Chapter 347: Church and Faith
Although Jiang Yan did not deliberately pay attention to the official movements of the empire, with the network system that he has now built up with thousands of sub-institutions, as long as it is within the radiation range of the network, there are few things that can hide from him.
No one would go out of their way to warn a small animal that is nothing unusual on the surface or in actual detection, after all, sparrows, crows, delphiniums, rats, cockroaches, and even a small moth, mosquito and fly...... There are so many of these gadgets in the world that even if a military base is heavily defended, it will be difficult to eradicate it unless a strict barrier or formation of the same level is laid to isolate the inside and outside without dead ends, and not even a small fly can fly in.
And with such a high level of protection, no one would think of doing it in normal times unless it is a critical situation. After all, whether it is a formation or an enchantment, the higher the level of protection effect, the greater the consumption required to maintain the effectiveness, and after a long time, no matter how big the cause is, it will not be able to sustain it.
Of course, places that are too secret, Jiang Yan's children can't detect them, such as Lux's private laboratory, the emperor's office study, treasure vaults and other places, usually not only have special personnel to clean them regularly, but also often have strong people with keen perception to guard them, if there are wild animals and insects running into such a place, it will obviously be very unnatural. Therefore, these locations will become one of the few areas that Jiang Yan's handsets cannot explore.
But those things that happen outside the specific secret area will not be able to hide from Jiang Yan's daughter network intelligence system, as small as who the chief of the guard in the main hall of the imperial palace in the imperial capital said to today, to the route and timing of the march of the emperor's ** department, everything will be monitored by Jiang Yan's daughter machine.
The actions of the Church of the Light, of course, are also included.
"O church...... Speaking of which, I haven't seen any other type of elf other than the Phantom Beast Species, and the red dragon I met at the research ceremony seems to have given me advice to be careful of the 'Holy Spirit Seed' and the 'Demon Seed'?"
Although he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, Jiang Yan had also seen relevant materials in the research institute, so he also had a basic impression of them.
According to the classification of this world, the so-called "Holy Spirit Seed" spirits are high elves who can use the power called "Holy Light", and their outward appearance is similar to that of a human, but they have white swan-like holy wings on their backs.
In fact, it is the so-called 'angel' in Jiang Yan's impression.
There is a very obvious difference between the elves of the 'Holy Spirit Species' and the elves of the 'Phantom Beast Species', different from the strange and almost innumerable number of races in the Phantom Beast Seed circle, the elves of the Holy Spirit Seed have always had only one race, the Angel Race, and the only difference within it is the difference in the strength level and the number of wings representing the Angel Rank.
In addition, the Holy Spirit Seed is also the exclusive spirit of the Holy Light Church, the official religion of the Holy Angel Church, and basically only members of the Church can summon and enserve the Holy Spirit Seed.
According to the Church of the Light's own propaganda, the Holy Spirit seed is a servant of the 'Great Lord', and only human beings who are holy in body and mind can obtain their approval, or if they are willing to join the Church to be baptized by the 'Lord' and offer their devout faith to the 'Great Lord', they will also have the opportunity to receive the protection of the servants given by the 'Lord'.
It is not uncommon in history for people outside the church to obtain the contract of the Holy Spirit, but as long as such people appear, they will basically be quickly absorbed by the church as saints, saints and other figures.
Basically, the angelic elves of the Holy Spirit seed are the exclusive property of the Holy Light Church, and it is difficult for outsiders to obtain and contract with them.
The elven envoy who has contracted the Holy Spirit seed can exert a special spiritual power called 'Holy Light', which has very prominent advantages in several aspects such as blessings, exorcism, purification, and healing. The buffs and healing techniques performed by the high-level 'Archangels' are not inferior to the 'War Unicorns' of the fantasy species at all, and they may be slightly surpassed in terms of individual combat effectiveness.
In addition, the level of intelligence of the Spirit Seed Elves is generally higher than that of the Fantasy Elves, and the lowest level is equivalent to the 'Little Angel' of the soldier rank, and also has the wisdom of not weaker than that of human children, and can cast multiple Spirit spells.
They even taught the spells that were originally exclusive to the angel clan to the human race, and let the priests of the church practice them, so that the church naturally has a stronger advantage than other forces in destroying evil spirits and purifying them, dispelling diseases and healing wounds, and then using this spell on a large scale in preaching, it will naturally make it more favored by the people.
After all, what the people of Shengdou are most afraid of is getting sick and injured, as the saying goes, it takes a hundred days to break the muscles and bones, once ordinary people are injured, not to mention the medical expenses, the labor and livelihood of the family will have to be delayed, and the healing techniques of the Holy Light Church are often very significant and efficient in terms of effectiveness, which is obviously more advantageous than other herbal medicines.
Coupled with the influence left by some history, the Holy Light Church has a very large influence in this world, and it is respected as the state religion of the Church of St. Angel, whose strength is still above the Duragon Empire before it was divided, and the land occupies the richest territory in the whole world.
The concept of the Holy Light Church is that it believes in the supremacy of the "Lord", and its sacredness cannot be surpassed by any mortal, even the emperor of a country, even the pope of the Holy Light Sect with the highest official status in the church, also claims to be a slave of the "Lord".
Obviously, this idea of divine power being higher than monarchy is unacceptable to other monarchies, and on the Western Continent, especially the Duragon Empire, it is the most resistant.
The Church was very powerful, but it was never ideal on the Empire's side, not only because the Duragon Empire was a standard monarchy, but also because of its origins.
The origin of this country, which is also known as the "Land of Dragons", which has been passed down from history, is naturally related to dragons, and even the royal family of the empire claims to be descendants of the "dragon" bloodline.
Dragons are essentially at the top of the food chain in any world, and this elf-populated world is no exception. As long as the 'dragon' in this world is an adult pure-blooded species, it is basically the highest level of elves standing at the apex of the phantom beast species, and even the top existence among them is beyond the category of ordinary elves if it is to be defined, and it can be called a 'divine beast'.
Excluding the existence of those near-gods in the dragon species, every adult pure-blooded dragon species also has at least "city-level" strength, and the strength of a single body alone is enough to destroy a city like Billon City.
With such a background, how could the Duragon Empire be willing to belittle itself and become the so-called 'slave of the Lord' and sacrifice its faith?
Although it is not like the Holy Light Cult and the St. Angel Sect that have established a ****-style religious statecraft, the Duragon Empire, under the guidance of the royal family, also generally worships the "dragon" as a worship, and naturally does not know the so-called "Lord" of the Holy Light Sect.
Even not only the Duragon Empire, but also the countries on this side of the Western Continent, especially the surrounding areas of the Duragon Empire, each have their own highest-level phantom beast species elves as origin beliefs.
Therefore, the development of the Holy Light Church on this side has been secretly resisted by various countries, especially the Empire, even if it is the imperial capital of the Empire, there is only a lonely church, and it was mainly established for diplomatic purposes.
After talking about the Holy Light Sect in this world, then another force must be mentioned. What is the mortal enemy of the 'angels'? There is no doubt that it is the 'devil'!
Among the elves, there are "living species", and there are also "demon species" on the other hand.
These two are almost no different from the angels and demons in Jiang Yan's impression, except that they are dressed in a layer of elf skin.
The Holy Spirit Seed has a corresponding Church of Light, and the Demon Seed also has a dark Church that worships them and develops in the world.
It's just that compared to the infinite scenery of the Holy Light Church, the Dark Church is obviously going to fall behind. This is also inevitable, after all, the reputation of the other party among the general public is really not very good.
If it is said that the Holy Spirit Seed is absorbing the faith of human beings and gaining a foothold in this world by developing believers through mission, and this way is more acceptable to the world, then the actions of the Demon Seed are indeed much more 'evil'.
Demon species will also develop elven envoys, but their envoys are often in a lower position in the contract scale, and they will ask for more precious things as sacrifices in addition to the spiritual power of the contractor.
Wealth, longevity, flesh and blood, sacrifices to sin, and even more extreme souls! These are the things that the demon species love the most.
However, there is also a characteristic of the demon species that is not well known, and that is that as long as you can not be fooled by the traps hidden in their contracts, then you can get the same reward from the demon species as the sacrifice, without any restrictions!
This means that as long as enough sacrifices can be offered, then even an ordinary person who has no power to restrain the chicken can also gain the power to ascend to the sky in one step!
There is no shortage of speculators in the world who want to take risks for various reasons, so despite the bad reputation of the demon species and the Dark Church, there will always be people who seek the contract granted by the demon species to fulfill their wishes because of their own desires.
This makes it a state of being suppressed by the Holy Light Church on the surface, but its power in the dark is still developing tenaciously.
"Satisfy the power of those who have desires with contracts, and receive sacrifices such as 'souls' as rewards...... Thinking about it like this, it's really very similar to what I did?" Jiang Yan couldn't help but shake his head after reviewing the information about the demon species.
It's no wonder that the movements made by the children under his command will be associated with the heads of the demon species by various forces.
I'm afraid that not only the people of the Holy Light Church have been attracted here, but even the people of the Dark Church will also be involved in their own interests.
After all, the demon species are not like the Holy Spirit species, and their internal camps are relatively chaotic, and the Dark Church may not be sure if the incident in this area of the Duragon Empire will be the work of some wild demon species or demon contractors.
When a human who has made a contract with the demon seed gains the power to fulfill his wishes, as long as his contract demon allows it, he can find other sacrifices to replace him - for example, the most common killing blood sacrifice!
Therefore, even if these incidents were not personally committed by some demon species, they may have been the work of their contractors, and anyway, the suspicion of demon species is very high.
"Speaking of which, is this way of doing things of the demon species also a means of obtaining some kind of alternative worship of faith? After all, the existence of the Dark Church is really reminiscent of the past. ”
Belief is not a so-called feudal superstition in the world with a transcendent system, but it does exist. Its essence is a kind of spiritual power that can be absorbed based on beliefs and emotions, although this energy is much lower in level than the 'World Force', which can be called the deterioration of the deterioration, but in many ways the two have similar great versatility.
For the system of gods in the heavens and all worlds, the power of faith can be used to enhance the divine power of the gods themselves, can be used to develop their divine kingdom, and can also be used to give feedback to believers to enhance the strength of believers or to fulfill the wishes of believers to a certain extent, creating so-called 'miracles', in short, there are many wonderful uses.
Jiang Yan, who had many subordinates who had already set foot in the heavens, was naturally not too unfamiliar with the information on the power of faith, so combined with the current situation of the two churches, he couldn't help but be suspicious.
The quality and quantity of the birth of the power of faith are closely related to the number of believers, the degree of devotion of the faith, and the strength level of the believers themselves. And this world, unfortunately, has a strange energy called 'Spirit Son', which has a significant amplification effect on the soul strength of living beings.
The power of faith that is born from the souls of beings who have been nourished by the environment of the spirit child seems to be of much better quality than the faith produced by believers in the normal world. ’
This is not Jiang Yan's speculation, because he has his own personal experience.
Jiang Yan can use means such as "Soul Eater" to draw spiritual power from the countless sub-machines under his command through the link of the sub-machine network, which was originally able to slowly nourish the soul and enhance the cultivation, after upgrading to the third-level true spirit realm, although the effect of enhancing the cultivation is much weaker, but at least it can be used to supplement the consumption of the ability operation.
When he was still in the Canglan Domain, Jiang Yan did not absorb the spiritual power of the child machine, and after coming to this world, Jiang Yan once again absorbed the spiritual power provided by the new child machine developed by the native beings of this world, and he obviously felt the subtle difference between the two.
Therefore, Jiang Yan can be sure that his conjecture is definitely not unfounded.
I think of the conjecture that he had thought about before, 'Is the existence of elves really native creatures of this world?'......
Jiang Yan seemed to vaguely grasp something.