Chapter 1 Gods Vanish on a Cloudy Day

October 29, 2015, 10:45 AM, Diligence Academy, Practical Combat Training Room.

The Practical Combat Training Room was a massive indoor space, 280 meters long and 200 meters wide, nearly the size of two or three soccer fields. It was generally used for practical combat tests, physical examinations, and data collection for the academy's practical combat students. For fights within the Awakening stage, this kind of training ground was just right, not too cramped, nor too spacious.

At this time, there was only a small team training.

Professor Su Zhou, with a serious expression, paced back and forth, surveying the five team members in front of him who had just finished a small-scale sparring session. They were all panting, their bodies sore. Despite being in the Awakening stage with strength more than ten times that of ordinary people, they looked even more pathetic than fat guys who had run ten kilometers.

This was only natural, because their sparring partner was Su Zhou.

"Good teamwork. Guan Wanjing's strength has reached the peak of the Awakening stage, an extremely outstanding level. If that punch hadn't been aimed at me, ordinary high or peak Awakening stage practitioners would have been seriously injured."

Although his expression was stern, Su Zhou was praising his students, "Shao Qiming and Li Yeyu's coordination was also very good. The former used strong light to create shadows, paving the way for the latter's shadow jump. You must have practiced many times, right? Add to that Li Hanshan and Guan Wanjing's cooperation in holding the front line, and even peak Awakening stage demon beasts would probably be killed quickly by your combination."

"It's just that Garuda, you have a problem. You are clearly the strongest, and you also have inherited memories, but when you fight, you only focus on one-on-one brute force. If you had blocked my attack from the beginning as the main force, then the entire team might have lasted half a minute longer."

Su Zhou's comments were all objective. Even though they were exhausted on the ground, everyone responded with a 'Yes!' indicating that they understood the problem and would continue to train next time. No one had any doubts about this.

Su Zhou was very satisfied with this. He waited for a while until everyone had regained some strength and could sit up before saying, "Your frontal combat ability is already quite good, but our Practical Combat Department can't just know how to fight head-on. Practical combat itself is unscrupulous. It's definitely not as fair and square as martial arts competitions. You have to use any means necessary."

"As the future elite of Zheng Nation, you also need to learn how to lurk, assassinate, set traps, poison, track targets, and call in long-range bombardments."

Speaking of this, Su Zhou picked up the small whiteboard behind him and quickly drew a simple city diagram on it. Then he placed it in front of everyone and said, "I'm going to ask you a question now: If you need to infiltrate a heavily guarded fortress city, as shown in the diagram, with the goal of assassinating the fortress commander in the city center, and the guards in the city are at the early Awakening stage and the city lord himself is at the high Awakening stage, and your strength is also at the high Awakening stage, and the resources you have are the same as during normal training, what would you do?"

Su Zhou gave them five minutes to think, and after five minutes, Shao Qiming raised his hand first.

"Very good, Qiming, you can answer."

Shao Qiming's thinking was clear, and he listed the possibilities one by one, answering, "If the enemy doesn't have magic detection, then I can use optical magic to become invisible and mix into a local team preparing to enter the fortress, and then enter with them. If the enemy has the ability to see through optical invisibility, then I will infiltrate the city's waterways, lurking in the sewers and other areas to collect information and find an opportunity to attack."

A mediocre answer, neither wrong nor outstanding. It was indeed a specific analysis of the specific situation. Su Zhou nodded slightly, then looked at Guan Wanjing, who raised his hand to answer second.

This man, covered in muscles, who looked like he would answer 'I'll kill them all, then no one will know I infiltrated,' said directly, "Collect the surrounding geographical locations. If there's a high place, climb up to determine the location of the city lord's mansion, then apply for official remote bombardment to pinpoint and destroy the city lord's mansion."

This answer was even more official, but Su Zhou understood, after all, Guan Wanjing's physique and characteristics were too obvious, and his abilities were also inclined towards frontal combat. He couldn't disguise himself, so he could only apply for remote bombardment. Of course, learning the fine traditions of assassins and rushing in to unleash his power was also an option.

Li Hanshan didn't speak. He took out a whiteboard from his side and wrote: [Fly into the sky, confirm the target, snipe remotely, kill with one shot]

With the bloodline of the Chongming Bird, he could indeed fly and see far. Li Hanshan's sniping skills were also very high, with the extreme distance calculated in kilometers, and the power was extremely great. If it was him, he could indeed do it.

Li Yeyu's answer was even simpler: "In the middle of the night, I'll infiltrate through the Tongyou Divine Power,遁入影子 (dùn rù yǐngzi,遁入影子), walk in another world, collect intelligence, and find an opportunity to assassinate."

There was nothing to say. This was her area of expertise.

Finally, Su Zhou looked at Garuda. This transcendent-stage divine bird, who didn't know why she had run into Su Zhou's team, was now transformed into a human form. In response to Su Zhou's question, she answered carefully, "I'll transform into my true form, restrain my aura, fly into the clouds and hide, and when the time is right, I'll rush down and kill him."

Forced assault, it was indeed like that.

Su Zhou nodded noncommittally. This question was actually a standard procedure, to observe everyone's self-positioning and whether they had self-awareness. Guan Wanjing's performance was very good. He knew that he was not good at infiltration, so he didn't even think about such methods. As for Qiming, he was a little naive. He was a support, so even if he infiltrated the city, what could he do to kill the enemy? It would have been more in line with the standard if he had answered with preparing poison instead of sneaking in.

But then again, it generally wouldn't be Shao Qiming, the support staff, who would lead the charge.

As a professor, Su Zhou still had some professional ethics. After making a mental note of the scores, he prepared to announce the end of today's practical training. After all, the team had other classes in the afternoon and couldn't train too hard.

However, Garuda, at this moment, asked anxiously.

"Su... Professor."

Because she had not been in Su Zhou's team for long, she was still a little unaccustomed to this title. After a moment, Garuda continued, "What about you? If it were you, what would you do?"

Su Zhou glanced at this divine bird, who was curious but subconsciously still afraid of him, then shook his head and said, "If I appear, then the enemy won't dare to discover me."

"Why?" Garuda asked somewhat naively.

"Because if they discover me, they will die."

Training ended, the team disbanded, and Su Zhou returned to his office alone, closed his eyes, and rested his mind, adjusting the spiritual energy in his body.

There wasn't much decoration in the office. Su Zhou wasn't the kind of person who was particularly interested in the finer things in life, and he basically didn't do much office work anyway. There was no official business for him to handle, so he mostly just came over to sit for a while occasionally.

Since the Kunlun Secret Realm trip, major countries around the world had also begun to explore various ancient heritage sites within their borders. Some were very serious, and except for knowing that exploration had begun, no information was revealed. Others were very relaxed, and even conducted official exploration live streams, broadcast during prime time, as a national entertainment program, which also served to popularize history and promote modern values.

This was indeed advanced experience. After a successful live broadcast, the average person's impression of the mystery and danger of the relics was largely alleviated, and the existence of the blessed lands was gradually accepted and understood by the public.

Zheng Nation officials were also discussing whether they should imitate this, such as selecting an ancient relic with the lowest risk and live-streaming the entire exploration. Putting aside everything else, the ratings would definitely be very good. Many people especially liked to watch such programs. Arranging some program effects would be much more exciting than island adventures.

In just these few days, the legal identity of the Great Peng Golden-Winged Bird, that is, Garuda, had also been finalized. The Sages didn't know what method they used, but with a speed that even Su Zhou thought was 'Is this a little too fast?', they confirmed Garuda's identity as safe, and even directly arranged for her to enroll in the Diligence Academy, directly led by Su Zhou.

This choice couldn't be considered wrong. After all, she was a transcendent high-stage divine bird. It might be a little difficult to suppress her if the Sages who cultivated quickly wanted to suppress her, but the Sages also had their own jobs to do. Where would they find the time to take care of a child?

Su Zhou, who had defeated her, was originally a professor, and he happened to have a team under him, so they directly threw her in there to feel the atmosphere of humanity and accept restraints.

There was indeed nothing wrong with this. At least, judging from the situation in the past ten days or so, Su Zhou felt that Garuda, apart from being a bit too curious and not knowing some common sense, basically had no other problems. She got along very well with the people in the team and didn't seem like a native of the secret realm who had lived alone in the secret realm for sixteen years. Her IQ and EQ were good, and her sense of identity with the human identity was not low. It shouldn't be a disguise.

The harvest from the Kunlun Secret Realm could be said to be exceptionally rich. In addition to the peaches of immortality and the Jade Pool mentioned earlier, there were also many demon god bloodlines in the secret realm.

Not only Bai Canglang and many other families who imitated the Dao, but they also found complete inheritances related to themselves. They even discovered dozens of divine beast and exotic beast bloodlines that had now been lost in Zheng Nation. Even if they couldn't find a suitable person to cultivate for a while, they could at least have another valuable research material.

But even these weren't the most important. The most important thing was that the Zheng Nation officials found the action logs of the ancient immortals and gods from the central area of the Kunlun Secret Realm.

Recalling the news he had heard a few days ago when he went to Tiandu for a meeting, Su Zhou couldn't help but shake his head: "The tree that was once planted in that giant pit was indeed Jianmu!"

Jianmu, the bridge between heaven, earth, humans, and gods, the means by which the gods ascended to heaven.

About four thousand seven hundred years ago, because of the size of the demon god's true body, the Dao-imitating immortal god lineage, which was extremely sensitive to the concentration of natural spiritual energy, had already noticed the fact that spiritual energy was gradually weakening.

In fact, for thousands of years before that, spiritual energy had weakened several times, but then there would be a rebound. But this time, there was no sign of a rebound in spiritual energy. Instead, the rate of decline was getting faster and faster, even triggering great panic.

For a time, almost all the high-level figures among the Dao-imitating immortal gods gathered in the Kunlun Secret Realm to discuss how to avoid the multi-world-level disaster of the severance of spiritual energy.

Powerful immortals and gods were not afraid of the weakening of spiritual energy. As long as they didn't waste spiritual power themselves, maintaining their longevity was no problem. But who knew how long the severance of spiritual energy would last? Not all immortals and gods could continue to tolerate low-spiritual environments, and they were the majority of the immortals and gods, as well as the disciples and descendants of those powerful immortals and gods.

Therefore, they planned to use the power of Jianmu to penetrate the world and constantly open space-time channels to migrate to many worlds with spiritual energy, just like herders leading their flocks from pastures that were already empty to another pasture that still had some grass and trees.

Some supported it, some opposed it, and even with the power of Jianmu, they couldn't take all the immortals and gods away. So, some overly large demon gods volunteered to leave their bodies in the Kunlun Secret Realm, using the remaining spiritual energy in their bodies to nourish the blessed lands and maintain the vitality of the inheritance.

Their souls left with the Great Heavenly Lord of the West, and their bodies turned into mountains and inheritances in the Kunlun Secret Realm, waiting for later generations to discover them.

Although brief, this was part of the truth about the departure of the ancient immortals and gods. After all, they had already left, and most of the action logs they left behind were just fragments, so only this information could be inferred.

"Why are we looking for the traces of ancient immortals and gods?"

Su Zhou still remembered that he had stood up and asked in confusion, "The immortals and gods left, so they left. We don't necessarily have to bring them back, right?"

Among everyone in the conference room, probably only he, a young man, would ask such a question. The Literary Sage, who was hosting the meeting, smiled and said, "You're right. We don't need to bring the immortals and gods back at all. In fact, we're not looking for the immortals and gods."

"We are essentially just tracking and exploring the 'path' that the immortals and gods left behind. A path that can lead away can naturally also lead back."

Speaking of this, the Literary Sage emphasized, his tone becoming somewhat low, "Speaking of which, it's a bit cruel and a bit inhumane."

"The current world no longer has a place for the immortals and gods... But they are so powerful, and the world we live in is their former home, so in the current era of spiritual energy recovery, no matter who it is, what country or force, they must consider such a question."

"If one day, those ancient immortals and gods return, then what will become of us?"