This is a strange realm. Within a space of only a few dozen square meters, countless twisted symbols were scattered around like insects. Just looking at them made you feel as if you could hear inexplicable whispers.
Inside the space, a blurry humanoid black figure stood in the center. Although his specific appearance was unclear, his trembling figure revealed his excitement.
"Finally finished! My divine kingdom!"
Lin Xuan looked around and sighed. He had originally been a game designer who unfortunately died suddenly while working overtime. When he woke up, he inexplicably traveled to this place and had a broken piece of his divine essence in his mind.
Based on the limited information remaining about the deity, the original name of the god was "Soul Eater," a dark, evil god in the shape of a long snake. Its method was probably to bewitch people's minds, luring out the negative emotions deep in their hearts, making them its followers, and finally causing them to fall into darkness and devour their souls.
It belonged to the kind of dark deity that was evil beyond measure. However, even among evil gods, the Soul Eater, who possessed only a small amount of divine power, was merely an insignificant being. Even slightly powerful priests of benevolent gods could be exempt from its interference.
In a divine war of the previous era, the Soul Eater was used as cannon fodder and was eventually kicked to the edge of the universe like a stray dog on the roadside, dying in its own divine kingdom. It seemed that the resentment of a deity had crossed the entire dimension, inexplicably causing Lin Xuan to transmigrate into its body.
"Avenge me…"
The mournful voice of the Soul Eater in the Divine Sea still seemed to echo.
"Get out of here," Lin Xuan cursed inwardly. No kidding—when he opened his eyes and saw the Soul Eater's divine kingdom, he almost thought he had fallen into a cesspool! Blood rained down from the sky, and the ground was covered in mud and swamps, from which swarms of maggots emerged. It was a scene he would never forget, even tens of thousands of years from now.
What kind of believers would love such a divine kingdom?
After fully mastering the divine essence, the first thing Lin Xuan did was rebuild this divine kingdom. Sadly, he discovered that the divine power he inherited seemed to be even lower than that of the Soul Eater. If the Soul Eater's divine power was 10, then Lin Xuan currently only had 1. This was the result of continuously simplifying the divine kingdom until he himself became a mosaic.
The most urgent task was to quickly absorb souls to restore divine power! The original Soul Eater sought out very remote, small worlds in the universe to devour souls because larger worlds were protected by benevolent gods. But Lin Xuan certainly wouldn't do that. On one hand, he was afraid of being beaten to death again, and on the other hand, he felt that this method was too inefficient. Why do something so morally reprehensible when there are clearly better ways to evoke emotions?
Even slightly more powerful evil gods despise this behavior. Every believer is precious, and sustainable development over a long period is the right way to strengthen one's divine power. Thinking of this, he smiled slightly and looked around at the divine kingdom he had rebuilt.
The constantly surging, twisting symbols eventually formed a line of brilliant text:
Dark Souls!
The moment Lin Xuan inherited the divine spark, the original "Soul Eater" died completely, and the remaining power to bewitch people was completely transformed by Lin Xuan into the skill of "enhancing the authenticity of the divine kingdom," which was now his own power.
What was the most effective way to evoke emotions, allowing people to enjoy themselves even knowing the dangers, without causing significant harm to their souls? Lin Xuan immediately thought of his old profession—games!
The game in this universe had weakened to the extreme, seemingly because the gods of drama and novels of the same type were too powerful, causing games to remain at the level of hopscotch and playing house, and even transforming into rituals to pray for the gods' pleasure. This resulted in the complete absence of game authority, and even the concept of "game" itself had begun to blur.
This benefited Lin Xuan immensely. Any one of the classic games in his mind could cause a sensation in the universe. Moreover, there were also comics, novels, and music. If it weren't for the fact that the rights and responsibilities for these three areas had already been taken by the gods, Lin Xuan would not have let them go.
Lin Xuan summoned the system panel he had designed.
Lord of Pleasure: Lin Xuan
[Divine Power: 1 (Demigod)]
[Power of Faith: 0]
[Divine Kingdom Range: 50]
Seeing such dismal data made Lin Xuan sigh, especially the lone 1 after "divine power," which had become extremely faint and seemed about to disappear at any moment. His immediate priority was to absorb the power of the soul. In order to create Dark Souls, he had even fallen from a weak divine power to a demigod. The next step would be to lose his divine core and become a false god.
Becoming a false god meant losing your divine kingdom! There would be no chance of turning the tables!
As for why he chose to make a Souls-like game like Dark Souls, which is extremely difficult, it was because his current meager divine power was simply insufficient to support any large-scale events. After much thought, only Souls-like games could truly evoke emotions in people.
In Soulslike games, battles against bosses are challenging and can easily lead to frustration. However, you can feel your own obvious progress in the constant battles, and finally perfectly defuse every attack, as if dancing on the edge of a knife. Furthermore, the Soul Eater's realm was perfectly suited to be one of the essential parts of Dark Souls—the cesspool.
Afterwards, Lin Xuan withdrew his divine sense and slowly released his game on the promotional interface of the entire universe.
This occurred after two divine wars, when both sides' chief gods discovered that the fighting and killing were taking a heavy toll on their believers. Whether a deity is benevolent or malevolent, it needs a certain base of believers. Good gods need positive values, while evil gods need negative values. Only the living can provide the best value!
In order to sustainably exploit resources, the two main deities, one good and one evil, jointly built a new platform called the "Forum of the Gods."
As long as it was a deity, it had the right to freely promote itself after being approved. Believers could store their faith power on the forum and recharge it for the gods they were interested in. As long as a doctrine was attractive enough, it could gain a large number of followers.
As a newly born deity, Lin Xuan also had a free opportunity for publicity. After much thought, he wrote on the promotional page:
"A cute and relaxing divine kingdom that's a must-see for people with high stress levels!"
Although it was somewhat unethical to do this, Lin Xuan had no choice as a newly created god without a base of believers. He needed to at least lure people in and extract some of their soul power. Once the game, which carried the authority of the game, was approved without any negative connotations, it quickly spread to various worlds through the system's promotion.