Ascending the Heavens as an Evil God

A young girl whose whole body glowed silver slowly walked out from underneath a blue curtain of water.

Her hand touched her stomach, as if she still felt phantom pain there, but she also knew that she had completely recovered from all her injuries. Still, that feeling of pain couldn’t be erased from her mind.

Ever since the young girl first gained self-awareness, she’d never been beaten up this badly.

"How do you feel?" Lu Wen still looked calm and serene, as if Gu Nan seizing the sand of time was just a trivial matter.

"I’m fine now," Long Ling'er replied with some lingering fear.

Whenever she recalled the earlier scene again, she felt like her stomach wasn’t stung by a bee, but bitten several times by a poisonous snake…

"But he snatched that item," Long Ling'er was still a little indignant when she thought about the sand of time.

"It doesn't matter." Lu Wen, however, just shook his head with a smile and didn’t elaborate further. Instead, he had Long Ling'er mull over the earlier battle.

"The Gu Nan who went there was just a clone who’s far less powerful than you, yet he was able to suppress you so completely that you couldn’t counterattack at all. Have you thought about why that is?"

Long Ling'er fell silent for a moment before answering, "I lack combat experience."

She knew this very well, and she even knew that if Gu Nan didn’t snatch the sand of time, perhaps she would’ve been its first user.

Lu Wen smiled. "Then go and work on what you’re lacking."

"Okay." Long Ling'er nodded and actually headed outside. Her figure soon vanished from this room, heading to an unknown plane.

After Long Ling'er left, another person walked out from behind Lu Wen. It was Duan Wenqi of Astral Gate.

As soon as Lu Wen saw him appear, he greeted him with a smile, "Someone from your Astral Gate stole my item. You must give me an explanation!"

Duan Wenqi was a representative of Astral Gate and also a famous Star Ruler. The Nine Heavens Dragon World he controlled was only one step away from ascending to a Realm Level plane.

What few people knew was that he and Lu Wen—one of the Thirteen Heavens—had been close friends since they were young and still were today.

Coupled with Lu Wen’s own easygoing personality, the two didn’t actually have a superior-subordinate relationship but instead got along as close friends.

Compared to Lu Wen, Duan Wenqi's personality was a bit more old-fashioned. He solemnly replied, "I will give you an explanation."

Lu Wen was taken aback, then patted Duan Wenqi’s shoulder helplessly. "No need to take it seriously. It’s fine to just give him the sand of time. We have more serious business to attend to."

"What is it?"

Lu Wen replied a light sigh, "It's time to teach the child to kill people."

……

Gu Nan's true body was sitting in the Evil God Temple inside the Divine Kingdom, playing with a grain of golden sand in his hand. This was the sand of time he snatched from Lou Wanying.

After leaving Tiluo World that day, the saint clone made several consecutive jumps between planes and finally lost the group of pursuers behind him.

After several more days of laying low to confirm that no one knew the clone’s location, Gu Nan’s main body finally went to that small plane to take the sand of time back with him.

As for the saint clone, he was still ordered to remain in the outside world—since the saint clone made contact with a major god-level existence, he can forget about ever entering the Divine Kingdom again.

Now that he acquired the sand of time, Gu Nan had no intention of waiting any longer and threw it into the Evil God Temple with a wave of his hand.

｢Blueprint detected—Time Arena. Begin construction?｣

The prompt from the Evil God Temple came as usual, and Gu Nan immediately confirmed construction. Soon, an exquisite mini arena was set up inside the Evil God Temple.

This arena was pitifully small, even smaller than the other structures in the Evil God Temple. The entire arena couldn’t even fit a single person.

However, Gu Nan knew that structures placed inside the Evil God Temple would be shrunk down like this.

If placed in the outside world, this Time Arena would probably be as big as a mountaintop, and the space inside would be far bigger.

The Time Arena was a Level 3 special structure, so it could naturally shrink the space inside it.

The function of the Time Arena was also very powerful; apostles could enter it and engage in nonstop simulated battles to hone their skills. The price was naturally the points that would be consumed.

And due to the nature of the structure itself, this training process would consume almost no time at all.

In other words, this was a place where players could spend money to feed apostles experience to level them up, but divine servants and the Divine Kingdom’s residents couldn’t use it. Not even Gu Nan himself could use it.

Apostles, divine servants, and the Divine Kingdom’s residents—these three types of living beings constituted the ecological system within the Divine Kingdom. The three categories also had their own corresponding Divine Kingdom structures, and there was rarely any mix-up.

‘The apostle system should also be further perfected,’ after acquiring the Time Arena, Gu Nan thought of this first.

The Evil God game in his past life boasted a high degree of realism, so apostles, beings whose roles were similar to that of “heroes,” naturally didn’t always remain loyal.

In addition to the "loyalty" attribute, there were other hidden factors.

For example, apostles like Guan Hongchen, Lei Qi, and Lei Ba were basically working for Gu Nan for free right now. Their reward was mostly resources produced inside the Divine Kingdom.

Although it wasn’t bad in terms of value, since they still couldn’t leave the Divine Kingdom, it was the same as having nowhere to use it. Moreover, most of these resources couldn’t be directly used for their own cultivation.

This model might be alright for a short period of time, but if this went on for hundreds or thousands of years, no apostle would be able to endure it.

This was also the problem Gu Nan needed to solve—how to manage the apostles.

Real gods wouldn’t encounter this situation, because their apostles were all fanatical followers who worshipped them. Let alone working for nothing, those apostles were even willing to offer their lives for their gods.

So as Evil Gods, while players abandoned the attribute of faith and enjoyed the convenience of being unfettered by it, they naturally also lost some of the benefits associated with faith.

But this naturally couldn’t stump players. After all, managing NPCs was much easier than managing players.

Red Tail was in White Bones Realm. Just as she finished helping the ascended Transcendent Realm fighters from Crescent Moon World settle down here, several messages suddenly popped into her mind.

｢Rebuild White Mist. Gained 300 Divine Kingdom contribution points｣

｢Assist in the ascension of Crescent Moon World’s martial artists. Gained 50 Divine Kingdom contribution points｣

｢……｣

There were nearly a dozen messages in total that actually listed out all the things Red Tail had done recently. Each of them was marked with the corresponding contribution point.

Of course it wasn’t all gains. For example, her act of requesting help consumed some contribution points, but of course the amount was far less than her reward for establishing White Mist.

"This is…” Red Tail read through the messages and instantly understood.

She knew that Gu Nan planned to manage them—the apostles—through this method.

Red Tail had managed a reincarnator organization for many years and was no stranger to this model. In fact, many people could do something like this, but the key was what one could buy with contribution points.

As long as the potential benefits were tempting enough, any method could be used to get people to work.

‘I must go back and take a look when I have time,’ Red Tail thought.

She originally didn’t plan to rush back. The people from Crescent Moon World had just come to this plane. Although they were settled in, she still needed to remain here and supervise things.

But the next second, a figure in blue appeared before her. It was none other than Lan Si.

"I've come to take you back to the Divine Kingdom."