The Era of Gods

However, contrary to everyone’s expectations, the Holy Church and the Kingdom had been passing the buck for nearly half a year, and after six months of inactivity with no preparations made for a campaign, it was Afonso, who held Dier Province, who suddenly sent a statement. He listed the numerous times the Holy Church had hindered his legitimate rule over Dier Province and declared retaliation against the Holy Church.

The target was the Church in Korot Province, which adjoined Dier Province.

Korot Province was one of four provinces surrounding Dier Province. The reason for choosing this one, aside from its location on the very edge of the Kingdom’s border, with no other Kingdom’s provinces nearby for the Church to send aid, was mainly that the Great Lord who held this province was one of the staunch supporters of the Holy Church and had previously been eagerly massing troops at the border.

Afonso’s sudden deployment of troops took everyone by surprise, even Her Majesty the Queen was quite astonished and sent a special envoy to inquire immediately.

The reasons Afonso gave to the envoy were far-fetched, or rather, perfunctory. The envoy, not having received a satisfactory answer, left in a great fury.

Lin Xiao was helpless in this situation because when they attacked the second province, any excuse would seem feeble.

Just as Sima Zhao’s intentions were clear to everyone, his replacement of Count Dyson could be justified by claiming oppression; even unifying the entire province would be within bounds. However, once he led his troops out of Dier Province to attack lords within other provinces of the Kingdom, it would be a blatant overstep and crossed the royal family’s bottom line.

In this world, even the greatest lords, the Dukes, have domains that are confined within a single province.

Earls, Marquises, and Dukes are all Great Lords; Count Dyson’s actual territory occupies less than one-third of Dier Province. A Duke’s territory might span an entire province at most; it could not exceed that. Once it did, it implied disloyalty, which was indisputable.

So, when the envoy returned to the Royal Capital, the Queen quickly reached an agreement with the Church, declaring no recognition of Afonso’s occupation of Count Dyson’s land. She swiftly found one of Count Dyson’s descendants to declare as the new Count Dyson and then denounced Afonso as a traitor.

Yet, within three days of the declaration of denunciation, when the messenger who delivered the message had just left the Royal Capital, a second army from Dier Province appeared on the border of Muya Province, directly seizing the border outpost and launching a surprise attack on the capital of Muya Province.

Their speed was so fast that neither the Kingdom nor the Church could react.

Compared to the Kingdom and the decadent, sluggish Holy Church, the nascent Church of Life and Wisdom outclassed them in execution by far; they announced the attack without hesitation or delay.

Neither Korot Province nor Muya Province could match them, and even if they had been prepared, the Holy Church’s knightly orders and the lords’ allied forces in both dioceses were routed in direct field battles respectively.

By the time the Royal Capital ended its wrangling and began dispatching troops, they had already defeated the main forces of two provinces. Many lords, both great and small, fled at the sight of them, and some capitulated upon the mere receipt of a written missive, surrendering even before the envoy’s message of persuasion arrived.

This saved them a lot of effort, and in keeping with the custom of this realm, dominated by aristocrats and lords, both Lin Xiao and Afonso accepted the surrenders but would tally the domains and troops of the various lords, drafting a portion of the soldiers from them.

This not only weakened the strength of the lords, both great and small, but also bolstered their own power.

As their territory continued to expand, they would need increasingly more troops.

Having conquered two provinces, Lin Xiao also harvested the vast Power of Faith from the two provinces, with Muya Province always having had a much larger population than the other two provinces, thus gathering almost twice as much Power of Faith as Dier Province.

In these months, Lin Xiao successively condensed ninety-nine Seeds of Essence, each imbued with different extreme energies and matter, and with the Power of Faith substituting the Deity Indwelling Power, he successfully ignited his third Talent.

His fourth Talent, called the Undying Body, required materiales that contained the essence of undying power, regardless of species, as long as it possessed undying power. However, the higher the quality of the material, the stronger the ignited Talent would naturally be.

It was also a troublesome material, but for Lin Xiao, who had the military as his support, it was hardly an issue.

Xie Yufei prepared for him a piece of flesh and blood from a terrifying Ancient Evil Object from the Crystal Wall Universe. It had already been purified, but Lin Xiao, still not reassured, personally purified it with the Creation Rubik’s Cube and did not find anything amiss, which indicated that the purifier was extremely powerful.

Ancient Evil Objects were terrifying entities with strengths comparable to a True God, each possessing an immensely powerful life force. The unspecified Ancient Evil that Xie Yufei procured for him was renowned for its undying nature.

Therefore, after integrating the flesh and blood of this Ancient Evil, Lin Xiao successfully ignited the fourth Talent of his Golden Ancient Tree Totem—the Undying Body.

As feedback from the Talent, after igniting the Talent, he too gained a strong regenerative ability. Although far from matching the Ancient Evil Objects, it was still very powerful. Even with the Talent newly ignited, he had the ability to regenerate small body parts like fingers and noses in a limited area. The speed of regeneration was not fast, but it was regeneration nonetheless, and as his strength grew in the future, he would naturally possess the legendary fearsome regenerative Talent, such as coming back to life from a small piece of flesh or even rebirth from a single drop of blood.

His fifth Talent, and the last one, was called Life Domain.

This was a domain Talent, and the material required to ignite this Talent… was the heart of an ancient tree with life force greater than the Tree of Life.

The heart of an ancient tree… This was akin to the brain and heart of an ancient tree.

This requirement was incredibly preposterous, and even Xie Yufei was stunned for a long while before she said:

“Are you sure you want this? Can’t it be substituted with something else? The Tree of Life itself is already exceedingly rare, you’re asking for the heart of an ancient tree more advanced than the Tree of Life, which is an extraordinarily difficult request. Let’s make this clear beforehand, we might not be able to find it.”

“Let’s see if it can be found first. If not, just get me the core of a Tree of Life then,” Lin Xiao replied.

Hearing Xie Yufei say this, Lin Xiao was already not holding out much hope.

After all, such an item was exceedingly rare and not something that could be obtained through sheer influence or extensive connections.

As he expected, a few days later, Xie Yufei told him that she had found the whereabouts of the item, but there was no way to get a hold of it.

If it were just a part of the branches, it might have been manageable, but he needed the ancient tree’s heart, effectively requiring him to dig out the core, which was impossible.

The object was situated within a powerful True God’s Divine Realm, at the very heart of their domain, and it was not something that could be traded for anything else.

Helpless, he had to settle for second best and asked for a Tree of Life core, intending to use the Creation Rubik’s Cube to consume Creation Energy for enhancement.

Actually, obtaining the Tree of Life core had already cost him a great deal of goodwill, and this was even with Xie Tianyan paying in advance, simply because the Tree of Life core was too valuable.

The gifts previously given were not considered as favors; to a powerhouse like Xie Yufei, no amount of ordinary materials mattered, only rarities like the Tree of Life truly caught a big shot’s attention.

Lin Xiao didn’t mind, as favors were meant to be used. What was the point in hoarding them? Now was the time when he needed resources the most. If he didn’t leverage them to enhance his strength early on, they wouldn’t breed offspring.

The core of the Tree of Life was a piece of wood heart, radiating dense Life Force. Thrown into the Creation Rubik’s Cube, a continuous flow of Creation Energy began to infuse into it for enhancement.

The direction of enhancement was simple, directly bolstering its vitality.

After all, he had accumulated over six hundred units of Creation Energy, more than enough.

This round of enhancement took nearly ten hours, consuming a total of one hundred and two units of Creation Energy, and ultimately transformed the Tree of Life core into a crystalline heart.

He wasn’t sure what kind of ancient tree’s heart this was, as he had never seen such a tree heart before, but he was sure that its quality was definitely a notch higher than the original Tree of Life core, with the dense Life Force almost solidifying into a crystal.

Had it not been obligatory for activating his Talent, he would have wanted to plant it himself…

“Huh!”

Lin Xiao suddenly stroked his chin as he pondered and sent a message to Xie Yufei:

“How much for another Tree of Life core if I were to purchase it?”

“?”

Xie Yufei quickly replied with a question mark, wondering:

“Isn’t it enough?”

He nodded earnestly:

“Yes, because there’s no higher grade ancient tree heart available, I need two Tree of Life cores as a substitute.”

There was a moment of hesitation before she replied:

“Although one Tree of Life core doesn’t mean much to us, and we’re willing to allow you some reasonable benefits, you have to be truthful with me, no deception.”

“Cough cough!”

Lin Xiao said somewhat guiltily:

“How could I deceive you, sister? It’s true. Without access to a higher-grade ancient tree heart, I can only make do with quantity. I’m being very honest by not asking for more.”

His explanation was flawless, reasonable, and Xie Yufei could find no fault. Her previous remarks were merely based on a woman’s sixth sense of suspicion.

Soon enough, the second Tree of Life core was delivered, and he once again used a hundred units of Creation Energy to strengthen it into a second crystalline core radiating with terrifying Life Force.

Back in the Divine Realm, Lin Xiao’s will surveyed the entire realm, his gaze falling upon the Creator Ancient Tree at the heart of the Main Divine Realm, lost in thought.

This Creator Ancient Tree stored a massive amount of species’ genetic material and could devour flesh to produce fruits bearing various modified organisms by utilizing these genes.

Its functionality was incredibly powerful, and even its name sounded nice, but the tree was just too ugly. At first glance, it clearly wasn’t a good tree and adversely affected the aesthetics of the Main Divine Realm.

He wanted to make some changes.

After some thought, he used the authority of Son of the God realm to remove the core of the Creator Ancient Tree and merge it with the strengthened Tree of Life heart, beginning their unification.

Combining the cores of two special ancient trees and utilizing the indescribable Creation power of the Creation Rubik’s Cube, he forced a fusion of two unknown species, retaining and enhancing the positive attributes while eliminating the negatives.

In the end, he merged them into a somewhat dull-colored, yet still rich with Life Force, crystal core. He then reinserted it into the previous spot from which the core of the Creator Ancient Tree was removed, akin to grafting.