After getting a basic understanding of their own condition, the three tried to see if they could change back to their original forms. As it turned out, they could.
Qi Tian watched them switch freely between their human forms and Golden Buddha Forms, growing ever more curious about everything in his sea of consciousness.
After all, he didn't believe in Buddha. Yet the Lotus Throne Golden Body and Sanskrit Phantom in his sea of consciousness, along with the Golden Liquid that had now transformed three people into beings capable of taking on forms like Buddhist deities, all seemed connected to the "Buddha" he knew from his previous life.
Before they knew it, the next morning had arrived. The warriors who usually rose early to hunt gathered before Qi Tian again to pray.
Jin Shi and the other two didn't go with them. Instead, they planned to find a place far from the village to spar and see just how strong they had become.
Qi Tian's consciousness now covered an area of more than a hundred miles, putting the three men's battle within his range. Their contest, which lasted from day until night, gave him a whole new understanding of their power.
At first, when Jin Shi and Iron Hand sparred, they held back somewhat, using only their human forms.
Yet even in their ordinary states, every punch and kick could destroy the woods across an area hundreds of meters wide.
The terrifying force radiating from their attacks even shook everything for several kilometers around them, sending rocks tumbling down.
But as the fight went on, perhaps they were enjoying themselves too much. They began putting all their strength into every attack, and even transformed into their Golden Buddha Forms.
When the two fought in their Golden Buddha Forms, a single full-strength strike was enough to shatter a mountain peak two or three kilometers high. The shock waves raged outward, making the area more than ten kilometers around them seem to suffer a violent earthquake.
The shock waves swept up mud and rocks more than ten meters high. One after another, towering trees dozens of meters tall burst apart from the tremors, their splinters mingling with dirt and dust that billowed dozens of meters into the air.
The two golden figures, each more than five meters tall, looked like world-ending deities beneath the sun. They fought all the way to the edge of Qi Tian's consciousness range, then carried on beyond it.
Once they were outside his range, Qi Tian could no longer see them, but he could still sense the aftershocks of their battle. The fight continued until nightfall.
Thanks to this great battle, all five hundred or so people in the tribal village saw with their own eyes how the blessing of the "Giant Stone God" they worshipped had transformed the tribe's three strongest hunting warriors into beings almost like gods.
From then on, everyone's faith in Qi Tian reached an almost fanatical level. This change also sped up the rate at which golden light filled the Sanskrit Phantom in his sea of consciousness.
After that, Qi Tian had Jin Shi and the other two explore the world in three different directions, searching for any other civilizations beyond the primeval forest.
The three had received Qi Tian's power and had practically transformed from "humans" into "gods" in a single day. They had no objections to his instructions.
Calling them "gods" might sound arrogant, but to the other villagers, beings who could fly through the sky and tunnel through the earth, shatter a mountain with one punch, and transform into five-meter-tall golden Buddhas were no different from gods.
And Qi Tian, the one who had created these "gods," was an even higher presence in their hearts.
After receiving Qi Tian's orders, the three first shot up into space. Once they confirmed that they were on a planet, they returned to tell him.
Then, following his instructions, they flew rapidly through the sky in one direction, staying within the range of his consciousness.
Jin Shi was the fastest. In his Golden Buddha Form, he could reach almost three kilometers per second, while even in his ordinary human form, he could manage one and a half kilometers per second.
At his ordinary speed, he took forty hours to circle the planet. Only after hearing this did Qi Tian realize that the planet was many times larger than Earth in his previous life, and that it had only a single continent.
Over the following days, the three set out from the tribal village and carefully explored the entire planet.
As they continued to send back reports, Qi Tian learned more about the planet. It had no more advanced civilization, but it did have many tribes of different sizes.
The planet was home to quite a few enormous and powerful vicious beasts. Some resembled animals from Earth in his previous life.
But it was as if they had evolved, becoming even more fearsome in appearance—somewhat like the magical beasts from web novels.
If Qi Tian hadn't arrived, humanity on this planet would probably have struggled to survive under the threat of these powerful beasts.
But now, with three superhumans transformed by the Golden Liquid, Jin Shi and the other two had become the top of the planet's food chain. In the future, perhaps all of humanity would reach the top.
To take control of the entire planet more quickly and gain the faith of all its people, Qi Tian used several drops of Golden Liquid, diluted them, and had everyone from the original Jin Shi tribe undergo the transformation.
Because of their physical limitations, the other five hundred or so villagers couldn't fly, even after absorbing the energy in the Golden Liquid. Their strength was far inferior to that of Jin Shi and the other two.
Still, even the weakest among them could easily defeat a beast on the level of the Silver Wolf King, just as Jin Shi once had.
Most importantly, everyone transformed by the energy of the Golden Liquid could take on a Golden Buddha Form.
However, anyone who had reached adulthood, whether a young adult or an elderly person in their sixties or seventies, could grow only a little over five meters tall. It seemed that this was the limit of the Golden Buddha Form's size.
To Qi Tian's surprise, when a man and woman who had undergone the transformation through the Golden Liquid had a child, their offspring could also take on a Golden Buddha Form.
This reminded Qi Tian of a web novel he had read in his previous life, called Coiling Dragon. He was like Beirut, who had created the Four Divine Beast Clans in the Yulan Continent, except that he had created a new race on this unfamiliar planet.
Qi Tian wanted to give the new race he had created a name. At first, he considered calling them the "Golden Buddha Clan," but he didn't believe in Buddha, and aside from their appearance, these tribespeople had none of the traits of the "Buddha" he knew from his previous life.
So he simply called them the "Gold Soul Clan." However, he still named their transformed state the "Golden Buddha Form," since they looked like Buddhas.
At the same time, he had the Gold Soul Clan call him "Buddha Lord." He had a feeling that once the Sanskrit Phantom was completely filled and he shed his stone body to emerge, he too would take on the form of a "Buddha."
Under Qi Tian's guidance, the Gold Soul Clan learned about the other tribes from the information Jin Shi and the other two had brought back. They then began expanding in every direction.
Some of the nearby tribes were directly absorbed into Jin Shi's tribe, expanding its territory.
The newcomers were also made to worship Qi Tian as the "Buddha Lord," speeding up the filling of the Sanskrit Phantom in his sea of consciousness.
As for the tribes far from the Gold Soul Clan's territory, members of the tribe were sent out in separate groups. They first subdued those tribes by force, then offered them protection so they could survive better against the beasts, and finally taught them of Qi Tian, the "Buddha Lord."
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