Chapter 160: Seizing the Divine Kingdom

The next day, Wu Chang kept his promise. After he and Eileen took the transformation pills, they left home early.

Eileen's appearance was far too eye-catching—especially after her holy marks were completed and she gained her true divine form. That innate divine bearing alone was enough to make any ordinary person feel utterly inadequate.

Without some kind of cover, within an hour of going out, the gathered talent scouts would be enough to clog the traffic.

After taking the transformation pill, Eileen took on the appearance of an Easterner—her golden hair turned black, her height and curves shrank somewhat, and by restraining her divine power, her divine bearing was also somewhat diminished.

Enough that, with a mask on, she could just barely step outside.

Leaving the house, Eileen looked at everything with fresh curiosity. The plane she originally came from had already entered the Industrial Revolution, with large steamships, but compared to modern industry, the gap was still like heaven and earth.

The cars filling every street and the forest of skyscrapers in the commercial district were scenes Eileen could never have imagined.

To better experience the world, Eileen chose not to take transportation but to walk instead.

Wu Chang planned to take Eileen to the nearby commercial street first. Just as they arrived, he noticed that in the few days since his last visit, several of the ground-floor shops at the entrance had changed their storefronts. Four of them had been taken over by the same person, all knocked through into one, and converted into a gallery.

The gallery had a very simple name: Emotion.

These days, with unrest everywhere in the world and the economy continuing to slide, traditional industries were tough to run. The ground-floor shops at the entrance to the commercial street could change their signs three times a year.

Even noodle shops and hotpot places—the kinds that used to make money lying down—couldn't keep going. So who was the sucker who'd take over four shops at once to open a gallery?

The gallery was still under renovation and not yet open. A man in a white suit and sunglasses was sitting at a small table by the door, drinking coffee.

When he saw Wu Chang and his companion, his gaze was instantly drawn—and held. More precisely, it was drawn to Eileen.

The man walked over on his own initiative and said, "I'm the owner of this gallery, Lu Langfeng, an artist in search of the beauty of life. Beautiful Young Lady, would you mind if I painted a portrait of you?"

Wu Chang sized up Lu Langfeng. With so many strange things happening lately, his guard was high. He spent over a hundred Inspiration points to scan the man and found nothing off about him, so he relaxed.

"No charge, right?"

Lu Langfeng smiled and said, "I only pick up my brush for someone worth painting. When I meet someone worth painting, I never charge. For someone not worth painting, I won't take your money either."

Wu Chang looked at Eileen. Seeing that Lu Langfeng's attitude was sincere, Eileen said, "Then paint one, but don't take too long—we still have things to do."

Lu Langfeng's smile brightened. "No problem. Sketching is what I'm best at."

He went back inside for his drawing board and, without asking Eileen to remove her mask, began drawing right away. He was indeed a master of sketching—in just over ten minutes, he produced a sketch that looked like a living person.

He handed the finished piece to Eileen and said with a touch of regret, "You are beautiful enough, but you're missing some emotion. Emotion is the soul of a person—the most wonderful and most brilliant part of being human. If there's a chance, I'd love to paint a portrait of you with emotion in it."

Eileen took the portrait and smiled. "Thank you. This is more than enough."

After Eileen and Wu Chang left and entered the commercial street, Lu Langfeng returned to his usual self and went on leisurely sipping his coffee.

A dozen or so minutes later, he carried his coffee cup back into the gallery, set it down, and said, "I'm back."

With that, he walked up to a blank wall, reached both hands behind his neck, and with a hard yank, tore himself into a flat sheet.

Then he picked himself up by his own hand and hung the hook at the back of his neck on the blank wall.

His body gradually flattened, and after a few breaths, he became a brightly colored abstract painting.

In the private studio deep inside the gallery, the Painter—who had been missing for days—sat at his drawing board, holding the same pose Lu Langfeng had just struck, carefully painting a young girl.

The Painter's skill far surpassed Lu Langfeng's sketching. He precisely captured the spirit of his subject—painting the girl flawlessly, and even rendering her transcendent, godlike bearing to perfection.

The girl in the painting was Eileen's original appearance.

As the Wasteland Realm's number one troublemaker—an existence that none of the four great organizations or the cultists of evil gods could do anything about—the Painter was extremely adept at tracking and counter-tracking. Otherwise, even with his cooperation with certain factions, he would have long since been hacked to death by some fellow from the second or third layer of the Abyss.

When he first tried to peek at Wu Chang, he nearly got caught, and from that he sensed that Wu Chang had powerful Inspiration and extraordinarily sharp intuition—someone who, even among the core players of the four great organizations, would count as outstanding.

Combined with their shared experience being sorted into the Quiet Town, this made him pay extra attention to Wu Chang.

He had specifically moved the gallery close to where Wu Chang lived, and prepared a special paper-puppet body to evade Wu Chang's overwhelming Inspiration. This observation, sure enough, let him spot something off.

He could be certain that the girl who had just been at Wu Chang's side was absolutely not a Blue Planet native. She not only possessed abilities beyond the Wasteland Realm, but also carried an extremely rare divinity.

She was at least a demigod.

And he could be certain that the girl had been brought out by Wu Chang himself, and was definitely not someone the Bureau had entrusted to his care. The reason was simple: if the Bureau had obtained such a powerful being, she would absolutely have been placed in a more important city, kept like a treasure. There was no way she'd show up in Wanghai City.

The Painter painted as he muttered, "The new guy from the Management Bureau seems to have brought some terrifying thing out of an instance. A treasure like this—you can bring her out, but you'd better be able to keep her."

Wu Chang, out shopping with Eileen, felt a faint chill run down his back.

He glanced back twice, noticed nothing unusual, and went on following Eileen through the shops.

For an entire day, they strolled like a normal couple on a date—visiting many shops, buying Eileen a few outfits suited to the modern era, and taking her to a cinema to experience the big screen.

After a full circuit, the sky had already darkened. Just before heading home, Eileen suddenly said:

"The bar you went to last night—I want to go see it."

The moment those words left her mouth, sweat instantly broke out on Wu Chang's forehead. The things inside the Night Song Bar were nothing a good child should see, and Eileen especially should not see them.

He had gone there on official business last night. If Eileen saw it and mistakenly thought he frequented places like that, his noble and upright image would be ruined.

"That place is still a bit early for you. If you're curious about bars, we can go to a different one."

Eileen looked at Wu Chang in confusion and said, "Didn't you say you sensed powerful occult ritual traces in that bar? I'm not an occultism master, but the holy marks have given me god-tier perception of energy. I think I could use the residual energy there to track down whatever it's connected to."

Wu Chang was stunned for a moment, then broke into a relieved smile. "Oh, that's what you meant. No problem—I'll take you right over. The occult energy there is so strong you can sense it without even going in."

Eileen tilted her head slightly, looking at the suddenly-relaxed Wu Chang, and asked:

"You were very nervous just now. It seems like you have some secret you're afraid I'll find out."

Wu Chang denied it righteously: "I'm an upright, open-and-honest person, full of righteousness! I can swear—last night was the first time in my life I went there, and a colleague dragged me along!"

Eileen looked at Wu Chang, puzzled, not understanding why he was reacting so strongly. But seeing how firmly he spoke, she let it go.

Under Wu Chang's lead, the two arrived at the entrance of the Night Song Bar.

With his head having completed occult contamination, and combined with his high Inspiration, Wu Chang could clearly sense the occult shield enveloping the Night Song.

A faint golden light flickered in Eileen's eyes. She stared at the Night Song Bar and said, "Very heavy occult aura."

As the crowning achievement of human occultism and alchemy, Eileen's very existence was a miracle of the occult arts.

No one could sense the occult better than she could.

A thought surfaced in Wu Chang's mind: if there were enough places in Wanghai City contaminated by the occult, taking Eileen on a single loop might just complete his first class-change quest directly.

Eileen walked a full circle around the Night Song, then her gaze turned south, and she said:

"This isn't a complete occult ritual, but a fragmentary part of one."

Wu Chang frowned slightly and said, "You mean…"

Eileen nodded and said, "Within this city, a massive occult ritual has been laid out; this place is merely one of its nodes."

Wu Chang's throat went a little dry. Just one node of such a massive occult ritual was enough to turn hundreds of people into monsters.

Just how greedy could Tang Renquan and the forces behind him be?

Eileen's gaze lifted toward the sky, as though some marker were hidden there.

"To link every node together into a vast and complete ritual, one must construct a colossal occult circuit to match it."

"I can see the occult circuits connecting the nodes. It leads to the next node. If I find enough nodes, perhaps I can deduce the purpose of this occult ritual."

Wu Chang followed behind Eileen, heading toward the south side of Wanghai City. Along the way, he imitated Eileen's manner and tried hard to look up at the sky.

Even with eyes modified by occult contamination, paired with a three-digit Inspiration stat, he could detect nothing—no trace at all.

He still had a lot of training to do.

No matter how high his stats, he was still bound by a mortal's field of vision. The world he saw clearly was still far removed from what a deity observed.

Following the traces of occult energy, Eileen arrived at the second occult node.

It was a standalone villa, surrounded by tight security. Fierce-looking neighborhood guards patrolled the perimeter nonstop, cameras covered every angle without blind spots—only those invited could enter.

All that surface show was for show, meant only to scare off clueless ordinary folk.

The villa's true defensive measure was the occult ritual laid out here. Through eyes polluted by the occult, Wu Chang could faintly see a massive monster formed of occult energy.

The monster had a humanoid torso, but its limbs were disproportionately thick and long, and with its hunched back it could only crouch on the ground like a beast.

Its body was covered in thick fur, and like a watchdog it watched its surroundings warily. Anyone who approached would be stared down; once it confirmed no dangerous target was near, it would lower its head and tear into the raw meat in its feeding trough.

This watchdog was the villa's true security. The moment any unwelcome intruder broke in, it would be torn apart and added to the trough.

Even if a visitor proved too strong for the watchdog to handle, it was enough to trigger an alarm and relay the intruder's presence to the master.

The moment he approached the villa, a prompt popped up before Wu Chang's eyes. "Occult contamination zone detected nearby. Approaching the zone allows Reality Anchoring."

He'd found the right place.

Wu Chang opened the back end of the Bureau's system and searched for the villa's owner. The property belonged to a second-generation rich kid who spent most of his time abroad; when the house was free, he lent it to friends for parties.

The friend he lent it to happened to be Tang Renquan.

Wu Chang frowned. That guy again.

To be honest, he was more inclined to see Tang Renquan as a participant. Seeing an unfamiliar name and seeing Tang Renquan every time didn't mean he alone was behind every evil deed—it only meant that from the very start, he'd prepared to shoulder every blame and cover for the others.

According to Eileen, Tang Renquan and the others were laying out a super-large occult ritual, and the nodes they set up were far from being just one or two.

It wasn't yet time to close the net; they couldn't tip anyone off. So if they wanted to get into the villa, they absolutely couldn't force their way in.

But for him, there was no need to force his way in.

With Social Anxiety Disorder and Elite Stealth activated, not only could the surrounding cameras not capture his presence, even the monster summoned by the occult ritual couldn't sense an intruder entering.

He stood at the spot where the occult energy was thickest—right beside the monster—and brazenly performed Reality Anchoring.

!

Quickly, under the occult contamination, his upper body and arms began to be tainted by the occult.

"You have successfully completed an anchor point in the real world. The current area has been anchored. Please change areas."

"Current Reality Anchor Points: 2/3."

"Your body has been contaminated by the occult. Vitality -1, Strength +1, Energy +2."

As his entire upper body became contaminated, his stats finally shifted—1 point of Vitality traded for 3 points in other attributes.

The change on the panel was only surface-level. After his upper body was contaminated by the occult, his body began to shift toward an energy-form existence. The most direct manifestation was that he could now touch energy, and his control over the energy already within him became far more fluid.

He was still in the first stage of his class advancement, far from being fully contaminated by the occult. Even so, the change was already obvious. If he completed the advancement, his flesh would likely become an existence caught between physical and energetic.

The Arcane Knight truly lived up to its name as a hidden class. It wasn't an ordinary Knight + Wizard, nor a simple dual cultivation of magic and martial arts—it directly altered the user's state of existence.

After completing the Reality Anchor, Wu Chang left the villa, noted the current location, and followed Eileen to the third node.

The third node exceeded his expectations—it was actually a Daoist temple.

The temple had over a thousand years of history and now served as a free scenic site for citizens to worship. Inside it enshrined Wenchang Dijun, who presides over fame and fortune. Every year around the college entrance exams, it was the most popular spot in the area; during the day, burning even a single stick of incense required queuing for at least half an hour.

Yet now, the Wenchang Hall that enshrined Wenchang Dijun had been converted into an occult ritual node, and at the ritual's end—sure enough—lay some evil god.

Heaven and earth had truly been turned upside down.

That said, perhaps because the wish-power gathered here was dense, the occult ritual node within Wenchang Hall held far stronger energy than the other two.

But this place wasn't private property, and visitors couldn't be barred from worshipping. No defensive mechanism had been set up inside the hall, so Wu Chang and Eileen could enter with ease.

Wu Chang naturally wouldn't hold back. Once inside, he began Reality Anchoring.

"You have successfully completed an anchor point in the real world. The current area has been anchored. Please change areas."

"Current Reality Anchor Points: 3/3."

"Your body has been contaminated by the occult. Vitality -2, Strength +2, Agility +2, Energy +3."

"You have completed Class Advancement Quest One: Find at least three areas contaminated by the occult in the real world and set up anchor points to the real world."

"Do you choose to complete the quest?"

"Tip: The number of anchor points set during the current stage will lower the difficulty of subsequent class advancement quests and will affect the final completed advancement."

The system had laid things out this plainly; of course Wu Chang didn't complete the quest right away. Instead, he chose to keep setting anchor points.

At the very least, he had to squeeze every last bit of use out of Tang Renquan's setup first.

Just as Wu Chang made his decision, Eileen—who had entered Wenchang Hall with him—also made a discovery.

She gazed at the occult arrangement around her and said, "I know what the people who set up the occult ritual are trying to do!"

Wu Chang's face lit up. Being able to fleece Tang Renquan while sabotaging their plans was practically the best-case scenario.

"What is their goal?"

Aileen said with a solemn expression, "A terrestrial divine kingdom!"

"A terrestrial divine kingdom?" Wu Chang repeated those four words softly. Though he didn't understand what a terrestrial divine kingdom represented, just from the literal meaning, it sounded ominous.

Aileen said, "A terrestrial divine kingdom is a large-scale occult ritual. Once successfully set up, everything within the ritual's range becomes the divine kingdom of the god it is aimed at. The planar barrier will become very thin, making it far easier—whether to gather faith for that god, or to have that god channel down divine power."

"When I was still in my original world, the Church set up a terrestrial divine kingdom three times. Each time the cost was enormous, and the effect was also extremely striking."

"The first terrestrial divine kingdom was set up at the final moment of the Ogri War of Founding. Once the terrestrial divine kingdom took shape, it brought the Great Mother's attack down upon the world, directly sweeping away Ogri Kingdom's greatest enemy."

"The second terrestrial divine kingdom was set up when resisting an invasion from the neighboring empire. Relying on the terrestrial divine kingdom, Ogri's Wang Cheng became an unbreakable city. With the Great Mother's support, they held off an enemy force ten times the kingdom's own soldier count for an entire year, forcing the two nations to a truce."

Aileen paused, as if she had sensed something, and her voice wavered slightly.

"The third terrestrial divine kingdom—the Church mobilized the entire nation's strength to set up the largest and most powerful one yet. That time, they received the Great Mother's reward and obtained the Holy Scar."

Right—she should have realized it long ago. The first two terrestrial divine kingdoms were both for the Church and the kingdom's ambitions. How could the third, most grand terrestrial divine kingdom have been simply about receiving a blessing?

From the very beginning, her appearance was the product of ambition.

Just as Aileen's spirits were sinking, Wu Chang beside her suddenly clapped his hands and said excitedly:

"If that's the case, this terrestrial divine kingdom really does have a fate with me."

Aileen's attention was caught by this remark, and she asked curiously, "Why?"

Wu Chang grabbed Aileen's hand and said triumphantly:

"One terrestrial divine kingdom helped me complete my class-change quest with super-doubled rewards, laying the foundation for the follow-up quests; and another terrestrial divine kingdom let me meet you. So a terrestrial divine kingdom isn't necessarily all bad."

Aileen was stunned for a moment, and the dejection on her face eased somewhat. "Maybe. If there had been no terrestrial divine kingdom, I wouldn't have been born, and I wouldn't have seen this world."

Aileen quickly adjusted her state, turning her attention back to the occult ritual before her, and continued:

"The essence of a terrestrial divine kingdom is actually coordinated action inside and outside the plane—allowing a god beyond the planar barrier to form an anchor point of existence within the planar barrier."

"Once a reality anchor point is formed, the constraints this material plane places on the god will be greatly reduced, to the point that the god can channel through the planar barrier a powerful divine force exceeding what the planar barrier normally permits."

Wu Chang was stunned upon hearing this. A reality anchor point—wasn't that exactly what he was doing?

His first reaction was: could the Arcane Knights have been aiming from the very start to use occult contamination to obtain power beyond what the plane allowed, and then use a reality anchor point to cheat that power back into reality?

No way—do the Arcane Knights play that big?

But on second thought, old Anderson, the first-generation captain of the Arcane Knights, had dared to lead his men to gouge out the eyes of the evil god Leiman, and even wanted to use Leiman's eyeballs to plunder the god's origin power in reverse.

If they could do something like that, what was there they wouldn't dare think of?

The world is like this: the bold are fed to bursting, the timid are starved to death.

Some things—if you don't even dare to think about them, then you can never get them.

Speaking of boldness, of daring to think—

Wu Chang's second reaction was to grip Aileen's hand tightly in his own, look at her with burning eyes, and say:

"What if we turn this terrestrial divine kingdom into your divine kingdom!"

Aileen: "Huh?"

After voicing his idea, Wu Chang grew increasingly convinced that this plan had legs.

Aileen was also a god, possessing a complete divine true body. Although she could now appear within the plane through a cheat method, she was in fact still affected by the material world's planar barrier.

If Aileen had a terrestrial divine kingdom of her own, then she, who was already within the plane—could she completely break free of the planar barrier's constraints in the material world, or rather, in Wanghai City?

They might not have the ability to construct a terrestrial divine kingdom, but Tang Renquan and the others did!

If you can't build one, can't you steal one!

Right now Tang Renquan and the others' terrestrial divine kingdom hasn't been completed, and their god cannot respond—this is the perfect moment to strike and seize it.

If they refuse to accept it, they're welcome to come down and have a go. On the surface we have the Management Bureau, in the shadows we have Aileen—could those rats in the gutter like Tang Renquan overturn the heavens?

Not to mention they currently can't communicate with the god behind them. Even if they really called people down and brought a god with them, once Aileen revealed her divine true body, she would certainly make sure the enemy came but never returned.

If it's Leiman who comes, then at the very least we'll gouge out another one of his eyeballs!

Looking at the somewhat dazed Aileen, Wu Chang said excitedly:

"Before a terrestrial divine kingdom is completed, it's essentially ownerless property. A god's kingdom on earth—whoever lives in it lives in it. If that evil god can live there, why can't our righteous god?"

(End of chapter)