After receiving his response, a beam of white light materialized out of thin air above Yuan Zuozhi's head.
Yuan Zuozhi stopped in his tracks, completely ignoring the busy street around him.
As the white light enveloped him, an overwhelming sensation of physical comfort washed over him. Every cell in his body, down to his genetic sequence, began to transform.
“This upgrade is even greater than I expected!”
While he bathed in comfort, the people on the street around him were not so fortunate.
The moment the passersby saw the white light, their eyes lost focus, and their flesh began to rot and disintegrate.
There were no screams. Only the overwhelming stench of rot quickly filled the street.
Thud!
The sound of bodies collapsing to the ground echoed one after another.
When the white light finally vanished, Yuan Zuozhi appeared completely unchanged on the surface. However, judging by the occasional bulges writhing beneath his skin, he could no longer be considered human.
“Earth Mother, you're really trying to make me famous, aren't you?” Yuan Zuozhi muttered, scanning the street as he felt the surging energy within his body.
It was the peak of the evening rush hour. Hundreds of people on the street had collapsed, bizarrely shaped tentacles sprouting from their decaying flesh.
“You are now the Supreme Pontiff. These ants should die with no regrets, having witnessed your transformation before their demise.”
“Go. I will give you only one year. Within this year, I want the scale of the Church of the Earth Mother to at least triple. I will grant you the authority to appoint three Archbishops. If you fail to achieve this goal within a year, I will reclaim everything I have given you,” the Earth Mother's emotionless voice echoed in Yuan Zuozhi's mind.
Yuan Zuozhi did not mind the threat. His eyes lost focus as he began to analyze his newly acquired abilities.
God-given ability: Artist. Writing the world with consciousness!
This ability was a perfect match for his awakened consciousness-based powers.
Looking at the pile of corpses before him, Yuan Zuozhi extended his left hand and shifted his consciousness.
Black paint materialized out of thin air above the corpses. Stirred by his invisible consciousness, the paint rapidly coalesced into a spinning, two-dimensional black hole.
The moment the two-dimensional black hole formed, a terrifying suction force erupted.
Crack!
Within seconds, the flesh of the hundreds of corpses on the ground, along with nearby trash cans and parts of the surrounding structures, were pulled into the black hole.
The entire street was completely swept clean. Yuan Zuozhi pushed up his glasses with his left hand, and the two-dimensional black hole vanished.
A faint smile played on his lips. “What a powerful ability.”
The paint consumed by the Artist ability was supplied by his own consciousness. Since he was already a supernatural being who had awakened consciousness-based powers, these two abilities complemented each other, producing a synergistic effect far greater than the sum of their parts.
Yuan Zuozhi turned and began walking toward the airport.
The Earth Mother had already flooded his mind with detailed information about the current state of the Church of the Earth Mother, as well as the situation of all the factions within the Nanming Kingdom.
Currently, the Church of the Earth Mother controlled four cities with populations of over a million, and ten cities with populations of over five hundred thousand.
Their total population was thirteen million. Originally, they had nearly twenty million, but Liu Wen had swept through several major cities, killing Earth Priests and cultists by the tens of thousands.
This purge had directly set the development of the Church of the Earth Mother back by a month.
Now, he had to bring the Church's population to forty million within a single year.
With the Earth Mother's power, their slow development in the Nanming Kingdom only shows how harsh the environment is, Yuan Zuozhi thought.
The domestic Special Bureau, the missing Liu family, and the powerful, intelligent Specters and Evil Spirits that banded together—all of these were massive obstacles for the Church of the Earth Mother.
Lost in the data in his mind, Yuan Zuozhi unknowingly arrived at the ticket counter of the Haicheng Airport.
He looked at the staff member inside. “Give me a ticket to the Coalition. Any destination is fine.”
Though the woman behind the counter found his request strange, she still issued a ticket as requested.
The next day, at 10:00 AM Coalition time.
Standing outside the airport of an inland city, Yuan Zuozhi watched people of all skin colors—white, black, and everything in between—bustling past him.
He pushed up his glasses. “Why does it smell like body odor?”
He turned his head to look a few meters to his left, where a sweaty, bearded white man was standing.
The sweat combined with the man's naturally strong body odor produced a pungent stench that made Yuan Zuozhi frown. These unevolved white pigs are truly disgusting. If it weren't for my targets, I wouldn't want to come here at all.
With a single thought, the bearded man suddenly wrapped his hands around his own neck and, under the bewildered gazes of the onlookers, choked himself to death.
Yuan Zuozhi walked toward the roadside, using his consciousness to block out the foul odor.
He scanned his surroundings and spotted a group of homeless people by the side of the road.
Shifting his consciousness, he took control of a nearby blonde-haired elderly man and made him walk toward the homeless group.
The traditional proselytizing method of the Church of the Earth Mother is to recruit ordinary people regardless of their identity, using ability-induced suggestion and orchestrating mysterious events to draw them in.
Such a method had worked well in the era before the supernatural outbreak. However, now that the supernatural had emerged, people had gained a certain level of understanding regarding these extraordinary phenomena, making them much harder to deceive.
While Yuan Zuozhi was deep in thought, the blonde elderly man approached a skeletal white homeless man.
The homeless man had his head down. Sensing the light above him being blocked, he looked up with a numb expression.
He saw the elderly man looking down at him with a warm, kindly smile.
The elderly man pulled a green hundred-dollar bill from his coat. “My child, living on the streets must be hard, isn't it? You should have been a proud, upstanding man, yet you've fallen to such a state. It is truly an injustice of destiny. I don't earn much, but I hope this hundred dollars can at least fill your stomach.”
As he spoke, he placed the bill into the homeless man's hand.
Moved by the elderly man's words, the homeless man's expression shifted, and his grip on the money tightened.
In the Coalition, a nation where capital and money reigned supreme, no one pitied you for being homeless.
They would only view you as a failure, and being discriminated against or chased away was a common occurrence.
“Thank you so much, old gentleman! I never expected a homeless person like me to receive such respect from you!” The man scrambled to his feet.
He used to be middle-class. But after a family emergency saddled him with massive debt, he was fired from his company. His entire life had fallen apart in a matter of days, and he was driven onto the streets to live as a vagrant. Having endured endless discrimination, he could no longer remember how many years had passed since he was last treated with such respect.
Hearing this, the blonde elderly man looked up at the sky with a devout expression. “My child, if you want to give thanks, thank the Earth Mother. It is she who cannot bear to see you wandering the streets. You were meant to be her children, enjoying fair and equal treatment. Yet, because of the system, your lives have been made so difficult.”
At the mention of the Earth Mother, the homeless man's expression changed slightly. He had heard of her, not just from the chronicles, but also through the actual Church of the Earth Mother.
“The Church of the Earth Mother... Old gentleman, do you mean the one from the Nanming Kingdom? I've heard many people say that this church is very bad,” the homeless man couldn't help but say.
The interaction between the two drew the attention of the other homeless people nearby, who gathered around to look at the elderly man with curiosity.
Looking at the dozen or so homeless people who had gathered, the elderly man maintained his warm smile. He nodded and smiled at each of them, showing them the utmost respect.
Then, he spoke slowly, “Our Church of the Earth Mother judges by the heart, not by external actions. We only want to make people's lives a little better. Whatever bad things you have heard are merely the words of others.”
As he spoke, he pulled out another hundred-dollar bill and handed it to a nearby homeless man. “Go buy some food for everyone. Whenever I see you suffering from hunger, my heart aches. Even the Earth Mother feels pain when she sees you in this state.”
“Oh, old gentleman, you've truly moved me. My name is John. I've been homeless for two years, chased away, discriminated against, and even beaten. It feels as though we've been completely abandoned by the Coalition. Yet, who remembers that we once worked hard for it too?” a gaunt, blonde-haired man standing over six feet tall spoke up.
The elderly man turned to look at him and patted his shoulder, showing not a hint of disgust toward the dirt on his clothes.
“John, you are still young. The road of life has only just begun. The Coalition may have abandoned you, but the Earth Mother never will, for you are her children.” The elderly man gave John an encouraging look.
“Alright, my children. I must go and help more people who are living in pain. You must never give up on life, or it will break my heart and the Earth Mother's.” With a smile, the elderly man prepared to leave.
Hearing his words, combined with the invisible energy subtly influencing their consciousness, the dozen or so homeless people were driven to make more impulsive choices.
The first homeless man who had received the money quickly stepped forward. “Respected old gentleman, if you don't mind, I would like to do something for you and the Church of the Earth Mother first.”
“Yes, old gentleman! Other churches can't wait to steer clear of homeless people like us because we have no money to donate to them. But the Church of the Earth Mother doesn't look down on us, and you treat us with such respect. I, John, also want to do something for the Church!” John chimed in.
Seeing this, the elderly man looked at the group of homeless people, who all shared the same eager expression. “You are all good children. How about this: at seven o'clock tonight, bring as many people in similar situations as you can to Saint Jude Park in the northern suburbs. Our Church of the Earth Mother will take you in, so you will no longer have to live such a difficult life.”
A few hundred meters away, Yuan Zuozhi watched the homeless people eagerly anticipating their initiation into the Church of the Earth Mother, his gaze placid. If I want to rapidly grow the population within the Coalition, these people who have been crushed to the bottom by the system are the best targets.
In any case, he didn't need territory, only population. Unlike the Church of the Earth Mother in the Nanming Kingdom, which gathered in dense clusters, he would disperse them to proselytize.
One recruiting another, providing these bottom-tier people with the respect they craved and the food to fill their bellies, they could easily be reeled in as followers.
He would then have the Earth Mother bestow blessings on those who performed exceptionally, promoting them to Earth Priests and Archbishops. By leveraging the opportunity to become supernatural beings, these individuals would be transformed into fanatic followers of the Earth Mother even faster.
Rate on N.U.
