Chapter 400

Chapter 327: Regulation

Under the dark sky, in the dim forest, an unremarkable carriage traveled along the path illuminated by the faint light of a gas lamp. The masked coachman drove the carriage towards the city ahead.

Inside the carriage, which swayed slightly, Dorothy, holding the Heart-Eating Staff Sword, slowly opened her eyes after recalling the contents of the stele. After taking a deep breath, her brows furrowed slightly.

“Occult Professor? This White Chalk advancement difficulty is really too excessive… Are all pure color professions like this? Just the spirituality requirement alone is so high…”

Dorothy muttered to herself, complaining about what she had seen recorded on the stele earlier. According to the records, as a Scholar, she needed a total of 80 points of accumulated spirituality to advance to an Occult Professor—30 points of “Enlightenment” and 50 points of other five types of spirituality. Although Dorothy had anticipated that advancing to White Chalk would be difficult when she advanced to Scholar, seeing the actual requirements made her feel that the spirituality requirement was absurdly high.

In comparison, the White Chalk advancement requirements for other paths under “Enlightenment” were not as exaggerated. Apart from needing to accumulate 30 points of “Enlightenment,” only the auxiliary spiritualities required 20 points each, totaling 50 points of spirituality, 30 points less than an Occult Professor.

The most crucial aspect wasn’t just the 30-point gap; for miscellaneous professions, mastering two methods of accumulating spirituality was sufficient. However, for a pure color profession like a Scholar, if one couldn’t rely on the system to extract spirituality from poison recognition like Dorothy did, they would need to master six methods of accumulating spirituality, finding six channels to acquire them, which was extremely difficult.

“Huh… I wonder how people in ancient times managed to advance in these pure color professions… Their resource consumption is incomparable to other professions, and their early combat capabilities are so poor and unstable… It feels like an entire society needs to support them to progress smoothly…”

Dorothy thought to herself, then shifted her attention to another key point—the advancement ceremony required for an Occult Professor.

“A Scholar needs to read six secret transmissions of different spiritualities, but an Occult Professor requires the names and holy emblems of six pure color main deities… Sigh… It involves all spiritualities for the advancement ceremony. I’m not sure if other pure color professions have similar requirements.”

“The advancement ceremony… It looks quite troublesome. Six pure color main deities… I can only confirm two right now: ‘Cup’s’ Mother or the Goddess of Abundance, and the Savior of Radiance from the ‘Lamp’ side. The other four are still uncertain.”

Rubbing her chin, Dorothy thought, “Among the deities of ‘Shadow,’ I know only the Deep Web Queen and the Mirror Moon Goddess. The Deep Web Queen is not a pure color deity but mainly ‘Shadow’ with auxiliary ‘Cup.’ As for the Mirror Moon Goddess, there isn’t enough information, so I can’t determine her specific type of spirituality.

“For ‘Stone,’ Dorothy knows about the Construct Core, but it might not be a pure color deity. The nature of the Construct Core industrial deity is more like an auxiliary ‘Lamp,’ aligning with the blacksmith branch within the ‘Stone’ path. In Dorothy’s view, there should be another pure color deity in ‘Stone,’ but she might find relevant information from Beverly if the price is right.

“As for ‘Silence’… Dorothy doesn’t know much. She only knows about the Great Soul from the New World, but whether this is a pure color deity or even a deity remains uncertain for now.

“Lastly, ‘Enlightenment,’ the one closest to her, is something Dorothy knows nothing about. She can only wait for further research on the Star Number Repair Association to yield results, which might require Adelle to find her teacher Dalena’s research materials.

“Speaking of which… Dalena chose to study the Star Number Repair Association because she follows the auxiliary ‘Enlightenment’ Path of Desire, while Audric, that old man, also follows the auxiliary ‘Enlightenment’ and has progressed to the Red Tier Level. His research on the Star Number Repair Association should be far stronger than Dalena’s. Next time I visit Beverly, I could ask about his recent situation. If possible, I might ask Beverly to deliver two letters to Audric, asking him about the Star Number Repair Association.”

Dorothy continued to ponder, then considered the other requirement for the advancement ceremony besides the name—the holy emblem.

Holy emblems, Dorothy knew, were not uncommon. They were essentially badges with a divine mark and a bit of spirituality. In the Radiant Church, senior clergy members carried the holy emblem of one of the Three Saints. Devout believers who contributed to the church often received a holy emblem as a reward.

To Dorothy, a holy emblem was akin to a higher-grade amulet, available to ordinary believers, so it wasn’t considered a particularly precious extraordinary item.

However, the issue was that, even within the Radiant Church, ordinary people could only obtain the holy emblems of the Three Saints. Obtaining the holy emblem of the Savior of Radiance, who was rarely directly worshipped, was already difficult, let alone those of other pure color deities. One had to seek out secret societies and sects devoted to these deities.

“Sigh… It seems this advancement won’t happen anytime soon…”

Sighing, Dorothy murmured, then set aside the advancement conditions and continued to handle the spoils of battle.

In the evidence room of the An Yin Bureau, apart from the advancement stone tablet of the Star Number Repair Association, Dorothy also found two secret transmissions collected by Davik and quickly flipped through them, noting down everything at the time.

One of them was Davik’s own research diary. From its content, Dorothy roughly understood what Davik was researching and why he needed to interrogate Dalena.

Davik’s research subject was the Church of the Goddess of Abundance. He interrogated Dalena because her family had been a priestly family of the Goddess of Abundance, so he wanted to gather more clues about the faith from her.

Closing her eyes, Dorothy began to recall some important parts of Davik’s research diary.

…

October 7th: We originally believed that the faith of Abundance was densely distributed in the Deseru region during the empire period. Now we know several significant ruins are located here, and Deseru should be the center of the faith. But according to that woman’s confession, there was still a continuation of the faith in the southern mountains of Farano until a decade ago. This might challenge our previous assumptions.

October 10th: To further my research, I need to write to the elders, requesting that the outpost in Farano send someone to investigate the woman’s hometown, hoping to find something valuable.

October 27th: d*mn it… The church hasn’t withdrawn from that place yet. The Holy Mother Order is still guarding there… How many ruins have they taken control of? Their blockade of the remnants of the faith of Abundance is becoming stricter…

…

The contents of Davik’s research diary floated in Dorothy’s mind. After roughly reviewing them, Dorothy rubbed her chin, summarizing the diary’s content.

‘From this diary, it seems the Wolf bl**d Association is searching for remnants of the faith of Abundance. Interrogating Dalena is mainly because she is related to the faith. Their goal is to find more remnants of the faith. What they will gain from these remnants is currently unknown…