Chapter 438
"Xinzhou is the first line of defense for Dayan. Your tasks are very heavy."
Yue Fuguang looked toward the distant mountains and forests. So many had sneaked in without any sign being detected, which meant that both the officials and border troops in Xinzhou bore responsibility.
"Rest assured, my lord. I will ensure the common people are well informed." That day, the goddess had brought rain, appeared before the crowd, and left lotus blooms in her wake—such treatment had never been seen elsewhere.
Without needing him to say more, within a single day, the people around Hexian County would all know.
The reason it spread only to surrounding villages was not due to limits of communication, but simply that a commoner could only travel so far in one day!
Feng Su assumed the Grand Preceptor would return to the carriage and continue onward. But in the blink of an eye, the goddess had once again lifted her foot and walked toward the Hèlián Mountains. The people below followed, running along the lotus path that bloomed under Yue Fuguang's steps.
Lotus flowers paved the road as she walked for two miles, soon reaching a spot not far from the foot of the mountain.
[Host, do you plan to handle all the ambushers by yourself?]
Yue Fuguang sighed helplessly. "With my current persona, I cannot afford any flaw in my abilities."
For a divine being, you could be bad-tempered or unpredictable, but you could not lack divine power. What was divine power? Raising the dead and making bones bloom with flesh were the basics.
"If I let Shen Jian's men go up to capture them, there will inevitably be injuries and deaths. Those I can heal, I can save. But the dead... I cannot bring back."
A deity who could not resurrect the dead would suffer greatly in the faith of the people.
It wasn't that she was overly cautious, but people were simply practical. They could not do it themselves, yet they demanded that others always succeed!
She herself was human. Did she not know the human mind?
In the end, it meant that a god could never show a health bar in front of mortals!
The people who had stopped looked up. They saw the goddess lightly touch the void with her delicate hand. Thunder rumbled. Purple lightning snakes swam through the rain. The sky began to crack from the center, like a thin sheet of ice struck by a stone.
The cracks were not black but dazzling gold—a burning gold that made you dare not look directly.
Every fissure spread, making sounds like shattering glass—slow, crisp, one after another, mingling with the rumbling thunder like a heavy hammer striking the hearts of the tens of thousands watching below.
Unconsciously, the crowd was forced to close their eyes from the blinding golden light. When they opened them again, they saw that the golden glow had turned into threads of gold, falling like shooting stars and vanishing into a mountain peak in the distant Hei Lian ranges.
Soon, everyone realized those golden threads were not mere lines—they were ropes of gold binding people holding sharp blades, dressed in black with masked faces and unknown identities.
The thunder continued to roar overhead, like an angered deity warning the world.
Yue Fuguang brought the captives down the mountain and tossed them onto the ground. Without another word, she flew into the carriage like a flash of light.
"Shen Jian, leave some men to deal with this. The rest will depart now."
Her plan was to traverse Xinzhou in three days, heading from the border city of Lancheng to Xingzhou.
Her abilities had grown stronger. A single rainfall could now cover over a hundred and fifty miles—such progress far exceeded her own expectations.
Yue Fuguang looked back at the people of Hexian County still seeing her off. Along the journey, the rain had made the common folk revere her as a true deity. With her incense offerings flourishing, was it any wonder her abilities grew so quickly?
Having entered Xinzhou just two days prior, Yue Fuguang did not yet know that news of her arrival had already spread. Not only had the people of Xinzhou heard of it, but the neighboring nations of Nanzhao and Nanyue—suffering from severe drought—had spread word from village to village. People from counties near both borders were gathering in groups and heading toward the Dayan border.
"Third Sister-in-Law, are you heading to Sanshui Gully too?" An elderly woman, her face sallow and lips cracked from severe dehydration, sat resting with her family under a half-dead tree. Looking up, she spotted fellow villagers coming into the woods.
"Aunt Hu, you're going to Sanshui Gully as well?" The woman called Third Sister-in-Law glanced around and lowered her voice.
Although the road to Sanshui Gully was full of travelers, and everyone knew each other's purpose, the officials above had issued a ban, so she instinctively kept her voice down for fear of being overheard.
"Isn't that right! I've been worshiping the goddess for over two years. I heard that in one more day, she'll reach the border. So my family and I must go to the nearest place to offer her incense!"
Aunt Hu shifted her seat and motioned for Third Sister-in-Law, who was holding a seven or eight-year-old girl, to sit on a stone beside her.
Her husband and son went off to chat with Third Sister-in-Law's husband and sons.
"Auntie, do you think we could beg the goddess to send rain for our fields too?" Third Sister-in-Law's land had only been watered once the previous month with water carried from the mountains. After that, not a single drop had touched it. Watching the crops wither from drought, she was frantic, her lips covered with blisters, but there was nothing she could do.
The mountain streams had dried up. Even drinking water had become a problem, let alone irrigating the fields.
The water they had stored was limited. In a few days, they might even have to slaughter the chickens and ducks—not because they wanted meat, but because there wasn't enough water to keep them alive.
Aunt Hu knew what she was thinking. Who didn't want the goddess to send sweet rain for their fields? Having lived for forty or fifty years, Aunt Hu could see plainly that drought was rampant everywhere—this was no temporary disaster.
Aunt Hu had once been the daughter of a scholar. Being literate, she saw further and understood more than most ordinary women.
The goddess was the deity of Dayan. The people of Nanyue also worshiped her, but whether the goddess herself acknowledged them—her foreign believers—was uncertain.
Yet, seeing the misery on Third Sister-in-Law's face, Aunt Hu held back discouraging words, saying only, "I've heard the goddess is still young, in her growing stage. Her rainfall has limited range. We're far away. Even if she wanted to bless us, it would be difficult!"
She then pointed toward the Nanyue capital. "The emperor and officials won't allow it."
Of course, Aunt Hu and Third Sister-in-Law did not know that their emperor and officials had colluded with their neighbor to try to "invite" the goddess they worshiped into their own country.
But the plan had failed. The emperor and his ministers were now like ants on a hot pan, burning with anxiety.
"Your Majesty, Xiao Yi and all his men were captured on the spot. Even General Qin Hu and his thousand one hundred soldiers were taken by Yue Fuguang alone! According to intelligence gathered from our scouts..."
Han Qinbao, Minister of War of Nanyue, knelt before Emperor Gan Sheng and described the scene in detail.
When they first received the report, they were terrified. The intelligence described that rain, how Yue Fuguang had single-handedly stopped a thousand troops with absolute dominance, made the arrests, and... walked with lotus flowers blooming beneath her feet. Every detail made them break out in cold sweat.