Hao Ren and Nangong Wuyue walked silently and quickly in this deep and long cave. They had already bypassed several intersections and relatively spacious caverns. Judging from the direction and distance of the journey, Hao Ren believed that he had already entered the cave. In the depths of a certain peak on the south side of the Longji Mountains.
There are obvious traces of artificial excavation on the stone walls on both sides of the cave, and torches or light boxes embedded in the stone walls can be seen at intervals, but these flickering lights do not bring much light to the whole cave. On the contrary, it made the atmosphere inside even more gloomy and depressing. A cold wind always blows from the depths of the cave, fluctuating in strength and weakness, as if to warn intruders not to approach. In the cave just past, Hao Ren and Nangong Wuyue saw some messy stone benches and tables. Those things looked quite old, and their style was different from the utensils that Hao Ren saw in other places in Holleta. I don't know what era it left behind.
The further she walked, the more Nangong Wuyue felt a disturbing atmosphere gradually coming. She couldn't help but grabbed Hao Ren's arm and followed carefully: This sea monster has a mighty The shape of the female boss, but at the critical moment, it is cowardly to compete with the "roll" at home...
At this time, Hao Ren suddenly saw a half-covered iron door in front of him. This iron door suddenly appeared in the cave, which made him stop subconsciously. Then he felt a faint movement behind the door. A human voice came: "Wait a minute, there is movement ahead!"
Nangong Wuyue leaned down, followed Hao Ren close to the iron gate, and looked inside through the crack of the door.
To everyone's surprise, behind the iron gate is a large and spacious stone room, which is so spacious that it can be described as a hall. It was a square room with a length and width of about tens of meters. The four stone walls were inlaid with crystals emitting light red light. In addition, there were large braziers with variable light and shade everywhere in the room, which made the whole stone room pervaded. A disturbing red dim light. Grotesque reliefs and characters are carved on the four walls of the stone chamber, depicting various grotesque creatures crawling on the ground, and an obsidian statue standing with a sword stands at each of the four corners of the stone chamber. The statue has no face, instead a mass of distorted symbols are depicted where the five features would have been. It looks terrifying with a hint of madness. In the center of the room, there is an altar. A group of people wearing red and black robes are worshiping the altar. In front of the altar stands a tall suspicious man with a black and red mask on his face. Presiding over this mysterious and eerie ceremony.
The shape of the altar is roughly circular, with a hollow in the middle to form a bowl shape, and there are crooked indentations around the altar that extend all the way down and spread to the ground. There are also weird patterns on the ground. Hao Ren took a closer look and found that dark red liquid was constantly seeping out of the stones in those patterns, flowing upstream in a way that defied gravity, and finally gathered in the "bowl" in the center of the altar.
Nangong Wuyue tugged at his sleeve, and gestured towards the altar, indicating that the dark red liquid was the "signal" she was looking for.
That's right, those are the remains of the missing soldiers—under some kind of hidden evil ritual transformation, they have turned into pus and blood!
At this time, the worship ceremony of the people in black was about to end, and the masked man standing in front of the altar raised his hands high. Proclaimed in a deep and magnetic voice: "Brothers and sisters! The Goddess gazes upon us, she has received our devout prayers, and has been relieved by our reverent offerings. We gather here. Hear true teachings , to open the dusty mind. Lift your head from this filthy world, and once again take a step closer to the mighty glory of the goddess... "
The people in black robes worshiping in front of the altar raised their heads one after another, but they still knelt on the ground respectfully. Hao Ren saw that there were men, women and children among them. rich and military. However, these people were all kneeling here with fanatical expressions, and it seemed that they only had the masked man standing in front of the altar with strange magic power lingering in their eyes.
"... what we hear, what we say, what we do. What we believe is the true will of the goddess. We are the pioneers who awakened from ignorance, the wise and the brave who awakened from lies..." The masked man kept his hands open posture, read a sentence that I don’t know if it is a scripture or an impromptu lie, "...we act in accordance with the will of the goddess, and save mortals from the false cult of glory...
"We will take back the authority of the gods from the villains who stole the power of the goddess, and dedicate them to the feet of the goddess. We will punish the sinners who deceived the goddess and expose their sins to the world. They lead from the filthy world to the Kingdom of God...
"We will repay everything to repay the sins of thousands of years ago, and we will repay our flesh and blood to prove our piety..."
The masked man spoke these crazy words in a strange tone, when he suddenly took out a dagger from his arms!
And following his movement, other black-robed people kneeling on the ground also took out the same knives from their arms, and a large group of people raised their daggers as if possessed, and shouted loudly: "We will repay our debts!" Flesh, to prove our piety..."
I only heard the muffled sound of a series of knives piercing into the flesh. These cultists stabbed their daggers into their arms one after another, and blood flowed out immediately. However, everyone was still fanatical after pulling out the daggers as if they didn't feel pain. The ground shouted: "We will pay back our flesh and blood to prove our piety!"
A group of people bowed down, their blood flowed on the ground, and was immediately absorbed by the strange patterns on the floor, and flowed back to the altar to mix with the thick blood plasma, which began to emit blood as if it had really received the grace of God. The bright golden-red light came, and the believers immediately fell into a greater frenzy when they saw this scene, and some even began to self-mutilate more seriously: "Repay our flesh and blood! Prove our piety!"
"The Goddess has heard your voices! She will reward you!" The masked man shouted in an exciting tone, and then he thrust a long dark red staff into the altar, and the surging blood immediately released a burst of blood. There was a hissing sound, layers of red mist diffused from the altar, and penetrated into the bodies of all the black-robed people. They thanked the goddess for the gift in excitement, and lifted the sleeves of the robes. The scars left by the knife stabbing before were all gone Disappear.
The man in black nodded with satisfaction: "The healing of your wounds proves the goddess' approval of you, and also proves the falsehood and deception of the Huiyao Cult. They stole the power of the gods, and we are here to take it back into our hands. Now let us offer tonight's sacrifice, to return to our Lord the purest flesh, to cleanse this evil land of the filth that dwells."
After the masked man finished speaking, he saw two believers in black robes stand up from the crowd, ran to the corner of the room and brought out a wooden box.
The moment the wooden box was opened and the two believers took out the contents of the box, Hao Ren's eyes were as sharp as a knife.
It was a sleeping child!
This is the purest flesh and blood, and they want to "return" the sacrifices to the goddess—these crazy people want to do human sacrifices!
The masked man put the child who seemed to be only three or four years old on the altar, raised the dagger and long staff in his hand, and chanted loudly in an almost crazy tone: "Supreme Goddess of Creation, you You are the origin of life, you are the beginning of all things, you are the first blood and flesh of all living beings! You are the purest origin of chaos! Your loyal and humble servant is here to offer pure flesh and blood, so that this world has not been polluted by mortal dust The clean things of the return to your embrace! In the name of returning, please bestow... "
A shout came from the side just as the dagger was about to be swung down: "I give you the second uncle!!"
The iron door of the secret room flew out as if being bombarded by heavy artillery after this loud shout, and the twisted and deformed heavy iron plate instantly smashed into the air several cultists who hadn't reacted, followed by a strange thing flashing blue light Then he flew towards the masked man with a scream piercing the air. The latter subconsciously raised his dagger to block, but the blue light bypassed the dagger with unimaginable agility, and slammed on the head of the evil cult leader. On the mask, the latter flew at least ten meters away in an instant!
"Have you ever seen a brick with automatic navigation!" Hao Ren took out a huge alloy stick (this thing was originally used as a building material) from his portable space, and walked towards the group of cultists with a murderous look, " It’s been a long time since you’ve been making trouble behind!” (To be continued~^~)