58: Chapter 58 Occupying Xuanming City

Su Ming walked slowly to the corpses of Tram and Melola, gazing quietly for a moment.

Life extinguished and the Dao obliterated, the nation ruined, a half-life of faith reduced to nothing.

This was the sorrow of the weak in a chaotic world, unable to control their own destinies.

In an instant, he restrained the ripples in his heart, completely settling his emotions.

In this world, softness of heart was a shackle.

Faced with an otherworldly war, there was no room for any womanish benevolence.

Su Ming slowly raised his hand, pouring all the nether yin qi into the two cold corpses.

The dead eyes once again flickered with lively luster, and the stiff bodies slowly revived.

Yet the moment the reincarnation was completed, Su Ming felt his divine power instantly drained, his limbs entirely hollowed out, his head dizzy, and his body falling backward out of control.

A dark shadow flashed by, and Yelie quietly appeared, steadily supporting him and shielding its form, its movements silent and swift.

"It turns out I was careless."

Su Ming stabilized his posture, secretly regulating his breath, and sighed inwardly.

His current divine power avatar had limited capabilities, and forcibly converting two high-level transcendent beings was still too far a stretch.

Just these two people had almost exhausted all his divine power.

After a long time, Su Ming finally suppressed the hollowness in his body, regained his strength, raised his eyes to look at the resurrected Melola, and asked in a deep voice, "Where is the statue of Mingyuan located in the city?"

The divine statue was not only a vessel for believers to worship, but also a container for a city to gather faith and store the power of faith.

The pure power of faith could not only refine divine crystals, but also quickly make up for the consumption of divine power. For him, whose divine power was exhausted at this moment, it was the only thing that could quickly restore his state.

Following the guidance, Su Ming raised his hand and touched the cold surface of the divine statue.

The majestic and boundless power of faith surged out like a tide, pouring continuously into his body along his palm, and was completely stolen and absorbed by him.

Such plunder was absolutely impossible in the past. As long as the Lord of Mingyuan was still around, outsiders could simply not touch its power of faith.

But now that the Lord of Mingyuan had fallen, the remaining power of faith naturally became a masterless object, allowing him to seize it at will.

In a short moment, the power of faith accumulated in the entire Xuanming City was completely absorbed by Su Ming.

Feeling the slowly recovering divine power in his body, Su Ming shook his head slightly, a trace of helplessness flashing through the depths of his eyes.

"Normally speaking, fifty thousand power of faith is enough to condense five thousand divine power, but now it has shrunk by fifty times, leaving only a hundred wisps of divine power."

What a huge loss.

But he quickly let it go.

Liang Feifan's cautionary tale was still there; if there was not enough divine power to back him up, even if he occupied an advantage, he might be ambushed and eliminated in an instant, dying an inexplicable death.

Compared to his own life, this little loss right now was completely worth it.

At the same time, the undead legion outside the city had already cleared the battlefield, escorting the remaining knights and priests in the city to the center of the square.

On the outskirts of the square, countless civilians of Xuanming City trembled, watching from afar, their eyes filled with fear and unease.

Having experienced two fierce battles, Xuanming City's military strength suffered heavy losses.

The original thirty thousand knights were reduced to only eight thousand, and the thousands of priests withered away completely, with only a hundred surviving.

There was no other way; priests were almost true believers of the deity or even pious believers.

Wanting them to surrender was not that simple.

Take Lilith for example; if Su Ming hadn't threatened the residents of Taoyuan Town, she definitely wouldn't have surrendered to Su Ming.

However, that method was still useful for Lilith, a newly-promoted priest. After all, she was like a college student just entering society, carrying a kind of clear stupidity.

But the priests in front of him were almost old hands; they didn't care about the lives of civilians at all.

"It seems that subduing this batch of priests is destined to be a protracted war."

Su Ming understood in his heart and had long been prepared for long-term domestication.

He stepped forward, standing on the high platform of the square. His voice was cold and majestic, resounding through the entire city and falling into everyone's ears:

"Mingyuan is dead, the old gods have fallen, and Jiuyou shall stand! From now on, there is no longer a god of Mingyuan in the world, only Jiuyou exists forever!"

The crowd below trembled all over, their faces filled with terror, and no one dared to respond.

Su Ming raised his hand and shook!

With a loud roar, the towering divine statue of Mingyuan in the center of the square shattered in response. Flying gravel completely severed the last sustenance in everyone's hearts.

"Presumptuous! Heretical madman, how dare you blaspheme the gods!"

The surviving priests split their eyes with anger, anger attacked their hearts, they cursed sternly, and their eyes were filled with monstrous hatred.

The group of knights on the side, however, had their states of mind shaken and their expressions varied.

The degree of faith of knights was inherently not as extreme as that of priests.

At this moment, witnessing the shattering of the divine statue with their own eyes, cracks had already appeared in the faith they had adhered to for many years.

Faced with the angry reprimands of the priests, Su Ming's expression was indifferent, without a shred of fluctuation. Every word was forceful, directly striking people's hearts:

"Where does your anger come from? What qualifications do you have to be angry?"

"You have burned incense and knelt in worship for generations, exhausting the city to worship the Lord of Mingyuan. When the flames of war burned the city and living creatures suffered, where was your god? When the soldiers bathed in blood and the subjects wailed, did Mingyuan ever bestow a shred of Divine Grace or half a protection?"

As the voice fell, the audience fell dead silent.

Su Ming raised his hand to urge a wisp of divine power, and the soft and warm nether-colored divine light illuminated the entire square.

In an instant, the wounds of all the wounded and disabled soldiers healed rapidly, their broken flesh regenerated, and their fractured bones reconnected. Facing such a miracle, everyone was extremely shocked.

"The old gods have passed away, and the faith you guarded to the death all your lives is nothing more than a void illusion."

"Those who submit to Jiuyou: the living shall obtain the protection of Jiuyou, free from disaster and trouble, peaceful year after year; the dead shall have their souls return to Jiuyou, transcending the pain of reincarnation, and attaining eternal survival."

"Those who are obsessed and stubbornly guard the obsolete divine lineage will have their souls dependent on nothing and their paths having nowhere to return. In the end, their souls will only collapse and completely annihilate, turning everything into nothingness."

Below the high platform, Tram and Melola, who had just been resurrected by Su Ming, wore solemn expressions, both bowing and kneeling, loudly swearing allegiance to the Jiuyou orthodoxy.

The two strongest existences in the city surrendering publicly were the most powerful corroboration.

Everyone witnessed with their own eyes the miracle of the two coming back to life, and the last shred of obsession in their hearts completely loosened.

Most of the knights completely lowered their guard, knelt down to surrender one after another, and no longer had any heart of resistance.

The remaining hundred priests looked at the soldiers surrendering all over the ground and the shattered statues of the old gods, feeling the aura on Su Ming's body, and their unshakable faith barrier of decades collapsed with a crash.

Some priests ultimately chose to bow their heads and submit, put down their obsessions, and convert to Jiuyou.

However, there were still quite a few priests whose proud bones were hard to bend and whose hatred was hard to calm. They stared fixedly at Su Ming, their eyes filled with monstrous malice.

"Heretical thief! The Lord of Mingyuan will eventually have a day of return! When that time comes, it will be the time of your fall and soul destruction!"

As the voice fell, blazing sacrificial divine flames suddenly ignited around their bodies. Taking their own souls as sacrifices, they resolutely burned themselves, completely turning into little flying ashes and dissipating into the world.

Su Ming looked at the flying ashes all over the sky and sighed softly.

"So be it. Since your obsession has penetrated your bones, then disperse together with your old gods."

In attacking Xuanming City, Su Ming lost nearly a hundred Undead Retainers, but more than ten thousand knights in Xuanming City died. As long as Su Ming was given time, he could convert all of these into his own retainers.

Even with his current ability, he could completely and slowly forcibly convert all the civilians in the city into the undead.

Yet Su Ming did not act this way.

It was not out of kindness, but a weighing of pros and cons.

Ordinary civilians had no transcendental foundation whatsoever and no cultivation aptitude; the success rate of forcibly converting them into the undead was extremely low.

Even if they were successfully converted by luck, they would only be withered bones without any combat effectiveness, completely useless to Su Ming, and instead consuming divine power in vain.

Rather than draining the pond to catch fish, it was better to proceed step by step.

Instead, keeping them and waiting until true believers appeared among them before converting them would have a higher success rate.