Sui Xiong was naturally unwilling to let go of a disciple. This was especially so seeing as Kalisa belonged to his church’s inner circle. This was not just a problem of benefits but also an issue of personal relations.
If Kalisa had followed the Goddess of Love from the start or if the Goddess of Love had approached him thirty, forty years ago to discuss this proposition, he would have agreed without much thought. However, Kalisa had already been an important member of the Void Mask Church for the past fifty years and was heavily involved in the core of the work, gaining her respect and trust among the followers. She had already become indispensable and irreplaceable. Thus, he would definitely not accede to her request now.
Furthermore, he had developed such a longstanding relationship with Kalisa; surely he could not be expected to just give that up overnight!
Benefits-wise, as a member of the core of the Church of Void Mask as well as being the Garth City Lord, she was also too important to give up.
Thus, after a few rounds of hesitation, the Void Mask Lord still shook his head.
“No, it cannot be done. If Kalisa really suits your teachings, she will naturally become your Holy Spirit when she dies. However, I will not be doing my own trades with my followers, and that’s the end of discussion on this matter.”
He had assumed that with such words, the Goddess of Love would fly into a rage and continue the cold war with him or even take physical action. Thus, he readied himself for battle even as he spoke.
To his surprise, the Goddess of Love did not flare up but rather smiled to herself.
“Very good! Your answer makes me extremely satisfied.”
“Ah?” Sui Xiong was shocked as this was not the reaction he had been expecting.
The Goddess of Love smiled widely upon seeing the Void Mask’s confusion and explained, “Kalisa’s personal focus in life is her own choice to make. Who she wants to follow, who she wants to respect is also her own choice to make. Similarly, whether she will become my Holy Spirit after she passes away or whether she will enter my God’s Kingdom is also her choice. How can we as gods act purely on instinct and decide her fate for her? I really like your answer and your mindset towards this issue. While I cannot say that you understand the workings of a woman’s heart, at the very least, you understand the concept of respect. This is something that’s rather rare in this world.”
“Does this mean you agree to do me this favor?” Sui Xiong asked.
“Of course! I will find Kalisa right now to discuss this matter. Perhaps when she meets me, she will be so enamored that she will realize that she should be my follower…”
Upon saying that, the Goddess of Love teleported back to her own God’s Kingdom to morph into a physical being, ready to enter the human world.
Sui Xiong was left in a rather confused state, and he couldn’t decide whether he was more angry at her insolence or happy that the matter was finally resolved.
While the goddesses in the kingdom had blurry relations with each other, nevertheless, they had interacted with each other for many years, and thus they were used to the Goddess of Love’s unreliable nature as well as the fact that they always had to clean up after her. Thus, the Goddess of Joy approached Sui Xiong graciously and offered him some desserts and tea at her God’s Kingdom to smooth things over.
Sui Xiong was definitely not about to turn her down, and thus both of them made their way to the Goddess of Joy’s kingdom.
This kingdom was called Sorrow-Proof Kingdom and was the core of the Sorrow-Proof Field. In the past, when the Goddess of Joy been sealed as a god, she had merged her own kingdom and the Sorrow-Proof field and thus became the ruler of this world. This had also laid the foundations for the Sorrow-Proof God System.
Before the Goddess of Joy had been sealed as a god, the Sorrow-Proof Field had only been one of the many rings floating around in the many worlds. However, as the Goddess of Joy had steadily built it up over the years, the world slowly became special and vast. Gods in the Sorrow-Proof God System also had habitually ventured out to seek smaller worlds that could align with this kingdom to merge. Over years of development, they had managed to make this small world stand out amongst the hundreds of millions of worlds.
The Goddess of Joy first apologized to Sui Xiong for the unreliable personality of the Goddess of Love and had smiled to subtly convey hopes of ending the matters there and then, especially as the resolution had been a decent one. Afterward, Sui Xiong brought up the matter of building up the kingdom to the Goddess of Joy.
Amongst the gods, one would definitely rank the Goddess of Joy as one of the top ten fighters. However, if one were to bring up the idea of developing the kingdom, no one would dare to confer upon her a rank other than first.
There was simply no one who could compete with her past experience of building up a small world from scratch to what it was today.
Sui Xiong had previously wanted to seek guidance from the Goddess of Love regarding the development of the kingdom. However, he had always been busy. It was either that, or he had been under the delusion that he was forever busy. Even when he had been freer, he had felt tired or bored and had used that time to rest…
In actuality, the root of the issue had been his procrastination due to him forgetting about it.
As an artist, Sui Xiong’s mind had always been simple and streamlined. If he was busy with a certain issue, other matters would be thrown to the back of his mind. In this case, this would refer to the matter of learning how to properly build up a kingdom.
This was especially so as the current Sanctuary was rather stable and only required light maintenance.
Sui Xiong was someone who was low-maintenance physically, and he did not require high standards of living. He had felt that if one could survive, that would be enough.
Under his influence, the gods in the system were also similarly low-maintenance—Wall had only required a sufficiently big library to indulge in his reading habits in peace; Arcaian had only required a science laboratory; Three Nothingness was happy to stay in the woods and play with little animals; Damwade was always busying himself in the field. In the entire system, only Song Ballard was slightly more particular, and he had built himself an open opera house as well as indulged in several outbuildings of varying sizes.
Within the Sanctuary, there were many pieces of land which were untouched and empty. There were also several obscure islands floating in the air.
As for the Desolation God System’s Kingdom, the degree of ruggedness was even higher than that of the Sorrow-Proof God System. The entire kingdom only had three larger-sized structures—Morani’s blacksmith workshop, Ink’s bistro and their meeting room.
The Desolation gods, including their main god “Steel Lion” Morani, were all introverted and spent their days in a carefree, floaty way.
Although the Goddess of Joy was easy-going and hyper, she actually lived a rather rigorous life. If she were to teach Sui Xiong how to build up a kingdom, she had to first understand what Sui Xiong had been doing. After questioning him, she let out a sigh.
“Although I had predicted that you lacked the relevant knowledge and may have had a slightly lackluster internal core of the kingdom, I did not expect that it would be so terrible!”
She had continuously shaken her head as she pored over the internal structure of the Sanctuary built by Sui Xiong, and her brain had felt like it was about to explode.
“These designs are totally unacceptable; you will have to start from the beginning again!”