Did Gods Have to Work in the Divine Realm Too?

[You stared at the Destruction God King. He stared back. Then you pointed at him and said, "You leave!"]

["This is my wife's home. You should be the one leaving. Besides, you entered illegally. Pay the sightseeing fee—one hundred thousand God Two Coins, please." The Destruction God King's calm words nearly made you lose it.]

[You rummaged through your pockets, found them empty, and looked back at the Destruction God King. "Do I really have to pay?"]

["You can skip the payment and spend a week in jail instead." The Destruction God King waved a pair of silver handcuffs, then showed you his identification as deputy director of the God Realm Enforcer General Bureau.]

["My daughter's staying with you. Can't you let me off this once?" You wanted to run, but you had only just arrived in the Divine Realm and barely understood how anything worked.]

[The Destruction God King nodded, then took out his phone and called Tang San, director of the God Realm Enforcer General Bureau, to come bail you out.]

[Watching the Destruction God King use a phone made the whole world feel surreal. Why was there a phone in Douluo I? It seemed ridiculous, yet almost made sense. The Divine Realm governed so many worlds that some of them were bound to have advanced technology.]

[You edged closer to the Destruction God King and studied his phone screen. Even from the call interface, you could tell the Divine Realm's technology was highly advanced.]

[Tang San bailed you out, then rewarded you with a complete compendium of the Divine Realm's 114,514 laws.]

[The law compendium taught you how the Divine Realm worked. God Kings and First-Level Gods received a fixed monthly salary in God Two Coins. Everyone else—the far more numerous Second-Level Gods, Third-Level Gods, and Divine Officials—had to work for their money.]

[First-Level Gods received a fixed salary, but after paying rent, they had little left. The remainder would buy them only one or two decent meals.]

[The Divine Realm currently had five directly administered territories and several public regions. The five territories belonged to the Five Great God Kings. Gods living there paid monthly rent according to location; the more remote the area, the cheaper the rent.]

[Foremost among the public regions were the Floating Islands where the five territories met. Most gods lived and worked there.]

[The Divine Beast Forest was also a public region, but gods were strictly forbidden from living there or building houses. It was effectively the Divine Realm's nature reserve.]

[The Five Great God Kings had decreed that, apart from fixed salaries and rent, individuals could keep thirty percent of income from other sources. The remaining God Two Coins had to go toward developing the Divine Realm, preventing inflation and giving lower-ranking gods more room to survive.]

[First-Level Gods had it a little better than God Kings, but not much. They could keep forty percent of their total monthly income, yet that worked out to about what some Second-Level Gods earned in a month.]

[Building on private land required approval from the Divine Seat that governed it. Construction in a public region required the approval of three God Kings.]

[After reading the Divine Realm's laws, you put on a clown mask. Being a wage slave before crossing over was bad enough. Now you were a god and still had to work like one. No wonder the Sea God and the Asura God wanted to run. To you, the Divine Realm's whole setup was a mirror of the wage-slave society from your previous life.]

[But it was not all bad news. Your current home had been designated a special residential area for relatives of the Asura God King. As long as Tang San still acknowledged you, you could live there rent-free forever. You still had to pay for water, electricity, and the rest.]

"I can't take it. So that's what the Divine Realm is like? Su Lao Qi, you didn't go there to enjoy yourself. You went to prison." Su Ming felt quite content where he was. At least on Douluo Star, he did not have to worry about making a living.

[After 114,514 seconds of thought, you made the hardest decision of your life.]

[In the twenty-seventh year of the Simulation, you opened a Mixue Ice City shop on the Floating Islands with Ah Yin, the Snow Empress, and the Ice Empress, taking on a debt of three hundred thousand God Two Coins.]

[Ah Yin, the Snow Empress, and the Ice Empress produced the ingredients. You processed them. Your affordable prices quickly won you a following among the gods.]

[On its first day, your shop took in thirty thousand God Two Coins. You produced all the ingredients yourselves, so there were no ingredient costs, though you still had to pay a consumption fee.]

[The consumption fee was taxed at different rates according to how much Immortal Spirit Qi was used. For every ten thousand units consumed, you owed one hundred God Two Coins—the equivalent of converting one percent of the consumed Immortal Spirit Qi into God Two Coins to offset it.]

[After your income tax was deducted as well, your actual earnings for the first day came to twenty-nine thousand six hundred God Two Coins.]

[You were delighted, but before the money could even warm your hands, Ah Yin, the Snow Empress, and the Ice Empress took it to buy ingredients for Spring Autumn Sausage.]

[That night, you were fed Spring Autumn Sausage version 3.00. Ah Yin had added three-hundred-thousand-year Deer Antler Velvet and four-hundred-thousand-year Epimedium. The Snow Empress had added three-hundred-thousand-year Oyster and a hundred-thousand-year Yang-Raising Herb. The Ice Empress had added twenty Ten Thousand Year Ginseng Kings, eight hundred-thousand-year Blood Ginseng roots, eight tons of thousand-year Red Dates, seventy-thousand-year Astragalus, three-hundred-thousand-year Honey-Fried Licorice, and hundred-thousand-year Cordyceps.]

[All the medicinal ingredients were mixed in one pot and stirred slowly. Partway through, Ah Yin brought out Whale Rubber from a 990,000-year Deep Sea Demonic Whale King and added it too. The thirty-odd tons of Whale Rubber nearly burst the pot.]

"Holy shit! You've got to be kidding me! Are they sure all that won't kill Su Lao Qi?" Su Ming was stunned. He could not understand how eight tons of thousand-year Red Dates had fit inside one sausage, much less how the enormous heap of medicinal ingredients also included over thirty tons of Whale Rubber.

[You ate the essence-packed Spring Autumn Sausage version 3.00. Under the expectant gazes of Ah Yin, the Snow Empress, and the Ice Empress, the Emperor raised his proud head slightly. Then, as the three women watched in anticipation, he seemed to play a joke on them and promptly went limp again.]

[The three women were furious. So many medicinal ingredients had gone into one sausage, yet you still could not rise to the occasion. Even if the Emperor remained limp, they were determined to give battle.]

[You were ridden hard. All the while, the Emperor watched Ah Yin, the Snow Empress, and the Ice Empress repeatedly challenge his dignity. At last he grew angry and launched a surprise attack, catching all three women off guard.]

[The three women were flustered and indignant at your sudden attack, but as they thought back on it, they found themselves longing for more.]