Above three hundred thousand square kilometers of scorched earth, the ceaseless fall of ash suddenly stopped.
Without hesitation, Lin Yuan linked his will to the Divine Domain core and brought down an overwhelming divine presence.
Boom!
Deep in the heavens, a muffled peal of thunder sounded.
An invisible force stirred the ash-filled sky, rapidly drawing it together and twisting it into shape.
At last, a vast, indistinct face of ash and storm formed against the dark heavens, gazing down upon the land.
It blotted out the sky. Its gaze fell over the wasteland, cold, majestic, and utterly devoid of emotion.
Below, all hundred Petrified Goblins froze at once.
An instinct from the depths of their souls overpowered their hunger.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Without the slightest hesitation, a hundred robust gray-black bodies dropped to their knees on the burning earth.
They pressed their heads hard against the ground, rough stone skin trembling with absolute reverence.
"Our great Lord!"
"Supreme ruler of ash and earth!"
Fervent roars echoed across the empty wasteland.
Lin Yuan hovered among the clouds and looked down upon his humble creations.
Amplified by the Divine Domain, his voice became a vast, ethereal oracle that shook every inch of scorched ground.
"My kin."
"This world is a land of trials. The weak shall become dust. Only the strong shall be granted glory."
"Today I grant you food and the foundation of transcendence. Make good use of them."
The divine words fell, and the laws obeyed.
Lin Yuan opened his terminal's storage space and poured out five sacks of [Ash Spore Mushroom] seeds.
Tens of thousands of gray-black spores drifted through the storm toward the ground.
Normally, plants needed time to grow.
Lin Yuan opened the panel and deducted one hundred faith points.
Divine power surged.
A miracle bloomed on the scorched earth.
The spores in the cracked soil absorbed fire toxins from the ground and ash from the sky.
Within a dozen breaths, patches of palm-sized mushrooms with gray-black caps pushed through the earth.
In the blink of an eye, a small dark-gray fungal carpet covered the center of the once-dead wasteland.
A strong neurotoxic odor spread through the air.
To the Petrified Goblins, however, it smelled sweeter than the hundred-flower nectar brewed by elves.
They lifted their heads, their eyes gleaming with hunger.
With their god's permission, several of the largest rushed forward first.
They snatched up handfuls of poisonous mushrooms and stuffed them into their mouths, swallowing without even bothering to chew.
Ash Spore Mushrooms were woody, dry, and bitter. Driven by extreme hunger, the goblins devoured them with juices running down their chins.
The toxins that entered their bodies were neutralized by the resistance beneath their rocky skin.
"Kree-gak! Praise our Lord!"
The feeding frenzy had barely begun when Lin Yuan raised his hand again.
Two dark-red spheres of conceptual light appeared above his palm.
[Bloodboil]. [Crude Body Tempering].
His fingers tightened, crushing both spheres.
Another two hundred faith points were deducted from the panel to serve as a medium.
The shattered light became a hundred streaks that sank into the brow of every Petrified Goblin.
"Raaagh!"
The feeding goblins froze. They dropped their mushrooms and clutched their heads, growling with mingled pain and excitement.
Before his eyes, thin dark-red threads of blood appeared in the cracks between their gray-black stone patterns.
The threads contracted and expanded with each heartbeat.
A primitive method of physical training, rooted in their bloodlines, was forcibly etched into their already tiny brains.
No instruction needed. No practice required.
A well-fed Petrified Goblin stood, a frightening red light flaring in its eyes.
Read this novel and other amazing translated novels from the original source at the "pawread dot com"
It swung its right fist into a jutting rock beside it.
Bang!
The scorched rock burst apart, scattering dust.
Fissures split its knuckles, but the instant dark-red blood seeped out, the stone skin around the wounds began growing and healing even faster.
Its greatly dulled pain was replaced by overwhelming exhilaration.
Another goblin lunged at a companion. The two monsters bit and wrestled without any technique on the wasteland.
Every collision slowly squeezed more potential from their bodies and increased their vital blood capacity.
They were no longer timid, cowardly cannon fodder at the bottom of the heap.
These were a hundred armored wasteland berserkers, without pain, able to survive on poisonous mushrooms.
Lin Yuan nodded in satisfaction as he watched his kin brawl their way through digestion.
A closed ecological loop. Complete.
For the next few days, all he had to do was let them breed freely on the wasteland and toughen one another's bodies. Faith points would flow without end.
A piercing pain stabbed through his temples.
Divine pressure, forced plant growth, consecutive trait bestowals.
He had pushed his mental energy consumption to the limit.
Lin Yuan withdrew his will. The ashen face in the sky dispersed.
He left his Divine Domain.
Back in the real world, he gasped for breath in his dim bedroom.
The back of his faded T-shirt was completely soaked in sweat.
He glanced at the wall clock. Three in the morning.
Without even enough strength to shower, he collapsed onto the hard wooden bed and fell into a deep sleep within two seconds.
...
Early the next morning, the first ray of light pierced the gloom over the slums and entered his bedroom.
Lin Yuan opened his eyes.
No exhaustion from staying up late. No weakness from overtaxing his mind.
Only an unprecedented sense of vitality filling his entire body.
He sat up and stretched out of habit.
Crack, crack, crack!
A rapid series of pops rang from his bones.
Lin Yuan paused, then looked down at his hands.
His thin body, sustained for years on nutrient solutions, now had visible muscle definition.
An extremely thin layer of gray impurities had seeped from his skin, carrying a faint sour smell.
He quickly got out of bed, walked to his desk, and gripped the edge of the solid wood table with one hand. It weighed twenty-five kilograms.
He lifted it with a light flick.
The table hung steadily in the air. Effortlessly.
"I'm at least fifty percent stronger than yesterday." Surprise flashed through his eyes.
He turned to his reflection in the mirror.
His eyes, nearsighted after years of intensive theoretical study, felt oddly dry.
Instinctively, he removed his black-framed glasses.
His vision didn't blur. It became astonishingly clear.
"Is this what the textbooks call... Divine Domain Feedback?"
Lin Yuan took a deep breath and calmed his excitement.
There was an iron law in this world: gods sheltered their followers, and followers nourished their gods in return through faith and evolution.
The higher the followers' grade, the greater their numbers, and the stronger their potential, the more powerful their god's physical body and soul became in reality.
But Lin Yuan knew that on the first day after opening a Divine Domain, an ordinary god would be thanking their lucky stars if their kin survived long enough to provide even a 0.1 attribute bonus.
For him, only one night had passed.
A hundred Petrified Goblins stitched together with [Stoneskin], [Bloodboil], and [Crude Body Tempering] had forcibly raised his real-world physique by a tremendous margin.
"Other people sell everything they own to buy resources. I spent a few hundred faith points."
An irrepressible smile tugged at his lips.
After a cold shower to wash away the impurities and the breakfast Old Lin had left on the table, Lin Yuan returned to his bedroom.
He put on his holographic interface and logged into the virtual campus of Jiangcheng No. 3 Divine Academy.
Light and shadow shifted before his eyes.
The next instant, he stood in the virtual plaza outside his class hall.
Today was the first rest day following awakening.
There were no in-person lessons. The academy required every student to visit the online hall and share their experiences establishing their Divine Domains.
He had barely entered the class hall's area when the noise reached him.
"Yuan! Over here!"
A round-bodied boy waved his fleshy arms and squeezed through the crowd toward him.
His best friend, Fatty Wang.
Fatty's face glowed today. Even the collar of his virtual projection seemed to radiate newly acquired wealth.
"Damn, Old Lin, you're looking good! That F-rank rating didn't get to you yesterday, did it?" He punched Lin Yuan's shoulder.
Lin Yuan didn't budge. Fatty was the one who staggered half a step back.
He didn't seem to notice. Leaning closer, he lowered his voice. "Listen, my old man really opened his wallet yesterday. He dumped a hundred thousand faith points straight into my account!"
A hundred thousand.
Several nearby commoner students who had been listening in stared wide-eyed.
Fatty proudly held up three fingers. "I spent fifty thousand on a Black Iron-grade [Bountiful Grassland] terrain card, then thirty thousand on ten premium breeding boars. This morning, my E-rank meat-pig kin started their first breeding cycle!"
"Dad said all I need to do is get the herd up to five hundred before the beginner period ends next week."
He rambled on about his grand pig-raising plans. At last, he looked at Lin Yuan, genuine concern entering his voice.
"What about you? That wasteland environment's brutal. Your hundred Gray Goblins haven't all died, have they? Should I lend you some faith points for a Water Ball Card to tide you over?"
Looking at Fatty's nouveau-riche expression, Lin Yuan nevertheless felt warmth rise in his chest.
In this rigidly stratified world of gods, someone as generous as Fatty, who asked for nothing in return, was a rare creature.
He patted his friend's shoulder and smiled. "Thanks, but I don't need it right now. I'm doing all right. The kin are just about getting enough to eat."