The Path to Lordship Begins in the North

Seraphim, the saint of dreams with a lamp, is now sleeping with her believers in the newly built church.

This is the first church built by Lantern Dream in the capital. It is small in scale and in a remote location. It is simply a large house with little decoration built in a corner of the original outer city.

But for the Lantern Dream, this was the first stronghold to be born in the light.

Although the collaboration with the central papacy in the capital was fraught with difficulties, the Lantern Dreamland finally managed to establish itself in the capital thanks to the coordination of the Northern Church.

Because it is a legitimate church and its faith is also in the goddess, under the strategy of giving eggs to believers taught by Linde, many novice believers in the goddess church also joined the Lantern Dream Church with the spirit of "since we're already here," becoming novice believers in the Lantern Dream Church sect.

The current Church of the Goddess is divided into three factions: the Central Church, led by Lilith, which worships the goddess in the traditional sense; the Northern Church, led by Flora and Isa, which, in addition to worshipping the goddess, also internally worships Lind; and the Lantern Dreams, which, despite modifications, still hold somewhat extreme beliefs.

Currently, there is no fundamental conflict between the three factions because the goddess has awakened and all three factions have received divine pronouncements. Under these circumstances, regardless of how the three factions view each other, they can only maintain a peaceful coexistence.

The three factions today have a clear division of labor: the Northern Church is directly responsible to Lind, the Central Vatican is responsible for secular missionary work and administration, while the Lantern Dream is more research-oriented.

Of course, the fact that Lantern Dream has changed its reputation from a cult to a genuine one is not simply because it relies on faith and giving away eggs. Lantern Dream uses brain servant technology to help many people overcome psychological trauma, and most importantly, it is free.

"Thank you so much, Your Excellency."

A middle-aged man dressed as a worker bowed to Seraphim with a stiff, newly learned gesture, while thanking him.

"Thanks to you, my son's hysteria was cured. I really don't know how to thank you enough."

Seraphim, still half-asleep, said, "It's alright. You can come to church to pray on prayer days whenever you have time."

Although it's no longer possible to burn a person's brain to build a dream world like before, the number of believers has increased, and quantitative changes have led to qualitative changes. While the research is progressing in an orderly manner, the Lantern Dream has surplus computing power to help people around the church solve some spiritual problems.

Many nobles, upon hearing this, even came to the church in the Lantern Dreamland to take a nap.

After seeing off the last group of casual believers, Seraphim led his followers into the dream world.

This public dream is now taking shape, with many believers working hard to build it up so that all its parameters are closer to reality, so that various experiments can be conducted within it in the future.

This was unimaginable for the Seraphim of the past. In the past, the public dream could only rely on the power of the goddess. A few people would huddle together in a small room, and even their own images could only be represented by the simplest black shadows in order to save computing power.

But now, this dream is so vivid that it's hard to tell whether it's a dream or reality.

Indeed, just as the governor said, the cult model, which is destined to only develop on a small scale, is unlikely to support systematic research.

However, the dream before him was far from enough for Seraphim, because Seraphim's goal now was the dream shared by all mankind, the legendary deep dream, or the collective unconscious of mankind.

In the church of the public dream, Bernice suddenly awoke. Even in the dream, Bernice could still feel her heart pounding, as if she had just returned from the brink of death.

"Bernice, how are you feeling? Have you entered the deeper dream realm?"

Upon seeing Bernice awaken, Seraphim in the dream immediately led his followers to surround her.

In order to enter the deep dream realm, Bernice needs to dream within a dream, which is actually quite dangerous. If she is not careful, she will fall into the deep dream realm and never wake up again. Even with the goddess's oracle lantern as an aid, the lantern dream still loses some of its loyal followers.

"My lord...am I still dreaming?"

"Yes, you have returned to the shallow dream realm."

Hearing Seraphim say this, Bernice looked at the oracle lantern by her bedside and breathed a sigh of relief; she had indeed returned.

"Your Holiness..."

Bernice, stroking her own heartbeat in the public dream, said, "I see the past, the present, and the future."

"I saw my birth, my experiences, even my death, and countless versions of myself."

......

A blackboard appeared in Linde's study, now covered with dense information. Linde erased some of it and wrote four large characters on the erased areas: Alaya-vijnana.

But after careful consideration, Linde erased those four words and rewrote the word "Ocean of Consciousness" in the language of this world.

After all, this was just a religious concept from a previous life, but now the ocean of consciousness is a real place that can be explored, and its nature cannot be exactly the same.

Linde still hoped to summarize the ocean of consciousness in something as comprehensible as possible, rather than in abstruse religious concepts.

After receiving help from 550C, Lin De discovered that this collective unconscious was more dangerous than he had imagined. According to some accounts from his previous life, this collective unconscious contained all of humanity's life experiences and karmic traces from ancient times to the present, and even included the human consciousness gene pool. If even a small part of the data in this ocean of consciousness were modified, it would have a huge impact on humanity in reality.

Some long-standing human habits, and even prohibitions, will be modified because of this.

It's no wonder that both the Tower and 550C are so eager to eliminate the time bomb in the ocean of consciousness.

At that moment, the familiar synthesized voice of 550C echoed in Lind's mind once again: "Citizen, are you sure you want to open this Pandora's box?"

"This is not the Pandora's box I wanted to open."

Lind put down the chalk, wiped his hands, and said, "The problem cannot be solved without opening this Pandora's box."

"What's more, someone has already opened Pandora's box."

Lind turned his gaze toward Anjou's location. Of course, it wasn't Anjou who opened the Pandora's Box, but the former empire. Lind had to prepare for the worst.

Linde then handed the documents on the table and the already set-up Grail terminal to Lucanos, who was in the shadows: "Deliver them to Saint Seraphim of the Lantern Dream."

Just as Lucanos was about to get up and leave, Lind suddenly asked, "Lucanos, how far has the research on the Old Empire progressed?"

Lucanus looked at the information Lind had written on the blackboard, wiped his sweat, and said, "My king, your research has gone a bit too far."