TGS - Chapter 169
Chapter 169: All Sides
In the past, the Sanur tribe that worshipped the Wild Fox had been quite powerful. If not for Kasnie's secret aid, it would have been difficult for them to be subjugated by the Sanur King's tribe in just a few short years.
When the Sanur tribes were unified, the Wild Fox God naturally submitted to Huracan. However, his believers still remained, and his strength within the Sanur pantheon was likely second only to the Wolf God and the Vulture God.
The reason for saying "likely" was because this was merely Lotus's speculation.
The Sanur pantheon was different from the other two. The entire pantheon currently consisted of only five deities, each a totem for one of the dozen or so tribes of varying sizes. The other beast-headed gods had long since vanished over the years, along with the tribes that worshipped them.
The powers of these beast-headed figures were also quite unique. In the case of the Solancian gods, one could infer the scope of their divine authority from their titles. The Sanur gods, however, were named after animals, yet their divine authority had little to do with those creatures.
They symbolized the spirits the Sanur tribes revered, or their aspirations and hopes for the necessities of survival.
Take the Wolf God, for instance. The Sanur people believed in Huracan and admired real wolf packs, yet they also drove away and hunted wolves, viewing them as a precious source of food.
In their eyes, the Wolf God signified ferocity, belligerence, ruthlessness, and plunder, while also being synonymous with unity and the spirit of sacrifice.
As for the Wild Fox God, although the fox head he wore looked a bit dopey, he was still endowed with the traits of cleverness and cunning, just like the pointy-faced, round-eyed foxes of popular conception.
Lotus had reason to suspect this perception was influenced by Solancian culture. After all, Solancian civilization was the first to rise, and the appearance of the Sanur wasteland foxes... was truly difficult to associate with intelligence.
Within the battlefield space, the Wild Fox God pricked up his ears, watching Lotus warily.
However, perhaps because the fox's face was so expressionless, or perhaps because its eyes were narrowed to slits, Lotus kept getting the distinct impression she was being mocked.
...It's just an illusion, right?
The Wild Fox God opened his mouth, then opened it again.
"Why do you keep staring at me?"
As a deity, he theoretically shouldn't care much for human aesthetics. He only had a few peers, and none of them cared whether his face was square, his eyes were small, or his appearance was odd.
They all had beast heads; who were they to laugh at anyone else?
The problem was, the Wild Fox God had once met Solancia's Goddess of Love and felt he had been mocked. To meet a Solancian god again after so many years, only to have his face stared at once more—how could a god endure it!
Lotus thought for a moment. "My apologies?"
The Wild Fox God let out a loud yelp. "I've had it with you Solancian gods—"
Lotus was speechless.
Are all the Sanur gods this irritable?
Lotus was beginning to think that the Wild Fox's reputation for cleverness and cunning was just a label from human legends, one that didn't match the reality.
Suddenly, the space before her was empty. The Wild Fox God had only spoken half his sentence, the trailing yelps still hanging in the air, but his figure had already blurred into an invisible afterimage, leaping straight toward Lotus.
The next instant, there was a dull thud.
The fox god, having transformed into his beast form at some unknown moment, had slammed hard into a thick wall of ice. But the transparent barrier only delayed him for a moment. In less than two seconds, the fox god leaped up and came down again, repeatedly ramming his head against the ice at high speed.
Soon, with a sharp crack, the ice fractured.
Lotus's gaze darkened. The shattered ice melted into a mass of water that enveloped the fox, forcing it back.
The Wild Fox God's narrow eyes stared death at her as he threw back his head and let out a yelp.
The figure within the mass of water vanished. In its place, countless wasteland foxes emerged from every corner of the land below.
From between the trees, from within the grass, from the edges of the deserted human structures.
They all looked identical, their fluctuations of divine power indistinguishable. One could be seen every few feet, tilting its head to look up at Lotus and letting out provocative yelps.
It was a form of psychological assault.
It was like a form of divine pressure exerted on her senses of sight and hearing, an attempt to affect her.
The River Goddess remained unmoved. The divine pressure of a superior god was difficult for a subordinate deity to withstand, but for a god of the same or even higher rank, its effect was practically nil.
It was only proper to return the favor. What would happen if a divine pressure like that of the river's main artery were to suddenly bear down?
The deadpan faces of the foxes showed no expression, making it impossible to tell if they were affected by the pressure. They simply switched from a static psychological assault to a dynamic one, as an endless tide of square-faced foxes surged toward the sky like a drab, gray torrent.
Almost simultaneously, the waters of the Yilu River surged into the air, forming a seemingly light, transparent curtain that carried the immense force of deep-water pressure.
The tactics Lotus had once envisioned—such as draining an enemy's blood or sealing their breath with water—were actually of little practical use in a battle between gods.
A god could still move freely in a desiccated body even if their blood was drained. Trapping them in water only served to restrain them, as gods had no need to breathe.
A god's power, life, and ability to act all seemed to originate from their gem-like divine core.
Even if their entire body was destroyed, as long as the divine core remained intact, they were still "alive."
When fighting the major Solancian gods, Lotus couldn't just aim for their divine cores. But facing the Wild Fox God from a different pantheon, she had no need for such reservations.
Time to let loose.
But before that...
Lotus gazed at the torrent of foxes surging like lightning.
I have to find the one with the divine core first.
Compared to the endless Wild Fox God, the fighting styles of the other deities from the two pantheons were each bizarre in their own way.
In an adjacent battlefield space, the area was almost completely filled with blinding sunlight. Any other observer would likely have perceived nothing but a dazzling white light.
This absolute visual suppression completely overwhelmed the other senses—except for touch, as the sun was also scorching the skin.
Beneath the sunlight, Kasnie's God of Mountains stood motionless, as calm and solid as the peaks he commanded.
The temperature had already risen high enough to scorch stone and melt magma.
"You can't possibly expect to roast my divine core until it melts."
The God of Mountains said calmly.
"How will we know if I don't try?" The Sun God, Suriel, held his hands out flat, a blazing white ball of fire condensing in his palms as if he were holding a miniature sun. "Of course, it doesn't matter if I don't succeed. I have plenty of other ways to deal with you."
The God of Mountains shook his head and silently removed his crown of mountain peaks.
The Goddess of the Earth was not here, and the ground of Solancia within this battlefield space was not real land. The mountains and peaks trembled under the foreign god's control.
"Our divine powers are on the same level. We shall see who is superior," the God of Mountains stated. He preferred sand to solid rock, and a sky-blotting dust storm rose to confront the source of light illuminating the world.
The Sun God's voice boomed. "Then let's find out—"
Before his words faded, the white ball of fire erupted in a shower of light.
The Vulture God spread his wings, dodging thousands of shimmering silver moonbeams.
As a deity capable of trading barbs with Kasnie's Beast God and Solancia's Sun God, this beast-headed god—with his vulture head and matching set of broad wings—was clearly an expert in provocation.
"Is this really light?" the Vulture God mocked. "Your brother—the Sun God is your brother, right?—is insufferable, but I can say for certain his light has more of a kick than yours. Solancian Moon Goddess, are you even trying?"
Anmila, holding her scepter, replied coldly, "And yet, you are the one currently doing all the dodging."
A fierce glint flashed in the Vulture God's eyes. "If I didn't dodge, you'd be the one crying!"
As if to prove his point, the Vulture God's wings unfurled, and layers of feathers as sharp as steel needles shot from his body, only to find they had no target.
The space was now shrouded in thick darkness, and Anmila's figure was nowhere to be found.
From within the deep blackness, the Moon Goddess's voice drifted from an unknown direction.
"No."
The Vulture God's feather-needles hung motionless in midair. "What?"
The Moon Goddess replied, "To answer your earlier question about whether I was using my full strength: I was not."
The Vulture God's pupils suddenly constricted.
His pupils abruptly dilated, losing focus. The beast crown on his head was askew, but he couldn't be bothered with that.
Just as he had said before, he would rather fight Suojia, a famously ancient deity, than have anything to do with the God of Wisdom.
Perseus should have been the one to deal with him!
The God of Wisdom seemed to guess his thoughts and stated matter-of-factly, "If it were the Goddess of the Mind, I would have run even faster than you did just now."
The Beast God retorted, "That wasn't running, it was a strategic retreat!"
"Retreat," Nierde said thoughtfully. "You are correct. But is your understanding of retreat accurate, or merely superficial? Allow me to demonstrate..."
Images that had almost nothing to do with the word "retreat"—but a mere glimpse of which would have sent the philosophers and sages of this era into raptures—once again flooded his brain, threatening to burst open a mind with a capacity little better than that of a beast or a plant.
He let out a futile roar and raised his beastly claw.
A silver-gray wolf claw came crashing down, only to slice through empty air.
The air currents needed no gathering; they were everywhere. This omnipresent substance formed the wind, and the wind was a constant presence in the sky.
En blinked.
An infant's body looked fragile, but in the eyes of a god, a mature or aged vessel was not much stronger. Regardless of the form he awoke in, the God of the Sky always protected the body containing his divine core with layer upon layer of omnipresent air currents.
"You cannot defeat me," En said, as if stating a fact. "You are all too young."
The Wolf God, Huracan, sneered. He now stood as a giant wolf, his paws on the mountains and his head among the clouds.
"It's just a few years. Time doesn't mean everything. While you're here dealing with me, your fellow gods might have already been slaughtered by the Kasnie deities. The thought alone makes this worthwhile."
En frowned. The next moment, he raised a chubby hand, and a blast of air shot toward Huracan's eyes.
Suojia was always smiling faintly, her crescent eyes seeming harmless. But now, those warm, light-brown eyes opened wide, staring directly at the monstrous waves stirred up by Kasnie's God of the Ocean.
"Lotus's control over water is a bit better than yours."
Suojia commented, her tone as amiable as a graceful lady addressing a promising junior.
This deeply humiliated the God of the Ocean, who was already concentrating and dared not be careless. "Don't use that tone with me! Are you some human's great-grandmother?"
Suojia covered her mouth with her hand and smiled. "My apologies. It's a habit."
The God of the Ocean was speechless. He gritted his teeth as the white waves churned, gathering power.
Amid the roar of the waves, Suojia's voice carried clearly. "However, I must ask you to listen closely. When it comes to training, I am quite experienced."
"Although, you will never have the chance to improve again."
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