Huh? Isn't this an adventure kingdom building game?!-Chapter 86 "River God

Jiang Yuan thought it over and realized something wasn’t right. While chatting he had consulted the Yin Mountain Corpse, and she claimed to widely recruit believers as the Yin Mountain Lady with good reason.

She practiced a cultivation technique that could forge statues into temporary magical artifacts, then hand them over to believers for worship. While collecting incense offerings, she would release the cultivation energy in a certain range through the statue "avatars" to protect the believers.

Because the cultivation level of the Yin Mountain Corpse was relatively high, someone like Ji Xiuxiang, who was among the worshippers, could also borrow her power within a certain range.

It’s as if she opened a branch here, and when the wilderness descended, the energy stored in the statue would be released to effectively repel the invasion.

Jiang Yuan pondered, I don’t have similar skills. Even if I establish ties with believers, get summoned, and act mysteriously, I can’t provide protection!

Moreover, after he put the incense sticks indoors to dry, he really found a gray believer symbol on the interpersonal relationship page, just don’t know how to activate it. After thinking it over again, he felt he probably needed to do side missions or acquire certain skills afterwards to open the channel to widely recruit believers.

"The Divine Statue in Riverfront Village was broken and useless, they need to re-consecrate it. Seems like they’re preparing enough materials to begin the ritual, which is actually good; at least they won’t worry about demon beasts causing trouble at night." He ignored the prompt and sighed, then continued to busy himself with upgrading his incense making skills, no longer paying attention to the situation at Riverfront Village.

The fierce wind arose and dark clouds gathered, with the spell transmitted far in sound waves unheard by ordinary people.

"Who’s murmuring, disturbing my dreams?"

A river meandered past fields and villages, finally converging into an expansive, deep lake at the southeastern side of the village, with water flowing into the lake continuously forming a spectacular waterfall on the eastern end.

Deep at the lake, a colossal creature slowly awoke, quietly listening to the message transmitted by the ancient spell. Humans were willing to go to any lengths for protection!

"At any cost?" It blinked, its blood-red vertical pupils rapidly swirling, released a giant water bubble, its mouth corners curled, "Then... should I eat them all? Swallow them into my belly for the highest level protection, ha ha ha..."

After a hearty laugh, the newly awakened colossal creature seemed to finally start thinking and decided to respond to human prayers.

After all, it really needed some special means to fill its belly and leave this place. Otherwise, if it continued to sleep, sooner or later it would completely dissipate.

"Hoo!"

A black wind whipped across the ink-green nearly black lake surface, determining its direction, swept across the fields and headed straight for the village.

"Look, what’s that?" People working in the fields first noticed something was wrong, pointed at the black cyclone saying, "It’s headed for the village!"

"It’s black, doesn’t seem like a good thing."

"Could it be a demon wind?"

"I think it looks like it’s coming out of Hidden Dragon Lake, do you think it’s the legendary old dragon?"

The villagers working in the fields looked at each other, feeling a bit scared.

Everyone in Riverfront Village, even three-year-old children, knew the legend of the old dragon. Especially the place where countless people had died, the old dragon cave, was rumored to be its lair, and it was said that before Shuiyun Lake was haunted, it was the old dragon that people worshipped, and those who mysteriously disappeared were swallowed by it!

No one knew from when the rumor began that the old dragon would swim from the depths of its cave to the bottom of the lake for air after heavy rain, thus the lake was called Hidden Dragon Lake.

No one knew how deep the lake was, it was said many people drowned there, and the rule passed down in the village prohibited boating on the lake, so even if they were starving, villagers only dared fish and catch shrimp in the river or by the lakeside to make a meal, no one dared to think of exploiting Hidden Dragon Lake.

Now suddenly there was a black wind rising from the lake, villagers were all worried, hoping Priest He could quickly hold the ritual, so that once they regained the protection of the Lady of Nüwa, they could resume peaceful lives and put their worries to rest.

At the same time, in the room of the He Family conducting the summoning ritual, the fire suddenly went out, with clouds thickening the light inside the building steadily grew dim.

"Call my name, what conspiracy is here?"

The wind blew with a roar mixed in, shaking people’s hearts.

"Grandpa..." He Yaozu had never seen such a scene, he was so scared he went limp.

His father was not in good health and had passed the position of priest to him early. Though he had attended several rituals, he had never truly heard the voice of the divine. In the dim room, a shadow wriggled in the sunless southwestern corner, as if a terrifying giant beast lurked.

An indescribable terror pressed on him to the point of breathlessness, his complexion turned pale as he huddled closer to his grandfather.

The others were hardly better off, knowing full well they were using a Forbidden Technique, and aware that it was unclear which Immortal had answered the summons. If it happened to be an Evil God, it might swallow them whole!

"May I ask which Immortal are you?" At the critical moment, Xu Family’s elder, responsible for communicating with the divine, was the calmest, trembling all over as he gave a solid kowtow toward the southwest corner, and said: "We offer sacrifices to the Supreme One in exchange for your protection!"

The black whirlwind spun leisurely, emitting a lazy yet majestic voice, "I am the River God. It’s not hard to obtain my protection, select a fifteen or sixteen-year-old girl of innocent background, tomorrow at noon, wash her clean and prepare a mat for sending her downstream as a sacrifice."

Instead of feeling shocked about offering a live person as a sacrifice, they were delighted to hear that only a fifteen or sixteen-year-old girl was required.

The accumulated materials could be divided among the three families, oh no, Xu Family surely had to claim a larger share.

In the future, they wouldn’t need to offer the collected materials as sacrifices, they only needed to absorb refugees within a certain range and encourage the lower classes to have more children. How many girls the River God wanted, there’d be as many!

However, families contributing girls should be slightly favored, this way more people would out of selfish greed voluntarily offer their daughters.

After sending off the River God, the elders of the three big surnames huddled together to discuss countermeasures.

"Let’s tell them Lady Nüwa is occupied and sent the River God to protect us. Those peasants don’t care who they’re worshipping, as long as there’s divine protection they’re quite satisfied."

"What do we do about live sacrifices? They never required live humans as sacrifices before!"

"That’s a rigid mindset, how can we call it live sacrifices? It’s giving the River God a wife, sent girls are going to be the River God’s lady, what a wonderful thing to enjoy happiness!"

"Right, right, just say that! Also, tell them if their daughters are sensible and gain River God’s favor, their families will share the glory! Haven’t you heard ’when one person becomes an Immortal, even their chickens and dogs ascend to heaven’?"

"Indeed, there’s no need to worry about peasants rebelling, they always only care for themselves and if it’s unrelated to them, they won’t concern themselves. As long as we find ways to placate the chosen families, and extensively tell them the benefits of their daughters being favored by the River God, even if they gain nothing, they can only blame their daughters for being undeserving and ignorant, that’s not our concern. The three major surnames aren’t involved, such a good opportunity is given to them, their daughters are incompetent."

"Good idea!"

......

With laughter, all problems were resolved.

The heavy rain outside finally fell, steam rising from fields in billowing white smoke.

"Master, with such heavy rain, there’s no need to water the fields tomorrow morning." Wan Mingchuan stood in the thatched house looking out, always curious but never dared to ask more, his master’s fields were quite different from his own!