Ves did not like deity cultivation. The examples shown by his mother and the cultivation methods described by the numerous enlightenment fruits dangling from the Tree of Possibilities all emphasized the primary reason for his dislike. The relationships between the 'deity' and its worshipers were too uneven! Due to the considerable power imbalance between the two parties, the vastly more superior one held most if not all of the cards. It was so easy for the deity to exploit its worshipers and demand them to give up much of what they possessed in value for a cultivator in exchange for paltry rewards. In fact, a deity did not even have to do anything for its worshipers! The supposed god could simply sit back and continue to absorb faith or spiritual feedback while leaving its subjects completely in the dust! "Even the more benign faiths tend to describe hands off relationships." Ves shook his head. Gods had better things to do than to act as nannies. If their worshipers couldn't do anything without crying to their revered deities, then what was the benefit of keeping them around? Besides, once gods started to attract a huge number of worshipers, it became unrealistic to attend to their spiritual needs in real-time! Only the more benevolent and restricted gods might have reasons to do a decent job and respond to those who were truly in need, but even then they could never fully reciprocate all of the gains they received from their body of worshipers. "Inequality is baked into the fabric of deity cultivation." Ves concluded. "No god can solve any problem, nor should they. People should ideally live their own lives without the meddling of nefarious or capricious gods." Deity cultivation became intertwined with all kinds of messy beliefs and assumptions. The ethical problems and propensity for abuse were so enormous that Ves had to resist the urge to torch it from existence in its entirety! "This is a cancer upon all of humanity and other races for that matter!" His strong secularist ideology caused him to discount all of the positive benefits that deity cultivation could exert on a society. Instead, he fixated on all of the possible abuses and expressed serious contempt towards anyone who used this method of cultivation to get ahead! Even his mother did not escape his sights! From what little Ves had seen from the Oblivion Empire, it gathered large amounts of desperate people who sought to break past their limitations. They somehow believed that the Lady of the Night could give them what they wanted. Though his mother had selectively 'blessed' numerous lucky individuals including a notable quantity of mech pilots, the vast majority of her worshipers obtained little to nothing from their goddess! Cynthia did not even bother to dress up the fact that she was exploiting her lowly minions. All of those gullible and foolish people who fought against the Abyss Empire and more terrible monsters on her behalf worked hard to gain her recognition and blessing, only to perish while fighting for another individual's cause. Ves did not want to follow the example set by his mother. He understood that she was a product of her environment and that she had internalized an entirely different set of values that were incompatible to contemporary human society. His design philosophy centered around the concept of Mutual Growth for good reasons. He had been raised as a modern citizen of a modest civic state. Not only that, but he had also inherited the values and principles of a mech designer. One of the first lessons that any student of this profession learned in class was that mech designers existed to serve mech pilots. By extension, mech designers existed to serve human society and humanity as a whole! This was the essence of what creation cultivators should be. Unlike other types of cultivators, those who attained godhood through production had to set their minds on meeting the needs of their clients from beginning to end. If there was no way that a creation cultivator could provide a positive benefit to their own society, then there was no basis for his existence! "Deity cultivation is too vulnerable for abuse, yet... it can provide a positive benefit to society as well." Deities could provide protection to a group of people. Deities could provide guidance and teachings to elevate a society. Deities could also help their subjects grow stronger and ultimately become god-like entities themselves! "My own work should be good examples of this." Ves considered. He found it rather ironic as much of his spiritual engineering work relied on this model of spiritual development. His design spirits and his kinship networks all functioned properly because they received their sustenance from the spiritual feedback provided by lots of humans! Although they all applied primitive and relatively rudimentary forms of deity cultivation, Ves considered them to be a lot fairer and more transparent than normal. Whenever a mech pilot interfaced with a living mech, he supplied spiritual feedback to the design spirit. However, this was not a unidirectional transaction. In exchange for supplying spiritual feedback, the mech pilot benefited from the glow as well as additional benefits from the design spirit. This was an equitable and sustainable win-win arrangement! Both sides had reasons to keep engaging with each other. They both obtained what they needed without making any unreasonable sacrifices. Ves did not want to break this mutually beneficial relationship structure. He could not allow himself to get indoctrinated by exploitative deity cultivation methods and drastically changed the way he operated! He glanced at a particularly large and shining enlightenment fruit that exemplified everything he hated about deity cultivation. [Karnasis Seed Planting Manual] Price: 555 Ascension Points Imparts a set of secret techniques that enables a practitioner to covertly plant demonic seeds into many different people. These demonic seeds will gradually merge with their recipients until they fully merge together. The practitioner can employ various different techniques to manipulate the behavior of the seed bearers, although strong-willed individuals may be able to detect and resist contradictory compulsions. The practitioner can also harvest as much energy from them as desired. If seed bearers grow stronger, they can make greater sacrifices to their controller. If a seed bearer perishes, the implanted seed can be harvested and absorbed by the practitioner. The matured demonic seed can also absorb the nutrients of the corpse on the spot to rapidly form a demonic tree that can spread a large amount of initial seeds that can be spread to a large group of nearby individuals. Ves' expression turned uglier and uglier the more he read through this description. This deity cultivation method was one of the most blatant ones about exploiting the masses! The so-called 'seed bearers' in this Karnasis Seed Planting Manual were all reduced to slaves by greedy and uncaring practitioners! The fact that the method used the word 'demonic' was a damning indictment of this enlightenment fruit! "Cultivation involving multiple parties has to incorporate reciprocity in order to meet my standards." In other words, a deity cultivation method had to incorporate contract cultivation aspects for the worshipers in order to make it fair enough for both sides. As long as the so-called worshipers could engage in an explicit or implicit form of contract cultivation with their chosen deity, Ves would have much less objections to this practice. This was his rule. The demand not only conformed with his principles, but also guaranteed that his work promoted his design philosophy. After a considerable search, Ves eventually settled on one deity cultivation method that sounded the most equitable of the current selection of offerings. He also grew intrigued by the mechanisms incorporated in this rather creative method. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮 [Karma Liberation Sutra] Price: 240 Ascension Points Imparts a sutra and related knowledge on karma manipulation. Cause and effect ties all life together. Karma is the force that affects luck and existence. Cultivators can impose themselves upon the universe to a greater extent by accumulating more karma, but they will also become bound to it, thereby making it harder to break loose from their shackles. The Karma Liberation Sutra can enable a practitioner to become more real without becoming imprisoned by a universe. The sutra encompasses techniques to generate karma by performing deeds that affect other individuals, which can be used to facilitate reincarnation and other processes. It also contains techniques to offset, transfer and resolve karma in order to liberate the practitioner from remaining indebted. "It's a bit vague, but... I have a good feeling about this one." Ves spoke as he stared at the orange enlightenment fruit. It gave the most positive and benevolent impression out of other comparable fruits. Its description might be a little vague and inadequate in many areas, but it conveyed an explicit sense of fairness, reciprocity, restraint and punishment. This was the template that he sought to define every deity cultivation method for his design spirits and other comparable products! Ves wanted all of his design spirits to grow stronger, but not by exploiting and sucking the energy out of their subjects. If the cultivation method he designed for them tracked all transactions and added negative connotations to debt, then that was a clear way to ensure that the deity cultivation methods did not lead to excessive behavior! "Buy!" Ves instantly plucked and ingested the fruit without any further ado. As he closed his eyes, he became immersed in brand-new mystical theories related to karma, cause and effect, reincarnation and other related topics. The contents of this enlightenment fruit was vastly different from the other knowledge he had absorbed not too long ago. The lack of overlap indicated that this inheritance came from a significantly different culture or time period than the more general cultivation methods. Ves questioned many of the Karma Liberation Sutra's assumptions. He did not know whether to believe that the main universe had an invisible karma tracking mechanism that tallied all of the good and bad karma accumulated by life forms. The sutra never provided any solid proof to back up all of the theories and techniques born from this key assumption. However, the System did not charge 240 Ascension Points for nothing. Even if the sutra possessed faulty elements that did not accurately reflect reality, it was still good enough to be usable by people such as Ves! With the mystical knowledge he learned in an instant, Ves applied it to himself. "Damn." He could vaguely sense the weight of all of the karma he accumulated so far. It was thick and heavy beyond belief! The Karma Liberation Sutra warned that the greater the entanglements and unresolved debts, the harder it would be for a pre-divinity cultivator to successfully break through and transcend into a True God! Ves did not not really believe in this assumption. Mech designers and especially high-ranking ones affected the lives of uncountable amounts of people. Whether their influence was positive or negative, it was impossible for any successful mech designer to avoid piling up karma! The sutra issued dire warnings about accumulating too much negative karma. When there wasn't enough positive karma to offset the bad stuff, a cultivator risked retribution! "Wait a second." Ves suddenly paused. "Is all of that inexplicable lightning from the skies a manifestation of punishment borne out of negative karma?" That would explain why he had to endure an exaggeratingly long lightning storm when he last broke through in the System Space. While his 'punishment' turned out to be so pathetically weak that Ves ended up using it as a strengthening source, he could not assume it would remain this way in the future. From all of the cultivation science he absorbed so far, he vaguely guessed that the strength of the so-called 'lightning tribulation' phenomenon scaled with the prevalence of the power of heaven in the environment. In other words, the same lightning tribulation in the Milky Way might become a hundred times stronger and deadlier in Messier 87! "I need to be more careful about this stuff in the future!"