Chapter 1 2016, August 14th

Almost a month and a half had passed since the meeting with Qilin An Tuo.

The construction of the Beast God Realm's 'Concord City' had begun, and the cubs of divine beasts and spirit beasts from the 'Feather', 'Scale', and 'Fur' tribes were gradually gathering at the assembly points established by the Earth side.

There, they would receive basic training and education, learning how to get along peacefully and treat each other equally.

Even if their bloodlines held inherited hierarchies, the cubs were still cubs. Inheritance wasn't true memory but rather education. As long as they were cultivated from a young age, through example and teaching, the hierarchical system inherited in their bloodlines could not overcome the education they received… Of course, this couldn't be completely eliminated, but the humans weren't obsessive-compulsive and didn't need perfection.

However, the past month and a half had not been peaceful.

Faced with the powerful humans, quite a few divine beast clans chose to resist stubbornly. Relying on the fact that their lairs were located underground or in the water, making them extremely difficult to breach, they not only refused to obey but also attempted to kill the human envoys.

This was actually quite normal.

Because in the past, even the Beast God Kings couldn't completely control the power of all the divine beasts in their clan. Many powerful divine beast families, though not kings, had always nominally obeyed but actually acted as local emperors in their own territories, listening to orders but not following them, and even secretly plotting to overthrow the current Beast God King.

They thought that humans were just a more powerful kind of divine beast, so they still followed their old habits and resisted the coming change.

To complete their plan, the Earth side considered it again and again, and finally, they were forced to ask the Zheng Guo side to dispatch Su Zhou to carry out several large-scale suppressions.

Moreover, they shamelessly used advanced projection technology to project the process and results of the suppression onto the clouds and sky, announcing it to the entire Beast God Realm.

These suppression processes were enough to film a hundred B-grade splatter films, or a year's worth of 'Su Zhou's Gourmet Cooking Class - Ingredient Preparation', in any case, it was a terrifying and awe-inspiring thing that detailed descriptions of the process would not pass censorship.

The emotionless cleanup weapon, Su Zhou, slashed, burned, and bit his way through, which was truly shocking to the beasts, especially since the projection area was in the sky and couldn't be blocked, becoming a childhood nightmare for countless small spirit beasts and divine beasts.

In short.

With overwhelming force, the Beast King's orders, and the fear of a certain young human, there were basically no divine beast families in the current Beast God Realm that dared to make small moves to resist.

As for the spirit beast families, offering their children to be driven or eaten by divine beasts was an extremely honorable thing. Even though the humans repeatedly stated that the cubs they sent out would definitely have a bright future, it was clear that without waiting for Concord City to be completed and the facts to speak for themselves, a few empty words were not enough to shatter the thought inertia established in the Beast God Realm over thousands of years.

As for why only three of the five tribes responded, it was mainly because the Beast God Realm was too vast, and the basic infrastructure was extremely backward, making it impossible for logistics to keep up.

If converted to Earth terms, if the territory of the Feather tribe was the Zheng Guo area, then the territories of the Luo and Kun tribes were located in Northern Europe and West Asia, respectively.

In a short period, even if the divine beasts of these two tribes dared not resist because of Su Zhou, it was impossible for the Earth side to carry out operations there, so they could only slowly start building airports, highways, and other infrastructure in various parts of the Beast God Realm, striving to strengthen control over the areas they already controlled.

It must be said that this was actually a good way to boost domestic demand and consume excess productivity.

Everything in the Beast God Realm was gradually getting on the right track. There were fewer and fewer things that required killing beasts for suppression, and they were basically all handled with reason. Even if there were any, it didn't require a large-scale weapon like Su Zhou.

It was precisely because of this that Su Zhou, who had returned to his hometown, was quite idle. Besides cultivating every day, watering the flowers and plants, and removing insects and slimes, there was nothing to do at all, entering retirement life early.

Recently, Su Zhou's parents had even taken annual leave to go to the Arctic Ocean to see whales, which led Su Zhou to move directly to the Shao family's house during this time. This way, he could occasionally tutor Shao Qiming and Shao Shuangyue in their cultivation, occasionally go out for a walk, or do good deeds and help others.

And it just so happened that while routinely watching Shao Shuangyue play games, Su Zhou accidentally discovered that the game called 'Element Era' had a bit of similarity to his experiences in the Reincarnation World!

"No, this is the transmission of your information in the Reincarnation World."

Yala said, responding to Su Zhou's question of 'Isn't this too coincidental?' The snake spirit swayed its tail and said easily, "Because information has gravity—for example, if there are only two transcendents in a world, then those two transcendents will definitely encounter each other. The same is true for you and the information from the Reincarnation World."

Su Zhou's expression was thoughtful, but he didn't understand.

The CG of Element Era was quite post-apocalyptic—a desolate world, a young city lord struggling to support a lone city, listless citizens, and an impending doomsday. In this world destined to face despair, should they drift with the tide and let it go, or persevere tirelessly, even in the face of countless dead ends, to find a way to continue civilization?

"Interesting!"

Su Zhou was quite interested in this game—because in the Reincarnation World, Elias was able to solve those many problems mainly because of his existence, but this game seemed to be about how the young lord would 'clear' everything if he weren't there, or if he interfered less with that world.

However, Shao Shuangyue, who was already used to having people watch her play games, had a completely different impression.

Muttering softly, the girl, who started manipulating the citizens' work, was almost using a resentful tone and strength, slamming heavily on the keyboard and mouse: "Lazybones!"

"Ungrateful people!"

"A bunch of freeloaders!"

"I'm doing my best to let you survive, but you're protesting because I won't let you drink?! It's the end of the world, what are you drinking for?!"

"You don't want to work 12 hours a day! Do you know that there are many people in modern society who work 12 hours a day? It's the end of the world, I'm already benevolent and Buddhist-hearted by not making you work 16 hours!"

"Shocked! The elemental array is almost out of energy, and you ungrateful people are actually clocking off on time?! If the array runs out of energy and closes, you'll all die, do you know that?! You don't even want to work overtime even if it means death?!"

Every once in a while, you could see the black-haired, straight-haired beauty gnashing her teeth in anger, her face flushed, and her eyes moist: "Ahhh, why don't I have the option to hang these ungrateful people?! I'm the city lord, don't I have the right to execute them?!"

Watching Shao Shuangyue's expression as she was enraged by the various bizarre behaviors of the citizens in Element Era, Su Zhou found it quite appetizing and very enjoyable.

Moreover, unlike Shao Shuangyue, who was focused on the game content, Su Zhou was more concerned about the entire game's background setting.

"The city controlled by the player should be Nesser City under Elias."

"Because of elemental stagnation, the world is on the verge of destruction. Only maintaining the elemental array can allow the city to continue to exist. To maintain the elemental array, the city needs to send adventurers to the labyrinth to collect resources, and it also needs to train soldiers to resist the occasional undead army."

"In addition, they will occasionally be infiltrated and sabotaged by mysterious people... These should be the believers of the Water God, but strangely, they haven't launched a full-scale attack? According to some merchants, there seems to be a war breaking out in the distance, and storms and heavy rain are sweeping the world... Could it be that the Wind God and the Water God are at war?"

Sitting behind Shao Shuangyue, Su Zhou solemnly pulled out a chocolate stick from the chocolate stick box next to the girl, munched on it, and fell into deep thought: "Could it be that if I don't appear and blatantly bomb the believers of the Water God in Nesser City, they won't focus their attention there, and might even encounter the Wind God who is nearby, to the point that they don't even have time for blood sacrifice and just start a war directly?"

"Hey, don't steal my snacks!" Noticing Su Zhou's small movements, Shao Shuangyue immediately came back to her senses from her criticism of the ungrateful people. She quickly took away the chocolate stick box and cautiously took out a few and stuffed them into her mouth: "Can't you buy them yourself? You only know how to steal from innocent little girls?"

"What stealing, I'm robbing! I'll buy you ten boxes next time, besides, what kind of little girl are you?"

And then continue eating yours, after all, stolen food is really delicious—Su Zhou's divine sense moved, and another chocolate stick flew out of the box, rotating nimbly in the air like a flying sword, and finally entered his mouth.

The simulation management game Element Era, if you want to talk about difficulty, it's not particularly high, after all, the game is for people to play, not to play people.

Among them, the seemingly familiar events were quite interesting to Su Zhou—he could see that some special events, such as the mysterious alien encountered, were actually based on himself. The city lord needed to unconditionally agree to a few conditions of this alien, provide him with some special resources, or help him go deep into the labyrinth. Then, at the end of the game process, when encountering a tide of undead, or an army of insects, or even a tsunami combined with various aquatic beasts attacking in full force, a giant dragon would appear to help the city resist the enemy, greatly reducing the difficulty of the final battle.

It is said that cultivating adventurers to clear the eighth floor of the labyrinth, or repelling a wave of undead tide with zero casualties, will also have special plots. It's just a pity that Shao Shuangyue is not a high-level game player, but Su Zhou himself can guess that the former should allow players to discover the truth about the 'changing of eras', laying the groundwork for the true ending of the game, and the latter is the same, also revealing the fact that 'the world is gradually becoming the underworld'.

Even, when the city's martial strength reaches a certain level, in addition to the undead tide, there will be no power from the Wind God and Water God coming to harass it—Su Zhou guessed that this should be because the two gods don't want to waste their power on hard bones that are difficult to chew, so as not to be taken advantage of by the other party.

Looks like this is also a way to clear the game?

After playing a game, stumbling and clearing it, in the end, the city controlled by Shao Shuangyue, through various emergencies, maintained the existence of the elemental array with the previous operations, repelled the enemy, and successfully led the city to support until the real end of the world.

In a silent darkness, the whole world was completely shrouded in gray mist. Whether it was the sun or the stars, all the light was lost.

On the hazy continent, only a little flickering spark could be seen... that was the light of the elemental array.

The city lord leading the city forward stood on the highest floor of his lord's mansion, and the NPCs that had appeared in the plot, such as the mysterious alien, stood behind him... Not only that, all the residents left their houses and stood in the warm and orderly city, where they were well-fed and clothed and had no internal or external troubles.

Everyone, under the cover of the array, silently looked up at the dark sky of this world.

--Is this the end?

The young city lord's inner monologue thought so... Then, a bright and warm firelight lit up from the distant distance.

The firelight was dazzling, but not blinding, and the scorching temperature began to spread in the silent world.

Just like the dawn of a new day.