The two walked towards the direction where they could sense life; sensing life meant that there was life there.
Along the way, Lianyao noticed that the land was extremely dry, with deep cracks in the earth and withered grass mixed in, indicating that it hadn't rained for a long time.
As evening fell, they finally saw a human city—Hancheng.
Although it is a city, it would be more accurate to describe it as a town.
Because the city walls of Handan were only three meters high made of adobe, and the city was full of low wooden houses, with no buildings more than two stories high.
The people on the street were all emaciated, with numb and empty eyes, like walking corpses.
On a street corner, a mother sat on the stone steps, stuffing a dirty strip of cloth into the mouth of her wailing child. The child immediately began to suck on the cloth as soon as it touched his mouth.
The woman watched as the child in her arms licked the wet cloth strip, and couldn't help but lick her chapped lips.
Seeing this, Lian Yao couldn't help but walk over to her and ask, "What are you feeding the child?"
The woman looked up and froze.
Zhang Yun and Ye Chen both had extraordinary appearances and wore extremely luxurious clothes, making them seem unlike people from this place.
The woman stared blankly for a moment before coming to her senses and saying, "There's no water anywhere. This is a damp cloth they used to filter the muddy water. Let the child lick it."
Lian Yao's divine sense expanded to the entire city of Handan, where he saw someone pouring sewage mixed with half yellow mud onto a cloth to filter out the sand and mud.
The filtered water was still murky, but these people scrambled for it like it was some kind of divine brew, even taking the dirty cloth used for filtering the water.
Some people even stuck their heads into the water tank to lick the last bit of moisture left at the bottom.
Some people slaughtered livestock and drank their blood.
Some are... well, self-sufficient.
It's too vulgar to describe.
How could the people in this small world be so miserable?
"Where are your gods?" Lian Yao asked.
The people of Handan looked bewildered.
Lian Yao asked, "Who are the gods you worship? Where are the temples where you offer sacrifices?"
"What kind of bullshit gods are there in this world? We've been suffering from drought for two years, and we've prayed to every god we can think of, but not a single drop of water has fallen!" one person couldn't help but say.
That's impossible.
When a deity first creates a small world, they will reveal their true form or incarnation to the beings within that small world.
Believers will carve statues in his likeness in this world for worship. Any statue of their own can become a coordinate for the arrival of a branch of the god in this small world.
When believers worship the idol, their faith accumulates on the idol. Every so often, the gods will send a portion of their spirits down to collect this accumulated faith.
He will also check out the smaller worlds, perform miracles, and grant some steadfast believers the qualifications to cultivate in the realm of the Lord, in order to strengthen their faith in him.
There's only one possibility why these people in Handan don't remember their gods—
This is a small, abandoned world.
When Lian Yao was cultivating in the Dao Palace, he knew that there were many small worlds abandoned by the gods in the current chaos.
Some kind-hearted deities will disperse the beings in that small world to their main world or other small worlds under their jurisdiction before abandoning it.
However, most deities simply don't bother with the beings in the small world. They will directly remove all the coordinates of their divine manifestations left in that small world, erase all traces of their existence and the memories of their believers, and sever all karmic ties with that small world.
What happened to that little world afterward was none of their business.
If you're lucky, you might encounter a deity willing to take over, or a being in the small world might have the opportunity to cultivate and become an immortal, thus protecting this small world and saving it from its collapsing fate, like the world of Zero God.
But those are just a few isolated cases. In most other small worlds, after being abandoned by their owners, survival resources dwindle, the environment deteriorates, and eventually the entire world is destroyed.
When Lianyao heard his senior brother talk about it before, he felt that abandoning a small world that could not provide him with any benefit was wrong.
Except for a very few gods who are too lazy to create or are unable to open up the world, all the gods cultivate in this way.
Moreover, this was a cultivation method passed down from his master, the ancestral god Honglin.
Even if Lian Yao felt something was wrong, he couldn't say it openly, otherwise he would be making an enemy of all the gods and immortals, which would be betraying his master and ancestors.
Unless he can create a better cultivation method than this and gain Honglin's approval.
However, the method to become a god is not a mortal martial arts manual, and it is even more difficult to solve the drawbacks of the current cultivation method.
Even his master Honglin, who has lived for so long, couldn't do it, let alone Lianyao.
But I digress. Let's get back to the present.
From the local people, Lianyao learned that they had been suffering from a severe drought for two years.
The crops in the fields couldn't grow, and many people starved and died of thirst. Some who still had the strength left to find a way to survive.
Those who remained were the ones who hadn't left before, and now they wanted to leave but couldn't, because there was no water or food on the road.
There was no water for miles around, so they had no way of surviving to reach a place with water.
After hearing what they said, Lian Yao felt a little sorry for them, so she took out a low-level water-falling talisman that she had drawn when she was practicing drawing talismans from the Void Mirror.
The laws of the small world restrict powerful cultivators and magical treasures, but these cheap water-falling talismans can be used.
Fearing there wouldn't be enough water, Lian Yao grabbed a large handful, infused it with a tiny bit of his magic power, and launched the talisman into the sky.
In an instant, the sky became covered with dark clouds.
Life returned to the lifeless eyes of the people of Handan. One by one, they emerged from their hidden corners, their eyes fixed on the sky.
It's unimaginable how well these people can hide.
There were only a few dozen people outside before, but suddenly there were nearly a thousand.
"Thud—"
The first raindrop fell and landed on the forehead of a gaunt man, who trembled all over. "It's raining! It's raining!"
With his excited shouts, more and more raindrops fell from the sky, eventually forming patches of rain.
"It's raining! It's raining!" People rushed into the water and cheered.
"Water! So much water!"
Some people tilted their heads back and used their chapped lips to catch the rainwater from the sky, while others took off their clothes and let the rain wash over their bodies.
Some people rushed into their homes and brought out water tanks, wooden basins, wooden buckets and other containers to catch the rainwater.
Their actions reminded others, who then went home and set up containers.
At this moment, someone noticed that Lian Yao and Ye Chen, despite being in the pouring rain, were not wet at all.
It was the arrival of these two that caused the rain to fall.
Remembering the question Lian Yao had asked them about the gods, someone suddenly realized, "It was them! It was these two immortals who brought down the rain! They are immortals!"
As he spoke, the man knelt on the muddy ground that had been soaked by the rain, ignoring the filth, and kowtowed to the two of them.
His voice and actions affected those around him. Belatedly realizing what was happening, the crowd knelt down and kowtowed gratefully, saying, "Thank you, God! Thank you, God!"
With this group of people leading the way, the people of Handan also came out, knelt down together, and kowtowed to Lian Yao and Ye Chen.
"May we ask your honorable titles, immortals? We will certainly build temples to sculpt statues of the two immortals and offer sacrifices day and night, with incense burning continuously."
An old man who was closest to Lian Yao stepped forward and asked.
The mud on his forehead from kowtowing was washed away by the rain and flowed down the deep lines on his face.
Perhaps, there were tears mixed in with it.
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