Chapter 234 - 196: Plotting for the World Tree Seed

Chapter 234: Chapter 196: Plotting for the World Tree Seed

The Divine Emperor had, in fact, created a Divine Country, but his ascension by raising it failed.

It wasn’t due to insufficient faith, but because he had committed a taboo: he destroyed the previous True God’s homeland and slaughtered his people. Thus, during his ascension, he attracted that True God’s attention.

A single strike from across dimensions shattered the Divine Country. The World Tree was burned to ash by Divine Flame, ultimately turning into a seed.

Although the Divine Country was shattered, its core remained.

It still retained some of its functions, able to operate on its own, gather faith, purify it, and convert it into energy to sustain the deity’s true body.

It just wasn’t as powerful as it used to be.

The World Tree’s seed was a relatively simple matter; Zhang Ji should be able to dig it up once he found the ruins of the Divine Country in the capital of the Su Ya Empire.

The Divine Country core, however, would not be so easy to obtain.

It was in the hands of the Lord of Entropy, one of the eight current super S-rank Demigods in this world. To be precise, he was also known as the "Bright Demi-God."

The Lord of Entropy’s identity was also very complex.

He was another ancient relic who had lived for tens of thousands of years.

He was the Bright Demi-God from the ancient era, who brought hope and light, and whose domain included healing and other such arts.

Through an avatar, he single-handedly founded the Saint Silver Church Country. His name at the time was Elvy Gloria.

This continued until he obtained the Divine Emperor’s physical body, which had not been completely destroyed, along with that Divine Country core. After studying history, the man developed a new ambition.

He wanted to emulate the Divine Emperor and become a True God.

Of course, he also worried about suffering the same fate as the Divine Emperor. So, he carried out this matter with extreme secrecy, leaving only an avatar called the Lord of Entropy within the "Crown of Sin Thorns" organization in Lan’er World to handle it.

Furthermore, he modified the path to godhood. He reverse-engineered the path of gathering faith, raising a Divine Country, and achieving divinity.

Faith is hope and worship.

But after his reverse-engineering, he developed a reverse-faith gathering model.

First, he gives his believers hope, then shatters that hope to harvest a hundredfold of despair faith.

The power of this despair faith was much more concentrated than ordinary faith. Therefore, even with fewer followers, he could generate more faith. Moreover, it didn’t cause faith fluctuations, making it almost undetectable to other Demigods.

His Light Divine Format was also twisted by this faith, driven to an extreme.

Behind hope lies endless despair.

Then there was the path of raising a Divine Country.

Raising a Divine Country to become a True God actually meant stripping the Divine Country from the world to exist independently in the void. By doing so, a deity would gain the ability to draw energy independently from the void, no longer relying on the world.

It was an official dimensional ascension to become a great void creature.

The Lord of Entropy no longer planned to raise a Divine Country.

He planned to use the Divine Country core to, in turn, corrupt the entire Lan’er World, directly transforming the world into his Divine Country.

This way, there would be no need for separation or growth; he would directly obtain a complete world as his Divine Country.

And he wouldn’t have to worry about failure.

His entire plan could be summarized as follows.

Secretly gather faith, perform an incarnation ritual using the Divine Emperor’s physical body to obtain a Divine Body, use Despair Divine Power to corrupt the entire world, and transform the world into his Divine Country.

That’s right. This was the main storyline of Lan’er World.

The Lord of Entropy was also the designated final boss.

Stopping him from corrupting the world to achieve godhood was the players’ objective.

He was even an ultimate boss with three phases and complex mechanics.

For this hundred-player raid, anyone below S-rank wasn’t even qualified to be cannon fodder.

However, Zhang Ji had no opinion on the Lord of Entropy’s method of gathering faith or his means of corrupting the world into his own Divine Country. He made no judgment on whether it was right or wrong.

The Divine Country core was what Zhang Ji wanted.

But actually, he didn’t want it that badly.

Compared to a "clean" item like the World Tree’s seed...

...the Divine Country core was not so user-friendly.

That thing had a catch. The Divine Emperor hadn’t died completely.

The third phase of the Lord of Entropy’s fight was the Divine Emperor reviving, taking over his body, and then proceeding to beat the crap out of the other seven Demigods and all the players.

Whoever obtained the Divine Country core would be bewitched by the Divine Emperor’s remnant consciousness, gradually degenerating into a being obsessed with the sole desire to become a True God.

So, rather than the Lord of Entropy plotting to become a True God, it was more like the Divine Emperor was borrowing his name to carry out his own agenda.

The former God of Light had now been twisted.

Zhang Ji didn’t think he currently had the ability to resist the Divine Emperor’s remnant consciousness. He also felt that fighting the Lord of Entropy would be tough. With his current strength, he felt he could probably only trade a couple of blows with an ordinary Demigod. To fight the Lord of Entropy head-on, let alone win, he would need at least three or four (Legendary) Combat Crystals.

Therefore, his desire for the Divine Country core was not very strong at the moment.

Getting his hands on the World Tree seed was enough.

As for the Divine Country core, that was a matter for the future.

...

Saint Silver Church Country.

This was a nation saturated with faith.

Almost every city had churches and tall towers belonging to different gods.

Of course, though they were called gods, they were actually all Demigods, not true deities who had broken free from the world’s constraints.

Their faiths were found all across Lan’er, but they were most concentrated here.

Rusted Moon Monastery.

This was a charitable organization spread throughout the Saint Silver Church Country, founded by the former Pope, Elvy Gloria. The god they worshiped was the God of Light.

At this very moment, inside a monastery in the capital of the Church Country, workers who mined Demon Crystal Ore were praying. Prolonged underground excavation, coupled with a lack of protection, had caused their lungs to fill with Demon Crystal Ore dust. This had afflicted them with a disease called "Crystallized Lung Sickness."

As long as they continued to mine, their lungs would eventually completely solidify into crystal.

Only the priests of the Rusted Moon Monastery could use Divine Skills to temporarily alleviate their symptoms.

However, the relief was only temporary, and the symptoms would erupt even more violently afterward.

A praying worker gazed at the statue of the God of Light, coughing intermittently, begging for His mercy.

A nun, unable to bear it, came forward and performed a Divine Skill on him.

A pure white radiance showered down, and the worker’s expression eased.

For the moment, his illness was alleviated.

"Please, you mustn’t continue this line of work," the nun said. "If you do, not even Divine Skills will be able to cure you completely."

The worker gave a bitter smile and shook his head. He only offered his thanks before turning to leave.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know the dangers, but only the pay from this job could allow his family to live a somewhat decent life.

Nearby, another praying worker also received treatment from a priest’s Divine Skill, but his reaction was not one of relief. It was one of agony.

The symptoms that the Divine Skill had suppressed all erupted at once. All the pain surged forth in a single moment, yet he wouldn’t die from it. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as he clearly felt every detail of his lungs turning to crystal.

Breathing became increasingly difficult. The faces of his family appeared in his mind; he didn’t want to die. The light of the Divine Skill showered down with double the intensity, but it was no use. He fell from hope into despair. Imperceptibly, his faith underwent a change. A hundred times more potent than his original faith in the light, it transformed into a pitch-black faith of despair, mixed within the rest, and vanished into the void.

He writhed in agony like this for a long time before finally dying.

If there had been no cure from the start, it would have been one thing. But the Divine Skill offered a partial cure, giving hope, only for one to discover in the end that it was all for naught. That was the most despairing thing of all.

To be given hope, only to be led step by step into despair—this was the process the priests and nuns of the Rusted Moon Monastery witnessed most often.

They showed expressions of compassion and pity, but there was nothing they could do.

They could only do their best to alleviate the suffering with their own means and try to dissuade the workers.

「Meanwhile.」

In a secret chamber beneath the Rusted Moon Monastery.

A figure completely shrouded in darkness felt the despair faith continuously gathering, a look of satisfaction appearing on his face.

With a slight thought, a pitch-black, spherical crystal materialized before him. That sphere was the Divine Country core. It was covered in many imperfections, but now, under the mending power of faith, it was gradually becoming whole.

"Soon. It won’t be long now..."