12: Chapter 12 The More You Know, the More Despair You Feel

As Teacher Tong Qian spoke, a projection appeared in front of her once again. Seeing this, Lin Xiao suddenly raised his hand. After receiving her permission, a smile of apology appeared on his face.

"I am very sorry, Teacher, but since this is about our studies, would it be possible to call my two subordinates over to listen as well? It is a rare opportunity to receive your personal instruction."

This request took Teacher Tong Qian by surprise, but teaching one or teaching three made no difference to her. Therefore, she nodded.

"I have already lifted the restrictions. You may call them to the classroom."

Less than a minute later, the figures of Wang Tao and Su Xue appeared in the classroom. Although they did not know what was happening, they still greeted the two very respectfully.

With everyone present, the classroom was sealed off again. The faith points the school allocated to Teacher Tong Qian were only enough for ordinary students to learn ordinary knowledge.

As for the current content, that required a different price. However, Lin Xiao was worth her personal investment.

The projection appeared, and the main category remained Believer. Beneath it, a subcategory appeared displaying the word "Strength."

Then, four sub-classifications appeared after Strength: Foundation Accumulation, Origin Expansion, Meridian Clearing, and Body Tempering.

"We all know that for a Divine Being to ascend to a demigod, they need one hundred Believers at the Qi Refining stage within their own Divine Kingdom.

Ordinary teachers will only tell you that if you want to improve the strength of your Believers, you must improve their physique, give them good food, use good items, and improve their environment.

For ordinary students, these are not issues at all. Spirit Fruit, monster meat, and so on are all helping your Believers slowly increase their strength. However!"

Hearing the word "however," Lin Xiao became completely alert. When a sentence ends with a "however," it is basically telling you that everything said before it is nonsense!

"Those things mentioned earlier were just teaching materials for ordinary students. It is not that teachers are deliberately treating them differently, but that this content is just right for them.

Forcibly teaching them content that does not match their level has no meaning other than driving them to complete despair.

Whether it is a demigod or a deity, in the end, they are all resource black holes built by piling up massive amounts of resources.

Without faith points and without resources, the more you know, the more desperate you will feel about the future... because in that future, you are destined not to exist."

When Teacher Tong Qian said this last sentence, her voice clearly changed a little. For a deity, this meant that her emotions were extremely unstable at that moment.

Exhaling, her voice returned to stability once more.

"Ordinary students only know how to pile resources onto their Believers, letting them use massive amounts of time to slowly evolve into more powerful individuals.

But elite students will improve their Believers in a purposeful, directed, and systematic way across all aspects.

Such cultivation will make their Believers grow faster and become stronger, but of course, the resource consumption will also be significantly more massive."

The subtitles on the projection began to change, and "Foundation Accumulation" was enlarged and bolded. A note was attached to it: Strength improvement, from mortal to spiritual.

"Believers who have not yet broken through are what we call the Mortal stage. And wanting to raise Believers to the Qi Refining stage is the process of transforming from mortal to spiritual.

If you compare this process to building a house, then the mortal-stage beings are currently laying the foundation for this house. That is the root of their bodies.

So-called Foundation Accumulation is a process of using a vast amount of time, year after year, to constantly settle and accumulate more energy within the Believers.

Where does the energy come from? Eating Spirit Fruit and high-energy monster meat. Then, absorbing and converting the energy within this food.

This is what we call Foundation Accumulation. If you use ordinary methods to eat, it will only result in a large amount of energy from the Spirit Fruit and monsters being wasted.

For example, suppose the energy of one Spirit Fruit is 10. The energy your Believer absorbs and converts simply by eating it might only be 1.

The remaining 9 will be completely wasted. At this point, your Believers can only use a larger quantity to accumulate energy. This is the reason why ordinary Believers require a massive amount of resources to support."

Upon hearing this, Wang Tao and Su Xue looked enlightened. Before, they only knew a vague general idea. Now, they finally completely understood the principles behind it.

"Keeping one and losing nine is obviously a huge waste. Therefore, to better absorb and convert, you need to have your Believers learn techniques.

For example, the Basic Body Refining Technique. After the Believers learn this technique, their conversion efficiency will change from one to two.

Believers with good talent can even increase this efficiency to 2.5 or even 3. This is why, with the same technique, some Believers increase in strength quickly, while others are very slow.

This peak of three is the upper limit of the technique. In other words, even Believers with higher strength can only convert three using the Basic Body Refining Technique.

If you want to convert five or even seven, you need higher-grade techniques. This is also why higher-grade techniques are more expensive."

The three of them listened attentively, their faces showing enlightenment and realization. Teacher Tong Qian waved her hand, and the words "Consumption Increases" appeared on the projection in front of them.

"A Spirit Fruit has 10 points of energy. After learning a technique, a Believer can convert two points of it, and then one of those two points must be taken out as the source for their survival.

In other words, only one point of this Spirit Fruit is truly retained in the Believer's body. As your Believers' strength increases,

their survival points will rise from the original one point to ten points, or even one hundred points. In other words, even if they do nothing all day, just to keep them alive, we need a large amount of Spirit Fruit to maintain them.

And for a Believer who needs to consume one hundred points or more of energy every day, you cannot just let them keep chewing on 10-point energy Spirit Fruit.

That way, they basically cannot do anything else all day. To survive, they would do nothing but eat. So, at this time, you need to switch to higher-grade crops.

For example, Spirit Fruit or monster meat with one hundred points of energy. Only then can you keep up with their consumption. This is also why you need to update the resources in your Divine Kingdom after your Believers' strength increases."

As Teacher Tong Qian explained, a more three-dimensional image of the Divine Kingdom and the Believers began to reform in the minds of the three.

At this moment, the text on the projection changed again, displaying three large characters: great restoration pill.

"Now you should understand the relationship between energy, Believers, consumption, and strength. So, now let's talk about the question you asked me earlier: why is this great restoration pill so expensive?

I can tell you now. Because the energy points within one great restoration pill are: one hundred thousand! One pill, and it can not only maintain the daily needs of the Believers in your Divine Kingdom for a long time,

but it can also be continuously converted into energy, allowing your Believers to accumulate more energy in one day than others can in a year or even several years.

It directly raises your Believers' strength to a height that their peers can hardly reach. While others still have ordinary Believers, yours might have already reached the introductory or even proficient level."

"One... one hundred thousand..."

If they hadn't understood it before, it would be one thing, but now, after listening to the teacher's explanation, Wang Tao felt very clearly and intuitively what the concept of one hundred thousand was.

This pill thing—he estimated that even if his family put in all their faith points for the month, it wouldn't be enough to buy one.

Su Xue's eyes also began to become a bit unfocused. At this moment, she fully understood the teacher's previous words: the more you know, the more desperate you feel.

When the Believers of those children from major powers treat the great restoration pill like a meal, ordinary Divine Beings like her are still meticulously calculating for a Spirit Fruit with only ten points of energy.

How can this be compared? When others take one pill, her Believers here cannot catch up even in a year or even ten years.

Coupled with the time flow rate in the Divine Kingdom, they eat 365 pills a year. One day in the outside world is enough to leave ordinary Divine Beings like her so far behind that they cannot even see their shadows.

And at this moment, Su Xue finally understood Lin Xiao's previous words: Talent? Divine Kingdom? In the face of resources, they are nothing!

What does it matter how good your talent is? The time difference of a single day can pull a gap of hundreds or thousands of years. What kind of talent can make up for such a huge gap?