No matter how exceptional Ronan was, the path to godhood—or more precisely, the foundational stage of becoming a New God—always meant "gathering the many." That followed from the origins of the New God and the fundamental nature of Fantasy Species.
The Lord of Zhanhe explored this in depth in his monumental work, Configuration, Faith, and the Great Limit—Reconstructing the Historical Evolution from Mei to Dawn: Magnetic Light Mica Treatise. Ronan had learned the principle from other sources before, but that book had always been beyond him. Lately, he had begun to understand it.
Becoming a god required more than understanding the theory. You had to make it work. However profound the principle, putting it into practice always began much the same way. Ronan had thrown Inner and Outer Earth into turmoil—or rather, he had stripped away the disguises and restraints that had concealed their ugly reality and laid it bare for everyone to see.
After all, faith in a deity rarely sprang from peaceful days or the confidence that you could manage on your own. It took upheaval. It took extremes.
To seize desires normally beyond reach, people had to survive calamities beyond human strength.
At that moment, hearts were in turmoil across Inner and Outer Earth. It was hard to tell what lay inside the "fish tank" and what lay outside. Only a layer of murky "glass" separated them, while fish, shrimp, insects, and microbes churned as though the water were boiling.
At a time like this, it made little sense to say Inner Earth was affecting Outer Earth, or that Outer Earth was interfering with Inner Earth. There were simply multiple hidden hands stirring things inside and out, quietly creating eddies. Then Ronan, who refused to play along, had taken a great iron hammer to the whole thing—**bang,