The Era of Gods

This is just the initial state with this additional effect; if all the cracks on this shell can be repaired, not only will the current effects be fully strengthened, but other more powerful extra effects will also be obtained.

After holding out for a full five hours and killing nearly fifty to sixty thousand invaders, Wu Zhonglin’s own losses finally reached a point where he could no longer maintain the defense.

The endless stream of enemies overran both flanks, and groups of Half Beastmen infiltrated and encircled the area through the breached flanks, initiating the countdown to failure.

He watched his subordinates being surrounded by the Half Beastmen, like a vast ocean, with a serene face. It was like a dry piece of paper gradually getting soaked by water, the dry area getting smaller and smaller until, at last, the final group of Kobold Dragon Vein Magicians was engulfed by the tide-like enemy. The space before his eyes shifted, leaving the virtual plane as well as the God’s Tomb.

In another plane, the artificial high walls built by Shen Yuexin, as more and more Half Beastmen perished, their corpses piled up, filling up a section of the man-made river, accumulating until it was level with the walls.

Large numbers of Half Beastmen rushed over the pile of corpses onto the high wall, only to see, a few hundred meters away, a newly completed second high wall; she had constructed an additional line of defense outside the first one.

She clapped her hands, placed them on her hips, and her eyes twinkled with sly vivacity:

“Looks like grandma here has won for sure!”

As the relentless stream of cannon fodder continued to sacrifice their lives to fill up the second wall, she ordered a portion of Mages to start building a third wall even further back.

With this delaying tactic, she managed to hold out for more than ten hours until, from the teleportation portals, giants beasts over ten meters tall appeared and forcefully broke through the wall, forcing her to admit defeat.

At that time, there wasn’t a trace of discouragement on her face from the defeat; instead, she stood with her hands on her hips, watching as more and more terrifying troop types emerged from the portals and besieged her remaining Mages who had dug holes and hidden deep within the Earth.

With just this, she was able to hold out for a full hour until the second Magic-based Half Beastman Hero arrived. Together with the Shamans, they cast earthquake spells, shaking the Mages hidden deep below the Earth to death.

Disengaging from the battlefield of consciousness, her vision swirled with change, and Shen Yuexin saw that she was sitting in one of the nine Golden Thrones in the Summer Camp Hall, immediately stunned.

It took her a moment to snap back to reality and stand up, exclaiming:

“How is this possible?”

She quickly turned to look at Wu Zhonglin, who was sitting two seats away in the center of the nine Golden Thrones. The young man, who had returned to Subspace at some unknown time, had resumed his initial gentle appearance and spread his hands with a smile:

“It wasn’t me!”

Shen Yuexin became even more astonished. Her sight swept over where Lin Xiao was supposed to be and saw another unfamiliar young man sitting there. Quickly realizing something, she turned her head again. Between her own seat and Wu Zhonglin’s, another Golden Throne was empty. As she was about to say something, suddenly, in the middle of the hall, a light from the Void appeared out of nowhere, rapidly expanding into a screen of light, revealing a vast sea of magma, where numerous flame creatures frolicked within the molten lava.

Most of the contestants were unclear about what this was, but Shen Yuexin, having just experienced it, recognized it at a glance.

On the other side, Wu Zhonglin also leaned forward slightly, his attention focused on that plane. After a while, his expression revealed realization:

“So that’s what it was!”

Shen Yuexin, with her mouth slightly agape, watched as invaders pouring continuously from ten portals at the edge of the plane fell into the magma upon entry, turning to ash, her pretty little head a bit baffled.

Just then, a column of light surrounded by infinite stars suddenly descended from the sky, striking the last, unoccupied Golden Throne. A ring of crystal light explosively burst forth, forcing everyone to instinctively turn their heads away.

When the crystal light vanished and everyone looked back, they saw Lin Xiao sitting atop that Golden Throne, becoming one of the nine Golden Contestants.

The little girl regained her senses, biting her lip in anger while placing her hands on her hips and glaring at Lin Xiao, who had just returned, before squeezing out a few words:

“You cheated!”

As her words fell, the image in the air shifted to another battlefield, where an endless stream of Half Beastmen was stopped by a high wall, unable to advance, as archers above attacked them from a distance, the spectacle displayed before everyone.

The projection hastened, quickly showing her method of delaying time to everyone. After watching, Lin Xiao subconsciously opened his mouth in an ‘oh’ of realization, and saw her delicate little face turn red, instinctively reaching out to squeeze his waist and twist hard.

“Ouch!”

And that was that. The little girl, having come back to her senses, immediately succumbed to social death, hugging her head and crouching in the large Golden Throne in an ostrich-like pose.

No one around made a sound, but it was evident that many were struggling not to burst out laughing. Lin Xiao scanned the room and noticed even Wu Zhonglin, who was normally so solemn, twitch at the corner of his mouth.

He shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands to indicate it wasn’t his business.

By then, the projection in the sky had vanished, and the host was still nowhere to be seen, which wasn’t too surprising to Lin Xiao as he glanced at the Golden Throne beneath him.

After all, he was the first-place winner in the exchange competition. It wasn’t strange for him to replace another with an average performance and take a Golden Throne.

The reason he hadn’t taken Wu Zhonglin’s place was that the progression of seats had to do with the overall performance in the Summer Camp, and he only had the best performance in the final stage, which definitely couldn’t compare to Wu Zhonglin, who had been at the top all along.

Key to that, he himself was far from being as strong as this prodigy and vice-leader of the contenders. If he were to be seated in the very center, not only would others be dissatisfied, but he himself wouldn’t feel at ease.

Of course, seating was just a matter of honor, and he wasn’t too concerned about it. What really mattered were the tangible rewards and benefits.

Not only was he about to receive rewards from the Summer Camp exchange competition, but also the majority of the inheritance from Major General Keri—the Divine Kingdom fragment hidden within God’s Tomb.

The reason he said “a part of if was that General Keri, before he left, had him carve out a small portion of the massive Divine Kingdom fragment to make five ancient-quality Divine Realm Cards to reward the young heroes who had performed well in the Summer Camp.

Lin Xiao could sense Keri’s purely selfless desire for the younger generation to thrive, and since this was the elder’s last wish, he had agreed to it.

It was only a small part, after all; the majority was his, and everything else inside the God’s Tomb belonged to him, too.

God’s Tomb actually wasn’t much. Contrary to what outsiders imagined, it wasn’t filled with treasures. Besides the Divine Kingdom fragment and those statues, the most valuable thing in the God’s Tomb was the shell of the Crystal Wall System’s Core.

Keri had escaped from a being of great divine power, so managing to hide a fragment of the God Country was all he could barely do; it was impossible for him to actually collect treasures.

All things considered, General Keri’s inheritance consisted of the broken shell of the Crystal Wall System’s Core, a Divine Kingdom fragment of unknown size, including an undetermined number of Legendary Creatures or Demigod statues. This place should yield a significant amount of Divinity, but that was about it.

The inheritance was now his in his Divine Realm, just waiting for the Summer Camp to end so he could return to the Divine Realm and take possession of it.

Speaking of which, Lin Xiao was already getting impatient. He looked around but could not spot the host, nor did he see any team’s mentors or observers.

It wasn’t just him who was curious; the others were, too.

Those curious about why the host and the four team mentors and many observers had not yet appeared were, at this moment, arguing heatedly in another space. If Lin Xiao were to come across this scene, he would notice there were several times more observers than before. If he listened carefully, he would realize the content of their dispute was the pursuit of the various students.

Owing to the exchange competition, the observers from the higher education institutions hosting the Summer Camp had promised to use all their special admission quota on these students.

So, besides the few dozen observers from the academies that had initially made their presence known, observers from the many other academies had now fully turned up—all in all, some two to three hundred observers from five Super Academies and one hundred thirty-three higher education institutions, all gathered to squabble over the talented contestants.

However, the most fiercely contested were not Lin Xiao and Shen Yuexin or even the competitors from the Gold layer, but rather the thirty-six contestants from the Silver layer.

All of the higher education institution observers knew that they had no chance of recruiting the foremost talents who belonged to the Super Academies, especially Lin Xiao, who had taken first place in the exchange competition and inherited Major General Keri’s legacy; he was, in a sense, as prioritized within the higher education institutions as Wu Zhonglin was.

He was bound to be favored by one of the Super Academies for special recruitment, with the only question being whether Radiance, ranked first, was willing to offer a special admission slot.

Historically, Radiance, as the top Super Academy, rarely offered special admission slots in the Summer Camp, perhaps once in ten sessions. Invitations to join them were, however, quite common.

The confidence for such a stance lay in Radiance’s robust genius training system and large reserve of talent. As a superb Divine System with great divine power, holding an entire Crystal Wall System as territory, after over two hundred thousand years of operation in the Main World and tens of millions of years in Different Domains, Radiance’s Crystal Wall System had long been assimilated by the Main World.

The Crystal Wall System known as Radiance already boasted billions of immigrants and trillions or even quadrillions of their descendants. The few primary material planes within the Crystal Wall System and many super-large planes had been thoroughly colonized and assimilated.

So many descendants of the immigrants, each holding the status of either citizens of the Main World or Affiliated Citizens, enjoyed the same treatment as citizens and had the opportunity to open their own Divine Realms.

The endless citizens and affiliated citizens were bound to breed outstanding geniuses. While it might be rare to find a peerless prodigy like Wu Zhonglin, there would certainly be no lack of excellent elites and geniuses. A superpower like this would generally not offer special admission slots unless someone was exceptionally outstanding.

But whether Radiance was willing to offer a special admission slot or not did not matter, for the non-Super Academies had no chance.

If Radiance didn’t want him, the others wouldn’t get a turn either—the other Super Academies would surely be interested.

For example, among the five major Super Academies, there were still two that had not offered their special admission slots. Moreover, entities like the War Throne, although having already committed the chief slot to Wu Zhonglin through a special invitation, would not mind offering another special invitation for the position of second chief or last place.

Although the second special admission slot wouldn’t have priority and top-tier institutions or higher education institutions could vie for it, it would hardly matter given that it comes from the third-ranked Super