The Era of Gods

After promoting my subordinates, the grand prayer ceremony concluded. The food used as tribute was divided for my subordinates to feast on, and after finishing half a lobster, I, Lin Xiao, returned to the other side of the altar. That’s where the spoils of war were piled up, all scavenged from the Lobstermen Tribe.

Most of it was stored food, nothing of value. Whatever remained was just a bunch of miscellaneous items, with only two or three things of real value to me.

The first was an enormous, rusty iron anchor, similar to a ship’s anchor, seven or eight meters in length and very heavy. When I’d visited the Lobstermen Tribe, this object had been buried in mud and sand, neglected by the Lobstermen who treated it merely as a part of the landscape.

Although temporarily useless to me, it might not be so in the future.

The second valuable item was a gigantic turtle shell. It was unclear which species of sea beast had left it behind, but at about forty meters in length, it was enormous. The Lobstermen had turned it over to use as a place to store treasured food.

I stored this item in the Creative Space without breaking it down, as I had yet to decide what to do with it.

The third valuable item was a stone sculpture several people high, depicting a male merfolk. I sensed an incredibly dense Power of Faith emanating from it. It was an idol used by the Lobstermen to worship the Sea God, also known as a Divine Artifact.

It was like the primitive Sea God altar of the Fish people tribe. On top of it was a Sea God’s sign for receiving Faith value. The Lobstermen’s years of prayers and worship had accumulated a considerable amount of Faith value.

This was a good item for me. Even if I couldn’t absorb it myself, I could use it as currency.

Not daring to take it out directly, I used the Creation Rubik’s Cube to break it down and extracted the Faith value within. Surprisingly, I harvested over four hundred and eighty thousand units of Faith value, nearly five Divine Power points.

This was nearly as much as all the Faith value I had gained since Opening the Divine Realm. Clearly, this Holy Proof had been worshipped for a long time, and the Sea God had yet to reclaim it.

I couldn’t help but think of the Holy Proof in the Fish people tribe. With a population much larger than that of the Lobstermen, if it also had not been collected for a long time, it could have accumulated even more Faith value.

At this thought, I, Lin Xiao, grew excited.

A few days later, I became somewhat impatient to start implementing my plan to manipulate the Fish people tribe.

The method was simple: continue to build relationships as before. The Fish people tribe had nearly half its warriors injured, with many unable to hunt due to their wounds. The tribe’s remaining food supply would not last long. Every two days, I’d send someone to deliver food to strengthen our rapport.

Then, I would send my subordinates out to find strong predators in the sea to lure or even directly drive towards the Fish people, creating a constant sense of crisis for their fishing teams or the tribe itself.

Afterward, I would appear as a savior to rescue them.

With the pitiful brain capacity of the Fish people, they certainly could not imagine that all this was orchestrated by their allies. Over time, after the Fish people tribe suffered an attack by a powerful Sea Beast I had lured there, I proposed to the Chieftain—on the pretext of being tired from running back and forth and to better provide close support—that the entire tribe move into this Fishman Big Tribe from their original small location.

Subsequently, I integrated with the Fish people tribe just as I had done when the Naga first emerged in the Divine Realm.

In just two months, the two tribes became as close as family, indistinguishable from one another.

Under my deliberate control, my Naga Clan easily influenced these native Fish people with the dominant style of the Naga. Initially, the changes were subtle. However, as the Naga continually demonstrated their formidable military power and effortlessly killed sharks—a Sea Beast terribly frightening to the Fish people—after several promotions, the psychological impact on the native Fish people was immense.

Within just half a year, the Fish people tribe had grown accustomed to following the Naga, and they were completely conquered.

From the time he had arrived in this world until he completed his first task, barely eight months had passed.

Lin Xiao was very satisfied with this progress and immediately applied to the Divine Artifact Platform Spirit outside the plane, requesting to submit task completion. It took the Divine Artifact Spirit one day to evaluate and confirm that he had completed the task.

“Student Lin Xiao, you have completed one task, please decide whether to confirm this task as one of the three limited tasks,” it said.

He immediately replied,

“Yes, I confirm.”

“Confirmed. Student Lin Xiao’s task completion is 1/3. Rewards are being distributed. Please check.”

The reward cards for the tasks were random, but the range of randomness was generally within what was suitable for the student to use. They were not necessarily a perfect fit, but they would never reward cards that were completely useless.

An 81-point task, rewarded with two blue rare quality five-star cards, three random quality five-star cards, and some spoils of war.

The strategic resources could be ignored, they were only present if there were spoils of war accumulated; without winning any spoils of war, they would be nonexistent. The main reward was these five five-star cards.

There were definitely two rare quality cards; the other three were random, and they could all be of normal quality or all of rare quality.

As a ray of golden light descended from the sky into Lin Xiao’s hands, transforming into five cards that emitted a faint golden glow, he swiftly fanned them out with a flick of his fingers, revealing their true forms.

Two were of rare quality, one of uncommon quality, and two of normal quality.

“Not bad!”

This definitely could not be considered poor, at least there was one extra card of uncommon quality that was not just three common ones.

The two blue rare quality cards were: one resource card — Small Shallow Sea Ecology (Extremely Rare): A one-time summoning of a 1 kilometer by 1 kilometer nutrient-rich shallow seabed ecological environment to cover the existing sea area.

Simply put, it simulated a nutrient-rich seabed ecosystem, including abundant aquatic plants such as kelp and nori which were edible, along with some like coral that were not, plus nutrient-rich seawater and microorganisms—all part of a complete underwater ecological system.

It might seem rather useless at a glance, as it didn’t include any fish life, just an ecological environment.

But in reality, it was quite valuable.

One should know that the seafloor of his Divine Realm was quite barren right now, aside from the small amount of seaweed and fish he had planted, there wasn’t much else. The aquatic ecology was nearly nonexistent, and most of the seafloor was bare and exposed.

With this, a complete underwater habitat could be established, attracting the gathering of fish and shrimp, and allowing for easier reproduction. It was equivalent to indirectly increasing the reproduction speed of the marine life, and as long as it wasn’t destroyed, it was permanent.

There was no doubt this card had to be kept.

The second rare card was a soldier card — Centaur archer (Extremely Rare): A one-time summoning of 150 Level 2 centaur archers, including five Level 3 Centaur wild archers. Note: Equipped with standard weapons and a five-day ration..