Among them, a voice full of extreme devotion, almost desperate pleading, like a beacon in the darkness, clearly drew his attention.
His gaze pierced through the clouds, through the magnificent or dilapidated buildings.
Finally, it became fixed on a remote valley outside the city, amidst the ruins of a temple long abandoned and decayed.
Inside the temple, among the ruins, a bald man, nearly a skeleton himself, sat on the cold ground.
He held a little girl in his arms, who was also thin and weak.
The other group was only seven or eight years old, probably his daughter.
The tears on the man's face seemed to have dried, leaving only deep tracks.
He gently and lovingly stroked his daughter's pale, emaciated face.
His other hand was raised with the last of his strength, pointing towards the ancient relief in the center of the temple, which was merged with a stone platform and adorned with a sun pattern bearing a majestic human face.
His voice was hoarse and dry, full of despair on the verge of collapse and the last, faint hope for a miracle.
"Great Sun... I praise you... You mercifully grant life and radiance to all things..."
"Your believer, Gil... I beg you, please save my child, my Lina... She is still so young..."
He coughed violently several times, his body trembling slightly from weakness, but his raised hand was unusually steady.
"I... I am your most devout believer, and have dedicated my humble life to the revival of the Sun Cult..."
"My money, my food, my labor... everything I have..."
"As long as you can save her, I, Gil, am willing to dedicate the rest of my life and my soul to you forever after death, and praise your radiance day and night... I beg you... bestow your mercy..."
Karl listened quietly to the tearful prayer, his gaze penetrating the bodies of the man and the girl.
Under his vision, the physical condition of the two was clearly visible.
Chronic severe malnutrition, almost atrophied stomachs, massive loss of muscle tissue.
More seriously, they had visible lesions inside their bodies, very similar to cancer.
The flame of life in these two bodies was already like a candle's wick about to go out,
on the verge of being abandoned by the world.
Yet this man was still performing the most humble and meticulous prayer to the god he believed in.
Karl felt a complex touch in his heart, surprised by the resilience of faith in such an extreme situation, and an indescribable compassion filled him.
This almost fanatical belief, placing all hope on ethereal gods,
was both sad and demonstrated a touching persistence in a desperate situation.
"What I want to do." Karl's thought arose naturally.
At that moment, a strange phenomenon occurred.
In the sound of Gil's extremely devout prayers, extremely thin but extremely pure golden energy threads gradually rose from the bodies of him and the girl in his arms.
As if inspired, they rose high into the sky, towards Karl.
Almost simultaneously, a large amount of thin energy flowed out from the ancient relief carved with the sun on a human face.
But this energy flow seemed murky, most of it an unpleasant gray energy with negative emotions such as greed, demand, and resentment.
Only a very small part was relatively pure golden energy, similar to that emanating from Gil's body.
Karl looked at these thin energy lines flying towards him, invisible to ordinary people, and knew in his heart: "This is... the power of faith?"
He reached out his hand, and a small ball mixed with golden and gray faith energy naturally hovered before him.
He cautiously tried to absorb a small part of the pure golden faith energy into his body, bringing a gentle warmth.
Like adding an insignificant drop of water to his solar energy, the effect on power enhancement was almost negligible.
And this trace of gray faith energy immediately gave him a slight feeling of stagnation and nausea, as if he had swallowed a mouthful of dirty oil mixed with sand and gravel.
He immediately focused his mind, mobilized the energy in his body, and tried to expel this gray faith energy.
This process was not easy; this gray faith energy seemed sticky, and it required a lot of energy and time to peel it away and expel it from his body.
Watching the gray energy gradually float in the air and begin to slowly exit after being expelled,
Karl realized in his heart that this gray faith energy was impure power, mixed with the selfish desires and negative emotions of the believers, and could be considered impurities.
Absorbing it not only brought no benefit but also required energy to purify and expel it, which was not worth the loss.
Only someone like Gil, who still maintained a relatively pure prayer in a desperate situation, could manifest the rare power of pure golden faith.
Moreover, this power of faith was unreliable! Karl's gaze deepened.
The nymph was a living example; her power was closely tied to people's faith in nature and water systems.
When faith waned, her power sharply decreased.
Karl even suspected that if he were to fight the nymph now, with her power greatly weakened,
when the faith power she had stored up ran out, she was afraid she couldn't even withstand a single blow.
The power of faith was a double-edged sword.
It brought strength, but also carried fatal dependence and weakness.
And the root of power should be in your own hands.
Karl strengthened his resolve, remembering the realization from his first encounter with the power of faith.
Immediately, his attention returned to the dying father and daughter below.
He opened his mouth, and his vocal cords vibrated at a frequency beyond the comprehension of ordinary people.
He transmitted a modified, deep, magnetic, and inhuman voice into the abandoned temple, sounding directly in Gil's ears.
"Devout believer, Gil..."
Gil, immersed in grief and prayer, suddenly trembled.
He looked up in disbelief, his clouded eyes frantically scanning the empty, ruined interior of the temple, his voice trembling with intense shock and tremor.
"God... is it you?! Is it you?! You... you heard my prayers?!"
"But... why? Why do you say you can't help us?" Gil's voice was tearful and puzzled.
Karl did not explain immediately. He controlled the relatively pure golden faith energy he had received from Gil, his daughter, and the relief,
manifesting a soft golden glow before Gil.
Under Gil's astonished gaze, the golden light split into two parts and vanished into the bodies of him and the daughter in his arms.
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