As the legitimate successor of Spirit Hall and the former Pope who once governed it as Grand Worship, Qian Daoliu's authority was absolute. Even many of Bibi Dong's self-proclaimed confidants ultimately chose obedience under his authority.
Under normal circumstances, Chrysanthemum Douluo and Ghost Douluo were considered Bibi Dong's trusted aides. Combined with their considerable strength, even Qian Daoliu's authority would have found it difficult to completely stop them from siding with her. At most, he could only make them less obvious about it.
But Bibi Dong's actions some time ago had thoroughly offended Chrysanthemum Douluo.
Now that Qian Daoliu had openly stepped forward to oppose Bibi Dong, Chrysanthemum Douluo immediately raised his banner and stood on Qian Daoliu's side, bringing along a large number of his followers, affiliated forces, and the largely indifferent Ghost Douluo as well under the Consecration Hall's faction.
In less than three days, Bibi Dong, the Pope herself, was effectively stripped of real authority.
Bibi Dong had spent years establishing her authority within Spirit Hall, yet once Qian Daoliu openly opposed her, she was reduced to little more than a ceremonial figurehead in only a matter of days.
Every document sent to the Pope's Palace would first pass through the Consecration Hall before entering. Only what Qian Daoliu approved would ever reach Bibi Dong's eyes.
Likewise, once orders issued from the Pope's Palace left its doors, they required Qian Daoliu's approval before implementation. If Qian Daoliu disagreed, Bibi Dong's commands could not be carried out.
As for Qian Daoliu's takeover of Spirit Hall's authority, not only did many people feel no dissatisfaction, they instead considered it completely natural.
A small portion even believed Qian Daoliu should have done this long ago. The most radical among them thought he should simply depose Bibi Dong and reclaim the position of Pope himself.
At its core, Spirit Hall was a religious organization. Ninety-nine percent of its members respected the Pope of Spirit Hall, the inheritance and name of Spirit Hall itself, the Angel God, and the Angel lineage.
Only a tiny minority truly respected Bibi Dong as an individual. And even among those few, most admired not her strength or abilities, but merely her beauty.
If Qian Daoliu had not restrained himself and stated that he was already tired of being Pope, there would genuinely have been elders carrying the pope's crown over to place it back on his head. A considerable number of them had originally been Bibi Dong's supporters.
The Consecration Hall's power to depose and appoint Popes was no joke, and Bibi Dong genuinely experienced the suffocating frustration of being completely restrained. Yet she had absolutely no way to break the situation.
Use force?
No. Victory was impossible.
Within the territory of Spirit Hall, Qian Daoliu was invincible beneath the level of gods, possessing power that truly rivaled divine beings.
The entirety of Spirit Hall provided him with nearly limitless enhancement. On this land, steeped in endless faith, even a true god descending to the mortal world might not be able to defeat one who wielded a portion of the Angel God's power.
And if someone somehow managed to defeat Qian Daoliu, there was an extremely high chance it would trigger the Angel God's divine descent, causing the true Angel God to personally intervene and display the might of the supreme existence spoken of in the legends of Douluo Continent.
Previously, Bibi Dong gambled that Qian Daoliu would not act because she believed him soft and predictable, and because of Qian Renxue, she thought he would never truly oppose her.
But now, Bibi Dong genuinely no longer dared gamble on whether Qian Daoliu might actually lose control and strike her down with a single sword slash.
After all, their attributes countered each other too severely, their strength gap was considerable, and this was the home ground of the Angel lineage. If Qian Daoliu truly went mad and drew the Angel Sacred Sword to kill her, it really might only take a single strike.
To her frustration, she discovered that she now had absolutely no options left.
She was practically under house arrest within the Pope's Palace, completely unable to interfere in any affairs of Spirit Hall. How could that not drive her nearly insane?
Yet no matter how furious she became, all she could do was rage helplessly in private. She did not even dare reveal that helpless fury before others, fearing that even the people around her—whose loyalty she already doubted—might abandon her as well.
It was during these few days of spreading influence that news about Chen Ming completely reached every corner of the continent. Spirit Hall branches at all levels began to distribute the Douluo Heart Method and relay Chen Ming's speech at Spirit Hall.
From low-ranking Spirit Scholars all the way to Spirit Saints and Spirit Douluo who had no qualification to enter Spirit Hall itself, everyone began studying the Douluo Heart Method with painstaking focus like children encountering cultivation for the very first time.
Chen Ming's name reached every corner of the Douluo Continent, becoming the genius on everyone's lips.
In the Heaven Dou Empire, although Emperor Xue Ye was somewhat displeased that Chen Ming had not shared the Douluo Heart Method directly with the empire, he still elevated Chen Ming—who remained in the Spirit Hall—to the rank of Duke. He even granted him one-third of Fasinuo Province as his personal fief.
Meanwhile, the Star Luo Empire's emperor acted even more aggressively.
He directly announced to the public that Chen Ming would likewise be granted the rank of Duke. Furthermore, if Chen Ming were willing to join the Star Luo Empire, he would be granted the title of a hereditary king with a specially designated province turned into a kingdom for him to pass down through generations.
To prove he was not merely speaking empty words, the Star Luo Emperor even carved out one-third of a province bordering Fasinuo Province and formally incorporated it into Chen Ming's duchy.
Because Fasinuo Province itself bordered the Star Luo Empire, and Nuoding City was a frequent hub for merchants traveling between the two empires, this resulted in Chen Ming's theoretical territory spanning both empires. He became one of the exceedingly rare nobles capable of receiving the highest standard honors and hereditary lands from two empires simultaneously.
In the Nuoding City Intermediate Spirit Master Academy, Principal Lu looked at the Douluo Heart Method in his hand and the high-ranking figure from the Imperial family with thick disbelief in his eyes.
"Your Highness… was this truly created by our academy's Chen Ming?"
"Of course it was him. Naturally it was him. It could only have been him!" Prince Xue Xing spoke with a solemn expression as he looked Principal Lu up and down.
Although no matter how he looked at it, he could not believe that a mere assault-type Spirit Ancestor and such a tiny place could have nurtured a genius of this caliber, he still tried his best to appear approachable.
"Nuoding City Intermediate Spirit Master Academy, correct? My imperial brother already instructed me to handle matters as I see fit. An academy that produced such a genius, a school that contributed such talent to Heaven Dou Emperial Academy and the Heaven Dou Empire itself—how could it remain this shabby?"
Prince Xue Xing, sitting in the principal's chair, stood up and patted Principal Lu on the shoulder.
"From now on, I will serve as the academy principal, and you will be vice principal. There's no need for the academy to remain in Nuoding City either. Once the time comes, it will relocate to Holy Soul City. And simply being called an Intermediate Academy is meaningless now—add the word 'Emperial' to the name. Understand?"
"??!!"
Lu Zhen, whose identity had just changed from Principal of Nuoding City Intermediate Spirit Master Academy to Vice Principal of Holy Soul City Emperial Intermediate Spirit Master Academy, trembled violently.
Although he was going from principal to vice principal, anyone could tell this was a blessing impossible to obtain in several lifetimes.
"Principal, then what about Holy Soul City?" Lu Zhen hurriedly asked.
"Holy Soul City hasn't been built yet. You'll move there once construction is complete." Prince Xue Xing replied casually before asking offhandedly, "What do you think of the Douluo Heart Method?"
"It's nearly thirty percent faster than the meditation methods we cultivate with! With talent like mine, I now have the qualifications to become a Spirit King in the future! And the students are still young—cultivating like this means nearly all of them can break through the limits they originally had!"
"For a genius like him to have once studied at our academy… this is the kind of blessing only possible if the ancestral graves of me and all the previous principals were smoking with heavenly fortune!"
Lu Zhen's eyes were filled with worship. Although Chen Ming had once been his student and should theoretically have lost some of that mystique, Lu Zhen now only felt fanatic admiration toward him.
In truth, while the Douluo Heart Method heavily impacted the major clans and sects by rendering their meditation methods obsolete and showing them a higher ceiling, the greatest beneficiaries were actually ordinary Spirit Masters.
After all, Chen Ming had standardized normal cultivation methods with an efficiency value of 1. Using that scale, even the cultivation method left behind by the Spirit Saint from Holy Soul Village only reached an efficiency of 1.05.
For Spirit Masters without backgrounds or inheritances, their cultivation efficiency usually hovered between 1 and 1.05, not even reaching 1.1. Many small clans and sects could not reach 1.1 either.
For great sects to achieve 1.2, it required the appearance of exceptional experts and several generations working over hundreds of years to continually refine their methods.
But for the overwhelming majority of Spirit Masters in junior and intermediate academies, the Douluo Heart Method genuinely increased their cultivation efficiency by thirty percent, visibly raising their upper limits.
Furthermore, the medicinal powder included in the book could greatly enhance the cultivation speed of Spirit Scholars and Spirit Masters alike, practically shattering barriers that ordinary Spirit Masters would never have been able to break through in their entire lives.
Even though the Douluo Heart Method had only spread across Douluo Continent for a few days, already tens of thousands of Spirit Masters throughout the dozens of provinces in the two great empires had voluntarily established shrines to worship Chen Ming.
After all, the efficiency of the Douluo Heart Method was truly high, and that medicinal powder was truly cheap and effective!
When the two were combined, cultivation efficiency during the Spirit Scholar and Spirit Master stages directly increased by fifty percent!
...
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