The Era of Gods-Chapter 568: Massacre, Blood Vengeance
Chapter 568 -568: Massacre, Blood Vengeance
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In the Subterranean Tribe, several old Ground Dwellers, wearing worn yet identifiable Thorium Gnome clothes, knelt before a tall statue of a Ground Dweller, praying in low voices.
These old Ground Dwellers were the oldest in the tribe and were the first to witness the God of Underworlders.
Year after year of protection, even though Lin Xiao did nothing, these Ground Dwellers had come to view him as their protector.
In the sixth year of his protection, upon the elders’ call, the Ground Dwellers took several years to carve a statue of Lin Xiao and erected it at the center of the tribe.
Thenceforth, Lin Xiao’s faith officially took root and sprouted in this tribe, slowly growing.
By this time, the Subterranean Tribe had grown into a large tribe with over ten thousand members, a prosperity beyond what the Ground Dwellers had ever dreamed of.
Having brought them hope in times of weakness, this faith was the most devout. Currently, all of the over ten thousand Ground Dwellers in the tribe were at least True Believers, with most being Devout Believers and Fanatic Believers. The quality of their faith was nearly comparable to that within Lin Xiao’s God’s realm’s Clan.
Unfortunately, the Ground Dwellers were too weak, and the Power of Faith they offered was too scant. Even the Devout Believers and Fanatic Believers could not provide much Power of Faith. The entire tribe of over ten thousand Ground Dwellers could only offer him a little more than three hundred points of Power of Faith daily.
However, one point of Divine Power required one million points of Power of Faith to condense; the entire tribe would need to persist for thousands of years to provide him with one point of Divine Power. As for the speed…
“So it’s time to expand the faith!”
Lin Xiao walked out of the cave followed closely by the Minotaur Jonila, who carried a look of reverence mixed with a hint of fanaticism.
Over the years, the Minotaur had come to know his identity. After spending a long time with an Incarnation of a True Deity, influenced by Divine Power and subtle indoctrination, the Minotaur had now become his Fanatic Believer.
Lin Xiao certainly did not skimp on his most powerful force. Although he had temporarily not granted Divinity nor dared to bestow the Asura Naga Bloodline, he often granted Divine Power. In person, he found the Ancient Red Dragon Phil and obtained a drop of Ancient Red Dragon Pure Blood from him, which he used to activate the Ancient Red Dragon bloodline in Jonila, promoting him to a Minotaur, Ancient Red Dragon Magician.
Now Jonila’s strength had stepped into the Legendary Level, possessing a Professional Level of 20 as a warrior and a Professional Level of 22 as a Magician imbued with the dragon bloodline, extremely powerful.
In fact, had he not needed to establish his prestige in the eyes of the Ground Dwellers, he could have easily sent the Minotaur to drive the patrols away.
After years of protecting the Cave-dwellers, the surrounding Cave-dwelling Tribes gradually learned of this particular Cave-dwelling Tribe’s powerful kin as a protector and began to relocate from afar, causing the tribe to grow larger and larger.
By the tenth year, the Cave-dwelling Tribe that Lin Xiao had protected for a decade had expanded into a grand tribe with over two hundred thousand members. It was then that Lin Xiao began consciously spreading the faith.
Although all Cave-dwellers had faith in him, it had been spontaneous and aimless. To them, he was known as the God of Underworlders, so if he were to achieve Divine Enthronement in the future, he would only gain the Godhood of the Cave-dweller Race.
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Although being a Racial God, the Cave-dwellers were too weak, and even at their strongest, they would not amount to much. Therefore, he had to guide the Ground Dwellers to prepare for obtaining some more powerful Godhoods in the future.
After once again driving away the increasingly huge Thorium plundering squad, Lin Xiao didn’t leave as usual but stayed instead.
As a tall Cave-dweller wrapped in golden light walked down from the sky, all the Ground Dwellers knelt down, fervently calling out the name, God of Underworlders.
Lin Xiao’s gaze swept over the entire tribe. With a gesture, a beam of golden light flew out and landed on the statue of himself at the center of the tribe. The statue immediately glowed with a faint light, and a subtle aura of Divinity spread. The mosquitoes in the tribe, as if encountering something terrifying, scurried from the corners and formed a considerable swarm, leaving the tribe.
“I am the God of Underworlders and the Guardian God!”
With another wave of his hand, over a thousand beams of golden light flew out and entered one hundred males and one hundred females of the Ground Dwellers.
This was his newly altered Cave-dweller Bloodline, designed to transform these individuals into more robust beings. The experiments had proven that the new Cave-dwellers, once mature, would average about 1.23 meters in height. While maintaining their original reproduction rate, they would be stronger than before, slightly weaker than the average human. Their hardened skin provided a decent defense, and they had enhanced night vision, with life spans extended by about five years.
This was the first generation version that Lin Xiao had developed. He would gradually increase the number of new Cave-dwellers. Once they had slowly multiplied to a certain number, he would then begin the creation of a third-generation Cave-dweller Bloodline.
One must eat their meal one bite at a time, and the evolution of a Race is not to be rushed. After all, he had plenty of time to develop slowly.
Twenty years later, a thousand new Cave-dwellers incessantly reproduced new offspring, and these new Cave-dwellers kept propagating through second and third generations. Soon, these stronger new Cave-dwellers became the mainstream in the ever-growing tribe.
Lin Xiao made no secret of the fact that the birth of new Cave-dwellers was his doing, which further solidified his Divine Authority.
After a decade and several generations confirmed the stability of the new Cave-dwellers’ genes with no other issues, Lin Xiao began the genetic manipulation of the third-generation Cave-dwellers based on the existing new Cave-dwellers.
In this new manipulation, he would introduce genes from stronger and more powerful species, aiming to ensure they remained mighty and fertile while also having even stronger constitutions and longer lifespans.
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However, before the modulation results could emerge, a crisis began to loom over the powerful cave-dwelling tribe.
With over twenty years of his protection, the population of the cave-dwelling tribe had surpassed four hundred thousand, making it a colossal tribe. The hardworking cave-dwellers had opened up more farms near their settlement, cultivating a variety of crops, which eagerly attracted the attention of the Zoel elves from the third level of the Dark Territory.
In the past, the Zoel elves were deterred by Lin Xiao’s formidable strength and because mere one or two raiding parties were insufficient, they dared not take risks.
But this time, unluckily, a large-scale beast tide occurred in the Dark Territory, affecting several Zoel cities, leading to a serious food shortage. Consequently, several Zoel cities united to prepare an assault on the massive cave-dwelling tribe in an effort to seize their food.
A total of four Zoel cities came together to gather an army of over six thousand Zoel elves and more than fifteen thousand servant races in a subterranean passage leading to the third level of the Dark Territory, quickly drawing Lin Xiao’s attention.
After all, it was an allied force of four Zoel cities with several high-level Priest of The Lord of Darkness, making it difficult for Lin Xiao to overlook.
But Lin Xiao struggled with how to respond to this allied force.
He certainly had the power to annihilate this alliance outright, for he was a True God by now, and no matter how numerous, mortals were no match for him. However, he couldn’t just kill all these Zoel elves, or it would attract The Lord of Darkness like the last time.
Previously, as a lone fighter he could hit and run, leaving The Lord of Darkness with no way to harm him. But now, the ground dweller tribe had flourished quite nicely, and to give up now would mean wasting twenty years.
Of course, he could afford to waste twenty years and simply start over, but what if he ran away this time—what then?
If the ground-dwellers wished to rise, they had to confront the threat of the Zoels, an inescapable reality.
“This truly grieves the divine heart,” he lamented.
Divine thought allowed him to consider all possibilities in an instant, and ultimately he determined that there were only two choices. One was to stand by and let the ground-dwellers face everything, relying on their own strength to defeat the invading Zoel raiding party.
Yes, only by this method could he avoid the interference of The Lord of Darkness.
Deities to deities, mortals to mortals.
If he intervened, The Lord of Darkness would have reason to act. If he did not, and the ground-dwellers held off the Zoel alliance, even if the entire Zoel force was annihilated, The Lord of Darkness would only curse his followers as useless, but would not personally act against the cave-dwellers.
But considering the strength of the cave-dwellers against that of the Zoel alliance…
Although the cave-dwellers numbered over four hundred thousand, nearly half being the second generation, they fell considerably short of the Zoel elves who had lifelong experience in slaughter and possessed various professions and Superhuman Power.
Lin Xiao regretted not preparing earlier, but now that regret was too late, so he could only implement the second method, which was to flee.
Leaving behind some of the old, weak, sick, and disabled to hold the rear, the adult and young cave-dwellers evacuated the place. Finding a new location to start afresh was the only reliable method.
No sooner had he thought of it than Lin Xiao issued a Divine-mandate, instructing his followers to prepare for relocation.
To ensure that his own threat and the faith of his followers did not diminish, he hastily claimed that the gradual strengthening of the ground-dwellers had threatened the Zoels, and now tens of thousands of Zoels were slaughtering their way here under the evil leadership of The Lord of Darkness…
The naive ground-dwellers, unaware of the wickedness of human hearts, and given that the second-generation cave-dwellers were indeed much stronger than the first, believed without hesitation. They mobilized quickly to start the relocation.
The entire tribe was abandoned. Over a hundred thousand adults and children left the tribe with only enough dry food for ten days, marching in the direction indicated by Lin Xiao.
After the main force had left, Lin Xiao erased their traces behind them.
Five days later, Lin Xiao, who had been escorting the cave-dwellers, suddenly stopped in his steps and turned. The long column of people in front also came to a halt, and at that moment, all the cave-dwellers seemed to instinctively sense something.
One by one, the threads of faith were severed, each break representing the death of a cave-dweller.
In just a single day, the entire tribe was slaughtered, more than two hundred forty thousand cave-dwellers left behind were completely killed by the Zoel alliance, the entire tribe was burned down, and the stored food was plundered.
The Zoels had no concept of conserving resources to last, ruthlessly exterminating the tribe in one fell swoop. Even those hiding underground were forced out or directly suffocated in their tunnels. The cruelty of it all was enough to unsettle even Lin Xiao, who was no stranger to bloodshed.
The procession continued in darkness, with all the cave-dwellers seeming to understand what had occurred, shrouded in an eerie silence.
In that moment, the cave-dwellers of limited intellect seemed to gain a spark of Wisdom.
