The most important thing is that the mastery of his own priesthood is growing rapidly. The level of his godhood has been rising continuously during this period of time, and he soon surpassed the weak divine power stage where most of the true gods in this Crystal Wall Universe are in, and entered the weak divine power stage above level five of the godhood level in one fell swoop.
And his understanding of the priesthood and the corresponding rules continued to grow.
But his godhood level did not continue to grow, because his current divine power income was not enough to support him to go further.
But this is only temporary and will continue to grow soon.
Lin Xiao estimated that after refining the godhood of the Lord of Darkness, his own godhood level could grow to a maximum of level nine, which was equivalent to the tenth level of medium godhood, which was a bit difficult. After all, he only inherited two priesthoods from the godhood of the Lord of Darkness, and he did not take the most important priesthood of the drow elves, so naturally it could not support his promotion to medium godhood.
But he was not in a hurry. The potential for priesthood of the cryptmen he now possessed had already caught up with that of the drow elves. If he devoted himself to developing it for decades, when the cryptmen developed to a certain level, they would naturally be able to cross that level without even a bottleneck.
This is the advantage of racial priesthood.
Although the racial priesthood does not increase any combat power and does not provide any bonuses, as long as the race you control is strong enough, there will be no bottlenecks along the way to promotion, and even powerful divine powers can be easily overcome.
The prerequisite is that this race can support a powerful divine power.
The current crypt dwellers may be a bit tough, but once the fifth generation of crypt dwellers comes out, it will probably be fine.
After being promoted to a weaker divine power, one can divide out the incarnations of gods in proportion to the number of priesthoods. In addition to the ancient god priesthood material and the caveman priesthood, Lin Xiao also has three other priesthoods, which means he can divide out three incarnations of gods.
Racial priesthoods, regional priesthoods, and certain special priesthoods such as the Supreme cannot be distinguished as incarnations of God.
In addition, he also obtained several universal extraordinary divine abilities, including divine shield and instant teleportation.
As well as exclusive extraordinary divine abilities related to the newly added priesthood, they are shadow magic mastery and group divine shield.
The divine shield is different from the shield formed naturally by divine power. The shield formed by divine power simply uses divine power to offset damage, while the divine shield is absolute defense. Although it can only block damage once, it can withstand powerful attacks that far exceed its own strength.
As the name suggests, teleportation allows one to appear anywhere within sight with just a thought, and can pass through any barriers and barriers.
Shadow magic comes from the Shadow Magic Net, which covers the entire Underdark and the Shadow Plane, and other places that the authentic magic net cannot cover. It is inferior to the authentic magic net controlled by the God of Magic, but it is also quite powerful.
With the Shadow Weave, his crypt followers and priests will have the ability to cast spells and can cast many shadow spells within the Underdark, which will further enhance their strength.
At this moment, Lin Xiao really wanted to find an opponent to test his strength, but at this time the gods of the Underdark were attacking each other for the drow believers. The entire Underdark was in great chaos, and the drow were busy with civil war, so they had no time to care about the Cryptids. In addition, now that the Cryptids have risen, the looting that had lasted for tens of thousands of years has now disappeared.
After years of fighting, many drow cities have been divided up among the gods.
Especially as Lin Xiao gave up the priesthood of the drow elves, the gods of the Underdark began to condense the racial priesthood of the drow elves after gaining a large number of drow believers. Now the fastest few racial gods have already condensed the priesthood of the drow elves.
Conflicts over priesthood have always been the biggest reason for fighting among gods, and they are no exception. After most of the drow elves were divided up, several gods who condensed the priesthood of the drow elves officially announced a holy war to seize the priesthood in order to enjoy it alone.
In the second year of the Holy War, the God of the Gray Dwarves attempted to launch a surprise attack on the incarnation of the God of the Ogres but failed.
In the fifth year of the Holy War, the God of Mind Flayer took advantage of the fact that the God of Ogres and the God of Gray Dwarves were attacking the God of Tauren and Assassination and raided the hiding place of the God of Gray Dwarves.
After a melee that could be sensed even by Lin Xiao who was in the second level of the Underdark, the God of the Gray Dwarves fell and was eliminated.
The Ogre God and the Minotaur God immediately ceased fighting, but on the way back, the incarnation of the Ogre God was besieged and collapsed by several incarnations of true gods on the surface. Although the true body of the Ogre God was hidden deep and had not been found, the underground Ogre Kingdom, the root of its faith, located somewhere in the first layer of the Underdark, was attacked by the coalition forces of drow and gray dwarves and was defeated.
In the sixth year of the holy war, the fourth generation of cave dwellers completely replaced the third generation of cave dwellers, and the scope of their faith expanded to the depths of the distant underdark. Lin Xiao's cave dwellers had more than one billion believers.
In the seventh year of the Holy War, the God of Ogres, the God of Minotaurs, the God of Goblins, and the God of Wilderness and Slime united to fight against the God of Mind Flayers who had been promoted to a weaker level of divine power. The Ogre Kingdom's Warlord, the Minotaur King, and the Goblin Grand Craftsman joined forces with the drow coalition under the command of the three gods to expedition to the Mind Flayer Kingdom on the fourth layer of the Underdark.
In the final battle, the Minotaur God and the Ooze God suddenly turned against them, the incarnation of the Ogre God escaped, the incarnations of the Goblin God and the Wilderness God collapsed, and then the true body of the Goblin God was found. The true body of the Mind Flayer ventured out of his hiding place and killed the Goblin God at the cost of the death of his two incarnations.
After killing two true gods in a row, and with the help of the subordinate gods, the Minotaur God and the Slime God, the power of the God of Mind Flayer increased again.
Even the true gods of the Underdark, such as the God of Shadows and the God of Spiders, who were fighting on another battlefield, stopped the war and were wary of the God of Mind Flayer.
At this moment, Lin Xiao's godhood level slowly increased to level nine, and he was only one step away from medium god power. The power of faith he gained every day was barely enough to support the maintenance of the godhood and kingdom of God with medium god power.
One billion fourth-generation cave dwellers each provide about twenty points of faith power every day, one billion is twenty billion faith power, which is twenty thousand when converted into divine power. And the maintenance fee of a medium-level divine power godhood of level ten plus the kingdom of God is exactly about twenty thousand.
The reason why he was not promoted immediately was not only that his mastery of the rules of the priesthood was not enough to be promoted to a medium-level divine power, but also that his existing divine power was too limited.
Once you are promoted, you will have no extra divine power, and you will be very passive if there is even the slightest fluctuation.
You must know that once you are promoted to a medium-level divine power, you will immediately become one of the most powerful true gods in this Crystal Wall Universe except for one of the three powerful divine powers. At that time, you will definitely come under the gaze of the three powerful divine powers, and at the same time will also attract the hostility of other medium-level divine powers.
The powerful divine power that this crystal wall universe can bear is limited. Three have been born, and there are two vacancies left. There are more than forty medium-level divine powers, and the competition is quite fierce.
Fortunately, Lin Xiao possesses the ancient god's priesthood, which can help him conceal his true strength. Unless other true gods see his true form with their own eyes, they will not be able to see through his true self.
At the outpost, Lin Xiao's eyes swept across the dozen or so light balls that were constantly changing shape in front of him.
These are the bloodlines of more than a dozen powerful species that he collected, including super-powerful supermodel races like dragons and special powerful species like the Hydra, not to mention celestial creatures like angels, terrifying races like abyss demons, and so on.
But he hesitated for a long time, and finally chose one of the species that was not strong but not weak either - the Earth Giant.
This species of giant is only average in size or strength among the giants, but it is particularly suitable for cave dwellers.
However, Lin Xiao did not directly merge the blood genes of the two races. Instead, he extracted the genes of the earth giants and embedded them into the blood of the cavemen, making their blood hidden in the blood of the cavemen.
The reason for doing this is that the fifth generation of cave dwellers have reached their limit after completely releasing the mind flayer's psychic talents based on the fourth generation. Further strengthening will greatly affect the cave dwellers' reproductive capacity.
If the blood of the Earth Giants is integrated, the Cavemen will directly become a super-powerful race similar to the Earth Giants, which would lose the meaning of his spending so much effort to slowly adjust it from generation to generation. Wouldn't it be better to directly integrate the blood of the Earth Giants or even the more powerful Storm Giants from the beginning?
At the same time, by doing this, he also solved a problem that had been bothering him for a long time, that is, the problem of the Cavemen's power system.
Why is it that the combined population of races such as Tauren, Gray Dwarves, and Drow is less than that of Troggs, yet they can easily give birth to true Gods?
That's because these races have a large number of powerful professionals. As we all know, the power of faith provided by the strong is far greater than that of ordinary people of the same race, hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of times.
They are all human beings. Can the power of faith provided by an ordinary mortal with devout faith be compared with that of a devout legendary strongman?
Therefore, these races can give birth to true gods even though their population is far less than that of cavemen.
Now Lin Xiao needs to solve this problem and provide a power system for the cavemen.
The blood of the earth giant is hidden in the blood of the fifth generation of cavemen. It is not obvious at ordinary times, so it will not affect its reproduction speed. However, as long as specific conditions are met, the blood can be activated to transform into a new cave giant. Yes, he named the giant awakened by the cavemen the cave giant.
This will not only not affect the reproduction rate of the cavemen, but also enable this race to possess high-end power, which will enable it to compete with other races for living space.
In this way, he can safely advance to medium divine power, and this is also the capital for him to advance to powerful divine power in the future.
All is ready except for the opportunity.
But this breeze from the east came much slower than he had imagined.
After the God of Mind Flayer killed the gods of the gray dwarves and goblins, he gained the gods of the Tauren and the Ooze as his subordinates. His power expanded rapidly. A few years later, he subdued the God of Shadows and the God of the Underground, a total of four subordinates. His power expanded rapidly, and he gained the upper hand many times in battles with the New Alliance headed by the Ogres, forcing them to retreat step by step. The drow cities they occupied in the third layer of the Underdark were constantly taken away, and his strength was getting weaker and weaker.
Under such circumstances, Lin Xiao, who had been excluded and forced to remain neutral, was finally remembered by the gods. Before he was about to be promoted to middle-level divine power, an incarnation of the God of Wilderness came to visit him.
PS: I'm going to make a patch. Regarding the cost of maintaining the godhood and the consumption of divine power for the condensed incarnation, I've modified the previous article a bit. It seems to be chapter 557.
(End of this chapter)