Chapter 2700 - 2701: A Troublesome Thing

They had no idea what Drudgeon was really thinking, or even whether it was Drudgeon personally handling this matter, but Feng Yuan and the others had no intention of digging deeper. Simply put, this thing had been stably in existence for so many years; if there really were problems, they would have erupted long ago.

Since nothing had happened up to now, they could be sure that this Ancestor Spirit posed no harm to the Tea Wood Town Area. Coupled with the regional restrictions imposed by the original rune, people from elsewhere wouldn’t cast greedy eyes on it. What Feng Yuan needed to do now was merely to further simplify and compress the Ancestor of Ancestor Spirits into a single sigil and blend it into Xiao Ji’s Special Spirit Beast Decoration.

At this moment Feng Yuan more or less understood why he had felt the Divine Chaos Period was so important back then, something that shouldn’t be given up lightly. In the end, it was because the Ancestor Spirits touched on too vast a span of time.

You could say that although this thing’s greatest influence lay in the Divine Chaos Period, both before and after that it continued to affect the Tea Wood Town Area; it just didn’t sway the culture of an entire era the way it had during the Divine Chaos Period.

For something with such far‑reaching influence, Feng Yuan didn’t believe it could be anything but important. Of course, even without it, he believed he could still complete a Special Spirit Beast Decoration; it’s just that the effect would probably be worse.

After all, according to that crafting method’s description, the culture it carries determines the final upper limit, and obviously the richer and more complete the carried culture is, the better the effect.

Feng Yuan had never considered making a Spirit Beast Decoration based on Great Xia’s culture. Though dynasties change, strictly speaking Great Xia’s culture has always been continuously inherited and transformed.

If it could be made, its upper limit would definitely be very high. However! Feng Yuan absolutely didn’t have the ability to compress all that into a Spirit Beast Decoration for Xiao Ji. The reason was simple: the size constraints were right there. Even if every era was represented by a single symbol, in order to perfectly describe each era, those symbols would already exceed the maximum size he planned for the decoration.

He couldn’t just ignore aesthetics and brute‑force it for power’s sake, could he? Feng Yuan prided himself on the strength he already possessed, and didn’t want to become one of those pure "power‑only" types who ignore everything else for the sake of raw strength.

Even if he did brute‑force it, only someone with Ah Mu’s kind of physique could bear a decoration that big. Let alone how the appearance would be an utter mess—with that much crammed in, wanting it to look good? Not impossible, but certainly very difficult.

Feng Yuan could manage it, but the amount of effort and care it would take truly wouldn’t be ordinary. He didn’t think that particular design was worth that much expenditure.

If Xiao Ji really lacked that kind of power, that would be one thing. But Feng Yuan didn’t even know what effect that Special Spirit Beast Decoration would ultimately have, and besides, as a Divine Beast, what Xiao Ji lacked right now was time to grow, not a bunch of messy external boosts.

It was just like Veronia: although it had come into contact with and grasped quite a lot of special powers while following Feng Yuan, those things were no more than toys to Veronia.

In battles where real strength mattered, it simply wouldn’t use such methods.

So in Feng Yuan’s eyes, this decoration’s appearance mattered more than its combat value. Xiao Ji really didn’t have much shortage of combat options: if it could play Crystal Domain and Qi Realm Stance well, that would already be enough.

Xiao Ji didn’t care about the origins of the Ancestor Spirits or all that miscellaneous stuff; what it was thinking about now was completely how to master this special finishing move called Ancestor Spirit. And if it could actually manifest the mighty power they said it possessed in the Divine Chaos Period, all the better~

Unfortunately Feng Yuan’s attention wasn’t on Xiao Ji, so he didn’t notice that Xiao Ji had been watching him with full expectation all this time. Veronia did notice Xiao Ji’s strange behavior, but it didn’t speak up to remind Feng Yuan, because there was no need.

Without asking, it could guess what Xiao Ji was thinking—nothing more than wanting to learn the Ancestor Spirit Skill. Yet at present, everything they had related to this was limited to being usable only within the Tea Wood Town Area.

From its analysis of runes, Veronia felt that Feng Yuan could indeed create an Ancestor Spirit that wasn’t region‑locked. But the root of this thing was faith. The reason the Tea Wood Town Area could maintain its current Ancestor Spirits at all was entirely because Saintess Cen Yue had destroyed the conversion segment.

Although, due to losing the conversion part, the Ancestor Spirits could no longer truly gather and manifest, the ones that had already appeared were let become part of the Tea Wood Town Area’s world rules.

This was why they couldn’t create new Ancestor Spirits, yet it didn’t prevent them from using the Ancestral Spirit Secret Technique.

Likewise, because it was sustained only by incomplete rule fragments, the Ancestral Spirit Secret Technique no longer possessed its original mighty power, while at the same time no longer needing faith to enhance the Ancestor Spirits’ strength.

In the final analysis, the original version of the Ancestor Spirits was akin to artificial faith gods: as long as faith was sufficient, their power could endlessly approach that of Divine Beasts, and as faith waned, their power would be endlessly diminished until they vanished.

In other words, compared with the current Ancestor Spirits—whose consumption doesn’t need to be supplied by users—the original version demanded faith as the price in exchange. And unlike temples, temples set a very loose threshold for Power of Prayer.

As long as you weren’t just going through the motions without a shred of feeling, even the faintest intention to pray would count, and in the calculations it was no different from devout prayer.

Faith power was different. The more devout the faith, the greater its numerical weight. This easily turned into faith wars, which is why, even now, although faith rules exist, very few people or Spirit Beasts can make use of them.

It’s not only that they lack the corresponding methods. The Divine Beasts also keep an eye on such matters—not because they’re worried about what humans will do after mastering faith power, but because they’re worried about what humans will do in order to obtain faith power.

As for the notion that mastering faith power would give humans might comparable to Divine Beasts, the Divine Beasts simply didn’t care. In the end, faith gods and Divine Beasts don’t differ that much; with enough faith, they can even stand on par with top-level Divine Beasts like Veronia.

But one point can’t be changed: the number of faith gods is destined to remain small. Compared to the multitude of Divine Beasts, they will inevitably be a tiny minority. One must know that even Veronia doesn’t dare stand against a whole crowd of Divine Beasts; in such a clash, the only possible loser would be it.

So Divine Beasts have never worried that humans mastering faith power would become a threat to them. What they worry about is the disruption of order that the emergence of faith gods would bring.

Say nothing else—among the Divine Beasts themselves, not everyone strictly abides by their role. Some, purely for their own whims, stir up storms among humans.

Faith gods controlled by humans would likely be even more dangerous than those Divine Beasts, because human behavior is impossible to predict; no one knows what they might do.

Veronia decided that once Little Crocodile came back, it would tell it about the situation in Tea Wood Town. Veronia was sure Drudgeon definitely hadn’t told Little Crocodile what was going on here; otherwise that fellow wouldn’t have left the Ancestor of Ancestor Spirits mural intact.

As for the current Ancestral Spirit Secret Technique? That could be left alone. It could only be used in the Tea Wood Town Area, and its power was limited. In the past it might still have had some value, since Ancestor Spirits could unleash special finishing moves that crossed attributes.

But now that there was Qi Realm Stance, attribute‑changing had lost much of its value. At least in terms of cost, those who truly needed it wouldn’t mind the side effects of Qi Realm Stance.

Not to mention that in the Domain Crystal era, some special finishing moves appeared that altered the user’s finishing move attribute based on the attribute of the Crystal Domain that was deployed. All this meant that cross‑type finishing moves were no longer as prized as they used to be.

After all, situations that require attribute switching are still relatively rare.

"Alright, that’s it. This should be fine."

Looking at the simplified and optimized Ancestor of Ancestor Spirits in his hand, Feng Yuan let out a long breath. With something that touched on so many aspects, he couldn’t just gloss over it, and directly using the Ancestor of Ancestor Spirits pattern wasn’t impossible either.

But he still had other sigils to incorporate later, and besides, that original pattern was best not shown openly. So Feng Yuan could only redesign and refine the Ancestor of Ancestor Spirits sigil.

There was no helping it—the consequence of directly using the original version was that anyone who saw the Spirit Beast Decoration on Xiao Ji might be able to deduce the complete Ancestor Spirit manufacturing method from it.

Yet in Feng Yuan’s view, that thing really wasn’t suitable for proliferation. It would undoubtedly have a negative impact on the stability of the current world order.

The temple alone had almost sparked unrest, and that was with Divine Beasts suppressing things. Throwing faith gods into the mix—if chaos didn’t break out, Feng Yuan would be the one surprised. And at that point, the Divine Beasts might not even be able to suppress it.

After all, they don’t interfere in human civil wars. As long as those people behave at the beginning and don’t directly damage world order, most Divine Beasts truly won’t meddle, even if they know trouble will inevitably come later.

"Mm‑hm, there are still some traces, but you can hardly see them."

Looking at the Ancestor of Ancestor Spirits sigil that Feng Yuan had simplified and modified, Veronia spoke, somewhat doubtful whether this thing would still be valid, given how far it had diverged from the original version.