The Era of Gods

As the purifying light formed by the Creation Energy infiltrated, wisps of grey mist seeped out from his heart.

The Creation Rubik’s Cube had burned a whole ten units of Creation Energy, with most of the strength formed directed at awakening his memory, and only a small part used for cleansing his anomalies, which was now nearing completion.

“I wonder how the others are doing now, whether they have awakened.”

“Or, whether they are still alive!”

Lin Xiao fell silent. This world was extremely mysterious, managing to completely block their connection with the Gaia Will. Either the will of this Crystal Wall Universe was extraordinarily powerful, or this world belonged to a rare and special kind.

From the previous sight of countless Nightmare Lords converging at the edge of this universe, including a Nightmare King on par with Powerful Divine Power seated there, it was evident that this world was likely occupied by the Nightmare World.

So many Nightmare Lords gathered outside, waiting — this scene reminded him of the scene back at the Myriad Images God Temple, extremely similar to that time.

The juniors entered the Ruins of Myriad, while the gods waited outside the ruins…

A hypothesis formed in Lin Xiao’s mind — could this world also be an opportunity created by the Nightmare World for the younger generation to compete for? Were there many young Nightmare Lords present in this world now?

The likelihood was high.

However, what was the great opportunity of this world?

Lin Xiao looked out the window. The dark clouds melded with the pitch-black sea, occasionally split by lightning. He quickly averted his gaze.

Years of experience in this world told him not to stare outside carelessly for too long.

When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

This world was extremely eerie: the mysterious beings living in this world had many inconceivable abilities, often just one prolonged glance in a crowd was enough to claim your life.

About a minute later, Lin Xiao felt the strength of the Creation Energy penetrate to the deepest part of his heart. When the last wisp of grey mist was expelled and dissipated, he suddenly felt a moment of vertigo, and the world in front of him twisted rapidly. Lin Xiao instantly stood up from the bathtub and drew the curved knife beside him.

However, the dizzying distortion before his eyes soon reverted to normal, but he could sense that the entire world seemed to have changed.

After a short silence, he suddenly summoned the panel to check again.

The first interface seemed unchanged, except that his spiritual power had surged by ten points. Besides that, he observed carefully and found something new that wasn’t there before — under the attributes list, a question mark had appeared, its nature utterly chaotic upon focus.

With a puzzled heart, he opened the second mission panel, and Lin Xiao’s pupils contracted.

The original three tasks had vanished, replaced by two new tasks —

The first task: Slay the Children of Nightmare that have descended into this world; for each child killed, based on the target’s strength and status, reward 1-5 points of evaluation, and plunder a portion of their strength; repeatable upon killing.

The second task: Destroy the nine Nightmare nodes that Nightmare’s Will has descended upon this world; for each node destroyed, receive 1% of the world’s authority, and earn the favor of the world’s Clan. The more Nightmare nodes destroyed, the more favor from the world you receive.

“This…”

Completely opposite from the previous tasks.

Lin Xiao tried to catalogue the differences between the previous and current tasks, and suddenly realized that the two sets of tasks were completely opposed, which meant…

Integrating the information from the tasks with what he saw before entering this world, Lin Xiao harbored a bold guess.

Could it be that he had been regarded as an invading Child of Nightmare by the will of this world, but now that he had awakened, he was no longer deemed a Child of Nightmare, thus receiving these new tasks?

He could not be certain, but it seemed likely.

The tasks were given forcibly, Lin Xiao felt there was no way to refuse them. Considering the complex situation of this world, even though his status seemed to be acknowledged by the world’s will, his situation was not great. It was clear that this world had been invaded by the Nightmare World, with numerous descending Children of Nightmare and nine world-controlling Nightmare nodes. The ever-present dark clouds and worldwide eeriness were obviously not a normal state. Even if this world’s will took a fancy to him, he had no help to speak of; he still had to rely on himself.

“Knock, knock!”

There was a knock on the door.

Lin Xiao stood up vigilantly and called out:

“Who is it?”

“Your old man!”

He breathed a sigh of relief, donned his clothes, opened the door, and found the old captain with a pipe in his mouth standing there.

“Looks like you’ve recovered quite well.”

The old captain, who never parted with his old pipe, walked in, glanced around the room, and sat down casually beside the table. Lin Xiao habitually poured a glass of water and handed it over.

The old captain blew out a ring of smoke and tapped the ash on the side of the table before looking up and asking:

“Have you awakened?”

Lin Xiao was slightly startled and pondered how to answer. The old captain waved his hand and said:

“You don’t have to answer anything else, just tell me if you have or haven’t.”

“Yes.”

“Good, don’t tell anyone.”

“Understood.”

“Give me a back rub.”

He obediently went over to massage the old captain’s back, and to his surprise, he discovered firm muscles under the captain’s clothing, not at all typical for his age.

After massaging forcefully for over ten minutes, just when he thought the old captain was about to fall asleep, the captain suddenly said,

“Little Karl, how many years have you been with me?”

After thinking for a bit, he replied,

“Five years.”

“Five years, I still remember what you looked like when you first came aboard.”

The old captain picked up his pipe with deliberate slowness, packed it with tobacco, lit it, and took a puff before speaking,

“I was thinking about having you land ashore after a while. The sea is too dangerous. But now that you’ve awakened, I’ll give you a chance. If you can meet my requirements, The Explorer will be yours.”

Lin Xiao felt a surge of joy, but managed to keep his excitement from showing as he asked,

“What about you, Dad?”

The old captain laughed,

“I, of course, would retire to shore.”

“Don’t get too happy too soon, though; inheriting this ship won’t be easy. You’ll need to achieve something that the crew acknowledges. If they don’t approve, you won’t be able to become captain.”

Lin Xiao nodded earnestly,

“I’ll work hard.”

“You have one year, and this year is the time for you to show what you’re capable of. Now that you’ve awakened, you should be able to greatly strengthen your resistance to the Weird Whispers. I trust you can achieve results that will convince everyone.”

The old man and he talked for a while longer, including some information he had previously been unable to know, such as how to gain more Powerful Divine Power. Two hours later, the old man left with his pipe.

Lin Xiao watched as the old captain left, pondering the things he had just heard.

This world was extremely mysterious, and its power system was equally bizarre.

It’s divided into three types, one of which involved what the captain referred to as awakening.

According to the captain’s understanding, awakening was akin to spiritual mutation. The entire world had undergone mutations due to its mysterious nature and the invasion from the Nightmare World, leading to the birth of countless terrifying beings.

These terrifying beings possessed horror-inducing powers such as distortion, pollution, radiation, and curses—unfit to be looked upon or touched by regular people. Anyone who came into contact would be twisted by their bizarre strength and turned into monsters.

Once awakened, with a mutated spirit, one would have immense resistance to these indescribable and mysterious beings, enabling one to combat them.

As for how to fight them, this involves the second and most common power system in the world—blood warriors.

So-called blood warriors housed within their bodies the monster flesh and blood of the creatures they killed. They would suppress the monsters’ bizarre strength with their strong will and the assistance of magic potions, absorbing the power from the flesh and blood to bestow upon humans strength surpassing that of ordinary people, giving them the ability to confront these evil creatures head-on.

Yet, as human vessels housing evil forces, even with potions resisting these influences, the monster flesh and blood incorporated into their bodies would incessantly emanate distorting powers, affecting them over time. The more times they fused with monster flesh and blood, the more blood warriors would be influenced, leading to physical and mental mutations.

If one couldn’t suppress these mutations, they would lose control, a condition known as blood source collapse—an exceedingly brutal outcome.

Either your genes would collapse into a mass of flesh, or you would lose your mind under the influence of the monster flesh and blood, becoming an indistinct monster. Many of the wild monsters are, in fact, former humans.

Those who awaken can withstand ordinary Weird Whispers due to their increased spiritual power, thus allowing them to fuse with the monster flesh and blood more times, easily becoming stronger blood warriors.

Furthermore, awakeners with their escalated spiritual strength can learn the world’s third power system—the witchcraft system, similar to mages. Witchcraft is odder and more perilous than spells, and also stronger, but the old man didn’t know much about it and only mentioned it in passing.

Setting aside witchcraft for now, since there’s currently no way to learn it, the immediate way to enhance one’s strength is through becoming a blood warrior. Lin Xiao had an idea about this.

Ordinarily, blood warriors use magic potions to suppress the weird power within the monster flesh and blood, which can’t be completely restrained. Even the most potent magic potions can’t fully prevent residual effects. Over time and with accumulation, these remnants can affect even the strongest warriors or awakeners beyond their ability to suppress. He had never heard of blood warriors dying peacefully of old age.

He didn’t want to end up like that.

His idea was to use the function of the Creation Rubik’s Cube to decompose and refine, and perhaps purify the evil powers in the fused monster flesh and blood that could affect the mind and body into purified material before integrating it.

If he could do this, he could continue fusing with monster flesh and blood without worrying about side effects, rapidly becoming more powerful.

Even if it meant expending Creation Energy, he was prepared to do so.

The reason was simple—he needed to survive, and that required substantial strength.