"Religion? Someone had reached into my territory?"
Lu PingAn was surprised, even somewhat unable to understand it.
At his level, "religion" was, in a sense, already a tool—a sphere of influence, the property of High-Level Professionals who used it to validate their own "truth" and seek out anchors for their faith.
He had been laying out his plans, coloring this world in his own hues. But from another angle, he had also been building his own "temple" and Kingdom of God on Earth.
Only those who had lived through modern society could understand what Lu PingAn's half-year of sedimentation meant.
He had been rebuilding this world's industrial chains, integrating those scattered technologies, light industries, and small-scale handicraft industries into a normally functioning society.
Light industry, equipment manufacturing, heavy industry, power grids, hydroelectric generation—he had been rebuilding a modern society.
If the capital had founded a nation administratively, then what he was doing here was the true reconstruction of a nation in practical terms.
At the same time, he was using mortals to enact his "ideals" and elevate his path of "trade."
Once every component of society took shape, once their interactions and operations formed the framework of this nation, Lu PingAn's "trade" might become the circulation of "social order."
In a sense, Lu PingAn did not need a traditional church. The act of "trade" alone was already the practice of his ideals.
His Trading Ground and the commercial system that had grown from it were the extensions of his "rules" and "truth."
A plurality of rules, a self-contained "group of rules," was the Eighth Order Threshold. Lu PingAn had never stopped moving forward; it was simply that his path seemingly required mortals to practice it for him.
And now, something appeared to be trying to intrude upon his territory and