In the Infinite Worlds, I Just Want to Be the God of Wealth – CH196

Chapter 196

Expanding the number of believers, however, required tackling some problems.

Right now, with everyone’s eyes fixed on the “God of Wealth,” secretly developing believers was difficult.

Smarter ones knew that in this environment, becoming his follower was a terrible deal. And the foolish ones weren’t promising either—stupid people rarely made money.

So Lu Chuan had to be picky.

That meant using a little trick.

[Host, you mean your little trick is… cooperating with Cang Jiu?] #888 wondered if it had misheard. Maybe it had missed some upgrade patch, and that’s why Lu Chuan would even consider such an idea.

[Host, a believer’s faith should be exclusive. If they’re tied to another god, doesn’t that make them disloyal to both? What use is such a believer?]

“What’s the big deal?” Lu Chuan waved dismissively. “You’re still thinking too rigidly. Back in our world, faith was flexible. You worship the God of Wealth, and you worship the Bodhisattva too—what’s wrong with multiple faiths?”

He didn’t mind at all if his believers also worshiped others.

In fact, he saw it as an opportunity—to scatter his followers into other churches.

Imagine, in a world where every god treats believers as exclusive property, suddenly a god appears who allows multiple faiths. What would happen then?

Soon, every church might secretly be filled with his people.

That’s true infiltration!

[Host, even so, why Cang Jiu specifically?] #888 was anxious. It had upgraded countless times, yet Lu Chuan still trusted this guy? Did Cang Jiu have something it lacked?

“Because he’s irresistible.” Lu Chuan said without hesitation. “He’s the embodiment of desire. Wherever he goes, people’s desires flare up. Even I was drawn to him the first time we met. Greed is a desire too—our authorities overlap. And without borrowing the ‘God of Desire’s’ power, how else could I make people bind themselves to my statues and become my believers?”

[Ah, so you’re fishing, Host!]

“How is that fishing? It’s just mutual consent.” Lu Chuan smirked. “I’m only doing this to expand my believer base. What else can I do? The God of Wealth’s fame is everywhere now.

If I want to expand quickly, I’ll have to leverage the God of Desire’s power to attract them first—lure them in, bind them, and once they’re hooked, well… whether they can change faith won’t be their choice anymore.”

Lu Chuan made a detailed plan for this.

After reading through the proposal, Cang Jiu stayed silent for a long time.

“If you weren’t the God of Wealth, I’d say you’re even more suited to the position of the God of Desire than me.” Cang Jiu spoke sincerely—Lu Chuan’s grasp of human nature was simply too precise.

[No no no, Host! He really has ulterior motives—he’s trying to poach you from me!] #888 became agitated. [Absolutely not! I worked so hard to cultivate you, and now he wants to steal you away? Let him try—I’ll fight him to the death!]

“Don’t say that—my system’s about to pick a fight with you.” Lu Chuan laughed at Cang Jiu. “Anyway, if you have opinions after reading my plan, you can bring them up. I like win-win situations. I’m not out to take advantage of you.”

Cang Jiu studied the plan again. “Your idea of disguising your statues as items and hiding them in different dungeons for players to discover—it’s clever. But there are so many dungeons. How do you plan to get them all in?”

Even though #888 could tweak some permissions of the Main God System, it wasn’t possible to slip things into all the dungeons without being caught.

Cang Jiu suspected that the Main God System’s relentless hostility toward Lu Chuan was largely because of #888.

A system with permissions like his, upgraded to the point it could meddle in dungeons—such a threat was far more terrifying than the Divine Alliance.

“Oh, that? I’ve got a great solution.” Lu Chuan smiled. “Remember the first dungeon where we met, Li Family Village?”

Cang Jiu nodded. Of course he remembered.

“At that time, I left a ‘seed’ there—made the villagers start selling fruit. Turns out they were hardworking and resourceful. Before long, they’d opened chain shops and were even delivering fruit to NPCs across multiple dungeons.” Lu Chuan clicked his tongue in amazement. He hadn’t expected dungeon folk to be so talented, inventing takeout delivery on their own.

The market exploded overnight.

“And those delivery guys…” Cang Jiu paused. “To deliver across dungeons, they’d need the strength to travel freely between them. But the Li villagers came from a low-level dungeon—they shouldn’t be anywhere near that level.”

“Oh, but I’m on good terms with the Blood King.” Lu Chuan grinned. “All his people are battle-hungry brutes, strong but with no real livelihood skills. Perfect delivery workers. I told them the fruits would be imbued with your divine power, attracting powerful challengers—so they’d get plenty of chances to fight.”

Lu Chuan was making full use of his connections.

And the ability to marshal different networks into one plan—that was a talent in itself.

“So, I’ll disguise my statues as fruit, send them into dungeons. When people see the fruit infused with your divine power, they’ll want to hide them. Players, though, are peculiar—they’ll crave what’s hardest to get. The more carefully it’s hidden, the more they’ll want it. That way, they’ll be drawn in by your power, and before they realize it, they’ll be bound to my statues in faith—my believers!”

Lu Chuan’s eyes gleamed with excitement.

Cang Jiu opened his mouth, wanting to say something—then shut it again, unable to find words.

“My offer still stands.” After thinking, Cang Jiu added, “If you ever want to switch divine thrones, you can take the God of Desire’s seat. I’ll trade with you.”

He didn’t particularly care about his own godhood.

Unlike Lu Chuan, the God of Wealth who adored money, Cang Jiu had little personal desire—he barely cared about his divine title at all.

[See! He still hasn’t given up!] #888 nearly went mad. How could anyone be so relentless in trying to steal its host?

“Alright, alright.” Lu Chuan soothed #888. “Don’t worry, I’m satisfied with my throne. I won’t switch with him.”

With no more objections, Cang Jiu agreed to the plan.

At first, they thought of carefully hand-carving each statue. But since they needed so many, they made a mold and mass-produced them—much more efficient.

For the first time, Lu Chuan saw Cang Jiu personally enchant statues with divine power.

The true God of Desire in action.

In front of him now stood hundreds, thousands of identical statues—silver coated in gold, glittering, lined up in rows, exuding an inexplicable pressure.

Lu Chuan studied them. Even if Shen Li’s group got hold of one, they’d never connect these to him—there was no resemblance at all.

Cang Jiu then ordered Number 18 to reveal its true form, surrounding them with its massive body, and cloaked them with a special artifact to ensure absolute secrecy.

To wield his divine power, Cang Jiu couldn’t use his ordinary vessel.

He’d wanted Lu Chuan to stand farther back, to avoid being influenced by the godly force. But Lu Chuan insisted on watching, treating it as a chance to learn. Reluctantly, Cang Jiu agreed.

Meanwhile, Lu Chuan whispered privately to #888:

“Hey, do you think Cang Jiu’s true form looks the same as how I see him now? Right now he’s all golden hair and golden eyes—really handsome. But what if that’s just my mental image, and his real form is ugly?”

[Why do you assume his true form would be ugly?] #888 asked, puzzled.

“Because before, when Number 6 turned into the God of Devouring, it looked weird. And, you know, they say ‘desire is ugly.’ Of course I’m worried.”

[But why do you care if he’s ugly or not? It’s irrelevant. As long as his power serves you, what difference does it make?] #888 gave a soul-piercing question.

Lu Chuan froze, embarrassed. “You’re too young to understand adult concerns.”

888 gave him a long look. [Being tempted by the God of Desire is normal. But whether you like him or are just chasing your own desire—that’s another matter.]

Lu Chuan smiled thinly. “System, I think you can roll back the sarcasm upgrade. Sometimes silence is an art.”

Cang Jiu’s hair began to flow on its own.

His body dissolved into starlight, expanding until it filled the entire space.

Lu Chuan tilted his head back, wanting to glimpse the God of Desire’s true form.

What had Cang Jiu originally looked like?

[Aaaaah, don’t look, Host! Your authorities overlap!] #888 tried to block his thoughts, but Lu Chuan’s desire to “see Cang Jiu” surged past all restraint.

The authority of gods resonated.

As Lu Chuan lifted his gaze, the God of Desire’s eyes turned toward him as well.

The God of Desire answered his yearning.

For a moment, storm and chaos raged.

***

“That child there—is that the reborn God of Desire?”

“Seems so. The wind carries whispers—he reeks of the ancient humans.”

“The God of Desire choosing to perish with the ancients, then recondensing desire into a new god… unheard of.”

“What high-concept gods think is beyond us lesser deities.”

In this cosmos, humans and gods lived in separate realms.

Humans cycled endlessly in their own world—destruction and rebirth, over and over.

No one knew which generation of humanity this was.

But the gods knew: this era’s humans no longer possessed the godlike strength of the ancients.

These humans were strange.
Short lives. No extraordinary power. No flawless beauty. Only flaws.
The gods believed this generation, born from cosmic rules, might not last long—perhaps a mere thousand or two years before extinction.

The ancient humans had been powerful, long-lived, and deeply ambitious—ambitious enough to try invading the gods’ realm.

Their conviction and desire even corrupted the God of Desire, who lost his composure and was devoured by his own longing.

Why must gods always stand above?
Why couldn’t humans become gods?

The God of Desire agreed to help the ancients enter the divine kingdom.

They wanted to drag all the gods from their thrones, to erase the divide between god and man.

But of course, both the ancients and the God of Desire failed.

This wasn’t the first time the God of Desire had destroyed himself.

They had already lost count of how many times it had happened.

Gods who held the Authority of Desire were far too easily devoured by their own longing.
Those who wielded the Authority of Time liked to exile themselves outside of time, so they wouldn’t interfere with any world.
And the gods of Death never pitied the dead.

True Gods were supposed to be eternal, yet almost every bearer of a True God’s Authority had been replaced countless times.
There were far, far too few beings capable of truly bearing a True God’s Authority.
Even if they could at first, little by little the Authority would erode them.

Among them, Desire, which by its nature destroyed its bearer, was one of the hardest Authorities to find a suitable host for—on par with Death.

But this time, things were different.

The Authority of Desire didn’t choose a new candidate. Instead, it used the final ambitions and bodies of the ancient humans to sculpt a new god.
Without doubt, a being born out of the desires of that ancient race was the best candidate to wield Desire.

Ordinarily, it would take an immeasurably long time for the countless desires of living creatures to give birth to a new God of Desire.
No one expected that it would be this generation of humankind that prematurely catalyzed the birth of a new Desire God.

The new humans owned almost nothing.
And precisely because they had nothing, they wanted everything; they were born apostles of desire.
Their overwhelming faith made the power of Desire unprecedentedly strong. And using the remnants and ambition of the ancients to forge a host was something never done before.
By accident, this caused the newly born God of Desire to come into being too soon—undeveloped, appearing in the form of a small child.

Not even the lofty True Gods, let alone their lieutenants, knew what to do with this freshly made deity.

True Gods generally banished themselves beyond the universe, avoiding entanglement with any living being.
Even their subordinate gods rarely met them face to face.
Just managing their Authorities was already difficult enough; their divinity outweighed their humanity.
They quickly concluded that this immature God of Desire wasn’t ready to shoulder the responsibilities of a True God. He would have to grow before he could truly become the Desire God.

Unable to leave for the outer cosmos, the newborn deity hadn’t yet learned to control his strength. Naturally, he could only live in the divine realm with the subordinate gods.

Lu Chuan, without anyone teaching him, instinctively understood much of this. He realized the child sitting atop a star, gazing down at humanity as they first learned to use tools, was the God of Desire—or rather, Cang Jiu as a child.

With just a thought, Lu Chuan floated closer.

At first, the boy looked unfamiliar, but almost instantly his image in Lu Chuan’s eyes shrank into a miniature version of Cang Jiu.

Forget it.
Lu Chuan had already given up on his own sense of aesthetics. He just liked gold.

No matter how Cang Jiu truly appeared, in different eyes his form matched the onlooker’s personal taste.

Though this god looked only five or six years old—tiny and adorable, a little golden dumpling—the power radiating from him far surpassed Cang Jiu in recovery.

The strength of a True God was indeed unlike that of any lesser deity.

Lu Chuan “looked” around the divine realm. There were many gods, but their appearances defied description: some like animals, some like plants, some beyond words.
Communication among them wasn’t done through language but through a higher form of information exchange—streams of data laid bare before Lu Chuan.

Here, among the subordinate gods, their feelings toward the young God of Desire were a mix of fear and affection.
Even undeveloped, his power was a dangerous lure.
A little closeness made them yearn to approach, to possess him secretly, or stirred up old “desires” they had forgotten—the reasons they had once sought godhood.

His power could awaken their buried longings, lead them astray, even cost them their divinity.

Terrifying!

They wanted no part of such temptation.
Keeping their distance turned into fear; fear became rejection.

Yet the little God of Desire never spoke a word to any of them. He simply watched, eyes fixed on the fledgling humans below: from learning tools, to taming beasts, to fighting, forming tribes and nations, passing through endless dynastic shifts—the only constant was the ever-growing, ever-evolving tide of their desires.

The new humans’ wants multiplied:
—The starving wished for food and warmth.
—The fed wished for status.
—The wealthy wished for power.
—The mighty wished for immortality.

Across ages, human desires barely changed.

Later, with technology, new forms arose:
They wanted to fly, faster than birds.
They wanted to swim, swifter than any fish.
They wanted to know the world without leaving home, to cure all ills with a single draught.

Desires never stopped blooming.

They no longer placed much faith in gods, not realizing they had all unknowingly become followers of the God of Desire.
Amid this roaring tide of longing, the tiny deity secretly grew, unseen by most gods.

Just as people on Earth were unaware that, among the countless stars, one held a little god—born early because of their cravings—quietly watching them.

So quiet.

Lu Chuan couldn’t help wondering: what exactly was happening to him?
Maybe, as #888 had said, some resonance between divine Authorities let him see this scene.

Well… he had wanted to know what Cang Jiu was like before. But this was too on-the-nose.
If wishing could do this, what if he wished to be the richest in the universe?
—No, wait, he was already the God of Wealth.

Was the God of Fate playing a small joke on him?

“Who are you?”

Just as Lu Chuan drifted about, the little God of Desire, silent until now, finally spoke.

Lu Chuan glanced around—still no other deities.
But the small Cang Jiu’s gaze stayed fixed on him.

“Me?” Lu Chuan felt incredulous.

“Your desire was to see me. Why?” the little one asked, full of curiosity. “Is seeing Desire itself something special?”

Author’s note:
Lu Chuan: I only wanted to see Cang Jiu’s true face—how did I end up here?!

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