The Era of Gods - Chapter 146

Chapter 146: Chapter 146 Entering the Shattered Plane

(5000-word mega chapter for monthly ticket)

Translator: 549690339

As one student after another emerged from the transport platform, their True Bodies suddenly manifesting uncontrollably before quickly converging, Lin Xiao watched a few and combined it with the phenomenon he experienced upon his own arrival. To his surprise, he found that the golden Divine Power halos extending beneath the students’ feet as they walked out were actually related to their Divinity.

Put simply, the more Divinity one possess, the wider the radius of the Divine Power halo under their feet.

Lin Xiao possessed four Divinity points and two uncondensed Divinity points, so the radius of his Divine Power halo was four meters, with an additional two meters of a semi-transparent halo.

The halos of these students arriving one after another were mostly between four and six to seven meters across, with not much difference among them.

Even Lin Xu had only six Divinity points, Ancient City had seven, and the rest of their companions all had five. In contrast, Lin Xiao’s four points were the least among them, but he also had two uncondensed Divinity points. Just a sufficient amount of the Power of Faith was needed to stabilize and materialize them, so overall, he was considered above average within the team.

As for Shen Yuexin, she came out early, so he didn’t see how many Divinity points she had condensed, but considering her low-profile acquisition of the Silver Seat and later becoming one of the strongest twenty-one, her strength was definitely impressive.

In fact, Lin Xiao had never been able to see the full extent of her strength. He suspected that her strength was stronger than he imagined, but he had no evidence.

As students continued to teleport in and the novelty started to fade, Lin Xiao turned his head and chatted with his friends. He hadn’t said much when

suddenly there came sounds of astonishment from one side of the area. He quickly turned to see a figure with a Divine Power halo underfoot that reached more than ten meters, his entire body enveloped by an invisible distortion.

Good lord, twelve Divinity points!

The gap was somewhat exaggerated, stretching a whole tier above Ancient City’s and others’ level.

As the Divine Power quickly converged, a lofty-looking youth with an air of arrogance appeared. It was Ding Ye, one of the five people who arrived with Wu Zhonglin.

Though the youth had suppressed his Divine Power, a twisting mass of Divine Power behind his head couldn’t be fully retracted. He walked out expressionlessly, and stood alone in a corner as the surrounding students involuntarily cleared a space around him.

Not long after, Zhang Guan, another of the six elites, also emerged with a Divine Power halo underfoot, likewise exceeding ten Divinity points, with eleven in total, one less than Ding Ye.

Less than a minute later, a third youth with more than ten Divinity points came out.

Following them were Qin Fengyan with ten Divinity points and another youth named Gao Yongsheng, also with ten points.

With that, five of the six elites in this year’s Summer Camp had appeared, each with a slight divine manifestation due to their excessively strong Divinity which they struggled to fully conceal. At this point, the only one left unseen was Wu Zhonglin, with almost everyone’s eyes fixed on the transfer platform, even the three towering figures shrouded in surging Divine Power casting frequent glances in this direction.

What do you think—each of those five has eleven or twelve Divinity points. Wu Zhonglin is clearly a notch above them. How many Divinity points has he condensed? Could it be more than fifteen?” Su Tong said in an envious tone.

Ancient City replied seriously,

Definitely.

Lin Xu also nodded,

At least fifteen, maybe even seventeen or eighteen.

Isn’t that a bit too exaggerated? We don’t even have a fraction of his strength?”

Lin Xiao chuckled,

Be confident, we don’t even amount to a fraction of his.

Shen Yuexin added,

If he didn’t possess potential and strength far surpassing ours, how could he get listed on the secondary list of prodigies in his first year alongside those second- and third-year seniors?”

They’re so powerful!

People marveled.

Just then, a surge of Divine Power burst forth from the portal, a dazzling golden light covering a range surpassing any previous, and before Lin Xiao could make out who was engulfed in the twisted divine radiance, someone beside him gasped,

Damn, twenty-one points of Divinity!

Then, the aura of Divine Power quickly contracted towards the towering figure at the center, solidifying into a three-meter-tall man covered in golden dragon motifs, bearing a seven to eight resemblance to Wu Zhonglin but with a more rugged and rebellious demeanor, his head crowned with a pair of flaming dragon horns, exuding a markedly different presence from the mild-mannered appearance seen before.

No, this was Wu Zhonglin’s true form.

Unlike others who retained a similar look to before when they restrained their

Divine Power, Wu Zhonglin, even when restraining his, appeared vastly different than before.

Standing at three meters, he towered over everyone else with an ever-present twist of Divine Power around him that he tried his utmost to contain, and atop his head burned a pair of crimson, curved dragon horns resembling red crystal, which seemed to cause the very void around them to collapse inwards. Anyone focusing on those horns would feel a scorching sensation washing over them.

Terrifying!

Such a powerful aura unwittingly emitted, one couldn’t help but wonder how terrifying it would be if he fully unleashed his Divine Power.

Lin Xiao was one hundred percent certain that Wu Zhonglin must hold a godhood related to dragons.

Just like the Creationist godhood he had obtained in advance, ready to coalesce the moment he became a Demigod.

Hiss!

At this thought, Lin Xiao suddenly realized, if Wu Zhonglin already had twenty-one points of Divinity now, wouldn’t he easily gather over fifty points of Divinity by the time he ascended to Demigod status two years later?

Wouldn’t that mean he could obtain two or more powerful godhoods from the start?

Too terrifying!

This was an unimaginable level of power, no wonder he was ranked among the prodigies on the vice-leaderboard in his first year of high rank. And there were so many other young prodigies like him. With his current strength, Lin Xiao wouldn’t even qualify for the lowest three thousand talents sub-leaderboard, a considerable gap indeed.

As soon as Wu Zhonglin emerged, three out of the five elites stepped forward to join him, willingly standing behind him and recognizing his lead.

Only Qin Fengyan and Ding Ye were unwilling to concede to his rank, giving Wu Zhonglin a glance before leaving with their respective companions.

With two leading the way, the others gradually dispersed as well, and Ancient

City clapped his hands, saying,

You see, everyone’s forming groups now. Let’s go too.

They withdrew their gazes and followed the floating signs and lights on the ground towards a direction on the vast platform, which was kilometers in width and tens of kilometers in length, as well as hundreds of meters high.

Their destination seemed to be a military war fortress within an unknown Exotic Crystal Wall, its size unknown, but just this platform they were on was over a kilometer wide, and likely more than ten kilometers long, with a height of over a hundred meters.

The platform, stretching over ten kilometers long like a runway, flanked by numerous huge semi-circular metal gates on both sides, saw frequent comings and goings of flying vehicles; some flew out from one metal gate and entered another, while some crossed from one side directly to the opposite gate.

The soldiers passing by often slowed down curiously to observe them, their eyes filled with envy.

Lin Xiao knew these soldiers envied their status as Divine Territory Players.

These soldiers were regular soldiers, not Divine Territory Players.

Many people think that military soldiers are all Divine Territory Players like them, but this is not the case. The vast majority are ordinary people who have trained in various powerful systems of strength from extra-dimensional planes, each possessing at least Transcendent Level combat capabilities.

Such non-Divine Territory Player soldiers are the military’s most numerous bottom-tier cannon fodder, who use the regular military ranks.

While soldiers like Lin Xiao who have opened their own Divine Territories are called non-commissioned officers and represent the elite of the armed forces, using elite ranks. If they join the military in the future, they start as elite noncommissioned officers.

With the same military rank, elite ranks were considered a major level higher than normal ranks and had higher priority.

For example, an elite second lieutenant had the same level as a normal major, and due to the higher priority, a regular elite second lieutenant was considered half a level higher than a normal major. Thus, an elite second lieutenant could give orders to a normal major.

This wasn’t discrimination; it was simply because the tasks elites had to undertake were far more difficult and dangerous than those of ordinary soldiers, and naturally, their treatment was better.

However, if a normal rank advanced beyond a major level and remained higher than an elite rank, such as a normal rank lieutenant general, then they could command any major or lower elite rank.

This priority of command was just as high as that of elite ranks commanding normal ranks. There were no instances where elite officers, out of arrogance, refused to follow the orders of normal majors. Anyone daring to do so wouldn’t end well.

After all, ordinary soldiers who had been promoted to the rank of general were those who had already become true gods on their own merits, and their god level was not low.

They might not beat divine territory players of equivalent level, but it was a different story for those one or two ranks lower.

The gap between ordinary soldiers and elite officers was significant. While these ordinary soldiers were all of at least transcendent level, there were still plenty of legendary-level beings that could pose a threat to them; yet their gazes were uniformly filled with deep envy.

As they walked along, following the signposts for several kilometers, they saw a turn up ahead pointing toward a huge metal gate, which was their destination.

The metal gate, twenty meters wide and fifty meters tall, had thick lines and grooves etched onto the massive frame, with lights occasionally flowing across them.

This was a mythological creation wrought from the fusion of modern science and magic technology with the extraordinary technology of other exotic crystal systems, capable of generating a thin, crystalline film that covered the metal surface, enhancing its resistance to various elements.

The military’s various void battleships, war fortresses, and puppet legions like steel golems all utilized this technique, granting them strong resistance to spells, combined with the super-hardness of modern alloy metals, this gave them a significant advantage in wars against natives of exotic domains.

A thin layer of transparent film blocked the view of what was on the other side of the gate. As the group passed through the film, Lin Xiao felt a momentary weightlessness. Surprisingly, this thin film even included a teleportation function.

When Lin Xiao could see again, he realized he was standing on a teleportation platform about ten meters in diameter, with Ancient City’s Shen Yuexin and others just to the side. At each corner of the platform stood a five-meter-tall steel golem resembling an ancient warrior in armor, holding the hilt of a giant alloy sword over six meters long rammed into the ground, motionless.

The group descended from the teleportation platform, curiously looking around.

They had teleported onto an enormous battleship navigating the void.

This was a standard model void battleship of the military, approximately ten thousand meters long—over ten kilometers. The huge hull, made of specially treated high-strength alloy, possessed extraordinary structural strength and energy resistance. It was the military’s most commonly used and basic combat unit in wars in outlands.

Each void battleship was a combat unit led by a true god from the Main World Divine Domain, usually of the weakest divine power level, staffed by hundreds of semi-gods including normal demigods and high-level demigods, and occasionally supreme demigods, as well as hundreds of thousands of soldiers, at least rank 6 transcendent level, with the highest being of legendary or even semi-god level.

These legends and semi-gods, although without their own divine territories and merely ordinary people, were quite formidable due to their experiences forged through countless battles.

On the void ship, there were no divine territory newcomers below semi-god level like Lin Xiao. The military did have such newcomers, but typically they were trained in relatively safe war zones as reservists, and they rarely appeared in formal combat units like void battleships.

With one true god, hundreds of divine territory semi-gods, and several hundred thousand soldiers of at least transcendent level, such strength was sufficient to launch a frontal attack on planes with true gods. As long as the god population of the target plane didn’t exceed three and their god levels were not too high, victory was assured.

The appearance of this void battleship was quite different from intergalactic ships in science fiction, bearing a more magical aesthetic. Their current location was somewhere on one of the upper levels of the battleship, likely at the top.

If compared to super-ancient ships that sailed on water, it was akin to the upper deck, with the massive hull below and a huge hemispherical dome above. The ship walls were lined with large semi-circular windows composed of protective barriers twinkling with light, through which one could see the chaotic and dazzling void outside — the battleship was sailing through the vast Void Sea.

This Void Sea was unlike subspace or outer space. In space and subspace, the void energy was mostly quiescent and hardly noticeable; however, in the exotic Void Sea, the void energy surged like ocean waves, tumultuous and powerful, inaccessible to anyone below the legendary tier.

They had teleported to one end of the void ship where everyone was gathering, but on the other end of the platform, several other teleportation platforms were constantly active, with columns of light transferring various striking figures in and out.

With their extraordinary vision, Divine Beings could easily see across nearly ten kilometers the blond, blue-eyed youths being teleported in from the other end of the battleship — they were the geniuses from the Ivy League Alliance of High Schools.

During the old Earth era, most Ivy League high schools were located in Europe and America. The newly formed Ivy League Alliance was also mostly from there, indicating that this major power in the Main World, comparable to China’s civilization, was actually formed by the countries of the western world from ancient Earth.

Despite tens of thousands of years passing, although the various forces of the Main World had no significant enmity, competition was still present, only kept within a certain range due to the pressure of enemies from exotic domains.

Both sides continuously competed in various aspects, each wanting to prove that they were superior to the other, and this contention lasted for hundreds of thousand years.

And this exchange contest was actually a microcosm of the routine competition, occurring every dozen years or so, and both sides regarded it with a certain level of importance.

As all participants from both sides entered the venue, Lin Xiao noticed — perhaps coincidentally—that the number of contestants from the Academic Alliance was roughly the same as their own.

Both sides had over a thousand people each stationed at one end of the platform, gathering in groups of threes and twos, chatting while observing the opposite side.

At this moment in the Outland, it was difficult to conceal one’s unique phenomena, such as the purple flame tattoos on Shen Yuexin, the delicate dragon horns atop the head of Ancient City, and the distinct anomalies on elite participants like Zhang Guan and Qin Fengyan, especially the intense flames and red crystal dragon horns on Wu Zhonglin, signifying that their strength and potential far exceeded that of others.

On the opposite platform, there were also many students with unusual features, among them eight with particularly conspicuous anomalies, two of whom also had extremely exaggerated phenomena.

Among those two, a male student had a pair of wings on his back made of congealed blood, which gently flapped, causing rings of blood light to slowly dissipate.

The other female’s body appeared to be carved from ice, with rings of blue patterns slowly spreading, as snowflake patterns continuously formed in the void and quickly vanished.

>■

Those two are really strong!

A trace of concern appeared on Yan Shu Huan’s face, and Lin Xiao glanced at him, as if his will had been taken away, showing signs of fear before the battle had even begun.

However, those two were indeed formidable, although on closer scrutiny they seemed a bit inferior to Wu Zhonglin, but there were two of them, after all.

No wonder they dared propose the exchange; the Ivy League Alliance of High Schools’ new students this year were incredibly strong.

But their own side was not weak either, and besides, the exchange contest was not about direct combat, but more about task-based challenges. Lin Xiao stroked his chin and smiled,

Take a closer look, they still don’t compare to student Wu Zhonglin, no need to worry.”

Lin Xu also nodded and said,

We don’t need to worry about so much. When the sky falls, there will be tall ones to hold it. There are so many people ahead of us, we just need to do our own taskswell.”

With these words, everyone’s emotions stabilized, and they calmly waited with a normal state of mind.

Less than a minute later, as Lin Xiao was bored, looking out the huge windows around the platform at the void storms, he suddenly withdrew his gaze and, like everyone else, looked towards a certain point in the center of the platform.

Without any warning, a figure appeared there, with the upper body of a human and the lower half a golden vortex, much like the Lamp God, attracting the attention of all. He spread his arms and golden dust slowly swirled around him as he announced loudly,

Welcome, distinguished students, to this exchange contest. I will now announce the venue and rules of the competition.”

The venue of this exchange contest, after consultation between both parties, is set in a shattered plane. The Void Battleship is currently en route to the destination.”

The specific conditions of the plane and your tasks will be sent to you shortly, please check for yourself.”

The rules of the exchange contest are simple. You will compete in teams, all students from the HuaXia District as one team, all students from the Ivy League Alliance of High Schools as the other.”

At this point, the Lamp God paused slightly, looked up at both sides, and said,

Now, please have representatives from each team come forward to choose a task.”

As soon as these words were spoken, everyone’s gaze turned to Wu Zhonglin.

On the HuaXia District side, virtually all of them took for granted that Wu Zhonglin was the representative, the unopposed kind.