Chapter 207: Mountain Sacrifice |
The Old Ladies got into a circle formation, surrounding the deformed one as they whispered amongst themselves.
Most of them focused on how to deal with Gu Qianqian, and some praised Yibei for her idea.
Her heart began to beat fast, and beads of sweat oozed from her palms.
Ever since she encountered Miss Rabbit, she didn’t know how many times she panicked. And yet, she was never as nervous as she is now.
Last time, it was all on her, but this time, she may accidentally kill Gu Qianqian.
“A sacrifice, you say,” the deformed Old Lady spoke, her slits studying Yibei closely.
“Yes,” she spoke, raising her head in confidence. “This is an outsider’s conspiracy to desecrate our holy ceremony. Executing her may not be enough to appease god’s anger, so indeed, she is the perfect sacrifice. Since she incurs its wrath, perhaps she shall meet it in person.”
The deformed Old Lady’s eyes flashed with a golden light several times.
Gu Qianqian felt wronged and puffed up her cheeks, wanting to yell at the Witch. However, the moment she opened her mouth, the system stopped her.
“What do you want me to do, then? She’s lying in my name. I never did anything wrong!”
“What a surprise for a Witch to lie,” the system sighed. “But she’s delaying time for us, so maybe it’s our chance to escape.”
“But I’m pissed!”
“It’s never too late for a gentleman to take revenge.”
“But I’m not a man!”
As the Witch spoke, the Old Ladies fell into deep thought before nodding in unison.
“You make sense, little girl. Let us sacrifice her to the gods, and…”
The Old Ladies gathered together and said, “We hear that you may be the best candidate for becoming a nun to serve our god. Then, you shall preside over this sacrifice, and when it is done, you will become a nun to the cause.”
“Thank you,” Yibei responded.
Yes, my plan is working! I can help Gu Qianqian escape somehow, and maybe I can get into contact with the serpent god, steal knowledge, and get out of here!
Looking around, she expected to see the grateful faces of the villagers, but instead, all she saw was pity and contempt, as if sad that her fate was reduced to becoming a nun.
After the storm, the banquet celebration continued.
The villagers continued to compete for food, and the soup, exuding a peculiar smell, was mixed with meat.
Everybody seemed to take their minds off Gu Qianqian, still within the black snake’s grasp.
However, the villagers seem to avoid Yibei. It’s hard to imagine how these deformed villagers would, ironically, avoid the most normal-looking person among them.
However, she didn’t care. She was used to being alone anyway.
At the banquet, three Old Ladies brought a nun’s robe to her. The Old Ladies looked exactly the same.
After taking the robe, she took the opportunity to slip out of the celebration under the pretence of changing her clothes. She returned to the stone house she was hiding in and found the guitar bag that she had hidden inside.
The robes worn by the nuns had a strange texture. Silky or made of tulle, but it’s smooth yet greasy on the skin.
Now, Yibei understood why the jacket couldn’t morph into their ceremonial clothes. It must be of unknown origin.
The jacket seemed to touch the robe, and I swallowed it as it began to mimic its appearance. Additionally, it added a layer of velvet lining to the robe.
She couldn’t help but want to feed it more cores.
After getting into the robe, she took out her knife and a drawstring bag filled with charms from her guitar bag and placed them close to her body.
She didn’t know who to trust anymore: the old man or the cry for help she heard when she entered the realm. Anyway, she had already planned on killing the serpent god if the opportunity arose.
Before leaving, she also checked on the deformed man that she knocked unconscious with the statue and smiled upon seeing him still lying limply by the wall.
She placed the statue gingerly on top of his family jewels and left the house back into the celebration.
When she returned, the banquet was coming to an end, and a group of priests had gathered at the edges of the space.
A sharp wail could be heard.
Clang!
A gong sounded, and the deformed old lady glanced at Yibei coldly before turning around and leading the priests towards the dark mountains and rivers.
The villagers carried lanterns and followed numbly behind like sheep.
Seeing this, she hurriedly merged with the priests, and they left the village into the torn, fragmented mountains.
The storm returned suddenly, and the sky somehow became darker than ever before.
Under the dim moonlight, the huge maze surrounded by trees seems to be connected to an ancient mystery.
The atmosphere was currently depressing, and vaguely, she heard hoarse whispers coming from Gu Qianqian, being dragged along by the snakes at her feet.
“Clearing progress… 73%, 73.5%…”
“Shh! You’re going to expose me, Gu Qianqian!”
“74.6%…”
Yibei wanted to convey her plan to Gu Qianqian, but whenever she wanted to get closer to her, the snakes wrapped around her legs would hiss at her.
After her third attempt, she stopped to avoid raising suspicion.
The stone road was now covered with a thick layer of moss, and Yibei had an eerie sense of recognition.
This was where I was last time. We’re going to the pit, aren’t we?
Plus, the Egg within her began to stir. Its cold breath rippled through her body, causing her body to tremble.
What is causing me to feel like this? I… I feel weird.
Soon, the dense fog in the forest cleared away, and sure enough, they came to the evil pit that seemed like an ancient beast with its maw open.
As soon as they arrived, the priests and the villagers spread out along the pit’s rugged and steep edge.
Following them, she discovered the jagged trail the last time she came here, not far away, and peering into the sinkhole, she felt a tingle in her heart.
It’s too deep.
The lanterns swayed with the light wind, and everybody began to pray as they hovered by the pit. Their unexplained whispers commigrate together in a cacophonous prayer.
She had no idea what any of them were saying, so she could only observe Gu Qianqian while attempting to blend in with the villagers.
“Kuntukutakatkautsuvasilason… Mia Morasuna, Dany Sheli Hong…”
I feel like a villager right now. I thought priests and nuns had special privileges.
To answer her, a figure appeared behind her ominously.
Just before a pair of pale hands were about to push her, she instinctively swerved to the side and saw a figure in red rushing by before twisting unnaturally to look at her.
It’s the deformed Old Lady!
“O-oh, hey, uh, what am I supposed to do?”
She didn’t respond to Yibei, but her scales began to swell violently, and her neck was engorged; her clothes were torn as she began to grow and grow, turning into a giant, black snake with limbs overlooking the entire pit.
“It is your duty to preside over the ceremony, escorting the sacrifices to the ancestral hall. Are you disobeying the sanctity of the ceremony by avoiding your duties?”
A dizzying fragrance entered her nostrils, and soon, she realised the predicament she was in.
No matter how you look at it, it was an attempt to kill her!
The Old Lady implied that the ancestral hall was at the bottom of the sinkhole.
Why didn’t that old man tell me?
A frightening scream sounded in her ears, and she could see the giant serpent tossing Gu Qianqian into the sky, and her body was suspended over the pit.
The priests pushed their wooden boxes into the pit, letting them slide down its crevices into the darkness.
In a brief moment of confusion, the snake pounced on Yibei with its fangs and claws, and its sharp fingers and claws launched waves of black smoke towards her.
Yibei instantly unsheathed her kitchen knife and swung it towards the evil claws. Stabbing it relentlessly, she silently recited her spell to conjure a pillar of fire.
The psychic energy around her became restless, and she shot out several fireballs from her fingertips, accurately hitting the snake’s body as it crackled upon impact.
The snake roared as it lost its stability, but Yibei knew her job wasn’t done.
Narrowing her eyes, she leapt onto a rock and leapt off it, slashing her kitchen knife down on the snake.
At that moment, she felt the wind and the rain on her face, and her red hair sparked with bloodlust.
Gu Qianqian felt herself being suspended over the sinkhole, but she could feel herself being lowered little by little.
Roar!
The system briefly stopped the process of clearing the curse out of her body and glanced in the direction of the roar, “Gu Qianqian, l-”
“What is it?”
“Forget it… 92.1%…”
After seeing the Witch’s bloodlust with its own eyes, the system was in awe but kept silent so as not to damage Gu Qianqian’s ego.
Even if she wasn’t relying on the power within her body, she would become a terrifying menace once she did.
If Gu Qianqian knew that her destined enemy was more ruthless and talented, as well as proficient in tinkering with spells and alchemy…
As the system was thinking, thunderstruck.
Arcs of electricity danced in the clouds, and a huge sense of oppression came over the pit.
A shadow, deeper in black than the shadow within the pit, crept past and rose into the sky in an instant.
The shadow shimmered strangely as its blasphemous limbs sent out maddening screams in all directions, intending to devour all that there was.
“Gu Qianqian!”
Before she knew it, a dark limb dragged her deep into the sinkhole.
By the edge of the sinkhole, relying on her kitchen knife, Yibei was in a fierce battle with the giant snake.
The battle was in an endless back-and-forth, but she never expected that the snake would call upon its god to aid it.
When an intense burning pain came from her eyes, her vision blurred as her body stagnated. The snake quickly took the opportunity and swept its tail across her feet.
She soared into the sky, and a dark tail wrapped around her ankles, sending waves of chilling cold into her soul.
She waved her arms wildly and stabbed wherever she could, feeling cold blood spraying on her face, and the terrifying scream of the snake was heard.
“If I’m dying, I’m bringing you down with me!”
The Witch yelled viciously, grasping her knife with both hands, and repeatedly stabbed the snake with her knife.
They viscously fought as she tried to break free from the snake’s tail, but the snake felt something pulling it into the pit, and even though its claws grasped onto the stone floor…
Accompanied by the sound of rocks collapsing, it fell into the abyss alongside the Witch in its grasp.
Roar!
It was as if the cries of thousands of wronged souls and the screams of countless snakes had gathered together.
The terrifying wails of the snake sounded in her ears, and yet a strong sense of calm came over her as she spun endlessly in their fall.
Soon, they could no longer see the pit’s opening, and the two fell into an eternal darkness.
