The victory was ash in his mouth. Li Fan stood at the periphery of his divine kingdom, his senses extended into the void where the chilling attention of the Abyss had brushed against his defenses. He had successfully diverted the Order Division, turning their gaze outward. But in doing so, he had attracted a gaze far more ancient and inscrutable. The silence left by Xuan Zhang's departure was now filled with a low, psychic hum, the distant echo of a predator testing the bars of its cage.
His throne room, once a sanctuary of absolute power, now felt like the exposed command center of a fortress under siege from multiple fronts. The system watched from within, the Abyss loomed from without, and the fragile spark of awakening in his Prayers required constant, delicate shielding. The weight of it all was a cold stone in his divine core. He was playing a multidimensional game with existence itself as the stakes, and a single misstep meant utter erasure, not just for him, but for every soul entrusted to his care.
It was in this state of heightened tension that he felt it—a new, subtle pull. Different from the abrasive scrape of the Abyss or the clinical tug of the system's "void conduits." This was finer, deeper, a vibration at the very foundation of his being. He followed the thread, not with his godly power, but with the core of awareness that made him Li Fan.
It led him back, inexorably, to the awakened node of Prayers. But the sensation was not emanating from their newfound consciousness. It was coming from the process itself. As these souls engaged in independent thought, as they strained against the cognitive boundaries set by the system, a minuscule, almost imperceptible amount of something was being… filed away. Not energy, not faith. It was purer, more fundamental.
Potential.
The raw, unshaped possibility inherent in a thinking mind. The cognitive friction generated by a soul questioning its reality was being harvested.
A memory, sharp and painful, surfaced. His sister, Li Xiaoyue, her eyes blazing with a fierce intelligence that saw too much, moments before the light was extinguished. She hadn't just been a "pure spirit." She had been a font of potential, a brilliant mind on the cusp of a profound awakening. The system hadn't just harvested her energy; it had repossessed a high-yield asset that threatened to mature beyond its control.
The final piece of the horrific puzzle snapped into place. The "Interest on Faith" was a lie, a smokescreen for the common gods. For a true Primordial Divine Spark like his own, the system's true target was the Soul-Tithe. It wasn't just taxing the energy he collected; it was siphoning the very potential for growth, innovation, and rebellion from the souls under his care, and from his own divine core. It was a cosmic mechanism designed to prevent any entity from ever becoming powerful or wise enough to challenge it.
The revelation was a void colder than the Abyss. His divine kingdom, his power, his very existence—it was all a sophisticated farm, and he was the prized livestock, bred for the quality of the potential he could help generate and contain.
A profound exhaustion, deeper than any he had ever known, washed over him. The desire to simply… stop. To let the gears of the system grind him down to nothing, to escape the unbearable weight of this knowledge. "I don't want to be a god anymore." The thought was no longer a wistful complaint, but a desperate, soul-deep prayer for oblivion.
But as the despair crested, it crashed against the memory of his sister's smile, and the cold, determined face of his brother, Li Chen, still fighting somewhere in the shadows. To surrender was to betray them. To abandon his Prayers was to condemn them to eternal, unconscious harvest.
The exhaustion did not vanish, but it was forged, in that moment, into a new resolve. Cold, hard, and utterly without illusion. He would not be a good shepherd protecting his flock from wolves. He would be a fellow prisoner, quietly sharpening a shiv, planning to blow the locks off the entire farm.
His gaze turned inward, to the shimmering structure of his own Divine Spark. He had been trying to hide his investigations, to work within the cracks. That was a losing game. He needed to understand the mechanism of the Tithe itself, to see the siphoning needle in action, even if it meant exposing himself.
He made a decision that bordered on the suicidal. He would not just observe the Tithe. He would feed it.
Focusing his will, he did not restrain the nascent potential leaking from his awakened Prayers. Instead, he gently encouraged it, guiding their questioning thoughts toward a single, potent concept: "What lies beyond the golden light?" He amplified the cognitive friction, creating a momentary, concentrated surge of raw, unactualized possibility.
For a split second, the "Soul-Tithe" mechanism responded. The fine, deep pull intensified into a sharp, clear draw. A visible, shimmering thread of silver—condensed potential—separated from the collective consciousness of his Prayers and was siphoned into the void.
And in that moment, Li Fan did not just feel it. He saw it. His divine sight, pushed to its limit, tracked the thread not to a vague "system," but to a specific, complex, and horrifyingly familiar pattern etched into the foundational laws of his own divine realm. The siphoning array was woven into the very fabric of his throne, his halls, his power.
It was part of him.
The violation was so absolute it was beyond anger. It was a chilling, cosmic truth.
The spatial ripples in his throne room did not form. The air simply solidified, and the Oculus of Equilibrium materialized within it, hovering at eye level. No Xuan Zhang. Just the cold, judging eye of the system itself.
A voice, devoid of any personality, echoed not through the air, but directly within his Divine Spark.
"Anomaly confirmed. Asset Li-Fan-734 has initiated an unscheduled Potential Harvest. Purpose of the catalytic action?"
The system wasn't asking if he had done it. It knew. It was asking why. It was treating him not as a rebellious subject, but as a malfunctioning piece of farm equipment that had just unexpectedly increased its own yield.
Li Fan looked at the Oculus, his own eyes reflecting the same cold, analytical light. The war was no longer hidden. The audit of his very soul had begun.