Chapter 346: Even the Most Excellent System Has Flaws

When Feng Xue arrived at the Chenghuangmiao, the Daoists were still performing rites—not because they hadn’t noticed the problem at the Long Wang Miao, but because the city’s pervasive poverty-qi was far more terrifying than a single unruly malevolent spirit.

In the most extreme case, even if the entire city were destroyed, given its geographical position and the Daoists’ spells, a prosperous port city could be rebuilt in no time—but if this poverty-qi were allowed to spread, the city would likely remain desolate for years to come.

The refined system and folk customs of Central Plains civilization ensured harmonious coexistence between Daoists and commoners, but correspondingly, they also produced the objective outcome of “doing what when.”

This meant enemies seeking to disrupt things could easily find loopholes by exploiting Central Plains’ festivals and folk traditions.

“They’re just picking fights by checking the almanac,” Feng Xue sighed, yet he wasn’t worried—not only were the Daoists’ devotional energies still stable, not at all like those pretending calm while panicking, but the city wasn’t home to just Buddhist and Daoist practitioners.

The great yao, heterodox sects, and foreign cults living in the city should already have rushed to the Long Wang Miao; in a sense, this was the price they paid for being allowed to settle here.

Feng Xue stood among a crowd of worshippers, watching Daoists with lifespans ranging from one or two hundred to three or five hundred years perform rites on their altars—a deep sense of security rose within him; this display was far more impressive than some Grand Tutor who summoned the Ten Absolute Array yet had no guards beside him.

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

As he watched the poverty-qi slowly being gathered, corrected, and sent upward into the high heavens, Feng Xue gradually understood: in this folk world, whether devotional energy or qi, both possessed the trait of the pure rising and the turbid sinking; in a sense, the virtual gods—composed of relatively pure devotional energy yet burdened with complex personas—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 gods—though without specific spells, the virtual gods themselves had negligible physical 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; just the annual large-scale rituals across the land were enough to nourish it to terrifying levels.

“It’s just that not many people are willing to believe—otherwise, it might be a lucrative profession, though believing might cost you wealth. If I’d been reincarnated here without any luck, I might as well abandon fortune entirely and become a priest of the God of Poverty—it could actually be 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 his ingestion technique to refine it—no need for stances or aids, merely visualization and mental transport to circulate the vast qi within his body.

This 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 it still required conscious coordination with the qi’s flow.

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

“The Long Wang is no good!”

“Has the Long Wang gone mad?”

“Hahahaha, 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 Miao, stirred by the entity within the Japanese god’s body, 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 spread across the sea’s surface, then suddenly, freezing rain mixed with ice shards began to fall, merging with the turbid devotion.

Normally, typhoons rarely formed in winter, since they required sea surface temperatures to reach a certain threshold.

But now, everything before them clearly signaled that a typhoon was approaching.

The freezing rain grew heavier, waves taller; Daoists cast all manner of spells to disperse the turbid devotion near the Long Wang Miao, but Japanese infiltrators, having secretly slipped in, became suicide squads, each unleashing death-bringing techniques to cling to the casting Daoists, even if weak, becoming human shields to disrupt, destroy, and obstruct their spells.

“It is He who girds me with strength 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 church singers held scriptures, chanting psalms; milky-white radiance spread over them, then hardened into armor and weapons, 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 4, and fixed his gaze on the passage.

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

Then he spoke—

“Be still! Be quiet!”

The wind ceased, the earth calmed—as if heaven and earth had fallen silent for an 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 heavens and earth.

The water at the river’s mouth suddenly warmed; 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 radiated the ferocity of a wild beast; no one could imagine such power originated from a little white mouse.

But even a white mouse was a great yao.

Worried about conflict with the exclusivist divine power of the Church, Bai Yi used no yao techniques; her body became a streak of white light, and in two breaths, over a dozen men were flung into the air. Only when she was blocked by a towering, eight-foot-tall cannibal ogre did the broken, fractured ninja finally hit the ground—but the barrier now bore even more cracks.

(End of Chapter)