Just as Hu Xinzhu had said, only seven days after the New Year, the Divine Domain completely shut its doors to the outside world.
The God of the Sea, Void God, God of Thunder, God of Souls, and Goddess of Commerce—the chief gods of the five divine pantheons—led hundreds of thousands of subordinate gods and divine armies composed of millions of lower god servants. Together with massive legions of believers drafted from the three underground worlds, they began formally putting into operation a full-scale offensive plan against the Miro Divine Cult alongside the Heavenly Temple.
Meanwhile, several subordinate gods of the Dawn Divine Pantheon, Divine System of Punishment, War Divine Pantheon, and Celestial Divine Pantheon remained in the underground worlds with a vast divine army, suppressing order there and encircling the invaders who still would not cease their depredations—especially those Fallen Gods led by the Screeching Lord. Whether on the surface or underground, endless storms were destined to rise.
As for Lin Qi, acting under the authorization of the four chief gods, he directly took control of all the Church's authority on the surface. In other words, the entire Western Continent, along with a small portion of the temple legions withdrawn from the underground worlds, now answered to Lin Qi alone. The lives, deaths, honors, and humiliations of countless archbishops and other clergy all rested on a single thought from him.
Out of a certain perverse sense of amusement, Lin Qi had Blackbeard take charge of the Church's great authority. He temporarily stripped the three Popes of their supreme religious power and handed every bit of authority to his own father, Blackbeard—just look at it: the great bandit chief who had once run wild through the North Sea region of the Western Continent, dividing stolen loot where he sat, had