Faith has invented a few spells; it's not just her, as most disciples invent a spell by the time they reach the 7th stage of energy gathering.
One of the spells she invented was called 'Mindhack.' The spell can be cast over a large area and affects only mortals with no energy in their bodies; with it, she can make them see whatever she wishes. She cast the spell above the barbarian city and used it to make them see herself as a sort of goddess.
Her spell won't work on anyone who has reached even the 1st stage of energy gathering, so if there are any in the city, she must arrest them to close their mouths.
"It still costs too much!" she complained. The spell has a very wide area of effect, and even though it's completely ineffective on cultivators and can only be used to deceive mortals, it still costs too much. Even with her full mana, she could only hold onto it for ten minutes.
Even her ten minutes are mostly because of her pure mana; if it were someone with an impure core, they might have been drained by 2 minutes.
Inventing spells is really difficult; even though her spell greatly affects mortals, with such a massive mana cost, it may not be very useful.
She manipulated the spell, controlling it carefully.
…
Charles stared as the goddess gracefully descended, landing in his palace's backyard.
Coming back to himself, he quickly put on his fur coat and went out; as the tribe's khan, it was his responsibility to greet the goddess.
Going out, he took secret peeks at her face and moved toward her with his head down.
In the legends, it's said that humans were born from Aaa, who was an ancient god. Exactly how it happened is contested; some think Aaa sacrificed herself, while others believe she was killed.
The official belief of the half-moon tribe is that Aaa swallowed half of the moon, got pregnant, gave birth to the first human, and died after giving all of her energy to her newborn. The first human, Aaa's child, cried blood until his eyes and hair became blood-red, which is why humans have red eyes.
After Aaa's death, the ancient gods all left the mortal world, leaving the newborn human to fend for himself.
The first human, a male, couldn’t give birth; to preserve humanity, he took out the half-moon, which remained with him after birth, and created the first woman from it.
He married the woman he created and gave birth to many children, who intermarried and populated humanity. The half-moon tribe considers the moon as one of humanity's ancestors.
Of course, that’s what the half-moon tribe believes in; other tribes can have different beliefs.
But, among all beliefs, one uncontested fact was the existence of ancient gods, specifically Aaa.
Aaa is said to be a humanoid, beautiful beyond imagination, and can fly in the sky like a bird.
Charles didn’t think that the goddess before him was Aaa; after all, Aaa died after giving birth to the first human.
But, what he already saw was enough for him to conclude that the goddess in front of him was one of the ancient gods who returned. It's said that ancient gods would return one day; today may be the day when ancient gods finally stepped back into the mortal realm.
After respectfully walking up to her, Charles asked, "Your Excellency, are you one of the ancient gods?"
The goddess looked at the mortal who asked and said, "That’s true; I am indeed one of the ancient gods."
Hearing this, Charles was more excited and joyful than ever in his life; ancient gods who left them thousands of years ago had finally returned during his lifetime.
Charles was much more knowledgeable than most tribesmen, but he still believed in this stuff; even if he had doubts, seeing what he had just seen made him discard them.
"Please don’t leave us, my lord; please remain in our lowly mortal world," said Charles, kneeling on the ground, kowtowing.
Seeing this, the goddess said softly, "Don’t worry; from today onward, you are my messenger; spread the word about my return!" the goddess then disappeared without a trace.
…
The news about the goddess was initially restricted to only the half-moon tribe, but it soon began spreading to neighboring small tribes.
The small tribes nearby rely on the half-moon tribe for many of their needs; they trade with each other and are more or less connected.
The half-moon doesn’t allow other tribes to live near it, but these small tribes actually had impure blood of the half-moon tribe, so they were barely acceptable; after all, even tribes need cannon fodders and cheap laborers.
The news didn’t spread any further; the tribes were isolated and had no trade.
...
Faith was forced to perform the same show in the top 20 big cities; it cost her 15 days!
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By the end of 15 days, all big tribes found out about her; most of them pledged their loyalty to the goddess who returned.
Even though the details of their legends and tales about ancient gods differed, the main line of the story remained the same.
For example, the Red Moon tribe believed that Aaa didn’t actually die after giving birth to the first human but was imprisoned by the other ancient gods on the moon.
Because of this, as soon as they saw Faith, they recognized her as Aaa herself and began worshiping her with much stronger intensity compared to other tribes. It was so bad that Faith was forced to stay there for longer and calm them down personally; she believed that if she just disappeared as she did in other tribes, many people would kill themselves from sadness.
There were other odd cases.
The Blood Knife tribe believed Aaa gave birth to the first human, who grew up to become Baa, a half-god.
Later, baa kills her mother and buries her in the sky. The moon is actually Aaa's grave.
After other gods saw what Baa did, they got angry and left the mortal world; before leaving, they swore that they would take Aaa's revenge on Baa's descendants.
Baa later gave up her powers as a half-god to get herself pregnant; she gave birth to 10 children, who went on to populate humanity.
Baa, who gave up her powers, died like every other human; her grave is in Blood Knife City. Or at least that is what they believe.
The moment they recognized Faith as an ancient god in the Blood Red tribe, everyone panicked. They thought the ancient gods finally came to take revenge for what happened to Aaa. Before giving her any chance to explain, everyone dispersed, making it much harder to communicate with them. After all, the Mindhack spell has a circular area of effect; if everyone chaotically ran in every direction, they would go out of range.
Faith was forced to leave the Blood Knife tribe alone. She would try again later.
Over the years of study in the sect, Faith got a very surface-level understanding of the legends of the barbarian tribes. Still, that surface-level knowledge was nowhere near enough to explain exactly what they thought when they ran.
In the future, she would have to study their culture deeper to be able to deceive them more flawlessly.
Faith is not a bad person. She actually doesn’t want to harm these people; what she is doing now is for their own good. That’s how she convinces herself.
After the initial shock, Faith went from tribe to tribe, city to city, and checked every tribe's situation in detail. She instructed them to look for unusual items and promised to bless them if they gave her good items.
She was surprised a few times, especially by the Half Moon tribe.
Their tribe leader, Charles, brought a horse called 'Redy'; it was massive, far beyond any horse she had seen. She could clearly feel the energy of 3rd stage energy gathering from the horse.
It was the first immortal beast she had ever seen; she wanted to quickly pick it up and return to the sect to show it to her master.
But she controlled herself and remained in her role as an ancient god. She made up a story that the horse was lucky to drink a drop of blood from the remains of ancient gods. She praised the horse many times, waiting for them to offer it themselves.
She wasn’t disappointed; they indeed offered it, and she accepted and promised to bless their guild.
She really did intend to make up for taking the horse away. She would help them grow faster in the future. After all, they gave her the first immortal beast in the world, so they deserve to get something in return.
The horse was an emergency, so she left quickly; she must show it to her master.
...
Jack looked at the well-behaved horse in front of him and nodded with satisfaction; he expected immortal beasts to appear decades later; this horse could be considered beyond his expectations.
"Half Moon tribe? The energy concentration around that tribe must be very high to give birth to immortal beasts ahead of schedule. Let's do this; our sect's headquarters in the Far West will be built near the Half Moon tribe's land!" he ordered.
Faith asked "What about the Half Moon tribe?"
"Use them to accelerate the process. I don’t care about the rest. You are not required to kill them or save them. Just do what makes the most sense. The only thing I want is for sect headquarters to be built in the area with the most energy."
He continued, "bring all talented kids you find; I'm sorry, Faith, but you got to stay there for a few years; the moment another disciple breaks through core formation, I would send them there and bring you here as the sect master."
Faith said, "What? No, master. Don’t worry; I enjoy serving you and the sect."
Coughing, Jack said, "You can retrieve anything you need for your mission from the sect treasury; anything you find during this mission shall remain yours, including this horse, which we keep for you in the sect."
"Thank you, master!" she said.
Then, she left and prepared to travel again to the far west.
...
Jack has been preparing for his nascent soul since he broke through his core formation.
The nascent soul realm is much harder than the core formation. To reach the nascent soul, the core formation cultivator must break open their core; if anything goes wrong, they will die.
Still, Jack, as someone with a pure core, has a much easier task. The only thing he must pay attention to is not making any mistakes; as long as he performs everything perfectly, he will reach the nascent soul.
The issue is that he cannot practice; nobody has ever reached the nascent soul stage before him.
He can easily break through using his deep knowledge but cannot; the Dao collection would be ruined if he broke through the nascent soul, relying too much on his knowledge from outside this world.
For this reason, he has been looking for treasures that can save his life, even if he makes mistakes during his breakthrough. Such treasures are extremely rare, and despite looking for years, he has failed to find even one.
Breaking the core is very precise; it's dangerous to do without any experimentation.
Why did he become happy and satisfied when he saw Redy? One reason is that if he is desperate enough, he can experiment with a magic beast's core.
He would prefer not to do it but would have no problem if it helped him.
Sure, Redy belongs to ready, but he can forcefully take it away and compensate contribution points in exchange; in any case, faith would most definitely give it to him willingly as long as he asks.
He is so generous because if he needs anything belonging to his disciples, he can easily take it from them by just asking.
An energy-gathering beast has a very tiny core that is not suitable for any experimentation.
However, once Redy breaks through core formation, its core becomes as strong as core formation cultivators, with not much difference in its essence. At that time, Jack can experiment with it as a guinea pig.
Of course, he isn’t planning to wait for Redy to reach the peak of core formation; that would take too long; as long as it breaks into the realm of core formation, it would be enough for experimentation.
Breaking a core before reaching the peak of core formation would drastically reduce the chance of the birth of a nascent soul; an early stage core formation cultivator has below a 1% chance of breaking through nascent soul. Even if they succeed by chance, the resulting nascent soul would be born with defects, cutting off any hope of a divine soul, which requires a perfect soul.
Therefore, Jack's experimentation with Redy would mean the beast's death, or even at best a severely defected nascent soul not much stronger than peak of core formation in strength.
That’s why Jack is unwilling; after all, Redy, as an immortal horse beast, can be used to give birth to generations of strong horse bloodlines; it’s a waste to use it like that.