All Gods: Starting with Two Families

Chapter 163 Visual ProfilingLeon’s actions were swift.

As the lord with real power in this territory, he was on a completely different level from Moby’s petty tinkering.

When Moby set up a relief center, he had to carefully calculate the amount of black bread, whereas here, with a single command, craftsmen and serfs were immediately conscripted.

Three days.

In just three days, a crude temple was erected.

The temple was not large; it had a wooden frame, walls plastered with mud, and a roof covered in hay.

Due to the rush, the craftsmen didn’t even have time to plane the wood, and the surface of the pillars still bore traces of tree bark.

Two statues were placed at the far end of the temple.

One was the God of Metamorphosis.

It was in the form of a Feathered Serpent, with distinct scales and slightly spread wings; its eyes were inlaid with two black stones, exuding an indescribable majesty.

The other was the God of Ascension.

Its wings were folded like a cocoon, and its face was blurred.

The mason had clearly never carved such a statue before, as he had carved its wings to look like chicken wings.

Crude.

But it was still much better than the drafty, leaky wooden shacks the serfs lived in.

Leon stood at the entrance of the temple, watching the serfs who had been driven there, his face expressionless.

”From today on, you must come here to pray every noon and nightfall,” his voice was not loud, but everyone heard it clearly, ”Recite the prayer and complete the ritual.”

A commotion stirred in the crowd.

”If commoners don’t come, taxes will increase by ten percent,” he said, ”If slaves don’t come, there will be no dinner that day.”

The commotion instantly ceased.

That same noon, the temple was packed with people.

They clumsily drew an inverted ”8” on their chests, stammering as they recited, ”With my mortal body, achieve the transcendent.”

They didn’t know what this prayer meant, what the inverted ”8” represented, or who they were praying to.

But they knew that if they didn’t come, taxes would increase by ten percent.

The slaves recited even more earnestly. No dinner meant they would truly starve to Death.

After this combination of measures, in just a few days, most of the thousands of people in the territory had become believers.

Although the vast majority were the kind of vague, casual believers, Zhou Zheng did indeed gain thousands of threads on him.

There were even a few true believers.

As for Leon himself, he remained that faint, casual thread of a believer.

He was indeed a smart man.

Having just received the improved version of the Eagle Breathing Technique, he immediately split the Family’s original old breathing technique into two halves.

He threw the first half to the reserve knights, winning over their hearts fiercely.

Those reserve knights held the half-manual of the breathing technique, their hands trembling with excitement—this was the secret, unshared technique of the Us Family! And now they could actually learn it!

As for the second half needed to advance to a formal knight? That would require pledging loyalty to the Death and making great contributions. With this carrot dangled before them, there was no worry that they wouldn’t work hard.

Using both kindness and severity to win over hearts, his methods were very experienced.

Zhou Zheng had seen plenty of such smart people.

He treated Zhou Zheng as a tool and faith as a transaction. Prayer was just going through the motions, and reciting the prayer was completing a task.

What he wanted were tangible benefits, the breathing technique, power, and capital to expand his territory.

Zhou Zheng was not in a hurry.

In front of a god, hoping to swallow only the bait without getting hooked. How could that be possible?

...

Moby was much busier than Leon.

He did not have the power to force thousands of people to believe like Leon, nor did he have as many resources. But he had his own way.

He revised the doctrine every day.

What was the God of Metamorphosis? Why was it in the form of a Feathered Serpent? Why was the divine emblem an inverted ”8”? Why did the prayer have to be recited this way?

He thought through these questions one by one, wrote them down, and had people copy them. Those who could read recited them to those who couldn’t, teaching slowly, spreading slowly.

He also designed the priestly robes. The style was simple, made of coarse gray cloth, with the inverted ”8” embroidered on the chest. The cost was low, so ordinary people could afford them.

The divine emblem was also finalized. It was that inverted ”8,” connected head to tail, cycling endlessly. He had people carve it on wooden boards and hang them at the entrance of the relief center. Later, it would be carved on stone and erected throughout the territory.

These matters were trivial and heavy, requiring a great deal of effort.

But Moby did it willingly.

Meanwhile, in Leon’s territory, Moby would change the area he ”patrolled” every day.

He leaned on his cane, tapping the ground, using his blind ability to scan this land, which was ten times larger than his own territory.

Sound waves spread, outlining the contours.

Trees. Stones. Houses. People.

Then—

A mass of red light appeared in his field of vision.

Moby walked over, crouched down, and reached out to feel. It was a stone tablet buried in the soil, already dilapidated, with blurred runes carved on it.

He carefully dug out the stone tablet, wrapped it in cloth, and placed it next to the sunflower.

The sunflower swayed gently.

[Reincarnation] divine authority fragments. Forged from the three great Laws of Life, Death, and Time.

The red light was slowly absorbed, the stone tablet faded, and finally turned into a pile of ordinary rubble.

...

That night, Moby felt something changing in his body. The power obtained from the Sequence 9 potion had completely merged into his body, becoming a part of him.

The [Blind Man] potion had been digested.

A new potion formula appeared in his mind.

...

[Infant] Pathway · Sequence 8 [Deaf Person]

Potion formula: A pair of night owl eyeballs, one gram of cat’s eye stone, one peacock feather, ten milliliters of ink.

Sequence ability: At the cost of losing hearing, exempt the body from all minor illnesses and negative states. Gain the Visual Profiling ability. Can briefly use the Sequence 9 blind cane ability.

...

Quiet.

The world had never been so quiet.

Those sounds he had long been accustomed to—the rustling of wind through leaves, the shouting of farmers in the distance, the sound of his own footsteps—had all disappeared.

Absolute quiet.

Absolute deathly silence.

But following it was light.

He opened his eyes—

Black pupils, clear eyes, no different from anyone else’s.

He could see.

Sunlight shone in from outside the window, casting bright patches on the floor. The desk was brown, and a faded tapestry hung on the wall. Outside the window, there were trees, grass, sky, and clouds.

He could see!

Moby stumbled to his feet, holding onto the wall, walking out step by step. The sunlight fell on his face, a bit dazzling, but he couldn’t bear to close his eyes.

He greedily looked at everything before him, like an infant opening its eyes for the first time.

Hallway. Stairs. Door. Courtyard.

Leon stood in the courtyard, hearing the movement, and turned his head.

He saw Leon’s lips moving, but could not hear any sound.

Then, something magical happened.

Next to Leon’s face, a speech bubble suddenly appeared. There were words inside, in the color of ink, written stroke by stroke:

”Can you see now?”

Although he had never learned to read, he understood it.

Not just that.

Next to the speech bubble, there was another line of small text, densely packed:

”Three parts shock, five parts joy, two parts panic.”

Moby was stunned.

He looked at Leon again. The expression on that face was now clearly deconstructed in his eyes.

Slightly raised eyebrows meant shock, the corners of the mouth curling up unconsciously meant joy, and that trace of evasion deep in the eyes meant panic.

Sequence 8 [Deaf Person] passive ability: Visual Profiling.

Your vision is greatly enhanced; you will automatically collect any information about the world you see and integrate it. Concentrating allows you to obtain detailed information about the item you are focused on.

Densely packed small text filled his vision. The more he tried to control himself not to look, the more he concentrated, and the small text swarmed out, all of it nutritional-less.

For example, ”This chair has been sat on 7,517,373 times; it is estimated to take 3 years, 10 months, and 5 days before it collapses.”

Moby stood in the sunlight, looking at this vibrant world before him, and suddenly remembered the small line of text at the end of that formula:

”After recovering your sight, you, in the present, might perhaps miss those days when you could not see.”

He was stunned for a moment. Then he smiled.