The Era of Gods

Of course, this couldn’t stay hidden, and it was bound to come out during the final exams, but at least there was this much time to delay things.

Tossing and turning for nearly two hours before finally falling into a groggy sleep, Ocean woke up early the next day, had breakfast, and entered the Divine Realm Login Cabin, arriving at his Divine Realm located in Subspace.

First, he routinely checked on the Divine Realm. The Black Scale Nagas were getting along with the Grey Mist Fish People quite well.

He flew over the newly opened fertile land in his Divine Realm, a black stretch of soil three and a half kilometers long and just over one kilometer wide near the beach, where some weeds were already growing.

Stroking his chin while overlooking the Divine Realm, Lin Xiao felt he still needed some economic plants and some seeds.

For example, potatoes, beets, and other easy-to-cultivate plants with high yields.

That Five Star Resource Card—the Large Bunch of Shallow Sea Fish Group Card—had already been placed. It contained five major random shallow sea fish schools: a large school of white scale shrimp, a large school of mahi-mahi, a large school of cod, a large school of sturgeon, and a large school of Black Spot Grouper. Each school was sizeable, with only a thousand Black Spot Groupers in one due to their large size, while the smaller white scale shrimp school had over a hundred thousand.

All of them were an even mix of males and females, capable of reproduction.

These five types of sea species, along with the ones previously in the Divine Realm, greatly enriched the ocean’s species and completed the food chain.

One could say that as long as there was no overfishing and the species were allowed to reproduce, these seafood resources could completely sustain the food needs of two to three thousand Fishmen and Black Scale Nagas.

As for that Wild Oxen Group Card, it was still in his hand and not yet deployed, mainly because the newly opened fertile land had yet to grow grass and plants. Releasing the oxen now would starve them to death.

Managing a Divine Realm was no easy feat, especially in the early stages when almost everything was needed, and problems kept cropping up. Solving one issue often led to another.

There were limited cards that could be used in the early stages, requiring careful planning. Each card had to be considered for its worth.

Lin Xiao had spent several months in the Divine Realm contemplating his future development path. Would it be a battle-focused approach, an agriculture-focused approach, or a hybrid?

If he chose the battle-focused approach, then he’d need to consider forming alliances…ahem, which is to say, like those outstanding students in his class, finding a few compatible friends to join up with, until both his Divine Realm’s level and his own divinity reached a certain point. Then, he could opt to unite with others, complementing each other’s advantages.

The essence of the battle-focused approach meant that in the days to come, he wouldn’t need to consider resource output when integrating all the cards into the Divine Realm. He wouldn’t heed internal balance or the like, focusing solely on cultivating the primary battle species.

As long as the primary battle species and Divine Realm were powerful, the logistical issues could be handed off to other allied teammates.

For example, finding a Divine Realm that specialized in the agriculture-focused approach, which wouldn’t develop the Clan’s combat power but focused solely on farming, producing enough resources to sustain the species within the Alliance Hierarch’s Divine Realm.

This was similar to Lin Xiao’s parents. His father pursued a battle-focused approach, while his mother chose the agriculture-focused approach. The internal Clan strength of her Divine Realm was average, but the resource output was exceptionally high, providing ample surplus resources to sustain his father’s Divine Realm.

To give a simple example, in Lin Xiao’s Clan, all members’ Divine Realms united under the Divine Realms of the two True Gods in the family, with the two True Gods at the core. The main task for other Demigods or Divine Beings of the Clan was to assist on the sides, forming a vast Divine System.

His Clan in the AX-14 Crystal Wall System was recognized by the Native deities as bearing the name of the Divine System.

The battle-focused and agriculture-focused approaches were like offense and defense, complementing each other.

As the name suggests, the integrated approach meant being strong in both offense and defense. Conversely, it could also mean that one was not particularly strong in either, but without any weaknesses.

Lin Xiao initially planned to follow the main combat stream and then, like his dad, find a beautiful goddess to be his wife. However, he soon realized that beautiful goddesses were hard to come by; there wasn’t a single attractive female classmate in his class, and even though there were a few in the school, what did that have to do with him?

Quality girls like that were already guarded by a bunch of LSPs; he didn’t stand a chance.

Moreover, Lin Xiao personally felt that this type of division of labor had a huge hidden danger. If one side encountered a problem, it would affect the whole body, impacting the entire Divine System.

Due to his slight OCD, he didn’t like having any weaknesses in his Divine Realm. Therefore, the only option was to follow the integrated approach.

Of course, this didn’t affect the possibility of finding teammates and building a Divine System together in the future.

In the following time, Lin Xiao spent every day in the Divine Realm, watching as the newborn Black Scale Nagas hatched and grew slowly. He was overjoyed.

The Black Scale Nagas had a growth period of six years and a lifespan of up to fifty years. With more than ten years left until the final exam, there was enough time for the third batch of offspring to be born.

Given that Black Scale Nagas could lay one to three eggs at a time, breeding once a year, minus the eggs that went bad, the first year saw the birth of over forty to fifty infants.

During this time, the only Divine-mandate Lin Xiao gave to these believers was to reproduce fiercely, striving to accumulate over five hundred Black Scale Nagas before the final exam. It was only then that he would feel confident about receiving a Divinity reward in the final exam.

As for the Grey Mist Fish People, he didn’t impart any Divine-mandate. He now considered Fishmen as an Advanced Race and didn’t find it necessary for them to reproduce so eagerly—he didn’t expect them to play much of a role when the time came.

There was no helping it; twenty-odd years later, even the longest-lived Fishman would have died. All the Fishman Warriors and Brave Fishmen leveled up during the preliminary test would be gone by then.

The subsequent Fishmen were all level zero; their Combat Power was limited, and bringing them to battle would just make them Cannon Fodder.

However, he had underestimated these Fishmen’s Reproductive Ability.

Without war, with an abundance of food, and all the newborn Fishmen having double the Reproductive Ability and survival rate, the growth speed of the Fishmen over these years was shockingly fast, like dumping dumplings into boiling water.

Sure enough, fifteen years later in Divine Realm time, or half a month later, the number of Fishmen in the Divine Realm had surpassed two thousand one hundred.

This was after he had sensed something was amiss and deliberately held back, making the Fishman Leader lead the Fishmen in daily training to prevent them from doing nothing but breeding.

Once the population reached that point, it had basically hit the upper limit of what the Divine Realm could accommodate.

Don’t forget that there were also more than four hundred eighty Black Scale Nagas in the Divine Realm, another major consumer. Just the food consumed by these Nagas wouldn’t be less than that of the two thousand Fishmen.

Fortunately, over the years, the newly opened fertile lands in the Divine Realm had become covered with wild grass. He activated the Wild Oxen Group Card, summoning one hundred wild oxen to graze on the land.

The hundreds of Black Scale Nagas swarmed over and captured these wild oxen, initially succeeding in domesticating them.

They didn’t use them for plowing since there were no seeds; they were purely kept as beef cattle. Every once in a while, some were slaughtered for food, ensuring that the herd could continue to reproduce.