Chapter 313 Eat Dung, Aslan!
“Divine Injustice, Pain Eternal…”
Xi Wei pursed his lisp as he murmured the name, finding it much more awesome then trash like Rotten Bones. “She must be very powerful, then.”
Aslan, however, shook his head. “No, Pain Eternal is actually very weak as a newborn evil god. If I had to compare, she was as noob as you were when we first met.”
“That’s quite something if that’s the case, actually!” Xi Wei pouted.
“It doesn’t matter, or as I would say, I knew you were not all that meets the eye from the very start. You certainly didn’t linger on the bottom end, although it still surprised me that you could squeeze your way into second-rate so quickly… really, your growth is divinely surprising.”
The Great Lion straightened his fur with his tongue while murmuring in awe.
“Anyway, you’re saying that the girl who turned into an evil god was that Finnia, yes?”
Xi Wei, meanwhile, had brought out his brews that contained certain degrees of divine attributes, including absinthe (90%), water of life (90% whisky) and Poland vodka (approximately 92%, and one should probably mention by now that antiseptic alcohol is only 75%) as he mixed a new cocktail for the Great Lion.
“Yes. She had since lost all rationality after becoming an evil god, and she was now bent on flooding the world with chaos.” Aslan paused then, spitting out a furball. “At the time, the mortal realm and the divine realm weren’t separated that tightly and the other gods were unwilling to get involved, and in the end, it was I who personally went down there to end her.”
“Why won’t the other gods get involved?” Xi Wei asked, puzzled. If it had been him, he would definitely be joining the fight. “Is there no divine power or divinity to be gained?”
“Divine Injustice is special. She is a being abandoned by the gods in the first place, which makes her divinity and her divine powers poison to other gods even after she had turned into an evil god.”
The Great Lion shook his head, his thick mane flowing in circular waves. “Simply absorbing it does you no good, and it would corrupt your own divine attributes in return.” Xi Wei, who had just finished absorbing Aojo’s divine energy pursed his lips-he did not actually feel ill in any way. “By the way, didn’t the civilization of the Third Age collapse in the War of Gods and Demons?” He then asked. “Why would anyone in this new age know about Finnia?” This time, Great Lion stayed quiet for a long time before sighing heavily.
“It was my fault.”
He said. “I felt sympathy for Divine Injustice after learning about her past, and just when I was about to slay her, she pleaded for mercy when I was about to land the final blow.
“She didn’t beg for her life, however, because actual death was a release to her. That said, after going through a lifetime of abandonment by the gods, she couldn’t accept that she would fall just like one, and was hoping that I would kill her as a human.”
“And I agreed to it.”
“Hence, she was dismembered, parts of her body were thrown into volcanic acid lakes to be melted. Using my divine kingdom as a pestle and the prime Material Plane as a mortar, her divinity was extracted and crushed utterly, and flung into the Void where the remains are left to its own fate. Then, at the very end, I cleansed her divine power with my Authority of Justice, granting her rebirth as a mortal human before I slayed her.”
“Now that I think about it, pieces of her divinity must have slipped through the World Barrier and fell upon the Prime Material Plane. After that, freak accidents happen, preventing her form from completely disintegrating and allowing her power to gain new life.”
Meanwhile, Xi Wei had become silent.
His delight in breaking through the shackles to ascend as an intermediate god had faded considerably.
He knew all along that the Great Lion was powerful and stood at the top of all intermediate gods, but to think that he was that powerful…
And what was ‘using my divine kingdom as a pestle and the prime Material Plane as a mortar’ even supposed to mean!? Sure, it was poetic, but that was basically lifting your own divine kingdom and smashing it down at the Prime Material Plane!
Moreover, the only thing between Aslan’s divine kingdom and the Prime Material Plane was the divinity of one evil god.
Did he have to go so far to destroy a divinity? Why not use a nuclear bomb to break a walnut too!?
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After half a beat, Xi Wei gingerly asked, “Should I have my believers help you dig out Divine Injustice’s cult?” “No need. It’s my loose end, I’ll think of something to handle it.”
The Great Lion did not hesitate to decline. “You don’t have to be concerned.”
“Hold on. If Finnia refers to the Divine Injustice, then what about the Silver Oak?” Xi Wei pressed
“The explanation for that is not so long-winded.” The Great Lion replied as he fiddled with the furball he spat out with his claws. “The Silver Oak is an ornamental plant that Silver Dragons nourishes, but those are extinct since the Second Age. There aren’t any now in the mortal realm.”
“That’s it?” Xi Wei was full of doubt, feeling that the word wouldn’t be so meaningless after Aojo had shouted it like a slogan
“Of course not.” The Great Lion’s face turned solemn. “The matter itself unraveled in the Second Age, when the distance between mortals and gods were much closer and less distinct. In fact, many gods loved to descend unto the mortal realm to live amongst mortals.”
“At the time, there was a God of Steel who is as arrogant as he is delusional. One time, when he was drunk, he told the people ‘All of you are so weak. Look at me. Even without the protection of divine power, my body is as tough as iron and impenetrable.”
“A Silver Dragon was extremely displeased when it heard him, and was intent on teaching the God of Steel a lesson. He hence beseeched the Dragon God to bless a branch of the Silver Oak he had been growing to grant it powers to hurt a god, and the dragon brought it along to meet the God of Steel, provoking him in his drunkenness into a bet. That god therefore allowed the Silver Dragon to stab him with the Silver Oak without using divine power.”
“But what no one expected was that a god who had a grudge with the God of Steel had swapped the Silver Oak branch with one that was laced with divine bane, and when that branch stabbed into the body of the God of Steel, the bane ate away his divinity before he could react and he fell right there and then.”
At that, Xi Wei got the idea why the Silver Oak was extinct. Even if it wasn’t the main cause, the Silver Oak had killed a god, and there was every chance that a whole crowd was bearing witness to the bet. It therefore directly elevated a mundane plant like the Silver Oak to a god-killing existence, which threatened the gods even if they actually could resist it with their Rule Resistance.
But the gods certainly wouldn’t abide by the existence of such a thing, and hence quietly set things in motion to wipe out every last shrub of Silver Oak.
Indeed, the reason that the Silver Dragons were the rarest species of true dragon might have something to do with that mishap.
“The cult your believers found not only worshipped Finnia but was also aware of the Silver Oak. Perhaps what drives them behind the scenes is no trifle…” The Great Lion continued even as he fiddled with the furball, which had somehow turned into a small lion doll. “Take this, this is a copy myself. You can talk to it if anything comes up, and its encryption would be more reliable than the furball before. It also counts as a backup of myself.”
“Your cocktail is done. Why not try it?”
Xi Wei extended a tentacle to take the doll before passing Aslan the alcohol-filled glass.
The Great Lion snapped its large feline claws, and pale blue flames ignited over the drink.“I’m not drinking anything that could be set on fire. Give it to Stoff (the God of Craftmanship and Fine Wine) instead.”
With that, Aslan left Xi Wei’s Divine Kingdom while laughing heartily.
“It’s okay if you don’t want it. But don’t you know it’s such a waste burning it?”
Xi Wei withdrew his tentacle in displeasure, unable to prank the Great Lion and make him make a fool of himself.
That was when the doll Aslan left him came to life.
Extending his senses over it, Xi Wei noticed that it was basically a golem that wasn’t too smart and was only capable of some simple movements.
While he had no idea why the Great Lion would call it a backup, Xi Wei had a strong feeling that the purpose of the doll was to monitor him.
Therefore, the self-indulgent and freedom-loving Xi Wei promptly carved a small space out of his divine kingdom and made it into a cat playground where he dumped it into. “Keeping an eye on me? Eat dung, Aslan!”