Choice

As soon as his true body returned to the Divine Kingdom, a powerful force flooded his entire body.

This was the blessing of the entire Divine Domain. Just as traditional deities could receive the blessing of their Divine Kingdom's rules within their own Divine Kingdoms, new gods of the Human Federation could receive the dual blessing of both Divine Kingdom and Divine Domain. In this regard, they were far stronger than the ancient gods.

Within this Divine Kingdom, Lin Xiao had no reason to fear the Snakemen Demigod's incarnation.

But the problem was, the Snakemen Demigod's incarnation would not stupidly enter the Divine Kingdom. It only needed to slaughter every species within the Divine Domain, and Lin Xiao's power would weaken to the extreme. The Divine Kingdom would naturally collapse.

Thus, the Divine Domain was immensely important to new gods. It concerned life and death.

Fortunately, the Human Federation protected Newborn Divine Lifeforms extremely well. During high school, they generally would not be allowed to face overly dangerous enemies, and teachers kept watch at all times to prevent accidents, just like this time.

Of course, even the most thorough protection had loopholes. Just like this time: if there had been no teacher watching over the exam, or if Lin Xiao had summoned monsters with a Snakeman Card on his own to train his kinfolk, any accident would have meant the end.

Every year, quite a few students dropped out or even perished because of various accidents.

Within the Divine Palace, Lin Xiao sat upright upon the only God Seat that could be considered somewhat magnificent. This God Seat was the only relatively grand thing in the entire Divine Palace; everywhere else was exceedingly plain.

Having long grown used to all this, Lin Xiao did not care in the slightest. The instant he sat down, he focused his attention on the Creation Cube.

Within the boundless cube floated two mountains of corpses. His thoughts settled upon the Murloc corpse mountain and the Snake-Man corpse mountain. After pondering briefly, he silently said:

"Disassemble!"

An arcane power immediately surged within the cube, and the corpse mountains began to break apart. They rapidly melted away layer by layer, until all the corpses turned into nothingness, leaving behind only two masses of blood-red light.

When his consciousness fell upon those two masses of blood-red light, a smile appeared on Lin Xiao's face. "Just as expected!"

As he had predicted, the two masses of blood-red light were respectively a special Gray Mist Fishmen bloodline with twice the breeding speed and survival rate of ordinary murlocs, and an ordinary Snake-Man bloodline.

Now, so long as he spent a certain amount of Faith Points, he could turn these two bloodlines into two rare Bloodline Cards.

However, Lin Xiao did not do so. After thinking for a moment, he suddenly said:

"Extract!"

The blood-red light abruptly exploded into two clouds of blood mist. Immediately afterward, the Creation Cube's power surged forth, and the blood mist slowly began to fade. Under the effect of an invisible force, certain powers within the two bloodlines were separately extracted, forming a total of five differently colored points of light above the original blood mist.

They represented pure Bloodline Source, the Snake-Man Life Imprint, pure Bloodline Source, the Murloc Life Imprint, and the Propagation Rule.

In other words, a Snake-Man Bloodline Card was formed from pure life essence combined with a Snake-Man Life Imprint. Lin Xiao had now used the Creation Cube's creation-like power to extract them separately. He had even re-extracted the Five-Star Breeding Card that had originally been fused into the murloc bloodline.

After finishing this, he took out the Two-Star Cod Card and directly disassembled it into pure Creation Energy for later use.

To him, a Two-Star Card was simply a waste of a usage opportunity. He had no use for it.

Next, Lin Xiao sank into thought.

Because he now had two choices: should he prioritize murlocs, or Snake-Men?

That was right. Having extracted both bloodlines, he could use the Creation Cube's almost miraculous power to fuse the bloodlines of these two creatures into a single species.

There would be no technical issues whatsoever. The crucial question was which one should serve as the foundation.

Emotionally, he leaned toward the murlocs. After all, they were his first batch of kinfolk, and he had grown attached to them.

But murlocs had too many limitations, which would be detrimental to future development.

Snake-Men were certainly powerful, but that also meant he would have to start over. Moreover, Snake-Men were land creatures, and his Divine Domain currently lacked a suitable living environment. Even if he obtained that Divine Domain Card—Fertile Land—and merged it into the Divine Domain after the exam, that environment did not seem suitable for Snake-Men either.

Besides, food in the Divine Domain was insufficient. Well, that was not a major problem.

The key issue was that a second species would appear in the Divine Domain. He would have to start from scratch again, requiring a whole series of cards to cultivate an environment suitable for Snake-Men, arm them, develop their faith, increase their population, and so on.

All of that required time. Yet less than a month remained until the Final Exam, which translated to only a little over twenty years within the Divine Domain. Snake-Men grew far more slowly than murlocs. A mere twenty-odd years would not be enough to develop any combat strength. This would greatly affect his immediate fighting power and his performance in the Final Exam.

"Damn it, what a blissful problem to have!"

Lin Xiao rubbed his forehead and decided not to make a choice for now. Once the exam was over, he would go home and ask his dad.

His dad was a High-level Demigod with abundant experience in this area. He was sure to have some good advice.

While he was at it, he could ask his dad for some good stuff. Letting such an awesome father go unused would be an absolute waste.

Sometimes, Lin Xiao really wanted to mock those novels where the protagonist's parents or family were insanely powerful, yet the protagonist refused to use any family resources. Instead, they struggled everywhere for resources and caused trouble wherever they went, all in the name of tempering themselves. It was downright idiotic.

If there was no way to make use of those resources, that was one thing. But having them and refusing to use them was simply stupid.

In a Divine Domain not much different in size from Lin Xiao's, barren desert stretched as far as the eye could see. Only in the center of that desert stood an oasis half-enclosed by mountains.

At that moment, the checkpoint at the oasis's only exit had already been breached. The wooden barricades had been knocked down, and corpses lay everywhere.

A dense horde of goblins charged into the oasis within the valley, waving wooden clubs, bone spikes, and all sorts of miscellaneous weapons. Several dozen injured Desert Lizardmen fought as they retreated. Within the valley, many young and elderly Lizardmen gripped weapons behind a fence by the small lake at the oasis's center, watching the invading goblins with terror on their faces.

Above the Divine Domain, a golden figure invisible to ordinary people watched the battlefield below with a bitter expression, especially the several large Bugbears. After a long while, he sighed and looked up. "Teacher, I lost."

Class Teacher Wu Hai's voice rang out:

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure!"

"Very well."

The next second, a dull drumbeat suddenly sounded from the horizon. All the goblins in the oasis stopped as though someone had pressed pause. Then every goblin turned illusory, transforming into streams of clear light that shot into the sky. Peace returned to the oasis.

Within the Divine Domain, Class Teacher Wu Hai put away the card in his hand and shook his head.

"What a pity. He was still in the top ten of the class two months ago. One unauthorized action caused his strength to plummet, and now he can't even pass a standard test."

Zheng Wenzhuo also shook his head. "He probably has no chance in next month's Final Exam. One misstep leads to more missteps. It will be difficult for him to catch up in the future."

At the same time, in another Divine Domain, several hundred Swamp Lizardmen were surrounding and attacking a Two-Headed Crocodile roughly seven or eight meters long in a swamp.