The Era of Gods

The power ceiling of this plane was not high, but after all, it had several beings at the Transcendent Level who were aware that there were other planes beyond this one. In fact, there were spatial rifts within this plane that led to other planes, but they were too dangerous for ordinary people to pass through.

Yun Shaoning was preparing to stabilize these planar rifts and reinforce them, using them as natural doors to extra-dimensional planes to springboard an attack and conquer other planes.

But before that, he needed to gather the kingdom’s skilled craftspeople to establish an inter-world transfer array first.

According to the rules, the teleportation array was to be built within a year, that is, at the end of the First Level stage, but that was just a criterion for an excellent assessment at the First Level. In reality, many students took longer, and he didn’t care about the First Level results at all; his focus was on the Second Level.

Like him, Lin Xiao didn’t rush to build the teleportation array within a year. After conquering that small Zorel Elves city, he immediately moved his base there and began expanding from the underground space beneath the city.

These Zorel Elves had enslaved tens of thousands, and together with those previously conquered, Lin Xiao now controlled nearly twenty thousand people.

In the War game, the population is a resource, and he picked some from these twenty thousand individuals, representing over a dozen races, to form a professional army. The remaining humans farmed, while the Grey Dwarves led a portion specifically for mining.

As a civilization capable of building cities, the Zorel Elves were one of the rulers of the Underground World on any plane, this one being no exception. Lin Xiao obtained detailed information about this vast underground world from them.

Yes, ‘vast’ is the word to describe it.

After obtaining information about the Underground World known to the Zorel Elves, Lin Xiao realized that this plane was not the small-scale type he had imagined—it was much larger in area.

He remembered, upon his arrival to this strange cluster of planes, those overlapping plane clusters, resembling tentacle-like strands, with many joint­like nodes in between that were much larger in volume than the planes on the sides that formed the tentacles; he guessed that the plane he had descended upon was one of those larger joint node planes.

Of course, ‘larger’ here is relative to the other smaller planes in the cluster. By the standard measure of the Chaotic Void Sea, this would be considered just a mid-sized plane.

Although a bit surprised, Lin Xiao was actually more pleased.

The larger the plane, the more it meant that if he could successfully conquer this plane, even if only half of it, the evaluation would definitely be very high when the time came.

It was for this reason that he slightly altered his plan.

Originally, he had planned to summon his clan immediately to steamroll the plane once the inter-world transfer array was established. If it was really a small plane, it would not be difficult to do so.

But now, finding out that it was a mid-sized plane, and considering the previous encounter suggesting the presence of dragons, conquering this plane would not be easy, especially since the plane’s will could detect him at any moment. Once discovered, it would be everyone against him.

It’s not as if the entire world would become enemies, but under the plane’s will influence, all creatures he encountered would involuntarily view him as an enemy, and fierce monsters would confront him more frequently.

For instance, if there were dragons in this Underground World, under the plane’s will guidance, a dragon that was asleep might suddenly wake up due to hunger or an earthquake and go hunting. It could seem like random flying, but unintentionally, it might fly towards him. If he were discovered, he would surely be hunted as prey, regardless of whether a single human’s flesh was enough to fill the gap in its teeth.

Normally dragons seldom regard humans as food, as they are too small to bother. However, under the plane’s will influence, this would not be a problem.

Even if he were as small as an ant, he might still get burned to death by a casual burst of dragon breath.

More than a year had passed now, and perhaps because he was hidden in the Under World, the plane’s will scanned for him more than a dozen times without detection, which Lin Xiao found both surprising and fortunate.

It was good that he had not been discovered, as he had already gathered enough resources and constructed an inter-world transfer array, just waiting to be activated and opened.

But Lin Xiao did not immediately activate it. Instead, he temporarily sealed it away, continuing to command his current subjugated followers to expand outward and conquer the nearby underground creatures and tribes of the Underground World.

The reason was that once activated, the plane’s will would immediately discover him and plunge him into an adverse environment where everyone was an enemy, and even his conquered followers could potentially rebel or flee.

So, before being detected, he had to conquer as many underground creatures as possible, establishing a vast power to provide himself with resources, and to even use his clan as cannon fodder.

In the following time, as other students activated their inter-world transfer arrays one after another and immediately summoned large numbers of their clans upon unlocking permissions to begin the conquest of the current plane,

Yun Shaoning was no exception. As soon as the transfer array was completed, he immediately summoned a large number of his clan members, who together with the empire he ruled, crushed two other kingdoms on the plane, unifying the entire plane.

Then he began to stabilize the few spatial rifts within the plane and search for the next conquest target.

By the time he found a plane, determined through exploration to be dozens of times larger than his initial plane and ready to be conquered, it was already the third year after their descent.

Outside the void, the enormous void battleship remained silently anchored in space, with many senior students and teachers still there.

These were but one of the many incarnations of the seniors, doing whatever they were meant to do with their true bodies and other incarnations. The most recent task for these incarnations was to stay here… and play around.

Every True God possesses a variable number of incarnations. Generally, a newly enthroned god with weak divine power has a number of incarnations corresponding to their divine positions, usually possessing as many incarnations as they have positions. These incarnations wield power linked to their respective divine positions.

For instance, if Lin Xiao would become a god with Truth, Creation, Supreme Naga, and Fishman as his divine positions, he would then have Truth, Creation, Naga, and Fishman as his separate divine position incarnations right after his divine enthronement, each with power corresponding to those positions and possessing half the strength of his true body’s god level.

For example, if the true body’s divinity was Rank 2, the incarnations would only be Ranki.

However, once promoted to Weak Divine Power, a god will consistently have five incarnations of God.

These five incarnations combine the powers of Truth, Creation, Naga, and Fishman in one, having still only half the god level of the true body, but their powers are much more formidable than those of the earlier divine position incarnations.

The divine position incarnations sent by the senior students indicated that they were still at the stage of weak divine power. The sixteen senior students, along with the class teacher, only had three incarnations of gods.

Three years was almost like a snap of the fingers for true gods who had ascended and possessed immortal life. None of them showed impatience due to the lengthy time. Instead, they were all excited to observe how the juniors performed as they entered the second phase.

At this moment, the light screen had already been removed, and each senior student had a large light screen in front of them, each displaying the junior they were rooting for. One senior was observing the screen with great interest —he was rooting for Lin Xiao.

This senior suddenly slapped the table and pointed at the scene on the screen, saying to the other seniors,

“This kid is good!”

He looked up and asked Jin Sisi,

“Sisi, come and see this student. Is he one of the few that you have high hopes for?”

Several people around looked over, and Jin Sisi glanced at the screen and nodded,

“He is one of them.”

“Then it’s settled. This time he’s likely to snag one of the top spots.”

At this, other seniors all craned their necks to take a look and nodded in agreement. One of the seniors even exclaimed in a surprisingly astounded tone, “This is awesome. How did he manage that? It’s been three years, and the plane will hasn’t even scanned him?”

He looked toward the other seniors and said,

“It seems like out of the eighty or so people, he’s the only one who hasn’t been discovered yet. The one who lasted the longest before him was found after just thirteen months.”

The group of seniors surrounded the screen and observed for a while but couldn’t figure it out. Senior Su rubbed his chin while staring at the screen, showing the increasingly massive underground city, and muttered,

“It doesn’t make sense. With the domain he has conquered and the servants he has enslaved, he is a significant force in this node of the plane. It’s impossible that the plane will hasn’t found him yet. It’s not like he can’t be discovered just because he’s in the Underground World; the interference there isn’t as high as one might think.”

Just then, a senior pointed at the screen and shouted,

“Look quickly, he’s about to activate the inter-world transfer array to summon his clan.”

All eyes turned to the screen to see a huge array in the center of that massive underground city light up. White magic brilliance spread quickly along the array, finally converging in the middle and transforming into a thick beam of light, filled with terrifying power, shooting up into the sky and…

“What!”

All the seniors leaned forward simultaneously, their eyes wide as they watched the screen. The energy beam, brimming with a surging aura, disappeared silently after not even reaching a hundred meters up, as if it were erased. But all the seniors knew that the cross-world portal had been activated, yet…

“Why isn’t there a reaction from the plane will?”

This was something not only the seniors couldn’t understand; even Lin Xiao himself was utterly confused. He had prepared himself to be discovered by the plane will and become an enemy of the entire world, but unexpectedly…

“This is not normal, this is absolutely not normal!”

There wasn’t a hint of joy on Lin Xiao’s face.

Normally, this would be a good thing. If he wasn’t discovered, he could continue enriching himself in silence.

But the situation was too damn strange. He would not be able to sleep peacefully without figuring it out.

The first thing that came to his mind was the Creation Magic Cube he had, but after pondering, he realized the Magic Cube didn’t have this function. His Golden Finger could only perform simple functions like disassembling, refining, and merging. Even the great divine power probably couldn’t compare with it in these aspects, definitely not the function he was experiencing now.

Beyond that…

He methodically ruled out the treasures he possessed that could potentially have such an effect, quickly considering two possibilities.

One was the Truth Divine Position, and the other was the shell of the Crystal Wall System’s Core.

Among all the good things he had, these were the only two that seemed possible.

Hmm, after a brief reflection, he dismissed the Truth Divine Position.

The real Truth Divine Position indeed had the ability to hide oneself, but the problem was that he hadn’t yet formed it; he was just beginning to pursue that path.

Having ruled that out, the answer seemed imminent.

His consciousness returned to the Divine Realm to communicate with his true body. When he returned, joy was written all over his face, impossible to hide.