The Era of Gods

Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

However, before he could finish his breath, the last remaining Snake People Priest suddenly gave up resisting. From his waist, he drew a bone dagger with a gemstone embedded in it, resembling a snake’s tail, and plunged it fiercely into his own chest. The bone dagger immediately lit up with a bloody golden glow, and at the same time, the two eye-like gemstones embedded in the hilt brightened, and a suffocating presence appeared out of thin air.

“Hiss!”

The Snake People Priest let out a scream to the heavens, his pupils turning pitch black as streams of black mist, resembling snakes, flew out from his eyes. They shot rapidly towards the bodies of all the dead Snake People around, and just as quickly flew back. When the black mist returned, it was entwined with the souls of the Snake People, re-entering the body of the Snake People Priest.

As the souls of the Snake People merged into his body, the priest’s aura rapidly expanded, and a slow, swelling presence, only possessed by a Demigod, began to emerge.

“Fuck, a Demigod’s Advent?”

Being a Deity himself, Lin Xiao of course knew what this meant.

The Demigod behind this Snake People Priest was forcibly sending a fragment of its Divinity through the priest as a medium, attempting to coalesce an Incarnation.

Clearly, this Snake People Demigod had taken an interest in Lin Xiao, a newly born Divine Being, and intended to cross realms to hunt him down this way.

If it were any ordinary Divine Being encountering such a situation, the chances were high that they would be overwhelmed, as a Demigod is far stronger than a Divine Being, and even just an Incarnation could easily crush almost all Divine life.

Unfortunately for the Demigod, Lin Xiao was currently in class, where he was a student under the supervision of teachers, precisely to prevent such accidents.

In such a situation, what he needed to do was to stay calm, and then…

“Teacher, save me!”

“How dare you!”

A thunderous roar came from the sky, as a golden finger, as large as a mountain peak, descended from the heavens and pressed down on the forming Snake People Priest.

Sensing this lethal threat, the black mist and souls enveloping the Snake People Priest rapidly contracted, forming a shield like a black eggshell, with a fierce Snake People face emerging on it, roaring towards the sky.

Then, the golden fingertip pressed down, and the eggshell shield shattered, bit by bit, along with the changing face of the Snake People Priest, eventually dissolving into nothingness, leaving behind only a flicker of golden light, which kept twinkling in the void, emitting Divine Power fluctuations that made Lin Xiao salivate uncontrollably.

This was a fragment of Divinity, sent by the Snake People Demigod to coalesce an Incarnation; now, with both the Incarnation and will obliterated, only this fragment of Divinity remained.

A ray of golden light emerged from the golden finger, winding around this speck of golden light and lifting it up. Lin Xiao, almost instinctively, reached out and sighed, and the golden finger hesitated for a moment before continuing on its way.

After a while, he heard the voice of his homeroom teacher, Wu Hai:

“In theory, this fragment of Divinity, generated during this unexpected test, should belong to you, but with your strength, you would have had no chance of defeating a Demigod’s Incarnation. According to the rules, you have failed this additional challenge. However, the subsequential intervention of a Demigod Incarnation is an unforeseen circumstance beyond the scope of the extra test. Therefore, I’ve taken the Divinity, and this extra test is deemed a success for you. The Divine Realm Card is yours.”

“Ah!”

Lin Xiao let out a deep sigh, for this was what he had expected.

But it was still a fragment of Divinity, and seeing it vanish before his eyes pained his heart.

One must know that the most crucial factor for a Divine Being to evolve into a Demigod is Divinity, the very essence of a Divine Being. The stronger the Divinity, the more Divine Power it can sustain, and the greater the scale of the Divine Realm. In particular, for a Divine Being to transform into a Demigod, it needs to coalesce Godhood, which requires sufficient Divinity to sustain it.

The stronger the Divinity, the more and stronger Godhood it can sustain.

Lin Xiao currently possessed only a single point of Divinity, and the strongest in his class, Yuan Hong, had only two. To become a Demigod, the minimum requirement is five points of Divinity.

Normally, one would need to accumulate one hundred million units of Faith value plus a certain amount of Divine Power to attempt to coalesce a point of Divinity, and even then, success is not guaranteed.

A whole hundred million!

Lin Xiao felt like he had made a mistake.

But there was no helping it, no matter how you looked at it, this divinity didn’t belong to him.

Fortunately, he had succeeded in the extra challenge, and the Divine Realm Card was his, which wasn’t too bad.

With that, this probing examination had come to an end for him, and it was time to wrap things up.

The injured Fishmen were to return to their tribe, and the uninjured would clean up the battlefield. They moved the bodies of the deceased Fishmen, along with their weapons, to one side, then brought back all the Snake people’s bodies and stacked them together.

More than two hundred Snake people died, causing casualties of over three hundred Fishmen, resulting in a mountain of corpses.

Now, the only Clan members still alive in the Divine Realm were just over two hundred. They had diminished significantly, but fortunately, the remaining Fishmen were mostly the type with double the reproduction and survival rates. With more than half a month left before the final exam, twenty-plus years were enough for them to reproduce anew.

Looking at the two large piles of bodies, and considering how quickly they would decompose in the seaside weather, Lin Xiao planned to burn them.

However, as he was about to take action, a sudden idea struck him—could he use his Creation Rubik’s Cube to do something about it?

He was still not reconciled to the small amount of divinity he had missed out on. Since he couldn’t claim it, he felt extremely frustrated, as if he’d suffered a loss and wanted to gain something back.

He thought, since the Creation Rubik’s Cube had the ability to decompose and extract, if it could break down cards and extract their core, could it possibly decompose these bodies and extract something from them?

Since these bodies were going to be burned anyway, why not try out his idea to see if it would work?

If it didn’t work, there was no harm done, but if it did…

Deciding to act on his idea, he looked up at the sky. By now, the headteacher and the tutor had already left, and there was no one outside the Divine Realm.

Flying above the pile of Snake people’s corpses, he extended his right palm. A ring of golden light flew out, rapidly expanding and descending, encompassing the mountain of Snake people’s bodies within it.

As the golden light swallowed the pile of corpses and closed back up, the bodies of the two hundred plus Snake people had vanished without a trace.

He then did the same with the Fishmen’s bodies on the other side,

Meanwhile, he didn’t forget to have the Fishman Leader shout out:

“The great Lord of the Grey Mist welcomes the brave warriors to the realm of our lord, and the evil invaders will be cast into the bottomless abyss.”

As a Deity with full marks in theoretical knowledge, knowing how to maximize faith was almost instinctual for him, and he could rattle off such words without hesitation.

Amidst the frenzied cheers of all the believers, Lin Xiao’s True Body soared to the sky and returned to his God Country.

His God Country was nearly empty, with nothing much compared to the Divine Realm, which had mountains and waters. His God Country was just a chaotic void.

As a New God from the Main World, different from traditional faith-based deities, his core was the integration of the God Country with the material plane, two sides of the same Divine Realm. The size of the God Country was equivalent to that of the Divine Realm’s material plane. The larger the material plane, the larger the Divine Realm would be.

But for ones like Lin Xiao, who had just established their Divine Realm, even developing the material plane of the Divine Realm was a challenge. The accumulated faith value was barely enough for self-use, let alone decorating the God Country.

So, although his God Country was as big as the Divine Realm, the actual area was only the size of a football field, including a simple palace. He and his True Body resided at the core of the palace, and outside the palace, dozens of Fish people praying served as guards, decorating the front.