Chapter 44: The Witch God Blood Sacrifice Tribulation
Lu Qingyang stepped on the crumbling steps of the Witch God Temple's altar, the blazing sun array patterns on his boots scorching the moss-covered beast-faced bricks. The morning mist carried a perennial stench. The emerald fragments on the surface of the qingmu spirit pearl glowed faintly, subtly echoing the concave groove on the forehead of the broken divine statue. The Witch tribe bone tablet, obtained three days prior from the Myriad Gu Cave, was hot against his chest; the 'Ye' character's residual mark on its surface oozed black blood, congealing into a twisted Chiyou totem beneath his Dao robe's hem.
"This statue's eyes are even brighter than the Eastern Pearls in the Drunken Immortal Pavilion," he said, flicking the statue's empty eye sockets. Bronze rust flakes cascaded down, revealing the densely packed 'Blood Sacrifice Incantation' on the inner wall. Su Li's Puppet Silk wrapped around a falling rust flake, and the moment a silver needle pierced a gap in the incantation, the entire altar suddenly trembled like a roaring beast.
Yinghuo's silver bell cord swept away the falling debris, and a chensha stone shattered a stone Puppet attacking from the shadows. Nine Witch Priest Puppets, clad in human skin, crawled out from the shadows of the pillars. Their exposed spines were covered in bloodworms, whose patterns were identical to the cracks on the qingmu spirit pearl. "Ye Wuchen's Witch Gu technique has become even more refined," Lu Qingyang said, splitting open the skull of one Puppet with his fingers and digging out a walnut-sized Heart Control Gu. "This Gu worm in the black market..."
Before he could finish, the 'Nine Li Battle Map' mural behind the statue suddenly peeled off. The bloodworms surged, forming a phantom image of Chiyou. The fierce wind from the descending battle-axe actually cracked the ice-scale Dao patterns on his Golden Core's surface. Lu Qingyang maneuvered, stepping on the flying beast-faced bricks, his boot array patterns interacting with the battle Qi, imprinting the incomplete array of the 'Tai Xu Swallowing Sky Skill' on the ground. The emerald fragments suddenly glowed faintly, freezing the approaching blood mist into ice shards.
"Li Palace shifts, Kan Water suppresses evil!"
Yinghuo's chensha stone array temporarily repelled the battle spirits, and Lu Qingyang seized the opportunity to sweep towards the statue's base. The qingmu spirit pearl illuminated a bronze coffin at the bottom of the altar. The coffin lid was not carved with Talismanic Incantations, but with a 'Hundred Witches Sacrificing' diagram, and the chief sacrificer's features bore a seven-tenths resemblance to Ye Wuchen. He sneered, prying open the coffin nails: "Ye Laozei certainly knows how to flatter himself..."
What surged from within the coffin was not the stench of a corpse, but the solidified Power Of Will of Witch Priests. The moment the Power Of Will touched the spirit pearl, the blood-red threads on the Golden Core's surface suddenly surged, and during their struggle with the ice-scale Dao patterns, they actually condensed into an ancient Battle Witch phantom. Su Li's Puppet Silk wrapped around his wrist: "Power Of Will backlash!"
"Backlash?" Lu Qingyang shook off the silk, his pupils showing animalistic vertical slits. "To break the Love Gu back then, Mr. Lu drank the heart blood of a Witch Clan Chief..." His words abruptly stopped, and he suddenly froze in place—at the bottom of the coffin lay half a scroll of the 'Nine Li Blood Tome', and tucked between its pages was not a Talismanic Incantation, but a turtle shell fragment, originating from the same source as the emerald fragments.
At the peak of Yin Qi at midnight, the altar's underground palace suddenly opened. Lu Qingyang stepped on the stairs formed by congealed bloodworms, leaping towards the epicenter. The qingmu spirit pearl illuminated the Witch Cauldron at the core of the underground palace. Nine profound iron chains were wrapped around the cauldron, their links inscribed with Taiyi Pavilion's Soul Suppressing Incantations, yet indigo bloodstains, unique to the Witch tribe, seeped from the gaps in the incantations.
"Kan Palace returns, Zhen Thunder breaks barriers!"
The moment the chensha stone shattered the chains, the Witch Cauldron suddenly roared. What surged from within the cauldron was not medicinal fragrance, but solidified resentful souls and spirits. When these spirits touched the faint glow of the emerald fragments, they actually pieced together half of the 'Witch God Descending to the World' painting in mid-air. Lu Qingyang leaped from the cauldron's rim to its center. The Battle Witch phantom on his Golden Core's surface suddenly opened its eyes, exhaling a wisp of Divine Sense mixed with alcohol: "Witch God's essence blood can temper the Golden Core."
At the fifth watch, a cold wind howled, and the mournful sound of a bone flute came from deep within the underground palace. Lu Qingyang found a cracked half of a Witch God Jade Bi inside the cauldron. The residual Power Of Will on its surface suddenly came alive, manifesting in his Sea of Consciousness the secret of Taiyi Pavilion sacrificing a hundred thousand lives to nourish the cauldron. Yinghuo's silver bell cord wrapped around a piece of driftwood in a dark river, and the three of them used its leverage to rush out of the underground palace.
As the morning light pierced through the mist, Lu Qingyang stood on a broken cliff, overlooking the Witch tribe's ancestral land. The qingmu spirit pearl reflected the soul-summoning banners fluttering in the valley below. On the forehead of the Witch God embroidered on the banner, a jade jue, perfectly fitting the emerald fragments, was unmistakably embedded. The mountain wind swept across his right arm, which was covered in blood patterns, and the Battle Witch phantom on his Golden Core's surface was slowly undergoing Fusion with the ice-scale Dao patterns.
"Just two more ingredients," he said, flicking his finger to shatter a corpse beetle attempting to climb his boot. He narrowed his eyes, gazing at the surging blood mist in the valley. "After I deal with these charlatans, I should go to the East Sea to find that thousand-year-old Flood Dragon..."