I Am God!

"This spear?" Looking at the thick, long spear, Chen Kangbao's goatee twitched. The spearhead was bitingly sharp, exuding a bone-chilling cold, and peculiar patterns covered the shaft. Sunlight streamed through the window and spilled across the chilly weapon, faintly radiating a piercing frostiness. Holding the spear, Qi Yuan wore an indifferent expression. "Pity this spear isn't one you can pull a trigger on. Weapons with triggers are the real deal!" Qi Yuan sighed wistfully. He could have turned Zhishuang into a heavy sniper rifle—a Barrett or whatever. Yet there were no bullets! If he pulled Zhishuang's trigger, was she going to spit bullets? Not a chance. At best, she would be a squirt gun, far too weak. A long spear was much more practical. "How are things at Red Cloud Stockade?" Qi Yuan asked. "Young Master, let us talk on the way." "Alright." *Bang!* Qi Yuan was brought to an abrupt halt by the doorway. Holding the spear horizontally, he had slammed right into the doorframe and couldn't get through. Seeing this, Chen Kangbao quickly said, "Young Master, why not carry it upright? The doorway is narrow, but it's tall." "No need. I'll just wrap my spear around my waist." Chen Kangbao: "???" Of course, wrapping it around his waist made Qi Yuan look as though he had an enormous belly. Before heading out, he used Myriad Transformations to disguise it a bit. Otherwise, causing a commotion when stepping outside would be bad. He had always been a low-profile person. Still, a spear that large could not be completely hidden. Much like an absurdly voluptuous bosom inevitably attracting wandering eyes, the moment Qi Yuan stepped outside, the gazes of numerous jianghu travelers fell upon him. "What... what does he have wrapped around him?" "Strange." "Could it be some kind of treasure?" Down in the inn's dining hall, many patrons murmured among themselves. Seeing this, Chen Kangbao puffed out his chest and declared, "My young master has a long spear wrapped around his waist!" "A long spear?" A middle-aged jianghu woman covered her mouth in disbelief, her ears burning red. She stole glances at Qi Yuan, her eyes shimmering with luster. "So huge... mmph!" Under the awestruck gazes of the crowd, Qi Yuan and Chen Kangbao walked out of the inn. "Lately, people have been dying one after another in Red Cloud Stockade, suspected to be the work of guiling," Chen Kangbao reported what he had learned to Qi Yuan. "White moonlight?" Qi Yuan's eyes lit up. Granted, back in the Immortal Realm, these guiling wouldn't meet the standards of the White Moonlight Code. But this was a game world, so Qi Yuan wasn't about to be so picky. "Right, white moonlight!" Chen Kangbao nodded. "I secretly bribed the runners at the yamen to inspect the dossiers on Red Cloud Stockade. I discovered... all the victims died in the middle of the night. Furthermore, they shared one thing in common: before their deaths, neighbors all heard... the continuous sound of running water." "Get to the point," Qi Yuan said. He had always treated everyone equally, never caring about a white moonlight's family background or education. Some shut-ins might restrict their white moonlight's gender, but Qi Yuan wasn't picky—male or female, both worked. Even if she had a gambling father, a mother suffering from cancer, and a delinquent brother, as long as she was Qi Yuan's white moonlight, he wouldn't hesitate to deliver them all to the Western Paradise. "...Their strength is unknown," Chen Kangbao said nervously. "Two fewer buns for you tonight!" Qi Yuan snapped in annoyance. This advisor was thoroughly incompetent. All he knew how to do every day was eat, accomplishing nothing useful. "Young Master, could we make it just one fewer?" "No!" Chen Kangbao's face fell. Missing even one bun at night... wouldn't he starve to death? "Young Master, can you eat guiling?" Chen Kangbao asked curiously. He had to find a way to supplement his diet. "Anything that exists in this world can be eaten. It's merely a question of... whether it kills the person eating it," Qi Yuan offered his "profound insight." "I see." Chen Kangbao looked somewhat worried. "How can you eat them without dying?" "Deep-fry it?" Qi Yuan speculated. "Sun-fry it?" At such extreme heat, any poison would surely be eradicated, right? Of course, he was only musing. Thinking along these lines, a whimsical notion struck Qi Yuan. Having the sun meant he had high heat. Having a kitchen knife meant he had cooking utensils. Having white moonlight guiling meant he had ingredients. Could he get into the catering business in the future? After all, didn't complete novices always start out by opening eateries? *** In Red Cloud Stockade. The woman dressed as a Daoist nun had a frosty expression, a red light swirling in her eyes. Standing on high ground, she looked out over Red Cloud Stockade. Stately silver firs stood interspersed among the houses, curling wisps of cooking smoke drifting upward beneath an overcast, murky sky. Yet in the eyes of the nun, the distant stockade was densely dotted with over a thousand black specks. These specks varied in size. The small ones were merely the size of mosquitoes, while the large ones were as big as eggs. "They're growing bigger. Once they reach the size of a fist, the guiling will claim that person's life!" Her gaze shifted to an old well, her eyes filled with a complicated look. "Very troublesome." She could faintly sense the existence of that guiling. Just feeling it sent a chill down her spine, as if countless pairs of eyes were glaring at her. "Senior, how is it?" Seeing the nun release her technique, Zhou Hu quickly asked. The nun did not answer immediately, asking instead, "How has the investigation gone?" When it came to dealing with guiling, the weapon wielders of this world had long accumulated experience and possessed systematic methods. Guiling rarely appeared out of thin air; they were usually tied to events from the past. For example, a child who had died a tragic death, or an entire colony of ants wiped out. Corrupted by inexplicable pollution, they turned into guiling. Guiling were immensely powerful and mostly slaughtered without conscious thought. The best way to deal with one was to trace its original identity, then devise a corresponding countermeasure. For instance, if a rat that once shouted "Mom, I'm not coming home tonight!" met a grisly end and turned into a guiling, knowing its true form was a rat meant carrying a cat might prove immensely useful when fighting it—preferably a feral cat. The pollution turned these dead things into guiling, but in reality, they still retained certain instincts that could never be altered. Those instincts were their weaknesses. Therefore, confronting a guiling required uncovering its background and origins first. "It's a long story. According to my investigation, over the past few centuries, this well has seen three cases of..." Zhou Hu rambled on, while the nun listened with a furrowed brow. "Hmm?" Suddenly, the nun paused. "Senior, what is it?" Zhou Hu asked. "Two peculiar people have entered Red Cloud Stockade." "Are they friends or foes, or just passing through?" Zhou Hu hurriedly asked. If Senior described them as peculiar, they were bound to be people of skill. The nun shook her head. "I will go see." Any weapon wielder with a shred of ability had likely spotted Red Cloud Stockade's abnormality long ago. Cloaked in thick black fog, this place had virtually become a realm of the dead; prudent weapon wielders would not step foot inside. Even if one survived, it was all too easy to be tainted by evil miasma. Weapon wielders slaughtered guiling to vanquish demons and uphold the Dao, yet... slaying more guiling was not necessarily better. No matter how thorough one's protective measures, continuously slaying guiling would inevitably lead to corruption amidst the killing. In this world, many of the most formidable guiling had once been weapon wielders themselves. *** Meanwhile, Qi Yuan trod along a muddy path, his gaze falling upon a crude, ramshackle house. Within his perception, there were two people inside: an adolescent boy and a young girl around six or seven years old. The boy was thin, frail, and dark-skinned, and the girl looked much the same. A knock echoed against the door. Inside, Li Xiaodan jolted. His voice sounded somewhat weak: "Who is it?" Dragging his heavy body over, he rested his hand on the door bolt and peered through a crack at the person outside. It was a fresh, handsome man of majestic, dragon-and-phoenix bearing—clearly no ordinary individual. "I am here to settle karma," Qi Yuan said calmly. Li Xiaodan was baffled, not understanding in the least. "The idol in your room... could you tell me its origin? Rest assured, I am a good person," Qi Yuan said with a gentle smile. Li Xiaodan was wary, but he truthfully replied, "It is called Divine Descent, a god of Rakshasa Country..." Li Xiaodan recounted everything he had learned from the nun to Qi Yuan without holding back anything. After all, the man before him was visibly extraordinary and not someone he could afford to offend. Wasn't it just like on Blue Star? When a man on the street asked a young woman riding an electric scooter for her socks, she had no choice but to take off both socks and hand them over. Li Xiaodan's feelings at this moment were just like that woman's. "A divine artifact?" Qi Yuan's expression remained calm. So the role of Divine Descent he was roleplaying was actually a divine artifact! And no ordinary divine artifact at that. *Since it is a divine artifact, doesn't that mean I have to pretend to be a god?* Qi Yuan pondered. He was only at the Purple Mansion realm right now; how could he qualify as a god? Roleplaying a god had its difficulties. Still, this was an ancient world—should he whip up some dynamite and pretend to be a deity? He looked at Li Xiaodan and asked placidly, "Child, do you recognize me?" Li Xiaodan furrowed his brow, racked his brain, and finally shook his head uneasily. "Then do you see me as a human, or a god?" Qi Yuan watched Li Xiaodan closely, terrified the kid might blurt out an English phrase: "Can you speak English?" He wasn't some clever weasel demon that kept up with the times, nor could he speak English. Li Xiaodan found this utterly bizarre and thought he had run into a lunatic. But he didn't dare back away; after all, lunatics were capable of anything. "Like... a god?" Not daring to cross Qi Yuan, he answered tentatively. In an instant, Qi Yuan sensed the progress bar for roleplaying Divine Descent advance by a notch. Previously, the progress bars for the kitchen knife and the matrilocal son-in-law Qi Yuan had been steadily climbing, while Divine Descent had remained stubbornly at zero. Now, there was finally movement. If roleplaying a kitchen knife could enhance his physical toughness and add sharpness attributes, the rewards for roleplaying Divine Descent were beyond imagination. "As God, I hearken unto the myriad heavens. Your wish has reached my ears," Qi Yuan proclaimed coolly. He had originally intended to say "As one who is a god," but feeling that "one" was beneath a god's dignity, he switched to "God." At this moment, the aura radiating from him was profound and boundless, faintly coursing with divinity. If a Great Ultimate Principle expert were present, they would perceive Qi Yuan's extraordinary nature. But Li Xiaodan merely blinked, unable to tell. He only wished this madman would leave quickly. Seeing this, Qi Yuan couldn't help but sigh softly. "This is not your fault; it is merely that the mortals of this world have poor vision." Qi Yuan could tell the boy didn't believe him. But he bore no grudge. "Let us go." With a flick of his sleeve, he departed with Chen Kangbao. "Young Master, mortals are ignorant and fail to recognize a True God!" Chen Kangbao followed closely behind and chimed in. "I know. It is because they cannot see my divine generals, my angels!" Qi Yuan shook his head. Normally, Qi Yuan wouldn't care about such things. But now that he had to roleplay a god, without these trappings, his credibility was far too low. "Divine generals? Angels?" Chen Kangbao's lips trembled against each other as if he had envisioned something terrifying. "Alas, I don't possess a two-way portal to buy DJI drones to pose as my angels. It seems I must rely on my own hands to achieve self-sufficiency," Qi Yuan said placidly. Buying some DJI drones to hover around him—wouldn't that look just like his angels in an ancient era? "Young Master intends to...?" Chen Kangbao asked expectantly. "Mm. Come, let's find a place with lots of mosquitoes!" Qi Yuan had already made up his mind. Asking him to climb the tech tree to build drones was far too difficult; slacking off was much better. When he wasn't being diligent, he loved to slack off—even in bed, which used to infuriate Ning Tao so much she wanted to snap his waist with her legs. *** Roughly half an hour passed before the woman dressed as a Daoist nun appeared. "What did those two want with you just now?" she asked Li Xiaodan. Li Xiaodan furrowed his brow, afraid of offending either side. "The man earlier seemed to have something wrong in the head. He asked me about the idol." "The idol?" The nun was somewhat surprised. Even if the idol of Divine Descent had lost its divinity, it could still draw the attention of weapon wielders. "At the end, he even asked me whether he was a human or a god! He also said he would fulfill my wish. He's really seriously ill." Li Xiaodan looked pale, lingering fear in his voice. After all, having two mental patients corner him at his own doorstep had terrified him. Especially with his rickety house and flimsy door that could be kicked open with a single foot, he felt completely unsafe. Hearing this answer, the nun also found it rather baffling. After all, what proper weapon wielder would act like that? She knitted her brows in contemplation. Just then, Li Xiaodan recalled something and whispered furtively, "Senior, yesterday... the idol seemed to manifest its presence." The nun raised an eyebrow, her expression unchanged. "The god has fallen and will not manifest. It was just your imagination." "But I... I clearly heard the god say a sentence!" "The god spoke?" The nun scrutinized Li Xiaodan, seemingly checking if he was lying. She asked in a deep voice, "What did he say?" "The god said... He is not a god!" Li Xiaodan replied. The nun frowned, perplexed. Li Xiaodan's words didn't seem fabricated. Could it be an illusion, or some sort of bizarre fluke? The god was dead; that was an indisputable fact. Just then, however, Li Xiaodan's eyes suddenly went wide as he stared into the distance. "What is that?" In the distance, an overwhelming buzzing sound rolled in, blanketing the sky and earth. The nun swiftly turned her head to look as well. Far off, a strikingly handsome man with a sacred demeanor was seated upright in midair. Her eyes widened sharply. *Riding the clouds and mist—that is a technique mastered only by Earth-rank weapon wielders!* *No, that's not it!* In the next instant, she vehemently overturned her own assumption. For beneath the man, she saw a swarm of bizarre, peculiar creations resembling flying birds. These creations looked as though made of steel; hundreds of them carried the handsome man along as they flew through the air. These mysterious constructs were so numerous they flew in a dense, buzzing swarm like a flock of birds. The nun racked her brain completely, unable to conceive what this could be. "What is this?" "What are those things flying in the sky?" "Heavens above, what am I seeing?!" Several kiln workers dropped to their knees. Having lived in Ninghe County their entire lives, when had they ever witnessed such a spectacle? At that moment, a vast and majestic voice resonated across all of Red Cloud Stockade: "I am God, come to purge evil spirits and demons!" "You need not bow or kneel!"