His partner had spent a long time envisioning the Divine Path Style and discussed it with him over countless nights. Even after living two lives, Chen Qing still remembered many of the details.
To make this style more interesting and challenging, the two of them had practically wrung their brains dry. Of course, this had also made the style so difficult that not a single player in the first test could stick with it.
And eighty percent of them had fallen at the first round of divine investitures.
The Divine Path Style's first round of investitures required particular care: they had to suit local conditions.
That was because the Power of Divine Investiture was consumable. Once used, unless you transferred elsewhere to serve as an official, whatever you had spent from your official seal was gone, just like a stored supply of energy water.
So how did you restore the official seal's Power of Divine Investiture?
That required the deities you had invested to do their jobs!
A deity's role was to gather faith. To achieve this, it had to accumulate merit and blessings and perform its proper functions before the surrounding people would believe in it. The more faith it received, the stronger its divine power became. In turn, it would feed power back to its investiture lord and replenish the official seal's Power of Divine Investiture.
That was the Divine Path Style's basic framework!
So how did you make the people believe in the deities you invested?
That was also the Divine Path Style's first hurdle...
Many players failed to understand this. They picked up their official seals and invested the strongest deities within their capabilities, such as underworld war officers, the Devil-Quelling True Lord, or divine generals of the four wind and thunder divisions. They were bloody useless. After all, you were a civil official without even any soldiers, so what were you going to do with these war-god deities?
As time passed and their divine power weakened, they could no longer even lift their blades.
Then there were the many players who started by investing underworld City Gods, mountain gods, river gods, and the like. These seemed like utility deities, but their actual usefulness depended heavily on the environment.
A City God, for example, governed a city's underworld administration. It could dispel resentment, reward good and punish evil, prevent new malevolent ghosts from arising, and grant the city's people an underworld lifespan and spirit bodies after death, allowing them to visit their descendants in dreams and inspiring greater reverence and faith in the underworld administration.
The ancestral halls of great Lineages would also command greater respect thanks to the underworld administration's existence. Over time, everyone would believe in karmic retribution after death and that accumulating blessings and doing good could extend their underworld lifespan. Faith in the City God would grow, and the more faith it received, the stronger it became and the more complete its underworld system grew.
Once this positive cycle began, the returns could truly flow without end.
It sounded wonderful, but in practice, it was unsuitable for beginners. A City God's divine power started out weak, and the underworld system it established would be extremely rudimentary. It needed a long period of growth before it could ensure spirit bodies enjoyed long underworld lifespans and could enter dreams, so it required a decent foundation of popular faith from the outset.
It was a deity that depended heavily on development and was strongly discouraged for beginners. Of those who chose to invest this thing as their first deity, eighty or ninety percent would ruin their runs.
As for mountain and river gods, these deities were close to nature and could more readily benefit humans through divine manifestations, thereby gaining faith. But that still depended on the place and the circumstances.
For instance, on a raging, flood-prone river where inadequate waterworks led to frequent breaches and flooding, if you invested a river god whose initially meager divine power could not stop the floods, why would the people believe in you?
Then what about finding a gentle little river?
That raised another problem. People had lived comfortably for generations by fishing and irrigating with that river. If you popped up and used a little divine power to give them a better harvest that year, who would think it was thanks to you?
Just because you said it was your doing, did that make it so?
Managing faith was no simple matter. You had to seize the right opportunity and adapt to local conditions. One wrong step, and the deity you invested would become useless-or even a Devil Creature that turned on you. You absolutely had to be cautious!
It was precisely because Chen Qing understood his partner's mechanics well enough that he had decided his first investiture in Liuzhou would be a door god of lowly divine rank!
A door god might seem unimpressive and serve only a single purpose, but used properly, it was actually among the deities with the fastest returns. Not a single player in his previous life had discovered this, however...
And Liuzhou's current circumstances were perfectly suited for door gods to shine!
"Daddy, there's one up ahead..."
Ghost Child excitedly pointed ahead. Chen Qing followed his finger and looked for ages. Since his mother had never skimped on food while he was growing up, his night vision was fairly good, yet even after searching for a long while, he still could not find what Ghost Child meant.
Seeing this, Ghost Child bounded over and delivered a kick. With a crash, a wail rang out, and Chen Qing saw a huge rock tumble dozens of meters away, writhing and begging for mercy.
"Spare me, Senior! Spare me!"
Only when Chen Qing approached could he see clearly. What Ghost Child had kicked was no rock, but clearly a mountain turtle whose shell had weathered away.
"You can actually speak human language. How old are you?"
"A human?"
"Daddy asked you a question!" Ghost Child stepped forward with his hands on his hips. "If you keep spouting nonsense instead of answering, do you believe I'll eat you?"
The mountain turtle shrank its head back in terror and hurriedly said, "Reporting to you, Senior, this junior is nearly two hundred years old. Thanks to your might over the years, there have been few people or wild beasts on Great Azure Mountain, allowing this junior to live so long. If you wish to eat me, Senior, it would be my honor. Thank you for looking after me all these years."
Ghost Child: "..."
I've even been looking after him?
This big-headed turtle really knows how to talk...
Suppressing a smug smile, Ghost Child tilted his head toward the sky, looking adorably haughty-except that the magnificent something down below was rather an eyesore.
Chen Qing looked at the mountain turtle and asked, "Have you ever eaten anyone?"
"No, no!" The mountain turtle shook its head repeatedly. "My mother was beaten to death by a crowd of humans because she grew so large that they feared her. I was small then, and I was so frightened that I swam all the way to Great Azure Mountain. I've lived on fruit all these years. My body lacks strength, and I move slowly. I can't even catch stupid fish anymore, so how could I possibly eat people?"
"As you can see, Senior, with my body as it is, even walking a few steps takes effort. If there weren't no other beasts competing with me for the wild fruit in this tree, which falls on its own when ripe, I might've starved to death long ago."
"Uh..."
Chen Qing rolled his eyes at this and took out a fire striker to examine the turtle carefully. Had he designed such a hopeless specimen among his monsters and ghosts?
He had designed quite a few turtle monsters and ghosts, but they were all extremely ferocious. How could any of them end up in such miserable straits?
After studying him for ages, Chen Qing still could not identify his breed, so he could not help asking, "What kind are you?"
The turtle froze, then shook his head. "I... I couldn't rightly say either. But my mother said my father was a Scarlet Dragon Turtle of fearsome renown. Back then, he ate no fewer than a thousand people in Jiangnan's waterways, before apparently getting beaten to death by some human martial artist."
"My mother was terrified then, so she took us siblings into hiding in the countryside. But she still ended up getting beaten to death..."
Chen Qing paused. A Scarlet Dragon Turtle?
What breed was that? I've never even heard of it. Of the turtles with 'dragon' in their names, I think I only designed one, and it definitely wasn't a Scarlet Dragon Turtle.
Could it be a hybrid from all these years?
That makes sense, actually. The dynasty I designed was probably a thousand years ago by now. As generations of low-level monsters and ghosts unable to reincarnate came and went, it wouldn't be surprising no matter what they turned into.
So he nodded. "The way you are, you probably don't have long to live. Do you intend to wait for death in these mountains, or come with me and see the wonderful world outside?"
"Go outside?"
"Yes. From what you've said, ever since your mother died, you've stayed holed up in these mountains, living off overripe wild fruit from the trees. What's worth living for in a life like that? Go take a look outside. This world is vast, and more wonderful than you imagine!"
"I... I'd like to wait for death in the mountains..."
"Really? Then I'll grant your wish." Chen Qing's gaze turned cold. "Nezha, beat him to death!"
"Wait, wait, wait!" The mountain turtle hurriedly withdrew his head. "I think you're right, Senior. The world outside is so wonderful, it'd be a waste of a turtle's life not to see it!"
"Mm, that's more like it." Chen Qing looked at Ghost Child with a beaming smile. "Come on, Nezha. Take Daddy to find the next one..."
On the third day after Chen Qing arrived in Liuzhou, the jinshi who had been dragging their feet, trying to stall a little longer, were finally brought over by force.
More than a hundred jinshi arrived in Jiangnan in a grand procession. Under the escort of soldiers arranged by the provincial administration commissioner, they finally reached Liuzhou City early on the fourth morning.
"Brother Liu, look. It's just like the rumors said. Liuzhou is no different from a ghost city now!"
The speaker was a short, stout scholar. Beside him, the man addressed as Brother Liu was tall and imposing, with regular features. Judging by his age, though, he was already past thirty. That was normal enough. Though Great Jin lacked officials, its jinshi examinations were extremely strict, and quite a few people only passed in their thirties or forties.
Had Chen Qing been there, he would certainly have recognized this middle-aged man surnamed Liu. He was Liu Yiqi, who had previously gathered their group for a feast at Bright Moon Tower.
"This situation is worse than I imagined..." Liu Yiqi frowned and sighed. "Chen Qing's promotion by several ranks was a good thing, but being sent to take over this mess... I fear he'll have a hard time..."
His tone seemed concerned for a friend, but a closer look would reveal the schadenfreude in his eyes.
That was only natural. Back then, he had been utterly overshadowed by Wang Ye in the same examination cohort, and now a youngster was pressing him down too. What face did he have left?
Chen Qing was a poor boy who could only afford to stay at the Confucian Temple. If he had not sympathized with the boy's struggles to pursue his studies and offered some pointers back then, could Chen Qing have scraped into the bottom of the second tier?
Now, who knew what means he had used to bewitch the sovereign and leap straight to the fourth rank? So young, yet instead of learning anything good, he had thoroughly mastered the methods of a sycophantic minister. All that painstaking guidance back then had truly been wasted.
Now that he had ended up with such a mess, he had only himself to blame!
Some of the jinshi walking at the front of the procession, especially the newly appointed top and second-place graduates, looked a little less sour after hearing this.
As first-tier graduates, they should originally have stayed in the capital and entered the Hanlin Academy. But after this incident in Liuzhou, they had no choice but to come serve as local officials.
Serving locally was one thing, but why should Chen Qing, a fellow at the very tail of the second tier, become Liuzhou's prefect, while he, the illustrious top graduate of the first tier, was merely an assistant prefect?
At the thought, the top graduate, Gu Beiquan, seethed with indignation.
Now, though, things were looking up. With Liuzhou in this state, how could it be called merely a mess? It was an enormous pit. Mishandle it, and someone would have to shoulder a huge blame. As the prefecture's chief official, Chen Qing would certainly bear primary responsibility if the job went poorly.
Was being prefect really so easy?
At this thought, most of the jinshi felt much better. People did not fear hardship; they feared having no one worse off than themselves. Ultimately, it took comparison to feel happy...
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