Chapter 7

Wu Hai announced the news with a poker face, then flipped his hand, and a stack of cards emitting a faint golden light flew out from his palm, spreading out in front of him. He said:

"This time, the difficulty of the baseline test will be higher than usual, but it will still be within your capabilities. Considering that some students' current abilities do indeed vary, if you feel unable to pass during the test, you can contact the teacher to give up. However, if you give up, it will mean the test is terminated, and I will score you based on your performance before you gave up."

He paused for a moment, then took out a slightly thinner stack of cards from his pocket and spread them out, continuing:

"Due to the increased difficulty of this baseline test, the rewards will be higher than usual. Students ranked 11th to 20th will receive a one-star designated card, those in the top ten will receive a two-star designated card, the third place will receive an additional three-star card on top of the two-star card, and the second place will receive an additional four-star card on top of the two-star card."

He paused again, his gaze meeting the surprised and hopeful eyes of the students as he said:

"The first place in this baseline test will receive a five-star designated card, which will greatly enhance your abilities. So, please... do your best!"

Lin Xiao noticed that the teacher's gaze fell on the top five students who usually ranked highest, while he, who ranked below average, was overlooked.

Sure enough, underachievers are not valued!

Although he was used to it, being ignored still made him feel angry.

This only made Lin Xiao more determined to do well in this test. Whether the teacher paid attention or not was one thing, but the five-star designated card was a valuable prize.

After all, for a newly established divine domain where even demigods are not yet reached, the highest level of card that can be used is a five-star card. Cards from six-star to ten-star are only usable by demigods and are called demigod cards. True gods generally use cards above ten-star, known as divine cards.

Each student has a limited number of cards they can use during high school, and using high-level cards is essential to maximize their abilities.

At this point, the homeroom teacher's voice rang out again:

"The rules for this baseline test are the same as before. You can now go back and prepare."

With a wave of his sleeve, Lin Xiao felt a strong force push him out of the hall. Before leaving, he vaguely saw that a few students had not left like him, and Wu Hai and Zheng Wenzhuo were still in the hall.

"The teacher is so biased!"

He faintly heard a student's complaint.

He shrugged, not responding.

Following the usual test routine, the teacher would announce the start of the test the next day, during which enemy invasions would begin in the divine domain. Students could either enter the divine domain immediately to prepare or do so the next day, but most students chose to enter immediately to get a head start.

Lin Xiao also decided to enter the divine domain immediately, logging in to connect to the divine domain.

Upon returning to the divine domain, he noticed that about a dozen new fishmen had been added, but an equal number of old fishmen had died, balancing out the total. However, he had lost a few followers.

Fortunately, with the birth of the new generation of fishmen, who were raised with tribal faith from a young age, the newborn fishmen became at least shallow believers upon reaching adulthood, and nearly a third became true believers.

As they grew older, all true believers gained the preloaded skill "Salmon Spear Thrust," which significantly boosted their abilities. This greatly motivated the shallow believers, and a large portion of them increased their faith and became true believers.

Currently, the tribe has 654 fishmen, including 19 fanatics, 68 devout believers, 116 shallow believers, and the remaining 451 are all true believers.

This ratio is quite good, considering the short lifespan of fishmen, who live for only a decade or less, leaving no time to gradually strengthen their faith. Generally, reaching the level of a true believer is the peak.

A standard human shallow believer can provide 0.1 faith points per day, while the weak fishmen can only provide one-fifth of that, or 0.02 faith points per day, which is almost negligible.

True believers can provide 0.2 faith points, which is still low, but the large number of fishmen and their rapid reproduction mean that the 451 true believers can provide Lin Xiao with 90.2 faith points per day.

A devout believer can provide 1 faith point per day, and the 68 devout believers in the fishmen tribe can provide 68 faith points per day.

A fanatic can provide 10 faith points per day, and with 19 fanatics, they can provide 190 faith points per day, making them the most valuable believers in terms of faith points.

In total, Lin Xiao can harvest around 350 faith points per day from this group of fishmen.

However, this is the ideal state. In reality, he currently harvests around 270 to 280 faith points per day.

The main reason is that believers must follow the church's rituals to maximize their faith points, but the fishmen's nature makes it extremely difficult for them to follow these rituals diligently. This is an inherent trait that cannot be changed, so Lin Xiao can only harvest about 60% to 70% of the theoretical faith points.

Even so, he accumulates around 270 to 280 faith points per day, and with his previous accumulation, he now has over 500,000 faith points.

It may seem like a lot, but it's not very useful.

Aside from trading faith points for items or upgrading clans, 500,000 faith points are not much. Converting faith points to divine power, 1,000,000 faith points are needed for one point of divine power, and 500,000 are not enough to convert to even one point.

However, even though it's not enough for one point of divine power, 500,000 faith points are still a decent amount for a newly established divine domain that has been open for less than a year.

Indeed, once the golden finger is activated, things start to take off.

Previously, it took over a hundred years to accumulate one point of divine power, but now, in less than eight years, he has accumulated half a point, which is much faster. This speed will only increase as his divine domain develops, and it's not impossible to reach one point of divine power per year by the time of the college entrance exam in two years.

After a brief moment of reflection, Lin Xiao gathered his spirits and spent 654 faith points to issue a divine decree, equivalent to one faith point per believer.

Currently, the cost is not high, but it will increase as the number of believers grows. If there are hundreds of thousands or millions of believers, a single divine decree would cost millions of faith points.

So, at that time, divine decrees will generally be conveyed through elects.