Becoming a God

A wave of dizziness hit Su He. He jolted awake and instinctively rubbed his head, his mind still clouded by lingering vertigo.

As the fog cleared, Su He took a careful look around.

He stood in the center of a ruined palace. Everywhere he looked were broken walls, fallen beams and shattered tiles.

One thing stood out amid the decay: a throne radiating a sacred aura.

A soft golden orb floated above it. Barely half a foot across, it was surrounded by a faint golden halo. As the light shifted, it gave off a weak but pure power of light that drove back the palace's gloom and decay, lending the dead ruin a trace of life.

This was nowhere he recognized.

How had he ended up here?

Suddenly, a memory surged into Su He's mind.

He had just turned on his computer to play a game when a vortex appeared on the screen. Then he seemed to have been sucked into it.

He had no idea how a computer could pull him inside, but what he saw left only two possibilities: he was dreaming, or he had crossed into another world.

Su He steadied himself and walked toward the only intact throne.

For some reason, a powerful instinct drew him onward. It told him the golden orb above the throne was the most important thing in this ruined palace.

He approached step by step, loose stones crunching softly underfoot.

When he reached the throne, he stopped and studied the floating orb with both curiosity and caution.

Without warning, the gentle golden orb moved. It shot straight at Su He and vanished into his body.

Before Su He could cry out, immense power swept through every part of him.

Then a flood of unfamiliar memories poured into his mind. They came in chaotic fragments: light bathing the earth, countless worshippers bowing in devotion, a brutal struggle against the forces of darkness, and finally defeat and the collapse of the Divine Kingdom.

After a long time, Su He opened his eyes again. He now knew where he was. This had once been the divine kingdom of Yuanxi, the God of Light.

The orb was Yuanxi's divine core. After his defeat, both his body and soul had been destroyed, leaving only a trace of divinity behind.

Su He had apparently absorbed Yuanxi's divinity and divine core.

Su He closed his eyes and felt the changes within himself.

Nourished by divinity, his body and soul had grown stronger. His mind now held many of the Light God's divine authorities, techniques and abilities.

At the same time, he could clearly sense that the Divine Kingdom had lost all contact with the outside world. No Faith Power could reach it.

Without Faith Power, his damaged Divine Core could neither repair itself nor restore his divine power. Without divine power, he could not repair the Divine Kingdom, much less leave it.

Su He's eyes filled with bewilderment and a trace of unwillingness to give up.

He had no idea how long he had been trapped there. It might have been days, years, tens of thousands of years, hundreds of millions—or even longer.

Time had lost all meaning in that lifeless space. Day after day, Su He sat among the ruins, feeling the meager divine power within him slowly drain away. He felt the cracks in the Divine Kingdom widen, as though it might collapse at any moment and bury him with it.

He had tried to find a way out, but nothing had worked.

Loneliness wound around his heart like a vine, slowly wearing down his will.

Suddenly, the gray haze overhead began to churn. A familiar black vortex appeared out of nowhere, hanging in the sky like a giant eye.

It was identical to the vortex that had drawn him into the Divine Kingdom!

Su He sprang to his feet, his eyes blazing. In an instant, hope swept away his despair.

He stared fixedly at the black vortex. He could feel a living world on the other side, a world brimming with life.

Focusing all his will, he drew on the nature of the Light God's divinity to send his sight through the vortex. It pierced layer upon layer of barriers in space and time and reached the world beyond.

Countless images flooded his mind. Across a vast continent, humans cultivated Martial Souls, absorbed soul rings and pursued greater strength. In immense forests, Soul Beasts lay hidden, cultivating for thousands or tens of thousands of years and holding humanity in check.

The name of that world appeared in his mind at once: Douluo Continent.

Su He's pupils contracted slightly, and disbelief spread across his face.

Douluo Continent? He knew that name all too well.

The world before him differed in a few small ways from the one described in the novel, but more than ninety-nine percent of it was the same.

Had the novel become reality? Or was this a parallel world almost identical to it? Su He did not dwell on the question. It did not matter to him.

What mattered was that this world held vast numbers of living beings.

Humans, Soul Beasts, and sea Soul Beasts could all provide him with Faith Power.

Urgency flashed in his eyes. Stirred by hope, the divinity within him grew more active.

If he gained enough power of faith, he could repair his divine core, restore his divine power, mend the kingdom and strengthen his divinity. He might even surpass Yuanxi and become something greater than the former God of Light.

Only one question remained: how could he make the beings of Douluo Continent believe in him?

Su He sat among the ruins and began to think it through.

His first thought was to use divine power to relieve suffering.

As the Light God, healing the living and saving those in distress came naturally to him. It was also the easiest way to win faith.

If he performed miracles, healed the gravely ill and badly wounded, and rescued those in misery, it would not take long for great numbers of people to worship him.

But he soon dismissed the idea.

His divine power was almost exhausted. The last trace of divinity he possessed could barely sustain his consciousness and body, let alone support healing on a large scale.

Even if he gave it everything he had, he could save only a few tens of thousands of people. The Faith Power they generated would be a drop in the bucket.

More importantly, Douluo Continent was no ordinary world. The Angel God and the Sea God controlled its sources of faith.

If an outsider like him tried to take a share, he would inevitably draw the attention of Spirit Hall and Sea God Island.

To those two powers, anyone who tried to compete for faith was an enemy.

Once they turned against him, gathering Faith Power would be out of the question. They would likely destroy even the small following he had only just begun to build.