"Elder Jin gave a cold snort, his voice deep. "Since you've made your stance clear, I'll show some mercy and answer you."
"After all, the ancestral teaching of Daxia is to wish others well."
"Our purpose in drafting troops is indeed to prepare for war, but not to wage war against any nation.""
Suddenly.
All the ambassadors, along with domestic and international citizens watching the live stream, widened their eyes in confusion.
Preparing for war.
Yet, not waging war against any nation?
What was that supposed to mean?
On foreign websites, international netizens were frantically refreshing the screen.
"Is Daxia planning to fight aliens?"
"What on earth is going on in Daxia? They draft fifty million troops, and yet they're not preparing to fight other countries?"
"Seriously, a draft of fifty million is enough to deal with any country. What on earth are they planning to do? Is there an enemy even more terrifying than other countries?"
"If they're not preparing to fight other nations, why is Daxia making such a huge fuss?"
Daxia's internet was practically exploding.
"We need an explanation!"
"Even if I don't get it, something huge is definitely about to happen!"
"Begging Elder Jin to explain! If it's not other countries, who on earth is our enemy?"
Inside the conference hall,
Ambassador Songquan stood up with a complicated expression. "Then can you tell us who exactly... Daxia is preparing to make an enemy of?"
"Heh."
Elder Jin chuckled. "Even if you didn't ask, I was going to tell you."
"Taking this opportunity, Daxia wishes to inform all citizens of the reason for the draft, so they understand the situation we now face. Out of kindness, we also wish to warn other nations."
"Ladies and gentlemen."
"The gods are about to descend! Just three months from now!"
"Our enemy is not any nation."
"It is the gods!"
Chapter 18: Ladies and gentlemen, please lend me your strength!
As soon as those words were spoken,
The foreign ambassadors present were completely dumbfounded.
And the netizens at home and abroad watching the live stream, as well as the national leaders of various countries, were equally dumbfounded.
The gods?!
This was not an unfamiliar word to anyone.
Religious stories were, after all, stories of gods.
What were gods?
In those stories, they were beings possessed of Divine Power, capable of manifesting miracles, practically omnipotent!
Yet...
It was precisely because they knew the meaning of gods that they found this so absurd!
How could gods possibly exist in reality?
Furthermore, Daxia was actually planning to wage war against those legendary, fictional entities?
"Are you joking?"
Kameda Country ambassador Songquan wore a look of utter disbelief. "Although our Kameda Country has the protection of Izanami, we all know that in the real world, these gods don't exist at all... Talking about the gods descending in three months is just too ridiculous!"
Elder Jin sighed.
"I regret to inform you."
"The gods truly exist."
"I am not using hyperbole or metaphor; the gods I speak of are the very gods you know of."
"And the gods are about to invade Blue Star."
"When the gods descend in three months, it will be a slaughter."
"I say this here, on the one hand, to ensure the people of Daxia are informed of our situation, and on the other hand, out of a spirit of goodwill, to inform you as well."
"After all, while there may be friction between us, we are fellow human beings. In the face of the gods' invasion, we must cast aside old grudges and unite."
Elder Jin's gaze was earnest.
Even though the foreign ambassadors before him, and the countries they represented, had mostly bullied Daxia in the past and held a deep, bloody feud with them,
The people of Daxia had always been magnanimous.
Now that the gods were descending, humanity needed to set aside all internal conflicts and unite!
Those past humiliations would certainly be settled in time, but as part of the human race, Daxia felt compelled to warn them.
Only thus could humanity go further amidst the invasion of the gods.
This was the spiritual height of the Daxia people.
However,
"Ha! Are you all in Daxia this humorous... always blabbering about gods? Do you have proof?" Songquan sneered.
Elder Jin glanced at him, too lazy to say another word, and expressionlessly stepped down from the podium.
Chen Yan, the chief scientist of the Supreme Command Center, hurried up and said in a deep voice, "Of course we have proof. Allow me to play a video for everyone first, and then I will present an object."
The projection behind him began to play.
The deep sea.
White Bone.
Bones the size of a giant!
In the darkness of the deep sea, a pair of hollow eye sockets stared at everyone, instilling a profound sense of insignificance in all who watched.
This was a condescension at the level of life itself!
For a moment, everyone present felt their scalps tingle.
Even the audience watching the live stream were so shaken by the scene they could barely control themselves.
"OMG, what is that? A mythological giant?"
"Inbelievable... something like that exists under the ocean? Suddenly I'm kind of terrified of the ocean."
"Just standing there, it makes me want to submit. Is this what a god is?"
"A skeleton... meaning this creature actually existed once?"
"If something like this were alive, we probably wouldn't even have the courage to look it in the eye. Just seeing its bones gives me a sense of human insignificance."
"This is the corpse of a god we discovered," Chen Yan said in a low voice. "They have reached this world before, and now we can confirm that more gods will appear in succession three months from now!"
"And this,"
Chen Yan held up a white bone fragment with a solemn expression, "This is a bone sample we retrieved from the deep sea. After analysis..."
"Hahahahaha!" Ambassador Songquan suddenly burst out laughing. "You Daxia people really are humorous. You bring out some special effects clip, and then some scrap of bone from God knows where, and claim the gods are descending!"
"I watched a movie yesterday; is Thanos about to arrive too?"
"And this so-called divine bone of yours—hahaha, Freedom Country's washing powder trick was used ages ago!"
"A farce! This is all a farce!"
Ambassador Songquan stood up once more, sneering, "Gentlemen, we can leave now."
"It seems Daxia is just a bunch of delusional lunatics. Are we really expected to listen to them ramming on about nonsense like gods?"
With that, Ambassador Songquan turned on his heel and strode haughtily out of the press conference.
Ambassadors from other countries followed suit, leaving one after another.
Seeing this,
Chen Yan said nothing.
He merely sighed, looking somewhat regretful. "You can't carve rotten wood!"
Elder Jin beside him snorted. "We kindly and with good intentions warned them, but if they're rushing to their deaths, there's no stopping them."
Elder Jin turned his head, wanting to see Lin Fan's reaction.
Only to discover that Lin Fan had already slipped away at some point.
At that moment,
Lin Fan was sitting in the conference room of the Supreme Command Center, looking at the dozen or so people seated before him.
Those dozen people varied greatly in age; the oldest was in their fifties, while the youngest was merely in their teens. There were men and women among them, and their temperaments were entirely different.
National Chairman slowly spoke from the side, "These are the people you asked for. To be honest, I'm rather reluctant to give them to you."
"They are the treasures of Daxia."
"Treat them well. Let them unleash their utmost potential in the God-Slaying Army!"
With that, National Chairman patted Lin Fan on the shoulder and walked out the door under the escort of two middle-aged men.
Lin Fan looked at the figures before him in silence.
These individuals were all regarded by the Daxia military as precious jewels—hidden practitioners of ancient martial arts!
Behind each of them stood a genuine ancient martial arts family.
These weren't the fraudulent, flashy martial arts scams you see on TV, but real martial arts born for battle!
Lin Fan knew all too well that as the gods descended and the aura of the God Realm seeped into Blue Star, these individuals' strengths would advance by leaps and bounds.
In the subsequent wars between gods and demons, these people would all become renowned powerhouses among humanity!
Some of them would even become God-Slayers who accomplished the feat of killing gods!
The burly man sitting in the front had a rugged face, thick knuckles on both fists, and a heavily muscled, imposing physique. He was clearly a practitioner of external styles.
"Xingyi Sect, Wang Hu."
The twenty-seven or eight-year-old man dressed in scholarly robes had gentle features, a faint smile at the corners of his mouth, and an unmistakable scholarly aura about him.
"Confucian scholar, Mo Buzhi."
Behind him, an old man in Daoist robes holding a horsetail whisk sat with his eyes closed, the aura around his body faintly warping.
"Daoist Sect Master, Dao Wanqian."
A middle-aged monk sat quietly to one side, showing neither joy nor sorrow, telling his prayer beads and chanting in a low voice, a faint golden light shimmering upon the beads.
"Buddhist Sect Resplendent Buddha, Master Beimin."
Yet what caught Lin Fan's attention even more
were the two people sitting in the corner.
One had a small wooden bird circling and flying around them. The bird was astonishingly lifelike, occasionally landing on a shoulder, occasionally letting out a crisp chirp.
Mo Sect, Gongshu Ming.
A descendant of Gongshu Ban, the sole surviving heir of the Lu Ban lineage!
The other was a young girl clad in form-fitting night attire. Her delicate face was obscured by a piece of black cloth, giving her an aura of extraordinary mystery, but her graceful figure and bright, alert eyes revealed her to be a beauty.
The girl leaned lazily back in her chair, her hands cradling a slender Tang dao, her dark ponytail swaying gently.
The outfit somewhat resembled that of Kameda Country's ninjas, but in truth, her sect was the ancestral forebear of those very ninjas.
"Mo Sect Hidden Starfall Style, Xingye."
"Ladies and gentlemen," Lin Fan swept his gaze across them one by one, smiling, "I presume National Chairman has already informed you of my identity and why I called you here."
"Soon, the gods will descend."
"We not only need to build the Steel Great Wall to protect our people, not only need a massive military draft to defend our territory."
"What we need even more is a sharp blade to pierce fiercely into the hearts of those gods!"
"And since you, as extraordinary individuals hidden away in the secular world, possess strength far surpassing ordinary people, therefore..."
"I ask you all to lend me your strength, join the God-Slaying Army, fight against the gods, and save Daxia!"
Lin Fan suddenly stood up and, facing the dozen or so people before him, bowed ninety degrees at the waist!
Chapter 19: Iron conducts electricity
However,
to Lin Fan's surprise,
the earth-shattering wave of enthusiastic response he had imagined completely failed to materialize.
There was no deafening applause or cheering whatsoever.
The room fell into absolute silence.
The dozen people before him continued attending to their own business. The middle-aged monk went right back to turning his beads and chanting; the Confucian scholar Mo Buzhi continued flipping through the pages of his book.
The burly middle-aged man, Wang Hu, slumped over the table as before, fast asleep and even letting out a soft snore.
Gongshu Ming stroked the wooden bird perched on his shoulder.
"Ah~"
The girl in tight black clothes, Xingye, stretched and let out a yawn, looking utterly listless.
For a moment, it was Lin Fan who found himself dumbfounded.
"You guys... this is your reaction?"
"Mhm." Xingye, the spirited young woman, seemed deliberately trying to tick Lin Fan off as she raised her head to look at him, answering flatly, "What else?"
"At least... give me some kind of reaction!" Lin Fan felt his composure nearly cracking; their reactions were completely different from what he had imagined!
One had to know,
in his past life, when Lin Fan came to know these people, every single one of them had been filled with burning passion, ready to lay down their lives for Daxia without hesitation!
This very Xingye had been the first Daxia Guardian God to fall in battle!
Lin Fan still remembered how this young woman had stood tall, gripping her blade despite severe injuries, facing the lofty God of the Dark Moon.
That defiant roar of a heroine—"Had you given me another five years, how could even a god dare step half a step into Daxia!"—and her figure darting like a speck of starlight into the night sky.
That battle came to be known as the Battle of Stars and Moon.
And it was in that battle that the Mo Sect Hidden Starfall Style, which had passed down through Daxia for a thousand years, was completely wiped out.
That night, the stars fell.
Ever since then, Daxia's skies never again shone with countless twinkling stars; only a bleak, desolate red moon hung in the heavens, like the silent mockery of the gods.
Back then, everyone in this room had been so full of fire! Eager to fight the gods tooth and nail!
So why were they showing not a shred of fighting spirit now?
Suppressing the anger rising in his chest, Lin Fan took a deep breath and said in a deep voice, "Perhaps you don't realize yet, three months from n—"
"Three months from now, the gods descend. Alright, alright, we've heard all of this," Xingye interrupted, resting one leg on the table and replying coldly, "When National Chairman brought us here, he practically talked our ears off until they grew calluses."
Lin Fan paused slightly. "Then, since you know, why are you..."
"Why aren't we fired up?!" The burly man who had been fake-sleeping and snoring moments ago, Wang Hu of the Xingyi Sect, abruptly snapped his eyes open, stared straight at Lin Fan, and bellowed with booming resonance, "Then can you tell us what the descent of gods has to do with people like us?"
"You tell us, how are we supposed to deal with gods?"
"With these iron fists?!" Wang Hu slammed a fist the size of a sandbag onto the table.
*Bang!*
A dull thud echoed.
Yet the table didn't shatter like it did in television shows; it merely vibrated once and then went completely still.
"You'd be better off explaining to me why, after practicing Xingyi boxing for thirty years, I'm now losing to people who've never learned a day of martial arts in their lives, simply because they suddenly put on knuckle-dusters bought from some online store?"
Wang Hu pointed at the completely unblemished solid red-wood table and shouted.
"So, how are we supposed to fight the gods? Are we supposed to rely on this?" Wang Hu's face was twisted in frustration.
Nearby, the old Daoist Dao Wanqian gave a cough, glanced at Wang Hu, and signaled with his eyes for him to sit back down.
Only then did Wang Hu pout and sit down. Though he was still harboring resentment, it was clear he held a considerable degree of respect for the old Daoist.
"Young friend," Dao Wanqian stroked his beard with one hand, looking at Lin Fan with a complex expression, "Take no offense. Wang Hu harbors no malicious intent; he has simply practiced external martial arts for many years without the methods of mental and spiritual cultivation, so his temper is bound to be somewhat fiery."
"Mhm." Lin Fan nodded. "Do you have any insights to share, Elder?"
"Insights would be too grand a word," Dao Wanqian sighed. "It's just as Wang Hu said."
"Though we people are all inheritors of Daxia's martial arts and can be considered somewhat stronger than ordinary people,"
"Martial arts are, after all, just martial arts. Granted, I admit martial arts are indeed skills meant for killing. But they aren't the metaphysical wonders you see on TV nowadays—leaping over roofs, bounding through the air."
"Times have changed."
"Just as Wang Hu said, he practiced the Iron Tiger Claws for thirty years, diligently rising at the crack of dawn, never slacking off day after day."
"A single punch of his can shatter a stack of bricks."
"In the past, he could indeed have been called a master."
"But nowadays... any random youngster can buy knuckle-dusters from an online shop, without ever needing to train, and shatter a stack of bricks with a single punch just as easily—their punch might even be harder than Wang Hu's!"
"This old man once diligently practiced lightness kung fu, and back in my youth, I could achieve what the ancients called covering eight hundred li in a single day. But... have you ever heard of high-speed rail?"
The old man's face was filled with a sense of wistful irony.
Lin Fan: "..."
Dao Wanqian fell silent for a moment, then turned his gaze toward Xingye and continued, "This young girl's Starfall Slash is nothing short of miraculous, and her Mo Sect movement technique has truly mastered the profound legacy. When unleashed, her form is as elusive as ink."
"Within the realm of martial arts, she has pushed both speed and explosive power to the absolute limits of human capability. She can take a man's head from within ten paces—the man's head would still be blinking after it fell off, completely unaware he had been decapitated."
"However."
"It is only ten paces."
"Do you know what the range of modern firearms is? With a sniper rifle, you can take a head from a thousand meters away in the blink of an eye. If you deploy precision-guided missiles... well, well, that truly is deciding a battle a thousand miles away."
At this point, the old man glanced over at Master Beimin, who was still sitting with his eyes closed and chanting, and added in a low voice, "This Master Beimin here has it even worse. Do you see that solid iron subjugation staff beside him? His subjugation staff technique was once capable of splitting mountains and cleaving rocks."
"Back in the old days, that would have been a supreme weapon for subduing demons and eradicating monsters."
"But a few days ago, a young guy who exposes fake martial artists challenged him to a one-on-one duel. Before the Master even threw a single blow, he was already lying on the ground howling in agony."
As soon as those words were spoken,
Master Beimin, who had previously worn an expression of utter detachment from worldly affairs, abruptly stopped chanting.
The fingers twisting his prayer beads tightened perceptibly, his knuckles popping audibly.
Opening his eyes, Master Beimin said expressionlessly, "That young man... knew not a shred of martial arts. Under normal combat conditions, he would be no match for me."
"The Master must have been upholding the compassion of the Buddha and therefore unwilling to inflict severe injury!" Lin Fan hastily brought his hands together in a salute. "Buddha is merciful, and the Master's compassionate heart—truly benevolent and virtuous."
Yet,
faced with Lin Fan's praise, not a hint of a smile appeared on the Master's face.
After a long silence, Master Beimin sighed and scratched his bald head. "Actually... it was mostly because that fellow didn't play by the rules of martial arts. We agreed to compare staff techniques—I was using a solid iron subjugation staff, and that fellow actually used... an electric baton!"
"Amitabha."
"The tricks in this world run deep; temple life is still the best."
Recalling how he had been left convulsing and twitching on the ground by electricity before he could even throw a punch, Master Beimin uttered a low chant of the Buddha's name.
That day,
Master Beimin, who had always ignored worldly affairs, learned a fundamental lesson in modern physics that the Buddha had never taught:
Iron conducts electricity.
By the same token,
A staff made of iron also conducts electricity.
Chapter 20: You have no idea how powerful you truly are
Recalling the experience of that day,
infinite compassion filled Master Beimin's eyes.
In his youth, when he had bitterly trained in Buddhist martial arts, he had once fantasized that perhaps one day he would encounter a formidable rival.
That rival would stand eight feet tall, broad-shouldered and thick-waisted, with a mastery of martial arts and wielding a staff even heavier and thicker than his own solid iron subjugation staff, beating him to the ground with profound martial prowess.
Yet back then, Master Beimin had never imagined
that one day he would truly encounter a formidable rival,
and that rival would possess not a shred of martial arts.
Only a tiny, delicate, seemingly harmless baton that flickered with electric sparks and crackled loudly.
"My defeat to him was not a defeat to his martial arts, but a defeat to the times."
"Amitabha."
Master Beimin sighed, once more rolling his beads and chanting.
It seemed only thus could he dilute the grievance festering in his heart.