Chapter 487: Divine Wood’s Fruit

It made the land fertile, allowing the creatures of this realm to live without ever suffering from hunger, while also allowing the world to grow slowly but steadily.

What an astonishingly powerful force.

It truly deserved to be called divine wood.

However, the energy bodies formed from divine power scattered during battles between gods, divine personas, the flesh and blood of people sacrificed during rituals, and the divine aura within their flesh and blood could all be absorbed by the divine wood much faster than the energy it normally absorbed from the void.

It could condense all of these things into pure divine power.

After the gods presiding over the sacrifices offered the flesh and blood of the people to the divine wood, they would receive pure divine power bestowed by the divine wood in return.

This was an even purer form of divine power that even gods who possessed divine personas could not directly extract from the divine wood.

After absorbing this power, their divine personas could actually grow.

Once this was discovered, the sacrifices on Divine Descent Day gradually transformed into another method of divine-path cultivation.

The gods would offer people and other sacrifices to the divine wood and receive pure divine power in return, which they could then use for cultivation and to strengthen their divine personas.

That was the method used by the gods.

As for human cultivators of the divine path, they would offer people as sacrifices to the gods they served and receive divine aura bestowed by those gods, which they would use for divine-path cultivation.

That was the method used by humans.

They also established clear regulations regarding sacrifices.

The descendants of gods were naturally born cultivators of the divine path and became nobles in the various divine kingdoms of the Myriad Gods Realm.

Their noble ranks were determined according to the rank of the god whose bloodline they inherited.

The higher the god’s rank, the higher their status.

Conversely, the lower the god’s rank, the lower their status.

If a noble family gave birth to a descendant with extremely weak divine power, that descendant would be demoted to the status of a divine citizen.

If a divine citizen had a child with outstanding aptitude, that child could study the divine path and begin cultivation.

If no outstanding cultivator was born within five generations of a divine citizen’s family, they would be demoted to the status of commoners.

If a god fell, or if their divine kingdom or divine city was conquered by another power, all of their bloodline descendants would also be demoted to commoner status.

Commoners occupied the very bottom of the food chain on the Myriad Gods Continent.

They were the source of the population used for sacrifices.

The divine laws explicitly stated that only commoners could be used as sacrifices.

Sigh!

This rule only brought suffering to those commoners who were judged at birth to have no qualifications for cultivating the divine path.

They were treated as less valuable than pigs, dogs, cattle, and sheep.

The moment they were born, they became commoners destined for a life of hard labor.

Once they reached adulthood, they were required to continuously give birth to children.

Those born with outstanding divine aura would immediately be adopted by various factions and become divine citizens or cultivators of the divine path.

Those born with weak divine aura could only continue repeating the fate of their parents.

After passing their prime childbearing years, they would be sent to the execution platform as sacrifices, their flesh and blood offered to the divine wood. Therefore, in the Myriad Gods Realm, except among the nobles, it was impossible to find elderly people among the divine citizens or commoners. There were only children and adults in their prime.

This rule had continued in this realm for countless tens of thousands of years without ever changing. After developing in such a distorted manner for countless years, things finally changed.

Seventeen years ago, the golden-green fruit that had grown from the divine wood after the Divine War had finally reached a length of more than half a meter after taking such a long time to mature. It had entered its mature stage.

As for why all the gods knew that the fruit was about to mature, it was because one day seventeen years ago, the golden-green fruit suddenly began emitting an incredibly rich fragrance of osmanthus flowers.

Every god who smelled this fragrance felt an intense desire to devour it. They all believed that if they ate this fruit, they would obtain divine power even stronger than that of the divine wood.

Even the First God King, the Wood God King, could not resist the temptation of this fragrance. He lost his reason and became crazed with the desire to pluck the fruit and eat it.

The other gods were the same.

As a result, another fierce battle erupted among the gods. During that period, the sky and earth darkened, the sun and moon lost their light, mountain fires erupted, earthquakes and tsunamis struck, and disaster after disaster followed.

The severed limbs and remains of the gods constantly fell around the roots of the divine wood and were absorbed by it, causing the fragrance of osmanthus from the divine wood’s fruit to become even stronger.

Even humans were affected by the fragrance and fell into chaotic battles. Divine path cultivators, divine citizens, and commoners all suffered heavy casualties.

Then, one day three months later, the divine wood’s fruit suddenly erupted with an intense golden light that illuminated the entire dark Myriad Gods Realm. It detached from the branches of the divine wood, which towered into the heavens, and fell toward the ground. At the same time, the fragrance of osmanthus also subsided.

Once the fragrance disappeared, the surviving humans and gods regained their sanity.

The instant they became clear-headed, they all rushed toward the golden-green fruit that was falling toward the ground.

Among them, Flying Bird King was the fastest. She seized the fruit first, immediately tore open the void, and teleported away.