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God Dao Style has long contemplated its partner, discussing countless nights together, with Chen Qing remembering many details despite living through two lifetimes.

To enhance the playability and difficulty of this school of thought, both of them racked their brains.

Of course, this also made the difficulty nearly impossible for players to engage with.

And eighty percent of that difficulty lay in the first wave of divine edicts.

The first wave of divine edicts in God Dao Style is very particular and must adapt to the local conditions.

Because the power of a divine edict is a one-time use item, once it’s used up, it’s gone from the official seal unless you’re reassigned elsewhere as an official, just like stored energy water.

So how do you restore the power of a divine edict to an official seal?

That requires the deities you have decreed to function!

The role of deities is to attract belief.

To do this, you need to accumulate virtue and perform your proper role, so that the people around will worship them, and the more belief they gather, the more powerful the deities’ divine power will become.

As a result, they will both feedback strength to the master of the edict and replenish the divine power of the official seal.

This is the basic system of God Dao Style!

So how do you make the common people believe in the deities you decree?

This is also the first challenge of God Dao Style…

Many players didn’t understand this and simply used their official seals to decree the strongest deities they could manage, such as the Hell City God, Demon-Purging True Lord, or Wind and Thunder Divine Generals, all with no use.

After all, for a civilian official without military command, what use are these deities of the War God system to you?

Before long, with weakened divine power, they couldn’t even pick up a sword.

Then there are the players who at the start would decree deities like the Hell City God, Mountain God, River God, and the like, which seem functional, but their effects are very dependent on the environment.

Take the City God, for example, who governs the city’s underworld, can eradicate resentment, promote good and punish evil, prevent the emergence of new evil ghosts, and grant the city’s deceased an afterlife with spiritual bodies capable of visiting dreams, instilling greater reverence and belief in the underworld.

All the clan temples of great families would also become more venerated due to the presence of the underworld and, over time, everyone would believe in the afterlife’s cause and effect, where accumulating virtue and performing good deeds could extend their afterlife.

This strengthens belief in the City God, whose power increases as belief does, perfecting the underworld system.

A positive cycle begins, with endless returns.

While it seems wonderful, it’s not suitable for beginners.

The City God starts with weak divine power and builds a very basic underworld system.

Ensuring extended afterlife and the ability to visit dreams takes a long growth period, requiring a solid base of public belief from the start.

It belongs to a type of deity that requires development, and it’s highly discouraged for beginners.

Many who chose it as their first decree ended up failing.

Then there are the Mountain and River Gods.

These deities are close to nature and are more capable of show miracles that benefit humans and thereby gain belief.

However, it also depends on the location and situation.

For example, in a river where water rushes and floods due to inadequate waterworks, frequent breaches cause flood disasters.

If you decree a River God with initially low divine power that cannot prevent floods, why would the people believe in you?

What about choosing a gentle river, then?

Here comes the issue.

If people have fished and irrigated with this river for generations and have thrived, why would they feel indebted to you for using some divine power to give them a better harvest this year?

You say it was you, but who will believe it was your doing?

Managing belief is not that simple; it requires seizing the right moment and adapting to the local situation.

If you make one wrong move, the deity you’ve decreed can become useless, or even backfire on you as a monstrous being, so you must be extremely cautious!

Because he understands the mechanism designed by his partner so well, Chen Qing decided his first decree in Lyuzhou should be to a deity of low godhood, the Gate Deity!

The Gate Deity might seem low in status and with a single function, but when used effectively, it can be one of the deities with the quickest return on investment.

However, not a single player from his past life could see this…

And the current situation in Lyuzhou is most suited for the Gate Deity to excel!

“Daddy, there’s one ahead…”

The Ghost Doll pointed excitedly ahead, and Chen Qing followed the direction pointed to for quite some time.

With above-average night vision due to his mother making sure he had good meals since childhood, it still took him a while to find what the Ghost Doll mentioned.

Seeing that Chen Qing hadn’t noticed, the Ghost Doll hopped over and delivered a kick.

With a thunderous boom, a howl of agony followed, and Chen Qing saw a massive stone roll away dozens of meters, writhing and pleading for mercy.

“Mercy, my lord, I beg for mercy!”

As Chen Qing approached, he could clearly see that what the Ghost Doll had kicked was not a stone at all but a mountain turtle with a weathered shell.

“You can speak our tongue, how old might you be?”

“A human?”

“Daddy’s talking to you!” the Ghost Doll stepped forward, hands on hips.

“Keep talking nonsense without answering, and see if I don’t eat you up.”

The mountain turtle, terrified, immediately retracted its head and hurriedly said, “To inform my lord, I am nearly two hundred years old.

Thanks to my lord’s power over these years, the sparsely populated Daqing Mountain has allowed me to live this long.

If my lord wishes to eat me, it would be my honor, grateful for your many years of protection.”

Ghost Doll: “…..”

When had they ever cared for him?

This turtle sure had a way with words…

Ghost Doll stifled a smug smile, looking up at the sky with a cute yet haughty expression, except the majestic something below was a bit of an eyesore.

Chen Qing looked at the mountain turtle and asked, “Have you ever eaten people?”

“No, no!” The mountain turtle shook its head repeatedly: “My mother was killed by humans who feared her because she was too huge.

I was small at the time and frightened, swimming all the way to this location on Daqing Mountain.

For many years, I have been eating only fruits, lacking strength in my body, too slow to even catch the stupid fish now, let alone people.”

“As you can see, Senior, with my current body, I get tired just walking a few steps.

If it weren’t for these wild fruits on the trees that no other beasts compete for, which fall down when ripe, I might have starved to death by now.”

“Uh…”

Chen Qing rolled his eyes upon hearing this and scrutinized the other party with a fire starter, wondering if he had really designed such a pathetic demon.

He had designed not a few turtle-like demons, but they were all quite fierce; how could it be as pitiful as this one?

After looking for a long time, Chen Qing couldn’t recognize what breed it was, so he couldn’t help but ask, “What species are you?”

The other party was stunned, then shook its head: “I…

I’m not sure either, but my mother said my father was the infamous Red Dragon Turtle, who ate no less than a thousand people in the Jiangnan Waterway and was later killed by a Human Martial Warrior.”

“Scared by what happened to my father, my mother took my siblings and me to hide in the wilderness, but still, she was killed…”

Chen Qing was stunned.

Red Dragon Turtle?

What breed was that?

He had never heard of it before.

Those turtle breeds with the word ‘dragon’ he had designed seemed to be just one type, definitely not this Red Dragon Turtle.

Could it be some hybrid over the years?

That makes sense.

His designed dynasty was probably a thousand years old by now; it wouldn’t be strange for low-level demons that couldn’t reincarnate to evolve into something else.

So he nodded and said, “In your current state, you probably won’t live much longer.

Are you planning to wait for death in this mountain, or do you want to go out and see the wonderful world outside?”

“Go outside?”

“Yeah.

According to you, ever since your mother died, you’ve been holed up in this mountain, living off overripe wild fruits from the trees.

What’s so great about that kind of life?

Come out and take a look, the world is vast and more wonderful than you can imagine!”

“I…

I think I want to wait for death in the mountain…”

“Is that so?

Then I’ll grant your wish,” Chen Qing’s eyes turned cold: “Nezha, kill him!”

“Wait, wait, wait a minute!” The mountain turtle hurriedly retracted its head: “I think the Senior is right, the outside world is so fascinating, it would truly be a waste of a turtle’s life not to go out and take a look!”

“Hmm, that’s more like it.” Chen Qing looked at Ghost Doll with a smile: “Let’s go, Nezha, take Daddy to find the next one…”

————————————————–

On the third day of Chen Qing’s arrival in Lyuzhou, that group of dawdling scholars, who tried to delay as much time as possible, were finally brought over by force.

More than a hundred scholars came to Jiangnan in a grand procession and, on the fourth morning under the escort of soldiers arranged by the Provincial Governor, finally arrived in Lyuzhou City.

“Brother Lyu, look, it’s just like the rumors, Lyuzhou now is hardly different from a ghost town!”

The speaker was a short, plump scholar.

The person addressed as Brother Lyu was tall and sturdy with a square face, but given his age—he was over thirty—it was not unusual.

Even though Great Jin lacked officials, the scrutiny for Imperial Scholars was very strict, and it was not uncommon for people to become scholars in their thirties and forties.

And if Chen Qing were present, he would undoubtedly recognize that this middle-aged man surnamed Lyu was none other than Lyu Yiqi, who had previously gathered them for a meal at Mingyue Tower.

“This situation is worse than I imagined…” Lyu Yiqi frowned and sighed, “It was good news that Chen Qing got promoted several ranks at once, but taking over this mess in Lyuzhou, it’s going to be tough…”

This seemingly concerned tone for a friend, upon closer observation, was laced with schadenfreude.

But it was understandable; he and Wang Ye had been utterly suppressed by their peers in their time, and now he was still being overshadowed by a younger man.

Was there any face left to save?

This Chen Qing, who could only afford to live in the Confucian Temple, if he hadn’t been moved by his difficult quest for learning and given him some tips, could he have grasped the tail of the second best scholar?

And now, God knows by what means he bewitched the king and jumped to a Fourth Rank all at once.

Young as he was, he had not learned anything good, but he had thoroughly learned the ways of a sycophant; it was indeed a waste of all the hard work he had put into teaching him back then.

Getting such a mess now was self-inflicted!

The scholars at the front of the procession, especially the top-ranked scholars of the recent examination, felt a bit better upon hearing this.

As top scholars of their class, they were originally supposed to stay in the capital to join Hanlin Academy.

But with the mess in Lyuzhou, they had to take up local official posts instead.

Being assigned to a local post was one thing, but why should they, especially this top scholar, be a mere Administrative Commissioner, while Chen Qing who barely made second place became the Magistrate of Lyuzhou?

The moment he thought of that, Gu Beiquan, the top scholar, felt aggrieved.

Now, with Lyuzhou in such a state, it was more than a mess; it was a huge pit.

If handled poorly, there was a risk of carrying the blame.

Chen Qing, as the chief official of the prefecture, would definitely bear the main responsibility if things went awry.

Being the Magistrate wasn’t so easy after all, was it?

With this in mind, the mood of most scholars greatly improved.

After all, people do not mind hardships, as long as they see others are worse off.

Happiness is always relative…