Cthulhu Gonfalon

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

Satan coming out of seclusion was indeed because he'd already cultivated himself to the peak of the Legendary Realm.

In theory, the Legendary Realm was without limits; even if there was no way to become a demigod, you could still grow stronger at an unceasing pace, continuously becoming more and more powerful.

Such Legendary Masters had existed back in relatively more savage, ancient times. Their formidable level was such that it was even enough to shock the gods—forget weak Divine Power, even if you had low-level Divine Powers, it wouldn't necessarily be enough to compete with them.

But legendary was still legendary. If you hadn't truly completed your life's transformation, that meant you hadn't escaped the river of time and had ignored the ability available to you as it passed you by. Following the passage of time, these impossibly powerful Legendary Masters were ultimately unable to defeat time itself, each of them growing older and dying instead.

As far as Sui Xiong knew, there were no longer any Legendary Masters of this sort existing on this earth.

This wasn't to say that the ancients surpassed modern people. In today's world, once Legendary Masters reached the legendary peak, they'd generally begin pursuit of the demigod realm, thus attempting to defeat time by obtaining immortality.

Satan was no different.

Him coming out of seclusion this time came with the intention of beginning his large-scale purification of the Ashes Woods. He would use this accomplishment to validate "purification," and get himself approval from the World's Origin. This would allow his soul to ascend and get that much closer to becoming a demigod.

In certain schools of thought, this was called "igniting the holy flame" because at the moment your soul ascended, your entire body would be covered in bright flames as if you'd been set aflame.

Originally, Sui Xiong had expressed that he had some knowledge of Purification and was willing to share a little divinity with him. By directly swallowing this piece of divinity, he would be able to start his soul's ascension. But Satan insisted that he wished to rely on his own ability to receive the world's response and obtain that ascension on his own.

This would obviously be much more difficult than ascending through Sui Xiong's Purification divinity, but you get what you pay for. Relying on the world's response to activate your spirit's ascension would give birth to the best-suited divinity for that person. There would be no need to slowly meditate and revise the divinity you had received, and achieving godhood would also be much easier in the future.

Because the world had responded to you, this signified that the Origin had already prepared a share for you. Afterwards, you simply needed to accumulate enough belief or reach an appropriate level of strength. Once you decided to put this share to use, turning it into a chair within the Pantheon temple wouldn't be too difficult to do.

By comparison, if one were to ascend through someone else's divinity, that person would not have received the world's response or approval, and they would have to put in effort to acquire a share. When pursuing godhood, the difficulty would also be much higher than it was for those who had already received their own share. It was to a point where you could say that they were on entirely different levels.

So Sui Xiong never brought up giving Leon divinity because he wanted him to be able to find his own path to obtaining a share from the origin, therefore giving him hope towards obtaining godhood.

But Satan normally didn't require such prudence. No one to date had obtained the Purification clergy, so even if there wasn't just the one portion, the origin of this particular aspect should have quite a lot to spare. Even if he didn't obtain it when his soul ascended, it wouldn't be difficult to do so in the future.

Sui Xiong and Satan had discussed this in detail before. Satan stressed that since he had the chance to monopolize an entire clergy for himself, why wouldn't he try to do just that? If he could obtain the world's response and have his soul ascend through igniting the spiritual flame. In that moment, he would be able to know whether or not he had any rivals. It was best if he didn't, of course, and if he did… hehe, well some things were better off left unsaid.

Sui Xiong was convinced by his words. A god with an entire clergy to himself was certainly nothing an average god could compare to. Wall, for example, had gained full control over the clergy of Knowledge. Even though gods from many god systems gained enlightenment, concentrating all their efforts on this domain, they were unable to take even a sliver of that clergy. If they reached a crucial moment, he even had the ability to temporarily seal off the entire Knowledge domain from others.

Similarly, Arcaian dominated the clergy of Medicine and had the same power.

But another one of Sui Xiong's followers, the God of Healing, named Three Nothingness, was a different matter. Although the God of Healing had once had full control over the Healing clergy, he was unluckily harmed by the previous era's Sun God and got turned into a Love Angel. In the endless years following that, although the Love Angel's existence prevented anyone from being able to take his place over the Healing clergy, many of the gods cut corners and divided up a portion of it. Now, pretty much all the bigger god systems included gods who possessed the Healing clergy. He'd managed to regain a new life with Sui Xiong's help, and he obtained a large portion of the Healing origin all at once. But even still, after all was said and done, he still didn't have the sort of imperiousness one could get from total domination over a clergy.

Now, all he could do was partition the healing abilities of those gods who held the domain but not the clergy. He was entirely unable to do anything to those who also held sway over a portion of the clergy.

If Sui Xiong started a war with other god systems, his followers would be able to directly absorb the Knowledge and Medicine powers of both the opponents and their believers. Though, there weren't quite as many actions available to them in regards to Healing.

So for this benefit, finding out early whether or not Satan had any rivals was very important.

Satan exchanged a few general greetings with everyone then gave his long-separated student, Nice some homework—a new magical research topic—before beginning to speak on proper business.

"I plan to construct another large-scale purification array," he said. "The plan is split it into two steps: first, we build purification arrays for the border villages as well; second, using all of these purification arrays as nodes, we create a gigantic array that includes all of the frontier areas within it."

Everyone couldn't help exclaiming in admiration at the thought of his tremendous plan. Only Madame Teague, the great governor in charge of civil administration, turned pale.

"This would take far too many resources!" she promptly opposed. "At present, we are unable to bear the burden of undertaking such a large-scale project!"

Sui Xiong stared blankly at her, asking, "Are we lacking in money now?"

"Money isn't the problem." Madame Teague realized she'd forgotten herself in the heat of the moment, and hurried to explain, "We have no shortage of money. But to construct this many purification arrays, especially that last super-giant purification array, would consume a great amount of manpower. Furthermore, constructing magic arrays requires a lot of resources, and those which we have stored are not sufficient for such a plan. If you insist on starting as soon as possible, not only will this slow down construction across the entire country, there is also the possibility of you finding yourself in the awkward situation of having run out of resources with a project over half-done."

It was only then that everyone finally understood; they couldn't help but furrow their brows at this revelation.

Insufficient manpower had always been the greatest problem which the Republic of Northwest had to face. Even if they went as far as using skeleton laborers, their population was still far from enough, and many of their construction operations were stuck in that same awkward situation due to a lack of manpower.

Mage Satan's plan was certainly tremendous and grand, and it would bring them immense profit once completed. But with the current state of the Republic of Northwest, where were they going to get the people to build so many magic arrays?

While the lack of resources wasn't as large a problem as the lack of manpower, it was still not one they could ignore.

Hearing Madame Teague's explanation, Mage Satan creased his brows, asking, "Can you really not transfer staff for this? By my estimation, we only need around 1000 people for it."

Madame Teague's eyes widened, staring at him as if she were looking at a madman. "One thousand people!? We can't even transfer 100, let alone 1000… Where am I supposed to find that many people for you!"

"We have skeleton laborers don't we, just get the necromancer to summon another batch," Steele said lazily. He continued, "In any case, as far as he's concerned, it should only take two or three days."

When he said this, Mage Satan let out a sigh, whereas Nice couldn't resist laughing out loud. "Aunt Steele, we're talking about constructing purification arrays! If skeletons went there, wouldn't they get purified straightaway just by touching the materials?"

At this reminder, Steele couldn't help laughing as well.

Really? Letting skeletons construct purification arrays? That was even more unreasonable than beating a dog with a meat bun!