The Promise

"That lord is a great man, whose power fills the gods with awe and fear. Even the Lord of Lightning, a Great Divine Power, fell before him... I never had any intention of making an enemy of him when I came to this world, and I'm willing to abide by the rules he has set. I hope you can pass this message on to that honored lord."

On a tree-lined avenue, the Goddess of Agriculture spoke gently to Bai Xiaoling, whose face was stiff with tension.

"Oh, all... all right. I'll be sure to pass it on," Bai Xiaoling hurriedly replied.

Hearing such fluent, standard Chinese come from a barbarian god's mouth was profoundly surreal.

Honestly, unless you were a barbarian god yourself, it was hard to understand the bone-deep fear they felt toward Chen Shouyi. So many barbarian gods had been lively and kicking that morning, full of ambition, only to be corpses by nightfall. Their deaths were clear as day; he was a god of slaughter who never blinked.

"You're a martial artist, aren't you?" the Goddess of Agriculture asked with a smile. Anything about humanity that she wanted to learn was hardly a secret.

"Yes, Goddess," Bai Xiaoling replied.

"You have a remarkable gift. Perhaps one day you'll become an extraordinary being," the Goddess of Agriculture praised.

Bai Xiaoling felt a little embarrassed. She had gotten there by piling up True God Meat; without it, her talent would have taken her no further than a martial apprentice.

"Goddess, you flatter me. I only..." She had been about to mention the True God Meat, but remembered something and quickly shut her mouth.

"Just call me Manlu. You can think of me as a friend."

Manlu was a god from the legends of the Ba Nation. That wasn't her