Safe City Ch.199

Chapter 199: Gods, Demons, and Monsters

It could work like this, too?

Cheng Qisheng genuinely hadn’t expected this.

There were two things she hadn’t expected.

First, she focused on sensing her mental power and discovered that a noticeable chunk of it was missing.

It felt… as though she had followed the channel of the [Eyes] and helped one of her believers by acting as their hired muscle.

— I can do that, too?

Even the great Creator God of Blue Sea was surprised.

The process was similar to the procedure for consulting the Truth Stone for answers. When passing through a channel, one had to leave behind a portion of one’s mental power as a toll.

The difference was that the channel Cheng Qisheng used to send her power down to Fallen Heaven Star had been built by her herself, so the toll wasn’t as steep.

If her reserves of mental power amounted to roughly a hundred million, then killing that wolf demon just now had probably cost her around a hundred thousand.

And that was because she hadn’t realized what she was doing, so she hadn’t controlled the amount very well.

Now that she had some experience, Cheng Qisheng lowered her head and looked at her hands.

She estimated that the wolf demon had only had a combat strength of thirty to fifty thousand. Sending down sixty thousand units of mental power would have been enough to kill it instantly all the same.

— How fascinating.

So she really could fight on behalf of her believers. It just consumed her own mental power.

Cheng Qisheng thought of the old-school fantasy dramas she had watched as a child. Wasn’t this exactly how the gods were summoned to possess someone in those shows?

Whoa~

The great universe really was full of wonders. This was kind of fun.

But there was something even more astonishing.

Those two new believers on Fallen Heaven Star hadn’t even been able to perceive the existence of the Creator God of Blue Sea after becoming her believers.

Yet, just like with her ordinary believers, she could still directly inspect their hazy memories.

After examining their memories, Cheng Qisheng confirmed once again that, from these two believers’ perspectives, the deity they currently worshipped was the “Earth God.”

— My believer gains believers of his own, and those believers directly become my believers?

What kind of downline-recruitment system for believers was this?

Although it had caught her completely off guard, as the one benefiting from this arrangement, Cheng Qisheng was quite happy to accept the outcome.

Whether it was personally stepping in to fight on behalf of her believers or recruiting more believers through them, either way, it was good news for Blue Sea!

Blue Sea’s primary objective in descending upon Fallen Heaven Star was to acquire more land.

If it could also gain a large number of believers in the process, that would be even better.

Other Safe Cities might have to consider whether adding too many residents would disrupt the existing balance within their territory.

But the great Creator God of Blue Sea had absolutely nothing to worry about on that front.

Blue Sea might be getting rather cramped again at the moment, but if all the new residents were believers, the overcrowding would only be temporary. The more believers there were, the more prosperous Blue Sea would become.

Cheng Qisheng was in an excellent mood. Even if each believer could bring back only two “downlines,” Blue Sea had hundreds of millions of people. If each person recruited two more, the Safe City could still gain nearly a billion new believers.

— Assuming Fallen Heaven Star actually had that many people, of course.

It probably did. This planet was absurdly huge.

Now that she had two believers on Fallen Heaven Star, Cheng Qisheng could directly obtain firsthand information about the planet from the hazy recollections of their life experiences.

First of all, just as she had previously suspected, the mechanism of faith on Fallen Heaven Star was completely different from Cheng Qisheng’s own chain of faith.

Cheng Qisheng’s chain of faith was more like a form of mental influence.

To use an analogy, imagine someone becoming aware of the existence of the great Creator God of Blue Sea and deciding to devote their entire life to serving the deity. That would be equivalent to opening the door to their mind for Cheng Qisheng and submitting a job application to the Creator God of Blue Sea.

Only after Cheng Qisheng received the application could the next step of the onboarding process begin: stamping the new believer.

The stamp read: Blue Sea Creator God Co., Ltd.

All employees of this company held their positions for life. There was no such thing as resigning. In fact, if both parents were believers, their child would automatically become an employee from the moment they were born.

As the boss, Cheng Qisheng was happy when the company gained more employees, but having fewer made little difference to her.

The business of faith on Fallen Heaven Star, on the other hand, was more like crowdfunding.

The more believers a deity had, the stronger it became.

But if its existing believers disappeared, the deity would weaken along with them. If it was forgotten by people, it could even fall from godhood entirely.

Moreover, Fallen Heaven Star had always operated according to its own set of rules. There were requirements one had to meet in order to become a god.

After ascending to godhood, a deity was obligated to fulfill the duties of its position. Otherwise, if it accepted offerings of incense and faith without doing its job, Heavenly Retribution would descend.

— And this was real Heavenly Retribution, the kind where lightning came crashing straight down from the sky.

Some divine lineages were sustained by the power of people’s wishes from the very beginning. For example, a certain region might have a long-standing legend about the Heavenly Willow Goddess, a deity who specifically protected children. If the legend was passed down for long enough, a real Heavenly Willow Goddess would eventually come into existence.

Other divine lineages were established through imperial investiture. Yes, in this world, the imperial court really did possess a dragon vein, the emperor really did possess imperial dragon qi, and officials were generally protected by an aura of official qi. Even temples built by the imperial court itself were recognized by the Heavenly Dao.

However, divinities established through imperial investiture had a weakness: if the dynasty fell, they would perish along with it.

Though that wasn’t necessarily always the case.

Several thousand years ago, during one of Fallen Heaven Star’s dynasties, there had been an exceptionally virtuous official who devoted himself wholeheartedly to assisting the ruler and caring for the common people. After he died in his old age, the reigning emperor posthumously appointed him as the City God of the capital.

While holding his position, this City God worked just as diligently as he had when he was alive. He trained troops of the dead, led them on nightly patrols, and occasionally punished evil and promoted good. For a time, the capital became much safer, earning him even greater reverence from the people.

Later, the dynasty collapsed. Several dynasties rose and fell after that, until one emperor of a later era found himself unable to identify a suitable candidate for divine investiture.

He then thought of that highly esteemed City God from several dynasties earlier.

He ordered that the man be officially invested as a deity once again. When the common people heard the news, they went to burn incense and pay their respects at the newly built City God Temple.

And then, the City God from several dynasties ago really did return.

He continued to carry out his duties diligently, caring for the people and maintaining peace and stability in the capital. The dynasties that followed eventually discovered that this deity genuinely loved doing his job. It didn’t matter who sat on the throne—he would always be a good and loyal official.

As a result, whenever a dynasty changed hands, the new emperor would issue an imperial decree appointing this same deity as the City God as soon as he ascended the throne.

After all, the imperial court and the divine order weren’t in a superior-subordinate relationship. It was more like an emperor recommending a talented individual for a position at another, much larger institution with better benefits than his own organization.

Sure, this talented individual had once worked for the emperor, and the emperor had even personally recommended him for the new position. But at most, that meant there was still a little goodwill between them, sustained by the incense and offerings the emperor had once provided. If the individual changed employers and genuinely refused to cooperate with his former boss, there wasn’t much the emperor could do about it.

That was why having a City God who was willing to do his job properly and cooperate with the imperial court was so important. Even under the current dynasty, the City God of the capital was still that very same deity.

There were other types of divine lineages as well. Some people had earned considerable renown during their lifetimes. After they died, the common people, grateful for their character and deeds, would build temples and erect memorial steles in their honor. Once the collective power of the people’s wishes became strong enough, the deceased could transform from a ghost into a deity.

Yes, in this world, energy could be converted into various forms, so people really did retain souls after death. And as long as a soul accumulated enough energy, it could even regain a physical body.

The advantage of this type of divinity was that as long as someone believed in them, they could continue to exist indefinitely.

The downside was that these deities often had to establish their own systems. They had neither the natural affiliation with the imperial court enjoyed by officially invested deities nor the proof of legitimacy possessed by deities born naturally from the world.

As a result, when they were still weak, they either had to attach themselves to one of the other two systems or cultivate their power until they became overwhelmingly strong. At that point, naturally, everyone who encountered them would greet them with a smile.

Not every soul could become a deity. If someone died while experiencing extremely intense emotions or harboring some deep-seated obsession, their soul could also continue wandering the mortal world without dissipating.

Some of these souls had already lost their memories and reason, acting purely on instinct. Others still remembered who they were. Those who had grudges might seek revenge on their enemies, while those who retained more of their sanity might embark on the path of ghost cultivation.

Most, however, became wandering ghosts, drifting aimlessly through the world until they randomly selected some unfortunate soul to scare half to death.

Ordinary people on Fallen Heaven Star didn’t know much about these things. At best, they knew a little.

Cheng Qisheng could learn about them from her new believers’ memories because one of the two new believers was the caretaker of the local Earth God Temple.

This temple caretaker had another identity as well: he was the clan head of the Luo clan in Xiaoluo Village. On top of that, his daughter worked as a low-ranking government functionary in the county seat, so Clan Head Luo knew quite a few inside details about the divine order.

To ordinary people like them, danger lurked everywhere. Even if they stayed peacefully in their own village, they could still encounter demons, monsters, and ghosts without warning.

The imperial court would intervene, too. But for remote little villages like theirs, there was the question of whether anyone could even escape to send a report. And even if they succeeded, the journey was long. By the time the government officials arrived, the entire village might already have been wiped out.

As for worshipping other deities, that was a matter of luck. From the common people’s perspective, some gods would protect them while others wouldn’t. It all depended on fortune.

That was why most villages worshipped a deity of their own.

Small villages, in particular, mostly worshipped Earth Gods, because Earth God temples were the smallest of all. A shrine that came only up to an adult’s calf was already considered a perfectly adequate Earth God Temple.

If a village had once produced a widely respected, virtuous sage whose good character was recognized by everyone, the villagers would sculpt a clay statue modeled after that person, hoping they would continue protecting the village even after death.

But some small villages were rather unremarkable. They had produced no great figures, nor any exceptionally virtuous sages praised by everyone. In such cases, the villagers had no choice but to invent a deity from scratch.

The statue that Wu Mingfeng had descended into, for example, was an original Earth God created entirely from the imagination of the people of Xiaoluo Village.

They had come up with a story about someone called Lord Ming. The general idea was that Lord Ming had once been a good man whose main occupation was traveling from place to place selling goods.

One day, Lord Ming went to the county seat to sell his wares, expecting to return five days later. On the third day, a great fire broke out in the village. Since the houses were made of thatched straw, they caught fire almost instantly.

Suddenly, Lord Ming returned. In the middle of the night, he ran around waking the villagers and rescuing people by every means available.

By the following morning, everyone in the village had survived.

Some people wanted to thank Lord Ming, but they couldn’t find him anywhere.

Two days later, villagers who had gone out with Lord Ming returned carrying his coffin. Only then did everyone learn that Lord Ming had died the day before the fire. The one who had returned to save his fellow villagers had been Lord Ming’s soul.

To bring this story to life, the people of Xiaoluo Village had even pooled their money to hire a storyteller. Their main goal was to obtain an upright, benevolent Earth God who would willingly save people.

When a divine statue received offerings of incense and worship from people over many years, it could gradually nurture a deity into existence. Exactly how long this took, however, was also a matter of luck.

Some villages were relatively prosperous. In those places, minor demons from the mountains might secretly impersonate the local deity just to mooch off the offerings and incense.

Clan Head Luo had initially hoped that a minor demon would come along and take over the role.

After all, once a minor demon accepted incense offerings, it formed a karmic bond with the villagers who worshipped it. As a result, after consuming their offerings, such demons would generally do a few things for the villagers in return.

For example, they might help clear blockages from the irrigation ditches in the middle of the night. If someone fell ill and prayed for good health, the demon might go into the mountains, fetch some medicinal herbs in its mouth, and leave them at the sick person’s doorstep.

When a ferocious demon came to the village… the minor demon would flee as fast as its legs could carry it, but it would at least notify the surrounding villages, allowing them to report the incident to the authorities.

For Xiaoluo Village, having a minor demon watching over them was still better than having nothing at all.

Unfortunately, Xiaoluo Village was poor.

Minor demons had aspirations of their own, too. None of them wanted to come to such a poor, remote little village.

The statue of the Earth God in Xiaoluo Village had been erected thirty years ago. Under the temple caretaker’s organization, the villagers regularly came to worship and make offerings. Yet after thirty years, all their efforts had only managed to nurture a tiny spark of spiritual awareness within the statue.

Until today, when a wolf demon descended from the mountains and brazenly attacked the village.

It discovered the faint spiritual awareness that had spontaneously formed within the Earth God statue, nurtured by the accumulated power of the villagers’ prayers. This was a wonderful thing! Without the slightest hesitation, it swallowed that tiny spark of spiritual awareness in one gulp.

Then, with its spiritual awareness completely gone, the statue became like an empty room—and Old Eighth moved in.

Clan Head Luo knew nothing about what had really happened. He couldn’t see the Evil Eye hovering above the statue’s head, either. He simply believed that thirty years of devoted worship had finally borne fruit.

Their Xiaoluo Village had an Earth God of its own!

Clan Head Luo had watched with his own eyes as the world grew more and more chaotic over the past several decades.

In the old days, even though their village was remote, it was still under the imperial court’s jurisdiction. At most, some demons and monsters might sneak in at night and devour a few people. When the survivors discovered what had happened the next morning and reported it to the authorities, the local government would immediately file a report and dispatch constables to capture the monsters.

Likewise, the local City God would receive word of the incident and lead troops of the dead to hunt them down.

But now, demons and monsters were growing increasingly brazen, and trouble was erupting almost everywhere. The authorities were overwhelmed with cases, and the City Gods were probably in much the same predicament. Small villages like theirs had simply been left to fend for themselves.

That wolf demon today had clearly intended to gorge itself on the villagers, eating as many as it could and leaving nothing behind.

If the Earth God hadn’t manifested its divine power today, Xiaoluo Village would probably have suffered casualties so severe that fewer than one in ten villagers would have survived.

Facing the statue of the Earth God that the wolf demon had knocked over, Clan Head Luo led the villagers in a deep, reverent bow.

He carefully lifted the damaged clay statue back into an upright position.

“Thank you, Earth God, for saving our entire village! Thank you, Earth God! We will surely pool our money as a village and have a new statue cast for Your Excellency!”

After expressing their gratitude to their village’s own Earth God, the villagers immediately hurried home to fetch offerings, incense, and candles.

They had to present the deity with a lavish offering as soon as possible, so that the god would know just how deeply the people of Xiaoluo Village respected him.

Everyone was bustling about when the sound of galloping horses came from outside.

“Father!!! Father!!!”

A woman’s voice rang out alongside the clatter of hooves.

Clan Head Luo, who had been directing everyone on how to arrange the offerings, trembled all over. He hurried outside and, sure enough, saw his daughter dismounting from her horse, with several constables following behind her.

This was Luo Yin, who possessed the constitution known as [Invulnerability].

When recruiting constables for the imperial court, the authorities tried whenever possible to find people with the [Invulnerability] constitution. Such people had steadfast minds and were difficult to sway. They wouldn’t be easily deceived or bewitched by demons and monsters. With righteousness in their hearts and a blade in their hands, they could kill demons and monsters.

Luo Yin’s trouser legs were covered in dried blood. The same was true of all four of her horse’s legs.

Clan Head Luo was horrified at the sight and hurried forward to meet her.

“What happened? What on earth happened?”

Only after reaching her and confirming that Luo Yin wasn’t injured, and that the blood didn’t belong to her, did he finally breathe a tremendous sigh of relief.

“Father, are you all right?!”

Luo Yin supported her father and examined him from head to toe.

“Where’s Mother? And Big Brother and Sister-in-law? What about my two nephews?”

“Everyone’s fine, everyone’s fine. They stayed hidden in the cellar the whole time and only just came out. The two children were a little frightened, though… They’ll be fine after coming to pay their respects to Lord Ming in a little while.”

Luo Yin felt the tension leave her body. Only then did she let out a long, heavy breath.

“Thank goodness everyone’s safe.”

Just as Clan Head Luo was about to ask how they had arrived so quickly when the wolf demon had only just attacked, Luo Yin spoke, her voice trembling slightly.

“We rushed here as fast as we could. A powerful wolf demon entered our county. The Day Patrol God discovered it and went to fight it, but unfortunately, the deity perished. The wolf demon continued slaughtering its way through the area, and three villages have already been completely wiped out. When we were on our way here, we spotted… spotted traces of the wolf demon in the distance, leading straight toward Xiaoluo Village…”

At the time, Luo Yin had felt as though the world were spinning around her. She had barely managed to hold herself together before mounting her horse and galloping here as fast as she could.

She had been terrified that when she arrived, she would find Xiaoluo Village in the same state, with corpses strewn everywhere.

Clan Head Luo’s hands began to tremble as well.

“Even the Day Patrol God has perished?”

That was the Day Patrol God!

A bona fide Yin deity who received incense offerings at the City God Temple—not some minor god or spirit like an Earth God.

Luo Yin held her father firmly by the arms.

“As long as you’re all safe, that’s what matters. Father, while you were in the village, did you notice anything unusual? That wolf demon killed a divine official and alarmed the City God. There’s no way it can escape…”

Her gaze fell on the half-visible corpse of a gigantic wolf, charred black and sticking out from between the buildings ahead.

The rest of her words suddenly caught in her throat.

“Is that… a wolf demon?”

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