Gu Nan admired Qu Hongye greatly. This kind of admiration was similar to finding a card with low stats but very special attributes while playing a card game.
If you happened to have a powerful card in your hand that could work with it, then even better.
Gu Nan saw a little of Zhong Die's shadow in Qu Hongye—no, she actually surpassed Zhong Die in terms of her compatibility as a player.
Zhong Die was just an experimental candidate for Gu Nan, who gave her the vampire quest line only because she was suited for becoming a vampire.
Gu Nan didn't even do the preliminary work to make sure Zhong Die would be under his complete control.
But armed with experience from Zhong Die's matter, Gu Nan already had other ideas—he wanted to make use of all player quest lines in the World of Gods to create a "player" army for himself!
Inside the Divine Kingdom, the populace could be born naturally and divine servants could be produced, but only apostles had to be recruited from outside.
Divine servants may have power exceeding Tier 5, but their intelligence would never reach that level, let alone their laws.
Only the apostles, who possessed complete intelligence from the start, could learn and evolve by themselves and could also be strengthened by the Apostle Hall.
So who better to fill the role of apostles than players?
'If I can really control a player army, then Kingdom Wars would be too easy.' Gu Nan sat in the room and watched Qu Hongye write furiously, while thoughts ran through his head.
Kingdom Wars was the players' abbreviation for Divine Kingdom Wars, and it was also the main gameplay for players advancing from the First Round to the Second Round.
The earlier construction and management of the Divine Kingdom were essentially all to pave the way for the Divine Kingdom Wars.
And Qu Hongye was currently doing the same thing.
"I finished writing out the plan." With an impatient look on her face, Qu Hongye handed over a thin piece of paper with a few lines written sporadically on it.
These lines could roughly be summed up in one sentence: "Everyone follow me and charge."
"Are you planning to take this to Gale World?" Gu Nan placed the paper down on the table and looked at Qu Hongye.
Gale World was Qiao Deyu's astral world. It was originally a naturally developing plane that Qiao Deyu just took control of for less than a few decades, so it was considered a newborn astral world.
"Is there a problem?" Qu Hongye asked with a glare.
Gu Nan shook his head. Gale World was only just starting out and had only one or two Void Cutters protecting it, so of course handling it through brute force wasn't a problem.
But the purpose behind having Qu Hongye write out a plan wasn't really for her to create a plan—rather, he wanted to analyze her attributes and personality.
As far as players were concerned, any NPC could be won over or subdued.
Since Gu Nan was considering having Qu Hongye join his "player army," of course he had to assess her ability stats in various aspects. It would be convenient if he directly accepted her as an apostle, since he'd be able to see her stats in the Apostle Hall.
But out of the same concern as Zhong Die, Gu Nan wouldn't allow her to enter his Divine Kingdom for the time being.
Gu Nan even started considering whether he should set up another organization outside the Divine Kingdom to specifically place these people in if there were too many talents from large planes.
Anyhow, these "heroes" mostly needed to command the troops when invading foreign planes, so whether they were ever allowed inside his Divine Kingdom or not made no difference.
"Then I'm off!" Qu Hongye saw Gu Nan's lack of response and said in an uncertain tone.
She was restless by nature and had always been interested in exciting things like this. It was impossible for her to get such an opportunity when Xue Ren was around.
Gu Nan waved his hand in dismissal. He wanted to see what Qu Hongye would be able to accomplish with this much freedom of command.
Her personality was very suited for joining the "player army," but unlike the experimental Zhong Die, if she was too weak, she would be abandoned by Gu Nan all the same.
In fact, after Qu Hongye's example, Gu Nan's thinking had already broadened—if it was hard to meet such people, then he could simply raise them himself.
'Let's try it first. There's nothing else to do here anyways.' Gu Nan looked at Qu Hongye's disappearing figure and thought casually.
...
While Qu Hongye was gathering troops to level Gale World, new developments occurred inside Gu Nan's Divine Kingdom.
The changes came from two places. One was that Red Tail, who stayed in White Bones Realm to manage White Mist, finally advanced to Void Cutter Realm after a few times in the Apostle Hall and years of accumulation.
Don't be fooled by how Gu Nan killed Star Rulers so casually. Nevertheless, the degree of difficulty in breaking through to the next realm remained unchanged.
The Myriad Heavens Universe wasn't a place where people could level up just by taking pills or elixirs. Even if someone advanced to a high realm, chances of that person's family doing the same were very slim.
The second development was that the progress of Shana and the other vampires' raid on Crescent Moon World went faster than Gu Nan expected.
In the boss battle, they were already able to cut off all of the Silver-Robed Ancestor's escape routes before their party could suffer any casualties.
After limiting the Silver-Robed Ancestor's ability to escape, the rest was nothing more than a slow grind. As long as the three mission experts were familiar with the boss's fighting style, killing him was not a problem.
In the end, the Silver-Robed Ancestor inherited only part of Gu Nan's power, as well as his keen combat instincts.
But in reality, Gu Nan's most powerful weapon was his familiarity with the various kinds of powers, as well as the targeted tactics derived from them.
The Silver-Robed Ancestor didn't have these memories, so sooner or later he would be killed.
In any case, Gu Nan still paid close attention to this. He even organized three additional Legend Rank vampires and had them start farming Crescent Moon World in two shifts based on the experience of Shana's party.
As long as Crescent Moon World was farmed continuously, Gu Nan would experience a large leap in the speed at which points accumulated. The initial capital needed to launch a Divine Kingdom War depended on this.
On this day, Gu Nan was still in Extreme Sword Heaven, but his gaze was focused on the rather distant other side of the Myriad Heavens, which was where Gale World was.
Qu Hongye's attack against Gale World had already begun.
Although the plane invasion she organized was, in Gu Nan's opinion, highly unskilled, extremely inefficient, and utterly lacking any sense of beauty, in the end, it was still an invasion.
Countless cultivators from Extreme Sword Heaven poured into Gale World, led by a few Void Cutter experts. They hunted down the experts native to Gale World with all their might.
Gu Nan, who was watching from the sidelines, couldn't help secretly nodding in approval.
Although Qu Hongye's strategic arrangements were crude, Extreme Sword Heaven's cultivators were all quite good. They carried out the blockade and slaughter very smoothly… Mm, it was obvious from a glance that this wasn't their first time doing something like this.
On the other hand, it also fully illustrated just how weak Gale World's foundation was.
The Void Cutter cultivators who came along didn't even have to step in at all. This invasion didn't meet any decent resistance.
Simply put, the civilization of Gale World was still stuck in the feudal era where most people were farmers. Qiao Deyu didn't have time to advance this world's civilization before the invasion happened.
Let alone facing cultivators of a higher realm, the natives of Gale World even lost against enemies of the same level.
Finally, the two Void Cutters of Gale World tried to make a move and were easily killed by Qu Hongye herself. Shortly after, the entire Gale World was razed to the ground.