[Uncanny cultivation + becoming a god through incense offerings + slow-burn mystery + no System in the later stages + no female lead + Lovecraftian divine path]
In the final years of the Great Qian dynasty,
a great drought ravaged the land and evil spirits ran rampant.
Some people saw the statues in temples open their eyes in the dead of night.
Some found that relatives who had been dead for years had returned to knock on their doors at midnight.
And some watched an entire village vanish overnight after its people prayed to the gods and Buddhas.
The imperial court began burning temples and destroying gods.
From then on, there were no true gods left in the world.
…
When Song Xuan transmigrated to this world, he was just a young temple keeper guarding a ramshackle shrine, nearly starving to death.
The shrine had no incense offerings left.
Half the statue was cracked.
There was even the stench of a corpse beneath the offering table.
At first, all he wanted was to stay alive.
Then, one night,
a spirit walker who had “lost his head” knocked on the temple door.
Only then did Song Xuan realize
that the most terrifying things in this world were not ghosts,
but gods.
Incense offerings could make a god,
and they could also devour people.
The statues worshipped by the world for thousands of years
had never held compassion within them,
only hunger.
…
Later,
Song Xuan saw a flesh-and-blood Buddha devour the incense offerings of an entire county.
He saw a faceless god dwelling in the dreams of millions.
He saw the “Guardian God of the Realm,” worshipped by the dynasty for three hundred years, devouring the living deep inside the imperial palace.
And at last, he understood:
The so-called divine path
was nothing more than a blood-soaked road paved with the desires of all living beings.
“If people must worship gods to survive,”
“then why can’t the gods die?”
