This Young Master is not Cannon Fodder - Chapter 644

No matter how small a system was, it represented a vast amount of resources. Hence, each system that didn’t have sufficient power to protect itself would be conquered by a superior system. The minimum power required was at least one divinity.

As long as there was one divinity, it would deter most pantheons, but for the truly powerful pantheons—like the Herakles System or the Three Thousand Immortal Realms System—which boasted multiple divinities, it was still far from enough. It was only a matter of whether they wanted to pay the price or not. In such cases, the lone divinity would persevere for a while, but eventually, he would be left with only two roads.

Continue to defend to the best of his ability and eventually fall, or submit to another pantheon and seek protection. The price was a cyclical tribute. In essence, they would have to export the system’s resources for protection. Perhaps it was better than being conquered and exploited, but it was still a helpless choice.

Unless the system could produce one or two more divinities, they would likely forever be vassals. This was the case for many systems without divinities that joined the All Pantheon Alliance. It was only because many of the pantheons had not yet recovered their full might that these systems had a chance of becoming vassals instead of being conquered.

If a system didn’t have a divinity willing to protect it, it only had two hopes. Hope, not options. One: that no one discovered the system and it could peacefully develop until it produced a divinity. Two: stay quiet and don’t attract any attention.

The modus operandi was a bit like the doctrines of the Dark Forest Theory proposed on Earth.

Of course, many civilizations that arose in remote systems would likely not comprehend the dangers of the True Nothingness. After all, even divinities had to expend great effort to traverse the True Nothingness. If they were unlucky, the signals or probes they sent out would be discovered by an external creature, leading to an invasion.

Like now.

Tianyi’s spacetime divine conduit grabbed a strange tool from afar. It did not move, and upon closer inspection, the internal mechanics had long broken down, not to mention the dissipated energy. In the True Nothingness, solid objects lasted longer than pure energy.

After some tinkering, Tianyi discovered that it was a mining machine. It must have drifted away because of an accident. His eyes lit up. He had been searching for over four thousand years, and this was the first clue. Even if the civilization that created this tool had perished, it wouldn’t matter as long as the system remained.

And so, Tianyi flew in the direction from which the machine had drifted.

It took even longer to discover the system. He had countless conduits scouring the True Nothingness, but compared to the entire universe, the range his conduits could search was not even a drop in the bucket. It was actually by luck that Tianyi discovered the system.

He didn’t know how long the tool had drifted. Systems did not remain in one location; they also moved with time. The longer the tool had been away from the system, the further it was from where it had been sent. So even if Tianyi calculated the direction, it still depended on luck to find the system.

That’s why he was lucky.

Tianyi had split some of his conduits to explore ahead, while others diverged to cover more ground, unwilling to miss anything. Even then, over thirteen thousand years had passed, and it was only thanks to receiving a signal that Tianyi found the system.

Size-wise, it was on the smaller end, barely even a tenth of the Three Thousand Immortal Realms System or the Herakles System. Because of this, Tianyi hesitated. He would eventually fuse his divine world with a system, and the process was permanent, but he didn’t want the system to be too weak.

After all, it was a divine conduit split from his Nine Heavens Universe.

“Forget it,” Tianyi said. “I haven’t deduced the complete World Fusion Method, and using a smaller system will increase the chance of success. Just think of it as a cost for eventual success.”

Tianyi had already prepared himself to lose a divine conduit if he failed to merge his divine world with a system. For most, it would be the end of their road, but for Tianyi, he still had many chances. All it took was separating part of his Nine Heavens Universe, and he could try again and again. If other divinities had the same chance, they would have jumped at it. Yet, only when he was given the chance did he discover that he was reluctant.

“My willpower is still too low,” Tianyi muttered to himself.

Saying no more, Tianyi’s spacetime divine conduit entered the nameless system. Since it was his divine conduit that would use the World Fusion Method, he sent it in to familiarize itself with the system. Of course, he didn’t pin all his hopes on this one system.

With it discovered, Tianyi redistributed his conduits again to search for more worlds. He didn’t know the consequences of a failed fusion, so he needed more backups.

The core of the system was a gigantic planet. Had it been in the Almighty’s inner universe, it would have undergone a nuclear reaction and transformed into a star before condensing into a black hole. Countless moons revolved around the planet. Stranger still was the star that orbited the planet, creating this strange planetary system.

If life evolved on the planet, they would live in a geocentric world. But that was impossible. At least, the chances of life evolving on a planet with gravity more powerful than stars was abysmal. And life didn’t originate from the core planet, but from one of the many moons.

In fact, these moons were larger than Earth. If they did not orbit that gigantic planet, they would have been called planets. Even if they didn’t orbit a sun, they would still be known as rogue planets.

However, the civilization was far from as developed as Tianyi expected. Even if it was an accident that their mining tools left the system, they should still have been advanced enough to leave their moon. Yet, all Tianyi saw were medieval-level civilizations.

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Upon further inspection, he discovered ruins that matched the design of the mining machine. The original civilization perished?

Tianyi held his chin. That… wasn’t improbable.

He continued to investigate the situation in this nameless system. After a few months, he gained the general gist of what had happened.

The denizens of these moons had humanoid shapes, but they had multiple arms. The more arms they had, the nobler their bloodline was. In addition, these creatures had flat faces with slits instead of noses and long, pointed ears. Their skin was also various shades of blue and lavender.

Tianyi dubbed these humanoids wanshou, or myriad arms.

These wanshou believed in the Thousand-Armed God. If Tianyi had to guess, this Thousand-Armed God should have been a natural divinity bred by this system. However, it remained unknown how powerful he was—perhaps at the demigod level.

The point was, under the Thousand-Armed God’s protection and guidance, civilization flourished. It reached a point where they expanded and terraformed the surrounding moons into suitable living places. Civilization should have prospered, but one day, the Thousand-Armed God disappeared, causing it to regress and return to a more primitive age.

A subtle smile appeared on Tianyi’s lips as his gaze flitted over the many habitable moons.

Because society regressed, the population fractured. From this, countless kingdoms sprang forth like mushrooms. It wouldn’t be strange for a kingdom to exist for only a hundred years before being destroyed. Even ancient kingdoms with a thousand years of history could disappear if they weren’t careful. The never-ending wars also spurred this cycle on.

However, there was one constant on each habitable moon—a church.

Contrary to the numerous kingdoms, each moon only had one church, and they had always existed since recorded history. While war ravaged the land, people sought solace in the church’s protection and warmth. Their influence far exceeded even the strongest kingdom, despite not possessing much territory.

How could any ruler allow such a maverick institution to exist? Yet, whenever a ruler tried to destroy the church, they always failed and suffered consequences. That never changed, even if several kingdoms joined forces. The church stood tall while the kingdoms disappeared.

It was only natural. After all, these churches were the masterminds behind the Thousand-Armed God’s disappearance.

Tianyi’s eyes penetrated through the countless layers of defense constructed by each church. At the core of each church was a body part. Most of them were dismembered arms, and in total, their number surpassed seven hundred.

He didn’t know how these mortals had taken down a divinity, even a demigod-level one, but it was likely through betrayal. They dismembered the dead god and used his body parts as storage devices for faith. They continued to expand upon the narrative that the Thousand-Armed God had left because he was disappointed with the people. Only when the people sincerely believed in him would he appear once more to stop the wars and bring peace to the land.

That was a lie.

The Thousand-Armed God was killed. If he had possessed a divine world, he could have remained invincible even in betrayal, but his true power was only at the demigod level. Ordinary mortals could not kill immortal monarchs who mastered a law, but this was not the Three Thousand Immortal Realms System. Below the Divine Realm, each system had its own subset of rules that applied within.

Clearly, this system allowed mortals to kill even demigods.

With the Thousand-Armed God dead, where did all the faith the mortals sent go? The answer was his dismembered body parts. The parts could only store so much faith, but that was fine for the founders of the churches—the betrayers.

Some betrayers chose to become popes and rule personally, while others chose to control the church from the shadows. All of them had one goal—to ascend to godhood. The betrayers would extract the faith energy and absorb it into their own bodies.

Tianyi didn’t know why they didn’t just change the target of the prayers to themselves, but he had a guess. After all, becoming a divinity of faith wasn’t easy without the right rituals and prerequisites. He could sense that these betrayers had grafted some of the Thousand-Armed God’s body parts, blood, and organs onto their own bodies. They might want to use a true divinity’s flesh as a springboard for their own divine ascension.

He sighed with relief. These betrayers treated everyone as livestock for their own benefit. Tianyi didn’t have much baggage targeting such a world.

Of course, he didn’t want to kill everyone, especially the ignorant mortals. However, he could make them disappear by the time he fused the spacetime divine world with the system. It would be a merciful and peaceful death.

Unknown to all, even the betrayers, a shadow had already covered the entire nameless system. Life seemed to go on. Countless people died in war, replenished only by countless newborns entering this dystopian world. Their only purpose was to experience the terrors of war and to pray for salvation from the gods.

The first to discover something amiss were the betrayers. They realized that the accumulation of faith had decreased. They immediately launched an investigation and discovered that the number of newborns had decreased.

It was very slight, less than one percent. Upon realizing this, they sighed in relief. Dips in birth were not uncommon. Dips and rises were common, but after decades passed, they could no longer keep the same mentality.

Year after year, the number of births continued to decrease. The church tried to find the source, but they couldn’t detect any behind-the-scenes manipulation. They could only watch helplessly as the wars continued to dwindle the population.

The church tried to get the kingdoms to stop, citing the dangers of population decrease, but most rulers were too embroiled in war to halt their actions. Only a few listened. Although the church had power above all kingdoms, it was difficult for them to convince the world to stop unless they revealed their true might.

The churches of the many moons did not want to use their trump card and reveal themselves to the world. They still harbored a tiny hope that everything would return to normal. They were destined to be disappointed.

When the birthrate declined to seventy percent, most kingdoms realized the danger and stopped their warmongering. The few that didn’t were forced to stop by an alliance of several powers.

The church declared that the people had sinned too much, bringing forth the Thousand-Armed God’s divine punishment. For a period, the amount of faith exceeded the previous decades of accumulation, but the betrayers knew this was only a temporary surge. If they could not fix the hidden problem, the amount of faith would only continue to decrease.

Even without war, the continued decline of birthrates meant that the number of newborns couldn’t replace the number that died yearly. The declining birthrate eventually slowed, but only because the births had already decreased.

After many censuses, the churches realized that birthrates were declining by 0.0002 percent every year. With such an accurate decline, even the most foolish rulers realized that someone must be behind it.

The churches on different moons convened a meeting, but they discovered to their horror that the same phenomenon was happening everywhere. They pooled their power and minds together, hoping to discover a solution, but they all failed.

Even when they promoted people to bear more children, the birthrate still declined.

After nearly five thousand years, the birthrate had dropped to one percent, and the population had become a fraction of what it once was. Even the eternal churches declined. Many of the betrayers could no longer sustain themselves on the faith collected. They couldn’t even maintain their lives, much less ascend to divinity.