Simulates history, but Chongzhen is the Divine Emperor at the beginning

Chapter 22: When you commit violence against others, you will gain divine power!
[Under everyone's astonished gaze, you actually sat down in the cell on your own...]

Some people wonder: Are you going through all this trouble just to fight to the death? Is it necessary to take such an extreme action over a simple matter involving a title of Juren?

"Anyway, you're still young, and a child prodigy. You have plenty of chances to pass the imperial examinations in the future. As long as you work hard, becoming a juren (academic candidate) isn't difficult, and even becoming a jinshi (a scholar) isn't impossible. But why must you be so unwise and extreme?"

The provincial governor and the prefects were confused, as were the imperial guards; they couldn't understand you either.

However, the Jinyiwei didn't take this too seriously. After all, they had no intention of letting you go in the first place. Throughout this incident, you've displayed courage and insight far beyond what one should possess at your age. Given their natural vigilance, they couldn't possibly let you go.

[Secondly, you are a direct participant and planner of this entire incident. You are fully aware of all the hidden twists and turns involved. So even if it's just to silence you, they will find a crime to kill you!]

[Thirdly, your position is too unclear, making it impossible for the Jinyiwei to determine whether you are truly related to the thieves. To be on the safe side, they would rather kill the wrong person than let him go!]

[With three sins committed, it will be hard for you to survive! ]

You: I have three sins...

[And now, you've given yourself the identity of an "accomplice of the thieves," which is tantamount to sentencing yourself to death. This will also save you from causing further trouble for the Imperial Guards.]

[For a while, everyone was amazed at you, resentful, confused, and suspicious...]

【…】

【However, you don’t really care about their opinions, because you are currently overwhelmed by your own amazing discovery.】

[“The tyrannical divine power… has increased?”]

You sit cross-legged on the floor of your cell, ostensibly resting with your eyes closed, but in reality you are carefully "looking inward..."

"It's not quite right to call it inner vision, because you can't use your mind to "see" things like your own meridians, spiritual energy, and mana like cultivators in the immortal realm. Your "inner vision" is actually just a special feeling that is sometimes there and sometimes not.

[And the thing that caused you to have this special feeling was a wisp of "qi"... It was exactly the wisp of tyrannical divine power that the county magistrate bestowed upon you all those years ago!]

[Back then, you were weakened by over-studying. Your master, who saw you as a cash cow, took you to see the county magistrate in private, and you obtained this divine power.]

"Master's original intention in asking the County Magistrate to grant you divine power was to help you recuperate, lest this rare human cash cow of yours wither and die halfway. But I'm afraid neither he nor the County Magistrate anticipated that before you could even begin to give them gold coins, you'd already whipped them into spinning tops and thrown them into jail..."

[However, what you care about now is not the source of divine power, but the divine power itself: it has become more!]

This is something that confuses you. After all, divine power is precious. You only know it as a salary bestowed by the Divine Emperor on officials. The more you use it, the less it becomes. Therefore, even though you know the infinite uses of divine power, you have never actively used it.

[In the two years since you got it, you've been letting it run naturally within your body, helping you regulate your body on your own, treating it like an "automatic fitness machine" or a "permanent portable buff," so it's been there until now.]

[However, ever since you've been busy running around between northern Shaanxi and Xi'an these past few days, this wisp of violent divine power that you had almost forgotten about has unexpectedly increased...]

"Before, you were busy seeking revenge and arresting people, so you had no time to pay attention to it. Now that you have some free time in prison, you have finally begun to carefully consider the reason behind it."

[“Divine power unexpectedly increased out of thin air…”]

This puzzles you: If divine power could truly multiply out of thin air, then why had it remained unchanged for the past two years? Furthermore, taking the example of Master and the County Magistrate, if their divine power could multiply, then they wouldn't have hidden it long ago. Why would they have to live as mortals in the mortal world?

[In other words, if their divine power had an independent and stable source, then the world would not be ruled by a single Divine Emperor. Instead, a divine war would have broken out long ago, leaving the world in flames and riven with war, a repeat of the events of the Sixteen Kingdoms of the Five Barbarians and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms...]

[“So, the fact that divine power can grow is inherently abnormal… at least it’s not a common occurrence.”]

You frowned and began to recall what special experiences you had these days, trying to find the answer to your question...

……

"Anyway, revenge has finally been achieved!"

As the simulated character fell into self-contemplation, Zhou Liang couldn't help but feel refreshed:
Wow! He wiped out the entire Shaanxi bureaucracy in one fell swoop, from the provincial governor, the governor-general who oversaw the province's administration and finances, down to the magistrate and clerks of Mizhi County, and in between were a whole bunch of prefectural officials whose names he'd never even heard of...

how to say?

"Your performance in just one instance has far surpassed the thirty-eight years of assassinating officials that my Pig Slaughterhouse has achieved!"

Zhou Liang was simply amazed:
Under normal circumstances, this level of achievement would be impossible to achieve, as mortals are still mortals. Even pulling out all the stops is useless against the God Emperor's lackeys, whose power levels completely crush mortals. The Slaughterhouse could only manage to kill a few county magistrates in remote areas, but this guy, on the other hand, started out as a provincial governor...

"Although he didn't use his own strength to accomplish this, but instead relied on the power struggles within the Ming Dynasty, so he couldn't possibly affect the Ming Dynasty's rule, but no matter what, his move was also superb..."

Zhou Liang couldn't help but give him a thumbs up:

Cowhide!

As for the subsequent death issue...does the simulator need to care about this?

As I said before, if you want to play the simulator smoothly, you have to die more! The more the protagonist dies, the more information you collect, and the smoother the game will be when you restart it next time.

"Then there's the question of divine power."

Zhou Liang looked at the question his "other self" was pondering and couldn't help but feel curious:

He was no stranger to divine power. During his many years of anti-Ming campaign, he had been attacked by those with divine power more than once!

However, Zhou Liang had never properly mastered divine power, so he knew very little about it.

He only knew that there was only one source of divine power in the world, and that was the Divine Emperor himself!
The divine powers of all officials were differentiated and bestowed by Him. As for whether any official could generate divine power on his own... the answer is no. If there was, he would be quickly blasted to pieces by the Divine Emperor.

After all, Chongzhen was not good at anything else, but he was an expert at seizing power. Countless historical examples have shown that this last emperor of the Ming Dynasty was never willing to give up his supreme power and status. He would kill anyone who challenged his power. He was a typical feudal centralized monarch...

Therefore, it should not be common for "Zhou Liang" to generate supernatural power on his own.

But what is the principle behind it?

Zhou Liang began to recall what made him different:

"What makes him different from others, besides being the protagonist of the simulator, is the two prizes given to him by the simulator."

One is "Me and My Animal Friends" and the other is "The Spiritual Light of the Sacrificers".

These two things have long been integrated into the plot itself. Although the simulation plot does not specifically indicate when they took effect, they have actually always been in effect. The reason why "Zhou Liang" can get to this point today is inseparable from their silent assistance.

"However, there's no necessary connection between their effects and the increase in divine power. Furthermore, if it were because of them, then the increase in divine power should have begun long ago, rather than being suddenly discovered by him in the past few days."

So, the problem must be with the experience of the past few days.

But... Zhou Liang carefully looked through the historical information for a long time, but didn't find anything special:

"He hasn't eaten any rare treasures like the protagonists in Jin Yong's martial arts novels, nor has he practiced any martial arts or magic, and he hasn't had any one-night stands with any drugged demons or fairies... That shouldn't be the case, right?"

In the past few days, besides running around everywhere, he has been busy catching enemies and bad guys, from officials to ordinary people, from corrupt officials to school bullies, and then beating them into a twirl, throwing them into jail. His main goal is to do whatever he wants, and to uphold justice...

"Could it be... because he punishes evil and promotes good?"

Zhou Liang suddenly had an idea.

But then he shook his head and denied it:
"No... I haven't seen the Divine Emperor punish evil and promote good, have I? He used to massacre towns and suppress uprisings every day, killing countless innocent people. What kind of justice was he upholding? And yet, he still has infinite divine power..."

Thinking about it this way, Zhou Liang seemed to have grasped something key:
"The Divine Emperor hasn't really upheld justice, but he has certainly killed a lot, from south to north, from east to west..."

"Although the simulated protagonist didn't kill anyone, he did manage to whip quite a few spinning tops, making corrupt officials and unscrupulous businessmen cry out in pain..."

There seems to be something in common between the two...

"And the name of Tyrannical Divine Power..."

Zhou Liang muttered to himself, and a bold and reasonable guess gradually emerged in his mind:
"This increase in divine power... isn't it through violence against others?!"

……

(End of this chapter)