When Jiang Hao returned to Blue Star through the black Vortex, the vast, ownerless Faith surrounding the planet—enough to make the gods of the Otherworld seethe with envy—surged as though it had found its master and poured into his body.
His Authority converted that Faith into Divine Power, which burst into flame.
15... 16. His god level jumped without warning, then stopped.
If the gods of the Otherworld learned that Jiang Hao, the God of Agriculture, had reached God Level 15 in one leap and then rapidly advanced to Divine Rank 16, they would go mad with envy.
In theory, with enough Faith, a god could raise his god level to its maximum as quickly as possible. In practice, almost no god could do so.
Spreading Faith in the Otherworld was simply too difficult. In times of peace, the distribution of Faith was all but fixed. It was nearly impossible for a New God to wrest believers from established gods. Every New God was short of Divine Power upon first ascending, let alone anything more.
Only between the end of an old era and the beginning of a new one, when the gods were in turmoil and the old distribution of Faith broke down, could New Gods grow quickly. The Lord of Dawn, the God of Plane Fusion, and the other powerful New Gods of the Fifth Era had all risen during that period.
Even so, no god had ever been like Jiang Hao: ascending straight to God Level 15, then reaching Divine Rank 16 less than a day later.
*Was level 16 the limit of the Authority of Agriculture? I feel it could go higher. If everyone in the Otherworld ate produce grown in fields, eliminating the widespread output of household workshops and the rapidly expanding livestock industry, Agriculture