first few things are fine, but the last one is truly fatal.

Once you've decided to embark on the path of godhood through faith, you must refine your image. You must clearly define your image among believers, eliminating all factors that are detrimental to you and retaining only those that are beneficial. This is much more difficult than gathering faith. Most people who choose the path of godhood through faith fail here, as their faith becomes mingled with other concepts, causing their own power attributes to become distorted.

Moreover, faith in becoming a god relies on external forces after all. That force is not obtained through hard practice. In the process of the power of faith flowing into the body, the body and the power of faith will rub and collide with each other, and will gradually be worn away, making the body fragile.

As the power of faith grows stronger and the body weakens, those who pursue the path of godhood through faith ultimately experience a calamity known as the Five Decays of the Celestial Being. This is the dwindling flesh, unable to contain the ever-growing soul, yet bound by its own frail flesh, unable to break free. At the same time, the inherent qualities of faith constantly attempt to merge with the soul, distorting the person's will and making it untrue.

As the soul is invaded by the concepts of faith, the god of faith becomes utterly weakened, filthy, disheveled, dull, foolish, and bewildered, becoming entangled in a variety of negative states. Only by rediscovering selfhood amidst the tribulations of the Five Decays can it break free from the constraints of the flesh and become a true god of faith. A clear priesthood and a clear faith are the most effective weapons for a god of faith to overcome this life-or-death hurdle of the Five Decays.

In addition to the five decays of celestial beings and the confusion of beliefs, the problem with believing in the God is that the power of faith is a consumable and non-renewable item. Although the power of faith can be stored in advance, the recovery of the power of faith has nothing to do with the God of faith himself, but only with the number of believers and the piety of their prayers. Therefore, once encountering a strong enemy, the power of faith is exhausted and cannot be quickly restored through deep meditation like magic power.

This led to almost all deities becoming collectors and hoarders, frantically amassing faith and then storing it away, fearing it wouldn't be enough when needed. This process often led to conflicts of faith, even brutal wars of faith.

After all, compared to other transcendental paths, becoming a god through faith is quite common due to its relatively low barrier to entry. Faith is often linked to religion, and religions are generally exclusive in their quest for followers. Through this chain of causal logic, wars between different faiths in the struggle for followers are almost inevitable. History has precisely confirmed this point.

In addition to becoming a god through faith, there are of course several extraordinary paths that are not ordinary, but since I haven't encountered them yet, I won't give examples here.

Now, back to the B-rank weapon, the "Company" distributed the Faith Artifact for free. According to its own description, the subject of faith absorption has changed from a human to a Faith Artifact. The Faith Artifact filters the absorbed faith, removing any impurities from its properties, and then stores the pure power of faith within it for the special agent to use.

A... um, a filter? A storage device? Anyway, it basically bypasses the biggest drawback of the path to godhood through faith. After all, the products of the "company" must be high-quality. If the description says it can filter impurities from the characteristics, then it must be able to do so.

But doing so basically limits the options for the special envoys to move forward. They can only choose to become gods through faith. After all, even the most critical faith filter is directly in their faces. It would be unjust if they really don't take the path of collecting faith.

However, Lin Zhenxi really looked down on this. She had her own teachers and admirers. Teacher Patchouli was much better than those people who believed in God, and her personality was much better than that of the God-believers.

After all, this kind of religious artifact with filtering function is a special supply of the "company". Those indigenous religious gods do not have such convenient things. As a result, the religious gods are often eroded by their beliefs in the process of becoming gods. Distorted personality is the mildest symptom. More serious ones may not even be able to maintain their self and directly become a totem-like thing, completely losing their emotions as a separate individual.

Lin Zhenxi's choice, which is the path shown to her by Teacher Patchouli, is to attribute all the great power to herself, use her own power to control the rules, and then influence the entire world. Not only is it greater than the path of believing in becoming a god in terms of scale, but the future prospects are also infinitely broad.

On the other hand, those who believe in God only concentrate their power in certain specific areas. Without their own expertise, the control of the outside world by believers in God will drop sharply, just like a child holding a gun but not knowing how to open the safety. He obviously holds enormous power, but has no way to effectively control it. He can only swing it back and forth like a wooden stick, trying to defeat the opponent with his brute force.

All in all, Lin Zhenxi doesn't think much of the path that the "company" offers the special envoys to continue on. She has better options.

However, not everyone is as lucky as Lin Zhenxi. Lin Zhenxi was able to find a teacher who could guide her throughout her life, but others don't have this blessing. When one's strength reaches a certain level, one inevitably faces the choice of the next path. Becoming a god through faith, coupled with the filter of faith, is a smooth path that can lead to a long journey.

Furthermore, building one's own faith, besides demonstrating one's divine majesty, also requires a certain level of reward from believers. Whether materially or spiritually, to become a god of faith, one cannot remain high and mighty, slaughtering believers like pigs, dogs, cattle, or sheep, killing a few at random for fun.

Did you see anything?

The attitude towards believers can be broadly extended to the attitude towards the natives of the other world. After all, the main world would never allow special envoys to wield religious artifacts to spread their own beliefs, and the "company" would never allow special envoys to do such a thing. Therefore, it is obvious where the power of faith comes from: it can only be exerted on the natives of the other world.

Don't forget that the special envoys are divided into two factions in their attitude towards the natives of the other world, the conqueror faction and the integration faction. Lin Zhenxi himself is an integration faction. Every time he arrives in a new world, the first thing he has to do is to understand the basic situation of that world, and then arrange a reasonable identity for himself that will not arouse suspicion from the natives of the other world.

As for the conquerors, they didn't consider the natives of the other world as human beings. They acted recklessly, leaving corpses everywhere they went. Now that the "company" has thrown a path to godhood through faith, if the conquerors continue their previous ways, only lunatics would offer them devout faith. They would be terrified.

Of course, fear can also be considered a concept for godhood, and it's even quite powerful, like the God of Fear. But as mentioned earlier, belief in a god is exclusive; there can't be two gods with the same priesthood. If two gods with the same priesthood existed in the same world, they would inevitably fight to determine who was legitimate.

Therefore, if the Conquerors still didn't change their fearful ways, once they embarked on the path of faith and godhood, their priesthoods would inevitably clash. Even if they didn't meet in the other world, they would inevitably clash once they returned to the main world. If this happened, the Conquerors, who were growing and even becoming the mainstream, would likely soon fall apart due to the internal conflicts that erupted.

Hiss, if the logic is really like this, then the "company"'s trick of driving away the wolf and swallowing the tiger is really brilliant!