Chapter 242.2: Lu Changsheng Enters the Divine Region! Slaying Villains in the Name of the Evil God! (II)

Lu Changsheng understood the dangers of the Divine Region. Many Martial Saints and Nascent Soul True Lords had managed to obtain deity fragments, only to be killed by deities before they could escape.

The intelligence provided by the sacred lands also contained a few precious secrets. The step from the Human Saint Realm to the Earthly Saint Realm, for instance, had not originally required a deity fragment at all, and one could advance without one—but that was tremendously difficult.

Earthly Saints and Heavenly Saints were exceedingly few in number, and anyone who could break through the shackles to become an Earthly Saint had to be a favored child of heaven. It was only after the discovery that deity fragments greatly aided that attainment that the number of Earthly Saints among martial artists finally surged.

The Immortal Dao system was no different. One could break through from the Nascent Soul Realm to the Deity Transformation Realm on one's own, but only with the aid of deity fragments did the number of Deity Transformation cultivators soar.

Lu Changsheng now understood the Divine Region well enough, and his Saint Body had meanwhile reached fifteen percent.

Reaching one hundred percent in a short span would be difficult, unless he remained in secluded cultivation the whole while, but even then there would be no qualitative leap in his strength, for however much further it rose, it could not bring about a fundamental transformation.

By this point, Lu Changsheng had already made up his mind to set out for the Divine Region.

And so, he took his leave of Sect Master Xu and Sect Master Wan. "Sect Masters, I'm ready to depart. Ten deity fragments within a hundred years. I will certainly keep my promise. But as for exactly when the first fragment will be sent out of the Divine Region, that I cannot guarantee."

The two sect masters nodded as well and said, "Don't worry about that. We can all afford to wait a mere hundred years."

Indeed, a hundred years was no great stretch of time for a Martial Saint. Lu Changsheng, however, certainly had no intention of actually spending a century slowly gathering deity fragments.

Swoosh!

The next moment he turned into a streak of flowing light and left the Azure Mountain Sacred Land behind, racing toward the Divine Region.

Reaching the Divine Region required crossing vast oceans. Back in the day, the supreme experts of the Martial Dao and the Immortal Dao had struck together and wiped out the majority of the deities, then seized the rest and sealed them away in a single place: an enormous island out at sea.

Though it was called an island, it was more like a continent. In the beginning, that land had been untamed wilderness, scarcely trodden by anyone. Later, the expanse of land came to be known as the Divine Region, and it had been sealed by a formation ever since, one that not even a deity at the Heavenly Saint Realm could escape.

Lu Changsheng flew the whole way at considerable speed, and still the journey took half a year. After half a year of crossing the open sea, the Divine Region came into view at last.

That should be the Divine Region up ahead.

Lu Changsheng saw a long coastline before him, though from that distance he could make out nothing of what lay within. A very distinct aura of a formation appeared within his senses, one that seemed to hold some vast and mighty power, so much that even Lu Changsheng felt his heart lurch in that instant.

That formation could erase me outright!

That was his intuition, and it was not the least bit exaggerated, for this was a formation capable of imprisoning countless deities.

A sharp glint flashed through his eyes. According to the intelligence, any living being from outside the Divine Region who has not surpassed the Earthly Saint Realm can enter the Divine Region, and leave it again as well.

Being able to leave freely mattered a great deal, and yet even so, few dared to venture into the Divine Region.

Lu Changsheng drew closer and closer until he stood at the very edge of the Divine Region, where he drew a deep breath. The next moment, his figure flickered once more.

Whoosh!

The instant he crossed over, his vision brightened and the coastline all around him seemed to vanish at once. Turning back, he could sense only the traces of the shrouding formation and could no longer see anything of the outside, so he tried leaving again.

Sure enough, he found himself back at the shore.

Alright. No issues with going out of the Divine Region.

Having tested it, Lu Changsheng finally set his mind at ease and stepped into the Divine Region once more. Inside, he was met with a lush, verdant forest, yet he immediately noticed something amiss. The Divine Region was filled with the spirit energy of heaven and earth, but alongside it there was some other, singular power, one that felt oddly familiar to him.

Is this... momentum of the masses? No, not quite. It's similar in some ways, yet also completely different...

Lu Changsheng frowned slightly as he recalled the intelligence he had received from the sacred lands.

The Divine Region was ruled by deities, but deities stood lofty and remote, the very embodiment of Law, and did not govern living beings directly. Instead, certain beings had observed them and vaguely worked out a peculiar method of imitating them, drawing the multitudes into faith in themselves.

This was the power of faith. With it, one imitated certain Laws and became a False God, while the true deities were called True Gods within the Divine Region. A False God generally had to attach itself to a True God, yet in practice it was the False Gods who ruled over the countless living beings.

The power of faith... If this is the power of faith, then it does resemble the momentum of the masses, but only on the surface. In substance the two are fundamentally different.

The momentum of the masses cannot be controlled. The power of faith can be wielded by the False Gods to rule over countless beings.

It even strips those beings of their intelligence little by little, leaving them ignorant and dull, so that no Immortal Dao, no Martial Dao, no powerful cultivation system of any kind could ever arise among them.

No wonder the Immortal Dao and the Martial Dao joined hands against the deities back then. It was a matter of life and death between them, so the two which could never come together did exactly that.

Having come to the Divine Region himself with prior knowledge gained from the sacred lands, Lu Changsheng felt that he had gained a far deeper understanding of the place, of the deities, and of that ancient war.

Now that I'm in the Divine Region, the first order of business is to stay hidden. I absolutely cannot be discovered by the deities.

True God or False God, the moment either finds a martial artist or an immortal cultivator, they will hunt them to extinction and never let up. So I have to go undercover first. Given what I've learnt from the sacred lands, the best way of infiltrating the Divine Region is to openly appear as a so-called Evil God.

Fragments of memory flashed through Lu Changsheng's mind. Evil God was what the people of the Divine Region called martial artists and immortal cultivators, and it was nothing more than the means by which the False Gods and the deities struck at them.

Those living under the deities' rule had long been told that Evil Gods were the most wicked beings in existence and that any sighting must be reported. Since the deities held sway in the Divine Region, martial artists and immortal cultivators were like rats scurrying across a street with every hand raised against them, scarcely different from genuine Evil Gods.

I can't stay in the wild hills and empty ranges forever. How would I ever find a deity fragment that way? But I can't hide either. It would be naive to hope to completely conceal my identity among people ruled by deities. My only option is to force my way as an Evil God into the human society under the deities' rule...

Lu Changsheng's eyes narrowed slightly as he swiftly unfurled his senses.

There!

After roughly an hour, Lu Changsheng finally sensed humans.

Swoosh!

His figure flickered and vanished without a trace.