Chapter 321: Even the Most Excellent System Has Flaws

When Feng Xue arrived at the Chenghuangmiao, the cultivators were still performing rituals—not because they hadn't noticed the problem at the Long Wang Temple, but because the city's pervasive poverty qi was far more terrifying than a single disruptive malevolent spirit.

In the most extreme case, even if the entire city were destroyed, given its geographic location and the cultivators' spells, a prosperous port city could be rebuilt in no time; but if this poverty qi were allowed to spread, the city would likely fall into ruin for years to come.

The refined system and folkloric environment of Central Plains civilization ensured harmonious coexistence between cultivators and commoners, but correspondingly, they also led to the objective outcome of "doing the right thing at the right time."

This meant enemies seeking to cause chaos could easily find loopholes by exploiting Central Plains' festivals and folk customs.

"They're literally flipping through the almanac to pick fights," Feng Xue sighed, yet he wasn't worried—not to mention these cultivators' devotional energies were still stable, not resembling the act of feigning calm while desperately panicked; first of all, this city wasn't home to only Buddhist and Daoist cultivators.

The great demons, heterodox sects, and foreign religions living in the city should all have rushed to the Long Wang Temple; in a sense, this was the price they paid for being allowed to settle within the city.

Feng Xue stood among a crowd of worshippers, watching cultivators—some with lifespans of three to five hundred years, others only one or two hundred—perform rituals on their altars; a sense of security arose from within him—wasn't this spectacle far superior to that Grand Tutor who had no guards beside him when he opened the Ten Absolute Array?

If anyone dared jump out and gouge out an eye, they wouldn't even need the cultivators to act—the surrounding worshippers would surely crush them to death (laugh).

As he watched the poverty qi gradually being gathered, corrected, and sent upward into the high heavens, Feng Xue roughly understood: in the Folklore World, whether devotional energy or qi, both possessed the trait of the pure rising and the turbid sinking; in a sense, the virtual deities—composed of relatively pure devotional energy yet burdened with complex personas—essentially resided between turbid and pure devotion.

This residence was literal: if this world ever launched satellites into space, they might even collide with one or two virtual deities along the way—though without specific spells, virtual deities themselves had negligible collision volume.

This act of sending poverty qi skyward could also be understood as a form of "offering," and the recipient, naturally, was the God of Poverty.

From this perspective, in this world—at least in the Central Plains—the God of Poverty was likely an extraordinarily powerful deity; regardless of other factors, the annual large-scale sacrifices across the land alone would have nurtured him to terrifying levels.

"It's just that not many people are willing to believe—otherwise, it might've been a lucrative profession, though believing might ruin your wealth. If I'd been reincarnated here without any luck, I might've completely abandoned fortune and become a priest of the God of Poverty—it could've been quite promising."

Feng Xue watched the poverty qi rise into the sky, occasionally pulling out a fish cake and shoving it into his mouth, activating the ingestion technique to refine it—no need for stances or aids, merely visualization and mental transport, letting the vast qi circulate within his body.

This utterly wasteful practice was even less efficient for physical growth than lifting weights at the gym, but it had the advantage of being possible anywhere, anytime—a rather luxurious idle-training method—

He couldn't even call it idle training, since he still needed conscious coordination with the qi's flow.

Meanwhile, at the Chenghuangmiao, all was calm and peaceful; at the Long Wang Temple, chaos had erupted. Though the port city's cultivators had prepared various sealing materials in anticipation of the Japanese actions, they hadn't anticipated these little devils would exploit the citizens' collective beliefs.

"The Long Wang is such a piece of shit!"

"Has the Long Wang gone mad?"

"Hahaha, you old dragon, you asked for it!"

"Now you know your place, stupid dragon!"

The devotional energy generated from listening to storytelling now flowed into the Long Wang Temple, stirred by the entity within the Japanese god-lord, transforming into a torrent of turbid devotion, surging forth—and this act was brewing a force known as flood disaster.

The surrounding air currents shifted; white lines began spreading across the sea's surface; suddenly, freezing rain mixed with ice shards began to fall, merging with the turbid devotion.

Normally, typhoons were nearly impossible in winter, since they required sea surface temperatures to reach a certain threshold.

Yet now, everything before them clearly signaled: a typhoon was approaching.

The freezing rain grew heavier, waves taller; cultivators unleashed all manner of spells to disperse the turbid devotion near the Long Wang Temple, but Japanese infiltrators, having secretly slipped in, transformed into suicide squads, each employing death-dealing techniques to cling to the casting cultivators—no matter how weak, they became living shields to disrupt, destroy, and obstruct the spells.

"It is He who girds me with strength for battle and makes my way perfect. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer and sets me secure on high places. He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bronze bow."

A choir of churchgoers held scriptures, chanting psalms; milky-white radiance spread over them, then solidified into armor and weaponry, clinging to the lead priest.

He held a wooden staff, clad in clerical robes; facing the increasingly violent storm, he took out a Bible that looked ordinary but was meticulously maintained, opened to Mark Chapter Four, his gaze settling on a single line of text.

Divine Sovereignty surged from his mind-sea; he drew a deep breath—and in that moment, he was no longer mortal; it seemed a saint had descended upon him.

And so he spoke—

"Be still! Be quiet!"

The gale ceased; the earth stilled; as if heaven and earth had fallen silent in that instant—but the clouds did not part, the rain did not stop; it was as if a furious tide battered a barrier, and with a sharp cracking sound spreading, cracks filled the entire sky and land.

The water at the river's mouth suddenly heated up; the freshwater flowing into the sea churned violently.

Water dragons, bearing massive waves, leapt from the surface, striking the fragile barrier.

Japanese figures clad in black, masked, as if possessed by demons, swung their weapons and charged toward the clerics trying to block the demon-god's descent—when a white shadow suddenly blocked the choir.

Slender and frail as a young maiden, yet Bai Yi unleashed a beastlike aura—no one could imagine such power originated from a white mouse.

But even a white mouse was a great demon.

Worried of conflict with Jing Sect's exclusivist divine power, Bai Yi used no demonic arts; her body became a streak of Bai Guang, and in two breaths, over a dozen men were flung into the air; only when she was blocked by a towering, eight-foot-tall man-eating ogre did the broken, fractured ninja finally hit the ground—but the barrier's cracks multiplied further.

(End of Chapter)