He wanted to tell the girl... to live, to keep living... to live as long as she could.
Because the world after death... The world after death...
The man cried. He hugged the girl and cried heart-wrenchingly. His voice was as hoarse as a wolf howling in the night.
The girl was frightened by him and she stopped crying.
The man's body was very cold, as cold as his dead grandmother.
But he held her tightly. He didn't want her to die, and he didn't want her to become so cold.
The skinny people next to them walked past them woodenly.
No one looked at them twice, and even if someone did, their confused eyes were devoid of any light... Along the way, there were too many, too many, too many things like this...
The man took the girl and staggered to catch up with the team.
They didn't know where to go, nor did they know how long they could continue this wandering in this cold winter.
But the man knew that they had to keep walking and walking, and even if they couldn't go on, they had to struggle to get up and move on.
Life is already so miserable, the world after death will only be more... miserable!
Chapter 331 Ritual in the Dark Night
Shi Hao, Lan Ke Zhenren, Du Yuejiao, Xu Xiaoyan, and Yueyaer headed north, passed Dengzhou, and continued northward.
On the way, Yueyaer did not dare to enter those provincial capitals and towns casually.
Along the way, I witnessed many tragic situations, which need not be mentioned again.
That evening, they came to an abandoned Taoist temple.
The Taoist temple was in ruins, a large section of the wall had collapsed, the statues in the main hall were also toppled, and there were holes in the stone walls.
It looked like some warriors had fought here.
At this moment, this Taoist temple located deep in the barren mountains is empty. There is no abbot. There is one room where you can see signs of someone living there, but all the important things have been taken away.
They speculated that there was a martial artist who had been living in seclusion here, but was found by his enemies. After a fierce fight, the man survived, quickly packed up his things, and fled.
They took some effort to catch a wild beast in the mountains, and then used the stove here to make a fire.
Xu Xiaoyan is the main person doing the work. Du Yuejiao and Yueyaer can hardly help in this regard.
Shi Hao discussed the art of alchemy with Lan Ke Zhenren, and Shi Hao showed him his "Samadhi Primal Fire."
Lan Ke Zhenren was stunned.
"Samadhi Fire" is just a way to conduct qi and practice internal energy. No one has ever really made fire with it.
"You kid!" Lan Ke said, "How many hidden abilities do you have?"
Shi Hao said: "Thanks to the teachings of my predecessors..."
Lan Ke said, "Bullshit! How could I teach you this? Why can't I do it myself?"
Shi Hao said: "Senior, you have to understand that as long as a genius gets a little guidance, he can exert powerful energy. And the guidance from the senior is actually necessary."
Lan Ke said unhappily, "Do you believe that I can kill you?"
Shi Hao said: "Senior... do you believe that you can't beat me?"
Master Lan Ke blew his beard and glared.
On the other side, Yueyaer took out the Kongxuanzhu containing the Nine Earth Spirit Water and placed it on the stone table in the yard.
Xu Xiaoyan covered the pot in the kitchen and let the broth cook. She came out and looked at Kongxuanzhu with Yueyaer.
"Is the water in here really useful?" Xu Xiaoyan said, "It doesn't look like much."
Yueyaer said, "It's water vapor! It doesn't look like much, but it's actually as big as a small lake."
Xu Xiaoyan circled around the Kongxuanzhu and said, "The intestinal cleansing rice you mentioned... a small bag can grow several warehouses of grain. Is there a way to popularize it? If everyone in the world can grow it, wouldn't that save a lot of lives?"
Yueyaer sighed, "How can it be that easy? Zutan also spent a long time researching before he made that small bag."
Xu Xiaoyan said: "But can't the grain grown from the intestine-cleansing rice also be used as seeds?"
Yueyaer shook her head and said, "No! According to the research of the ancestral altar, no matter how hard you try to plant the seeds of the intestine-cleansing rice, nothing will grow. They are worse than ordinary seeds."
Xu Xiaoyan asked, "Then how did you get that bag of intestinal cleansing rice seeds?"
Yueyaer tilted her face and looked at her. Xu Xiaoyan raised her hand: "I'm just asking. If this is a secret of your ancestral altar, just pretend I didn't ask."
Yueyaer said, "It's no use telling you! This is our 'wise master', Grandma Ba, who got it from the ancestor god using the 'divine communication' method. This divine communication method is mysterious and unpredictable. Only the wise master knows it, and it is not passed on to others..."
Xu Xiaoyan asked: "Are you a wise teacher?"
Yueyaer said, "I am not."
Xu Xiaoyan said unhappily: "Why don't you just say you don't understand either? What else are you talking about? There's no point in telling me... It's obvious that you don't know it yourself." Yueyaer choked and then snorted.
Xu Xiaoyan asked: "But what is this ancestor god you are talking about?"
Yueyaer said, "This involves the beliefs of the ancestral altar. The ancestral altar believes that all people living in the world today can trace their origins back to a very small number of ancestors in the distant ancient times. This is true for everyone, regardless of wealth or race.
"In the long tradition, there are some powerful ancestors who are immortal and exist in a mysterious and unknowable realm. They are the 'ancestral gods'. Through stones and specific rituals, we can get the protection of the ancestral gods, borrow the power of the ancestral gods, and even obtain knowledge that has been lost long ago."
Shi Hao, who was discussing alchemy with Taoist Lan Ke, glanced over here.
What Yueyaer said was actually the ancient and traditional Shamanism. Shamanism was once spread everywhere, and now many remote places still maintain this primitive and ancient belief.
After Xu Xiaoyan prepared the game, they shared the food. With nothing else to do, Du Yuejiao and Xu Xiaoyan started a sword fight.
Du Yuejiao's precious sword and Xu Xiaoyan's plain sword clashed with each other, back and forth. As they fought, the speed of their swords was extremely fast, and the chill was whistling, which made Shi Hao frightened... Are you guys just sparring, or are you serious
There were several guest rooms in the dilapidated Taoist temple, and they stayed in these rooms to rest that night.
At midnight, Shi Hao suddenly opened his eyes, frowned, stood up, opened the door, and floated out.
When he got outside the temple and looked down the mountain, he saw a shadowy figure.
There were hundreds of people, staggering in the darkness, not knowing where they were going.
Beside him, Lan Ke Zhenren, Du Yuejiao and Xu Xiaoyan also rushed out one after another.
"Where are these people going?" Du Yuejiao asked puzzledly.
Shi Hao took a quick glance and saw that there were at least five hundred of them. In such a cold night, they were not holding lanterns or torches. They were just sleepwalking as they kept moving in a certain direction.
The team was a little messy, but no one spoke. Even if someone tripped over a stone, they would quickly get up and then stagger forward.
This was originally a barren mountain. These people passed through the foot of the mountain and entered the deep mountains ahead. The vast forests seemed like a monster swallowing them up.
Shi Hao whispered, "I'll go take a look. You guys wake up Yueyaer first, just in case." He leaped and flew to the foot of the mountain.
Xu Xiaoyan was curious and wanted to chase after him. But a beautiful figure flashed by her side, and it turned out that Du Yuejiao had chased after him first.
She had no choice but to go back to the temple to wake up Yueyaer.
Shi Hao heard the sound of strong wind behind him, turned around, and saw Yue Jiao chasing after him, but he did not let her go back.
They didn't know if there was anyone watching them in the woods, so they took advantage of obstacles and made a long detour before they carefully entered the depths of the woods in the darkness.
There were many strange trees and tangled vines around them. They held hands and climbed up the branches, trying their best to hide their strong winds in the night wind blowing from above.
It was not until they entered the depths of the mountains and forests, in a gorge, that they saw the people again.
Those people were lying on the ground in a very strange manner. Looking from above, one could see that they were forming several circles, forming a strange pattern.
Dozens of Wuhou lanterns were floating around, each emitting a green light.
These lights, which were floating in the sky but not flying away with the wind, seemed to be connected to the people lying on the ground by some invisible threads.
In the center of them, there was a big stone, on which a man was sitting cross-legged.
The man was about twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, wearing a fur coat and a travel cap on his head, and was quite handsome.
But at this moment, he sat with his eyes closed, and the surrounding area was filled with gloomy air.
There were four things placed around him, facing in four directions, and at this moment they were also emitting ghostly lights.
Shi Hao and Du Yuejiao landed on a tree with branches that stretched out slantwise, providing them with a foothold.
Du Yuejiao whispered: "What is this for?"
Shi Hao's eyes flashed: "Magic Sect Ritual!"
Only an ongoing demonic ritual would be so bizarre.
However, to sacrifice as many as 500 people at once, and to use hypnosis to make them serve as sacrifices directly in the ceremony, the scale of this ceremony was not small.
The people began to twitch in the strange evil spirit.
Shi Hao whispered, "I'll go stop him!" His figure flashed, he rushed to the side and hid behind the man.
Whoosh, the iron sword was unsheathed, and the sword tip seemed to come alive, pulling his body back, turning into a white rainbow, and shooting towards the man.
He couldn't just ignore five hundred lives. Moreover, once they were sacrificed, the souls of these dead would be sent to the Demon Realm, where death would be worse than life.
Shi Hao himself had sacrificed souls, but he believed that those he sacrificed deserved the punishment they received.
These people are just ordinary people!
The sword energy was like a shuttle, rapidly advancing towards the man's back!
Chapter 332: The Four Thieves of Nanqi
The man sensed the danger and turned back quickly, only to see a flash of lightning coming towards him with overwhelming force.
He was originally here to perform the magic sect ritual to advance to the fourth level. This place was in the wilderness, and although there were many people, there was chaos everywhere at the moment. It stood to reason that within a few days, no one would care about the lives of these lower-class people.
But he didn't expect to be suddenly attacked at this critical moment.
The man was shocked and angry and was forced to open his mouth. Boom! A black gas spurted out of his mouth and went towards the oncoming sword light.
With a loud bang, the black gas dissipated.
This person's skill is at the fifth level, and Shi Hao is not as good as him in terms of skill.
However, this person was at a critical juncture in the ceremony and could only rely on his internal strength to resist Shi Hao's sword light. How could he block it
Seeing the sword light approaching again, he was furious, but there was nothing he could do.
Beside him, there were four materials for upgrading, namely a knife, a sword, a head, and a strange black stone.
Both the knife and the sword were filled with murderous aura, and blood was faintly visible. No one knew how many people they had killed.
The man shouted loudly, and the knife jumped up, fell into his hand, and chopped it off with one blow.
Ming! Following the burst of brilliant light, Shi Hao was actually forced back.
The evil energy around dissipated, and the Wuhou lanterns floating in the sky all flew away with the wind. The people on the ground were all shocked, as if they were awakened from a dream. They looked around in confusion, and then fled outside in panic and fear.
The man spat out a mouthful of blood, jumped up angrily, grabbed the knife, and slashed down repeatedly, causing the ground to crack.
Amidst the overwhelming gusts of energy, Shi Hao was forced to retreat... This man's strength was quite impressive.
The man's eyes were red and his face was distorted, and it was clear that he had begun to go insane.
With the idea of eradicating all evil, Shi Hao wanted to kill this man, but his swordsmanship was so strange that each of his sword strikes left countless afterimages. In an instant, he had struck out hundreds and thousands of times, making it difficult for Shi Hao to get close to him.
Suddenly, the man roared and slashed with his sword, forcing Shi Hao to retreat, turn around and run away.
With a whoosh, he rushed out of the dense forest at an extremely fast speed. On the way, more than a dozen people were too close to him and were quickly killed by him, all cut into two pieces.
The civilian who was beheaded did not die on the spot, but lay on the ground wailing.
Shi Hao flew up, sighed, and with a flash of sword, he killed those civilians who could not be saved, so that they would suffer less before they died.
"Master Brother!" Du Yuejiao floated down beside him, "That guy just now was not simple."
Shi Hao pondered and said, "The main reason is that his sword technique is quite strange. I couldn't find a countermeasure all of a sudden. I have never seen a similar sword technique before! This person must be from the Demon Sect. I don't know which sect he belongs to."
Among the demon sects, there are certainly large sects with a large number of members such as the Guiji Sect, the Xielian Sect, and the Tianxie Sect.
But there are also many sects with very few people passing down their inheritance, with only a few people in each generation, or even just a single person in each lineage.
He was also unable to infer anything from the man's swordsmanship.
"Let's go back first!" He and Du Yuejiao rushed back to the Taoist temple to explain the situation.
Xu Xiaoyan said: "So, I dare not say that there are no good people in the Demon Sect, but at least more than half of them deserve to die. These people do not take human life seriously at all!"