Chapter Ninety-Three: Ancient Rites of Sacrifice, Part Two

A woman in a sheer violet veil, her pale skin all but visible through it, was leaning barefoot against a tree. Her body formed a perfect S-shaped curve, the sort that made it hard to look away once seen.

After hearing the burly man's words, she cooed, "Oh, come now. The two from this country are as sly as monkeys, and we can’t catch up to them anyway. If we can’t trick him, we’ll just go to the neighboring country and find some easier fools. Besides, the chairman only wants old-timers above five stars."

"Silken Violet, if you’re not going after him, what will the little Sister Five think, the one who lured that monk all this way?" A fussy, almost effeminate voice came from behind her. A frail-looking man in white, she had no idea when, had appeared at her back.

"You go fish him yourself, Fussy. As for me? I’m not staying." After saying this, the woman called Silken Violet vanished into her own purple veil, and in the blink of an eye only that veil remained, streaking through the air toward the distance.

The three-meter-tall giant looked a little dazed, then scratched his head and said to the effeminate man and Shadow Protrusion, "Old Third, Little Fifth, I’m heading out too. If I don’t finish the chairman’s task, I’ll get scolded!"

With that, the giant took off after the violet-veiled woman. He ran with thunderous strides, each step carrying him four or five meters, and only then barely caught up with the purple veil.

After the two left, the white-robed effeminate man walked to Shadow Protrusion and said very gently, "Little Sister Five, do you want big brother to carry you?"

"Thank you. No need. Farewell."

Shadow Protrusion’s androgynous voice was cold as ice.

After rejecting the white-robed fop’s offer, Shadow Protrusion’s shadow expanded rapidly. In the blink of an eye it became that black fiendish form, taller than a building, the same shape it had in the seaside prison. Shadow Protrusion rode atop its head and sped off into the distance.

"Tch... Such an ungrateful little girl."

After Shadow Protrusion left, the white-robed man sneered and flicked open the white fan in his hand. His body split apart into sheets of white paper. The paper twisted in the air on its own, turning into paper airplanes. Then, a swarm of those paper planes shot forward at astonishing speed, catching up to the violet veil.

These people were the current second elder of the Purification Society, Silken Violet Zitong; the third elder, Endless Body Han Bai; the fourth elder, Martial Maniac Zhang Meng; and the fifth elder, Shadow Protrusion Chen Ying.

This time they had all come out together for the task their chairman had given them: to bring back five old men above five stars who did not cultivate magnetic power, dead or alive. He wanted only that flesh-and-blood vessel.

According to the chairman, he would use the flesh of these people to begin the first stage of the ancient sacrifice, ushering in the next great rise of ghosts and monsters across the world.

By then, with the resentment of living beings, the members of the Purification Society would become kings of all ghosts and monsters, and thus kings of the world.

As for how the sacrifice was to be performed, the four did not really understand. They only followed orders. And the place they were now heading for was the Land of Poison Remains, where there were also strong practitioners who had long relied on inherited ancient methods to rise to power.

Before the great outbreak of ghosts and monsters, those methods had been useless. But after the outbreak, these people, even without magnetic power, could still wound ghosts and monsters by means of a special kind of energy.

For instance, Wuxiang's golden circular slash, or the living Buddha of the Land of Poison Remains they were about to seek out, Master Baman, who cultivated the power of the mind.

Baman's practice was somewhat like that of an ascetic monk. He traveled endlessly through the Land of Poison Remains, taking the alleviation of others' mental and bodily suffering as his own path of cultivation. And in the process of healing the pain of others, he, too, could gain a certain power of the mind.

This power was enough to withstand the attacks of ghosts and monsters. In the early days of the outbreak, Baman, who could even injure such beings, was worshiped by the people of the Land of Poison Remains as a god.

Two weeks later

Somewhere in the Land of Poison Remains, Baman, who now looked somewhat gaunt, was repairing the house of a mother raising a child on her own. His aged face and kindly eyes made him look like a deity of the Land of Poison Remains descended into the mortal world.

By then, however, the four elders of the Purification Society had already quietly surrounded him. Baman's realm was only equivalent to that of a six-star awakened one. Unlike Wuxiang, who could stand toe-to-toe with a seven-star abomination, the four elders did not need to be nearly as cautious with him.

Not long after, Baman finished helping the mother repair the roof that leaked rainwater. He accepted the food she offered, then left leaning on his wooden staff.

When Baman reached a stretch of woods, he came to a halt, turned, and looked toward a certain place before slowly speaking. "The four of you have followed me all this way. What is it you want?"

Although Baman's cultivation was inferior to Wuxiang's, with his tranquil mind it was far too easy to sense the four nearby hearts brimming with killing intent. He had not pointed it out earlier only because ordinary people were nearby, and he feared that if fighting broke out they might be injured by mistake.

The Purification Society elders hiding in the shadows gave no answer. Instead, a violet veil came straight down over Baman's head.

Baman lightly lowered his staff to the ground. With a dull thud, blue energy erupted outward; this was Baman's power of the mind. The purple veil and a pool of black liquid that had tried to ambush him from the ground were both blasted away by the blue force bursting from around him.

A great many white, leaf-like things were shaken loose from the trees all around him. They sliced through his clothing and left wounds across his skin. This was none other than the Purification Society's third elder, Han Bai, who was called Endless Body.

Blue energy erupted once more, halting the surrounding white paper leaves for a moment and preventing them from falling. Seizing the chance, Baman hurriedly escaped the area covered by the white leaves.

In barely two minutes beneath that canopy of paper leaves, more than a hundred cuts had been carved into Baman's body, and his clothes had been reduced to ragged strips.

Just as Baman steadied himself, the giant-like Zhang Meng thrust half his body up from the ground beneath him like a burrowing spirit, his enormous hands clamping around Baman's feet like iron tongs and pinning him in place.

At that moment, the blasted-away purple veil struck again, while within a hundred meters black liquid flooded the area, surrounding them. Any tree touched by the black fluid vanished at once, as though corroded by acid.

Baman finally turned ruthless as well, setting aside his usual mercy. His solemn face hardened, and the wooden staff in his hand burst with dazzling blue light as he swung it at Zhang Meng, who held his feet.

Boom.

The staff, wrapped in blue energy, struck the side of Zhang Meng's head. He was knocked clean out of the ground by that blow. His grip on Baman's feet wrenched him off balance, interrupting Baman's attempt to turn and defend against Silken Violet's attack with the staff.

Zhang Meng's body crashed through several trees and flew off into the distance. In the blur, his head seemed to have been knocked so hard it had twisted around to face backward.

Once Silken Violet had descended over Baman's head, it wrapped his entire body within. The purple veil began to tighten, like a violet python coiling around him and starting to strangle.

But Baman was not so easy to handle. Blue energy raged and surged within the purple veil, battering it until it warped out of shape. From the outside it looked as though the veil was on the verge of being shattered, reduced to a tattered rag.

Just then, a white sword stabbed out from beneath the purple veil, and a slit tore open at the top of it.

Yet Baman did not escape from beneath the purple cloth. Instead, the sharp blade formed from white paper had already pierced him from foot to crown. The man who had once been regarded like a deity in the Land of Poison Remains was thus slain by the four of them.

The split purple veil transformed once more into a beautiful woman dressed in purple, though now a wide expanse of snowy skin was exposed across her chest. Beads of red blood flowed from within the gauze as well, making her look alluring to an extreme.

At that moment, Zitong's voice, sweet and thick with killing intent, rang out. "Han Bai, how dare you break my Silken Veil!"

Han Bai, who had been sitting in a tree watching the spectacle, suddenly found a swath of purple gauze above his head. In the next second, he was wrapped up without the slightest chance to resist. The purple cloth tightened at once, and even Shadow Protrusion, who was cleaning up the battlefield, could vaguely hear the sound of bones cracking.

Bang.

With a soft sound, the white-robed man inside the purple veil turned into a white paper figure, only to be shredded by Zitong into a blizzard of fragments. The scraps of paper turned into wisps of black smoke and slowly vanished.

A figure reappeared beside the quietly decapitating Shadow Protrusion, then reached to embrace her while saying, "Then I have to thank Little Sister Five for carving me a path under that old man's feet."

Before Han Bai could finish, Shadow Protrusion took Baman's body and head, turned them into a pool of black liquid, and slipped into the shadow of a nearby tree, disappearing without a trace, leaving him to embrace empty air.

At that moment, heavy footsteps sounded, and Zhang Meng, whose head had been knocked crooked, also walked back from afar. Hearing this, he said, "Then this time the first credit goes to Little Fifth?"

The instant Han Bai heard those words, his eyes narrowed slightly. Then, still smiling, he said, "If Little Sister Five wants it, I have absolutely no objection."

"Oh! I don't mind either!"

Zhang Meng said with an honest grin, then gave his head a crack and twisted it back around from behind where Baman had struck it.

"Han Bai! Do you take me for air!"

Before the words had even faded, the purple veil came down once more over Han Bai's head.

Han Bai's figure instantly turned into a paper arrow and fled from the veil's reach. After reforming his body, he said with a frosty face, "Zitong, you tore my clothes and I destroyed one of your clones. We're even. If you keep making a move, be careful I report you to the chairman and have him hunt you down!"

"Hmph!"

Zitong also snorted coldly, her face just as icy.

Zhang Meng scratched the back of his head and said with complete sincerity, "Second Brother, Third Brother, stop arguing. We've only finished one, and there are still four left. Are you really worried there's not enough credit to go around?"