I became a god through archaeology in the Wizarding World.

The mornings in the lower city no longer belong to the sunlight, but are shrouded in a suffocating white terror.

The once noisy and dirty streets were now unusually clean, but this was not due to improved sanitation. Rather, it was because all the unclean things—garbage, homeless people, and even some vendors who did not seem very devout—had been forcibly cleaned up by the paladins of the Church of Morning Star.

The air was filled with a strong scent of incense, trying to mask the lingering stench of the corpse.

At the entrance to Black Oak Street, a spot that used to be used by gangs to collect protection money, a temporary faith verification station has now been set up.

Several priests dressed in white robes stood on a high platform, holding a thick register and a basin of holy water.

Below the stage, hundreds of ragged civilians lined up, their eyes filled with fear and longing.

"Next."

The pastor's indifferent voice rang out.

A woman carrying a child with a high fever trembled as she stepped forward and knelt at the foot of the steps: "Sir, please... give me some holy water, or that blue potion... my child is dying..."

The pastor did not look at the child, but instead tapped the woman's forehead with his scepter.

"Memorize the Gospel of the Morning Star, chapter 3, verse 5."

The woman was stunned. She was illiterate and couldn't even write her own name, so how could she possibly recite the obscure scriptures?

She kowtowed desperately, crying, "Sir, I can't read... but I believe in the Lord! I truly believe in the Lord!"

"Ignorance is sin, and faithlessness is defilement."

The pastor withdrew his scepter, a look of pity mixed with cruelty on his face: "This plague is God's punishment for the depravity of mankind. Only pure souls can be redeemed. Your soul is full of impurities; holy water cannot save you, nor can medicine. Go to the confessional over there and kneel in prayer until the Lord forgives you."

"But child..."

"take away."

Two paladins stepped forward and roughly dragged the crying woman toward a penitential area enclosed by iron bars.

The place was already filled with kneeling people, many of whom had fainted due to high fever and dehydration, but no one dared to help them up.

On the other side of the screening platform, several believers who had passed the test were receiving a small bottle of holy water with fervent expressions, as if it were a ticket to heaven.

……

Warehouse on Black Oak Street, second-floor office.

"Bang!"

Benjamin slammed the ledger on the table, his chubby face, usually adorned with a friendly and prosperous smile, now filled with anxiety and anger.

"These charlatans! These robbers!"

Benjamin paced back and forth in the room, his fat jiggling with each movement. "Mr. Rhodes, look out the window! They've blocked the road! Anyone who wants to buy medicine must first pass their so-called faith test. If they don't buy their indulgences or recite their scriptures, they're labeled unbelievers and won't even have a chance to get near our warehouse!"

Rhodes sat in the shadows, toying with an empty test tube in his hand, his expression calm.

"How much have sales dropped?"

"Sixty percent! A full sixty percent!" Benjamin gestured with his chubby fingers. "And it's still falling! What's worse, that Bishop Cecil claimed during his sermons that alchemy is a blasphemous art, and that while our silencing potion can cure diseases, it will pollute the soul, preventing one from going to heaven after death!"

"The ignorant masses in the lower city have gone mad. They'd rather drink that watered-down holy water and wait to die than buy our medicine! Some are even throwing stones at our warehouses, calling us accomplices of the devil!"

Benjamin wiped the cold sweat from his forehead: "Mr. Rhodes, if this continues, our funding chain will break. And... I have a feeling they're targeting you. They're trying to cut off your control over the lower city."

Rod stood up, walked to the window, and looked through the crack at the long line of people waiting to be screened downstairs.

The pastor was handing a bottle of holy water to a well-dressed merchant, who then respectfully placed a large bag of gold coins into the church's offering box.

"It's not just targeting me."

Rhodes' voice was icy: "They are targeting the monarchy, targeting the academy."

This is a meticulously planned, open conspiracy.

Mortimer created the plague, and although it was suppressed by Rhodes and the royal family, the panic did not disappear.

The church intervened at this time, interpreting natural and man-made disasters as divine punishment, and monopolizing the hope of survival through faith.

They don't need an army, and they don't need to conquer cities and territories.

All they need to do is control the distribution of food, water, and medicine, and then cloak these things in a religious guise, and they can take over the entire lower city without bloodshed.

Once the hundreds of thousands of civilians in the lower city are brainwashed and become fanatical believers, the royal decrees will be unable to leave the upper city, and the mages of the academy will be regarded as heretics.

This is more terrifying than the Iron Duke's military reforms. It undermines the very foundation of the kingdom's rule.

"Cecil...good tactics."

Rod squinted.

That seemingly kind-faced cardinal was even more ruthless than the necromancer.

He exploited human weaknesses.

Faced with despair, people are often more willing to believe in ethereal miracles than in cold, hard science.

"Mr. Rhodes, what do we do?" Benjamin wrung his hands anxiously. "Should we contact the Iron Duke and have him send troops to clear those roadblocks?"

"it's useless."

Rhodes shook his head: "The Duke dares not act now. If he takes action against the Church, he will be accused of persecuting believers, and there are many soldiers in the army who believe in the Morning Star, which would cause a mutiny. The King is in the same boat; he can only endure it for now."

"So we're just going to watch like this?" Benjamin asked in despair.

"Of course not."

Rhodes turned around, a strange smile curving his lips.

"Benjamin, you just said that the church claims our medicine will corrupt souls, and their holy water is a miracle?"

"Yes...yes."

"Then we'll show them what a real miracle is."

Rod walked to the lab bench and opened a sealed lead box.

There were no precious gems inside, but rather a clump of damp algae that emitted a faint blue light.

This is a symbiotic plant, called "fluorescent algae," that he collected from the edge of an underground river in the underground ruins.

This algae itself is not toxic and has no special medicinal value. Its only characteristic is that when it comes into contact with biological fluids, it emits a soft and sacred blue-white fluorescence that lasts for several hours.

Moreover, this fluorescence has extremely strong penetrating power, and can even penetrate the skin, making the human body appear to be glowing.

"Take this."

Rhodes used tweezers to pick up a small clump of fluorescent algae and threw it into a huge grinding bowl.

"Grind it into powder and add it to the next batch of silencing agents at a ratio of one part per thousand."

Benjamin was stunned: "What...what is this? Will adding this make the drug more effective?"

"The efficacy of the medicine will not change."

Rod watched the algae turn into glowing powder under the grinding process, a mocking glint in his eyes.

"But it will make the person who drinks the potion radiate a holy light."

Rhodes walked up to Benjamin, patted the fat man on the shoulder, and began to teach him his counterattack plan.

"Listen, Benjamin. I want you to use all the underground channels to spread a new rumor."

"You must tell those fools that the light of the Morning Star has indeed descended, but not in the hands of those arrogant priests, but in this blue potion."

"Tell them that only those who are truly devout and chosen by God will radiate divine light after drinking the potion. Those who drink the potion but do not radiate light, that is, those who did not buy our potion, or those who drink the church's holy water but have no effect, are the real hypocrites."

Benjamin's mouth slowly opened wide, and the despair in his eyes was gradually replaced by an unbelievable excitement.

That's a really underhanded trick.

This is using magic to defeat magic!

The church said it was divine punishment, so Lot created a divine grace.

The church uses faith, which is invisible and intangible, to discern, while Lode uses tangible light to refute it.

For uneducated commoners, a potion that makes them glow like angels after drinking it is far more convincing than the empty scriptures uttered by a priest.

"and……"

Rhodes added, "This bioluminescent algae has a slight aversion to the aura of the dead. If an infected person drinks it, the glowing part will feel a slight warmth due to the conflict of toxins. You then promote it as holy light burning away the sins within the body."

"Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!"

Benjamin's fat jiggled with excitement; his admiration for Rhodes was like a surging river: "Mr. Rhodes, if you became a charlatan, that Bishop Cecil would probably be begging for food!"

"I'm not a charlatan, I'm just a scholar."

Rhodes took off his alchemical gloves and threw them into the trash can.

"Go ahead, run the production line at full capacity. Tonight, I'm going to light up the entire downtown area."

"Let Cecil see who truly holds the light."

Benjamin picked up the box containing the fluorescent algae and rushed out of the office as if he were carrying a gold brick.

Rod walked back to the window and looked down at the still arrogant pastor.

"Faith screening?"

Rod sneered.

"You will soon discover that your so-called faith is worthless in the face of miracles."