I fabricated myths to guide the revival of spiritual energy.

A strong stench of blood permeated the dilapidated temple.

The three high-ranking heretical inquisitors were completely crushed into a blood mist floating in the air by that terrifying dark gold pressure, leaving not even a trace behind.

Cold rain lashed down from the broken dome. In the center of the altar, Eve lay collapsed on the cold stone slab, covered in blood. The iron thorns that bound her had turned to dust, but blood still seeped from her broken body.

She gasped for breath, the intense pain blurring her vision. Directly in front of her, the indigenous statue representing their ancient faith had crumbled into rubble. And in the very center of the ruins, a "fragment of lost divinity" floated, radiating a deep, dark golden light.

That cold and majestic voice, seemingly from another dimension, still echoed deep within her soul.

"If you want to live, kneel down."

Eve stared intently at the dark golden light, clenching her bloodshot teeth.

She was once the last royal descendant of this small border kingdom, and also the lowest-ranking priestess in this abandoned temple. From childhood to adulthood, she prayed to the gods every day, offering her most devout faith and purest sacrifices.

But what did the gods give her in return?

The iron cavalry of the rival parish trampled her country, slaughtered her relatives, and enslaved her people. The gods she worshipped, faced with the oppression of the rival pantheon, unhesitatingly abandoned this barren parish, leaving her to be bound like livestock to the enemy's altar, to be skinned alive.

Gods need the flesh and blood of mortals, but they never listen to the cries of the weak.

Therefore, when Eve, with her broken ribs, swayed and knelt on the altar, there was no fervor or piety in her eyes that a believer should have when facing a miracle.

She knelt down simply because she wanted to live. It was that deep-seated hatred that made her crave the power to drag those false gods down from their thrones.

This was not the beginning of faith, but a soul-for-soul exchange made without reservation in a desperate situation.

"I'll kneel."

Eve pressed her blood-stained forehead heavily against the cold altar slab, her voice hoarse like that of a desperate lone wolf: "As long as I can live... as long as I can kill them!"

Just as her forehead touched the ground, the boundary marker fragment disguised as a lost deity emitted a low, resonant sound.

Under the cover of dark golden light, the Sub-Heavenly Dao Network, like billions of invisible nano-blades, ruthlessly pierced into the underlying rules of the Pantheon of Faith, following the causal lines created when Eve knelt.

God names, religious affiliations, temple registrations, sacrificial contracts, and faith affiliations... these underlying rules that imprison the souls of all beings in the pantheon are laid bare under the analysis of the secondary Heavenly Dao Network.

Immediately afterwards, a bright, dark golden light swept across Eve's entire body like ripples on water, instantly accomplishing three things.

First, the contract was severed. The invisible "skinning and sacrifice contract" that bound Eve's soul to the hostile higher god was brutally severed by the dark golden light, like cutting dry grass.

Second, flesh and blood were rebuilt. Pure life principles were infused into Eve's dying body. Her broken bones crackled and snapped back together, and the exposed flesh grew and healed at a visible speed, even restoring an unnatural rosy glow to her pale cheeks.

Third, the anchor point was established. The dark golden light finally converged on the back of Eve's left hand, like a branding iron, deeply imprinting an ancient and complex "Dao Lord Divine Rune".

This divine rune signifies that Eve has officially become the first native anchor point of Earth's civilization in the pantheon of beliefs.

The fragment of divinity revealed nothing about "Earth," "Second Heavenly Dao," or "Gu Qing." According to the rules of this world, it perfectly represented the resurgence of an ancient, lost "new god" who did not belong to the existing pantheon.

Eve looked at her perfectly healed body and the oppressive divine mark on the back of her hand, and for the first time, a flame called ambition ignited in her eyes.

In a corner of the temple ruins, a dozen or so prisoners of war and slaves, who had also been waiting to be sacrificed, were huddled together.

They witnessed the Inquisitor turn into a bloody mist and Eve's rebirth. As the dark golden light swept across, the slave brands on their necks, representing sacrifices awaiting slaughter, shattered and peeled away.

The dozen or so mortals looked at each other in bewilderment. They did not immediately succumb to fanatical faith; their instincts, long suppressed by divine authority, instilled in them extreme fear and doubt.

But after the fear came the ecstasy of discovering that he had truly escaped the torture of being skinned alive and was genuinely alive.

Someone started it, and an old man who had lost an arm knelt down, trembling. Then, a second slave, a third villager... a dozen or so desperate mortals, for the sake of survival and for the mercy that spared their lives, knelt down one after another in the dilapidated temple.

There was no grand scene of people worshipping, nor the spectacular sight of faith transforming into the sea.

But the moment these dozen or so people knelt down, a faint, mixed, yet pure, dark gold power representing the will to survive and a sense of dependence slowly floated out from above their heads and merged into the lost divine fragment.

This is the first crack torn open in the pantheon of religious beliefs. An indigenous faith belonging to Earth's civilization has been officially born!

However, the old theocracy reacted faster than expected.

The thunderous sound of hooves tore through the rain-soaked wasteland. A pilgrimage team from a rival parish stationed nearby, drawn by the commotion of the statue's collapse, quickly surrounded the dilapidated temple.

The group was led by a high-ranking priest in a platinum robe, followed by eight fully armed Templar Knights who radiated divine grace.

When the priest stepped into the temple and saw the bloodstains belonging to the judges scattered on the ground, the collapsed statue of the chief god, and Eve with dark gold divine patterns shimmering on the back of her hand, his face instantly turned ashen.

"How dare you desecrate the image of the chief god and steal the souls of the sacrifices!" The priest roared furiously, raising his platinum staff. "This is a wild god attempting to usurp the throne! A false god on the verge of resurgence! In the name of the chief god, slaughter all blasphemers and return their souls to the parish!"

The Templars drew their broadswords, the blades blazing with the holy fire of judgment, and strode toward the altar.

The priest closed his eyes and began chanting a divine spell. He attempted to use the rules of the pantheon, in the name of opposing higher gods, to forcibly reclaim the "faith" and "right to pray" of the slaves in the corners.

As he chanted, the dozen or so slaves who had just knelt suddenly let out piercing screams. Illusory flames rekindled at the shattered slave marks on their bodies, as the covenant of the old gods was forcibly tearing at their souls, trying to relabel them as livestock.

This is the cruelest underlying rule in the pantheon: gods not only fight for the flesh and blood of believers, but also constantly vie for the right to possess their souls.

Eve did not back down in the face of the approaching knights and the agonizing cries of the believers.

She knew no combat skills, nor any profound divine arts. But at this moment, a cold and immense pulling force emanated from the dark gold divine runes on the back of her hand.

Eve abruptly raised her head, her eyes, which had once only held tears, now filled with icy killing intent. She raised her left hand, adorned with divine markings, and pointed it directly at the priest who was chanting.

Guided by the dark gold divine runes, Eve spoke in a hoarse yet exceptionally firm voice a sentence that shook the entire temple:

"In the name of the Lord of the Way, the covenant of sacrifice is severed."

Om-!

As Eve spoke, the fragment of the pseudo-godhood erupted with a dazzling ripple of rules. This was the first localized "divine art" triggered by the Sub-Heavenly Dao Network in this world—the erasure of underlying authority!

The moment the ripples swept across, the dazzling divine armor adorning the eight Templar Knights extinguished instantly, like light bulbs whose power had been cut. The flames of judgment on their blades also vanished in a wisp of smoke.

Their divine power was instantly drained, turning them into ordinary people wearing heavy iron canisters, who froze in terror.

The high-ranking priest met an even more tragic end.

His attempt to forcibly seize control of the soul was severed at its source in the most brutal way. Divine backlash!

"No--!"

The priest stared in horror, spitting out a mouthful of blood. The divine fire of judgment, which was supposed to descend upon the slave, lost its target and instead exploded violently within his own magical energy circuit.

Grayish-white flames of retribution erupted from his seven orifices. He writhed and howled in agony before several Templar Knights who had lost their divine favor, and was ultimately burned alive to a charred corpse.

The high and mighty priest is dead.

Eve stood quietly on the altar, looking at the charred remains and at the Templar Knights who were usually so arrogant but now trembled with fear at the loss of divine favor.

She was deeply shocked, like never before.

It turns out that even the so-called unshakeable gods, those whose glory must be offered with one's life, can have their brilliance extinguished. It turns out that high-ranking priests, after losing divine favor, cry out with the same pitiful sorrow as those skinned slaves.

Fear receded from Eve's heart like a tide, replaced by the thrill of revenge and the ambition to overthrow everything.

She picked up the skinning dagger that belonged to the heretic inquisitor from the ground, and walked step by step down from the altar toward the Templar Knights who were already terrified.

Amidst screams of agony as the blade fell, Eve underwent a bloody transformation from a "sacrifice" awaiting slaughter to the "First Priestess," a new legendary god.

……

At the same time.

Beyond the endless dimensions lies the Kunlun Heavenly Palace.

Gu Qing sat upright on the throne of the secondary Heavenly Dao, while a vast stream of dark gold data rapidly scrolled before his eyes. This was the first batch of detailed rule samples transmitted back after the "pseudo-godhead" completed its first faith plunder in the Realm of Gods.

Looking at these data, Gu Qing's lips curled into a cold smile.

Just as he expected. The core deterrent of the Pantheon is not the individual combat strength of those high-ranking native gods. The true core of their world rule is that incredibly rigorous "faith contract system".

Clerical registration, temple registration, and the imprint of the soul. These three locks have turned mortals into the private property of the gods generation after generation.

To conquer this world, sending a large army directly into the realm to forcibly slay the gods would only provoke a frenzied backlash from all the pantheons in the pantheon, who would be protecting their "private property."

Once the foundation of faith is drained, those gods who hang high in the divine kingdom are nothing more than a bunch of withered bones that have lost their energy.

"Continue to lie low."

Gu Qing did not open the star gate, nor did he mobilize a single soldier. He simply issued a highly concise command to the pseudo-godhead through the secondary Heavenly Dao network:

"Erect a temple first."

Without declaring war or showing their face, like the most efficient computer virus, they will quietly establish the first root node of Earth's civilization within this decaying network of beliefs.

……

The realm of pantheon worship, a desolate borderland.

The carnage in the ruined temple has ended. On the ruins of the collapsed main statue, the lost fragment of divinity has been completely integrated into the temple's stone walls.

A massive, dark gold divine rune, radiating a dim glow, slowly emerged on the wall, replacing all the old divine emblems.

Eve tossed aside the dulled dagger in her hand and wiped the blood from her face with a rag. She turned around and stood beneath the dark gold divine runes, before the dilapidated gate of the temple.

Behind her stood a dozen or so survivors, ragged but with their backs finally straight. Their eyes, filled with awe and blind obedience, looked at Eve. For this young priestess had just demonstrated to them the power of their new god.

The wind on the wasteland was still cold and desolate, but the abandoned temple had a new master.

At the same moment Eve erected the first unique temple.

Thousands of miles away from the border wilderness, inside a magnificent temple deep within a hostile diocese.

Countless paladins and high-ranking archbishops clad in golden armor knelt on the ground, performing a grand prayer ceremony. At the highest point of the hall stood a colossal statue, hundreds of feet tall, cast from pure, radiant divine gold, representing the supreme deity.

Sudden.

click.

A faint, yet chillingly sharp sound rang out abruptly in the deathly silent hall.

On the supreme god statue that symbolized supreme divine authority and was indestructible, a fine crack actually began to spread from the base!

All the archbishops looked up in horror, their faces filled with disbelief.

The next second, a blinding divine light erupted from within the statue, and a majestic, grand, yet extremely angry and cold divine edict resounded throughout the magnificent hall:

"There are false gods..."

"They stole my lamb."