"Do you see? The power of God-hidden emerges from within your body, returns to your body, and through cyclical growth, it can be accumulated and strengthened for your own use." The Federation's leader demonstrated to everyone the correct way to obtain God-hidden power.
To everyone else, God-hidden power did indeed originate from within their bodies, but through Jiang Li's eyes, it was the power of merit born from the void, attaching itself to the Feng leader, and finally entering the Feng leader's body to become his own power.
This was exactly the process of the arrival of merit power as recorded in the classics.