Chapter 298: Rapid Expansion

In three days, Mu Yi traversed over a thousand li and wiped out dozens of waves of Mongol cavalry.

And with Mu Yi's descent from the heavens, plus the promotion by Lin Xuzi and his followers, more and more people learned of Mu Yi's existence and began to erect temples for him, offering incense.

Zongwang Prompt: You have gained 32 points of incense.

Zongwang Prompt: You have gained 27 points of incense.

Zongwang Prompt: You have gained 46 points of incense.

Watching the threads of incense power, like wisps of blue smoke, transmitted through the divine seat, the incense golden body visibly trembled.

Mu Yi did not intervene; he directly supplied all the incense to the incense golden body.

Thin strands of incense rose gently from the divine seat, and the incense golden body inhaled them with an open mouth, causing the entire golden body to exude a vivid vitality.

Correspondingly, Mu Yi also sensed faint changes in the incense golden body; they were not obvious, but it was certain that the golden body was undergoing transformation.

This is the usual claim that incense is poisonous, and it explains the origin of the incense golden body.

Using incense is the best way to truly make a deity grow rapidly; if a nation worships and offers incense, it can accelerate a deity with a divine seat to unimaginable strength.

It is like Guan Sheng Dijun, who in life was merely a warlord in chaotic times, but was lifted by incense all the way to the emperor's throne.

From antiquity to the present, few in the Jiuzhou Heavenly Court have been titled emperor; even the famed Erlang Shen and the Third Prince were only given the title true lord.

Of course, the speed of growth powered by incense is extremely fast, but it cannot escape the truth that water can both carry a boat and capsize it.

Incense is a catalyst for the weak to become strong, and also a shackles after becoming powerful.

Incense comes from faith and prayers, and widely celebrated things are forged from false to true by the will of sentient beings, ultimately feeding back onto the deity through incense.

Guan Yu became famous for his righteousness that pierced the clouds, so once he possessed power, he was swept by this great trend and had to defy destiny.

He advanced further, attaining the truly karmic‑free emperor's seat.

If he fails, he must retreat repeatedly, or abandon that portion of incense, regressing from Guan Sheng Dijun to an unknown level of deity, and may even be annihilated in body and mind by incense's backlash.

Enjoying some speed and convenience comes with responsibility, which is inherently fair.

However, the Heavenly Court is not idle; after recognizing this issue, it developed the incense golden body path to better prevent newly arrived deities from being engulfed by this power.

Naturally, this separation also slowed the progress of later deities considerably.

Many deities cannot tolerate such slow advancement, especially when they see the golden bodies growing stronger while their own cultivation lags, eventually becoming pure incense deities.

Being shackled by incense, but for most celestial righteous gods approved by the Heavenly Court, this is still a viable way of survival.

As long as they do not err, they will not be stripped of power.

Honestly fulfilling their duties allows them to endure.

Even if no one worships them, they can still earn incense by working for the Heavenly Court and the Underworld.

However, for wild incense deities, faith is their lifeline; once faith disappears, their very existence may vanish.

For a being like Mu Yi, the incense golden body is the optimal solution.

Regardless of what divine duties prayers bring, they do not affect the self; the power granted by the divine seat is merely ancillary, and even if stripped, it will not greatly weaken the self.

The incense‑infused golden body no longer resembles the wind‑fragile form; it solidifies at a visibly rapid pace and grows at a similarly visible speed.

In almost no time, it already matched Mu Yi's size.

Mu Yi clicked his tongue, no wonder so many cannot resist incense; after experiencing this one‑click, instant rise to the 999 level, who would still endure slow cultivation with hardship.

From wind‑fragile to this near‑Transcendent pinnacle took only three days.

Although Mu Yi's public saintliness attracted many followers, and this world lacks other Heavenly Court or Underworld deities, allowing Mu Yi to fully reap incense.

Nevertheless, this growth speed still made Mu Yi click his tongue; incense truly is a catalyst for power.

Perhaps in a few more days, Mu Yi's incense golden body could surpass Mu Yi himself and achieve the Legend rank early, even becoming stronger.

After all, Mu Yi holds a fifth‑rank divine seat; with enough incense, he can continuously ascend.

Moreover, Mu Yi controls the incense golden body.

He shifted his perspective to a divine statue, within which a portion of incense is stored.

The incense golden body forged an intangible blade from this incense, which fell from the sky.

In the village where the statue stood, a newly‑entered demonic fiend instantly had its head severed.

Chaotic times inevitably spawn demonic fiends, which are disasters for ordinary people.

But for Mu Yi, they are ants that can be crushed with a flip of the hand.

Mu Yi's divine statue sits in command, and these fiends cannot threaten the villagers at all.

Incense‑imbued statues act as sentry posts; even from thousands of li away, Mu Yi can monitor the entire village.

The more abundant the incense, the broader the area he can surveil.

In just three days, Mu Yi seemed to possess dozens of avatars, each capable of wielding power beyond the mortal realm.

The Mongol side, alarmed by Mu Yi's massive slaughter, withdrew; all small units retreated and collectively fell back into the city to defend.

From outside the city, watching the Mongol army gathered inside under a commander, Mu Yi had to admit they were indeed a tough nut to crack.

Especially the cloud‑like substances drifting above the city, which made Mu Yi even more hesitant.

He himself is a Military Strategist officer, so he clearly understands the lethal power of a tightly defended army massed within a city.

Even he does not dare to step in lightly.

Even if the opposing Mongol officer lacks Zheng He's abilities, the stored Cloud Energy in the city could suppress him, perhaps even force Mu Yi back to the mortal realm.

Seeing the Mongol soldiers begin to cower within the great city, Mu Yi unhesitatingly began to take over the villages and small counties they abandoned.

Villages surrounding the city—wisdom of the ancestors.

Statues bearing Mu Yi's divine name are taken back for worship and placed in villages and homes… As each statue is erected, Mu Yi begins to dominate these villages.

Although the revenue from each village does not even reach that of a ninth‑rank land god, Mu Yi is not an ordinary deity; he is a composite god who can fight and also command Earth Vein Power and manage water veins.

Each time he occupies a village, Mu Yi uses the statue as a peg to annex nearby lands, expanding his authority as a Mountain God and continuously absorbing Earth Vein Power.

Especially after Mu Yi accelerates the annexation of regional Earth Vein Power with incense, his progress becomes a thousand li per day.

Through his incense golden body, Mu Yi could sense the mountain village; the incense golden body could also swiftly descend via the incense within the statues, and even spaces began to be opened up beneath these temples.

However, during the expansion, Mu Yi also encountered many problems that he hadn't noticed before, accompanying the flourishing incense and the extension of the earth veins.

Within the territory he occupied, many places actually had owners.

They were all mountain sprites and wild monsters, each occupying a mountain as king, calling themselves a local mountain or water god, governing a region.

Mu Yi's divine sense, when extended there, would be repelled.

After spending a day barely managing to connect all the statues, Mu Yi looked at the map he had condensed from incense.

In an area of nearly a thousand li, over a thousand wild gods were actually entrenched; truly, in the mountains without tigers, monkeys reign as kings, and some mountain tops even host several so‑called mountain gods.

Besides these wild gods, there were also countless evil spirits and ghosts.

One could say the whole world was suffused with an aura of impending doom.

"Hehehe, looks like I'm back to my old trade."

Mu Yi looked at the incense map he had made, which showed the areas occupied by himself, the Mongols, and the mountain sprites and wild monsters respectively.

Mu Yi felt his hand itch; he wanted to paint the map a single color.

It wasn't that Mu Yi was idle; rather, these fellows' presence blocked his path.

Originally Mu Yi came here just to kill, kill, kill, but now the Mongol army has holed up in the city, and attacking himself would incur too great a loss.

So he wanted to open another path, using the strategy of surrounding the cities with the countryside, isolating the besieged cities, using incense to strengthen his power, and then wiping them out in one fell swoop.

And in this process, the existence of these wild gods delayed Mu Yi's encirclement speed.

You must know, Mu Yi doesn't have much time; the Mongol khan and Eternal Heaven are not dead, and his blatant obstruction of their blood sacrifice will inevitably provoke their utter hostility.

These Mongol soldiers can hardly be considered human anymore; unconstrained by logistics, they could bring hundreds of thousands of troops, and at that point even relying on Cloud Energy could crush Mu Yi.

If the enemy also had a commander capable of directing those armies, killing Mu Yi would be as easy as squashing an ant.

So Mu Yi must be swift, integrating the entire region at the fastest speed, training a batch of subordinates, and finally smashing the Mongols.

These mountain sprites and wild monsters have now become Mu Yi's stumbling block.

So Mu Yi directly descended as a deity to where Lin Xuzi and his group were; as the earliest force rescued and settled by Mu Yi, they have now been reorganized and are plotting their next move.

When Mu Yi walked out of the statue, someone immediately notified Lin Xuzi to come over.

"I don't know if the exalted deity has descended here; pardon our failure to welcome you from afar. I wonder what we can do to serve the exalted deity?"

Lin Xuzi, as the pioneer spreading Mu Yi's fame, had actually guessed what Mu Yi intended to do from his recent actions.

Nevertheless, he put on an appearance of quietly listening to Mu Yi's teachings.

"Gather all the able‑bodied youths; I will grant them the power to protect themselves."

Mu Yi got straight to the point, meaning he had no intention of beating around the bush.

Gathering an army through faith is the quickest method Mu Yi can think of now.

Lin Xuzi showed no hesitation or objection, bringing the already‑convinced able‑bodied youths before the statue.

Few doubted it; after just experiencing a disaster akin to a massacre, the yearning for power could not be suppressed.

Thus, when Lin Xuzi said that Mu Yi would bestow power upon them, all the youths chose to comply.

Among them, some wanted revenge, some wanted to protect their wives and children...

Looking at the youths gathered before the statue, Mu Yi mobilized all incense power, fully unleashing his Elite Talent, Blazing Ruin.

Most of Mu Yi's Elite Talents, as he grew, had merged into his body.

It was as if the all‑round talent and stored‑force talent were almost completely covered by the Soldier Lord's power.

What remained truly functional were only Iron‑blooded Slaughter representing killing power, Blazing Ruin representing spiritual power, and Fivefold Sacrifice representing sacrificial power.

Plus the Dragon‑Elephant power and rigid defense integrated into Mu Yi's body...

Elite Talent is the key to opening the Transcendent path, and Mu Yi has nearly reached the pinnacle of Transcendence; most of his Elite Talents have actually lost their special effects, gradually becoming components of his strength.

Even the still‑functional Iron‑blooded Slaughter is merging with the Asura Path, while Blazing Ruin and Fivefold Sacrifice are also merging with the Hell Path.

However, Blazing Ruin, this power born of the spirit, is the best key for Mu Yi to unlock power for others.

It is also the talent most suited to exploiting numerical superiority.

Spiritual power is contagious, and the flame born from the spirit likewise possesses this transmissibility.

When Mu Yi used incense power to ignite the youths' spirits, causing their spirits to give birth to flame...

Mu Yi then had a batch of fresh‑out‑the‑oven single‑talent soldiers.

"Chang Haoran, Guan Lingling, Zhou Zhengye..."

Mu Yi began to appoint commanders, handing these newly empowered troops to his capable lieutenants to lead, and then assigned them the tasks of clearing the wild gods and cleaning up the mountain sprites and wild monsters.

Veterans of the Human Path all master Iron‑blooded Slaughter, Blazing Ruin, and Fivefold Sacrifice; having them lead the new troops into battle is the most suitable.

These mountain‑ruling sprites and wild monsters will become their best nourishment, making the flames in their hearts burn even fiercer and giving them more resisting strength when facing the Mongol army.

Martial officers, martial officers—the age of martial officers is past; now is the age of commanders.

Lin Xuzi and the others were also all thrown out by Mu Yi to slay demons and eradicate evil.

With the incense map and the first day, nearly all enemies were under Mu Yi's control.

To be frank, Mu Yi never imagined that, without restraint, he could expand this quickly.

Incense, earth veins, water veins... all of it, Mu Yi feared nothing; he even did not let the corpses of those mountain sprites and wild monsters go, directly sacrificing them to gain power to fill the new troops.

In just one month, he not only had thirty thousand new troops who had experienced breaking mountains and toppling temples, nearly all transformed and reborn, but also occupied a full hundred thousand li of territory, seizing all the earth and water veins within that hundred‑li range.

He even reclaimed a large batch of mountain sprites and wild monsters as attendant deities.

Without waiting for the Mongol counterattack, Mu Yi simply did not wait; he directly launched an offensive toward the cities where the Mongol army had retreated.

If the mountain will not come to me, I will go to the mountain.