Late at night, near the street park, a van was parked on a completely dark street.
The vehicle was old, with much of its paint chipped off and rust spots everywhere…
Inside the van, three men sat in the back, staring intently at a screen in front of them.
One of The Scarface men breathed heavily and blurted out, “Damn it!”
He seemed restless and agitated.
Even so, he tried his best to suppress himself, his voice as steady as possible:
“What is this guy thinking? Bringing people into the city to perform a sacrificial ritual to communicate with the gods? Isn’t he afraid of causing irreparable consequences?”
A man wearing sunglasses next to him bit his finger lightly, the lenses of his sunglasses reflecting the screen’s light. Hearing The Scarface’s complaint, he said calmly:
“Poor people who have lost Divine Grace are all like this, struggling in despair.”
The last person, with a patch over his left eye, was thin but had an extremely fierce demeanor, and spoke concisely:
“Why don’t I go in and slaughter all these people?”
The Scarface panicked:
“Don’t!”
“Calm down!”
He reached over the man in the middle with sunglasses and grabbed the thin man. Earlier, he was emotionally unstable, but now he was earnestly advising him:
“The Arbitration Committee has repeatedly ordered us not to cause frequent bloodshed!”
The thin man reached his left hand under his eye patch, rummaging around, his tone quite impatient:
“I’ll strangle them all, not a single drop of blood will be shed!”
The man in sunglasses slowly turned his head. With the sunglasses, his gaze was unclear, and his tone became playful:
“I want to see if they get a response.”
He pointed at the screen:
“The footage from the drone shows the ritual is almost complete; this is the final stage!”
Hearing this, the two men’s gazes turned back to the screen.
The thin man’s left hand was still under his eye patch, picking and scratching.
Squish~ Splat…
The man in sunglasses was expressionless: “What are you doing?”
“My brain itches, I’m scratching it through this hole.”
“Hmm?”
“It’s at the back… I can’t reach it, I want to flip my brain over.”
The Scarface was exasperated:
“What good is sticking two fingers in there? Why don’t you just shake it like me?”
After speaking, he abruptly twisted his neck, trying to demonstrate for the other person, his mouth still moving:
“Is it that hard?”
There was a crisp snap.
The Scarface’s spine was twisted by his own force, and he slumped limply onto the seat.
As for the thin man, white and red substances dripped from his left hand, and he leaned forward, slumping onto the front seat’s backrest.
The man in sunglasses pinched his forehead, sighed softly, and ignored the two corpses beside him, continuing to stare at the screen.
The high-altitude drone’s camera clearly transmitted the situation inside the park.
The trees and flowerbeds that served for landscaping had long been leveled, creating a flat piece of land.
Hundreds of people gathered there, dressed in vintage robes, with a circle of torches around the perimeter.
At the very center was a beautiful long-haired woman. She looked at the drone in the night sky, gently raised her rusty, mottled mechanical right hand, and gave a friendly greeting to the person behind her.
A huge formation was carved beneath the feet of this group of people, with intricate, dense patterns that made one dizzy at a glance.
The robed figures around them held white candles in both hands, kneeling uniformly with devout expressions.
Other than the rustling of clothes as they knelt, no one made a sound; the entire scene was like a silent play.
The woman in the center raised both arms, her expression fanatical.
Her facial expression was so intense that veins bulged on her forehead, marring her overall beauty.
Her mouth moved continuously, beginning to chant some kind of spell, her voice indistinct, with a strange sticky sensation.
Inside the van, the man in sunglasses, seeing this scene through the screen, seemed to hear some command. His right hand suddenly lifted, wanting to pinch the frame of his sunglasses, but he quickly pressed it down with his left hand.
The woman closed her mouth and reached into her robe, pulling out a sharp short knife.
Seeing this, the people around them gently placed their candles in front of them, each reaching into their robes and pulling out short knives.
Everyone followed the woman’s example: first, they cut their foreheads, and once blood seeped out, they raised their left hand, wiping it with two fingers.
They pressed their bloody fingers onto the formation, their expressions contorted.
Inside the park, a bloody mist suddenly rose.
“Look, look, there’s a response, there’s a response!” Inside the van, the man in sunglasses excitedly patted the thin man.
“Don’t pat!”
The thin man with the eye patch, who knows when he sat up, was carefully pulling his left hand from under the eye patch; his body seemed to have become even thinner.
“If you pat it again, my brain will be scrambled.”
He complained, “I should have been allowed to go in and slaughter them all. Now, I have to consume other parts of my body to recover from this injury.”
“No matter how much I eat, I can’t recover; I’ll starve to death sooner or later!”
The man in sunglasses was unconcerned: “With the human population drastically decreasing, the Arbitration Committee cannot tolerate you killing normal people. As for your losses, we can consider hormone injections to fatten you up.”
“My faith does not allow me to do that!”
The thin man said, carefully pulling out his left hand and shaking off some white, unknown substance, his tone serious: “The ritual succeeded?”
The man in sunglasses gestured with his mouth: “See for yourself.
The space between the eyebrows leads to consciousness; the blood from the brow is the most spiritual. Using this most spiritual blood for a Blood God sacrifice…
Just a little bit of blood can satisfy the spiritual needs of the Blood God sacrifice, and with a small amount of blood, the Blood God communicated will not be too violent!”
The man in sunglasses’ voice was strange: “This sounds like a lie no matter how you look at it, yet it actually succeeded?”
The thin man snorted coldly: “Consider them lucky; they survived!”
His remaining right eye glanced at The Scarface, then he paused: “What happened to him?”
The man in sunglasses said casually: “He’s dead. We’ll dump him later.
His Divine Grace power focuses on strength, and his mental resistance and recovery are very poor. He was just affected by the overflowing power of the ritual, sacrificed himself, and is as dead as can be.”
The thin man was slightly surprised: “This ritual has some power; it can even affect us through the screen.”
He clicked his tongue twice: “This guy had a good body; it’s really a bargain for those Believers of death.”
The man in sunglasses watched as the blood mist on the screen gradually stabilized at a certain level and stopped changing, then leaned back.
“It should be successful. It looks like some kind of Blood God.
Today was an eye-opener. This deceptive method actually has low risk and high success rate?”
The thin man leaned closer to the screen and looked carefully, then asked doubtfully: “Wait! Is something not quite right?”
“Hmm?”
The man in sunglasses also quickly leaned closer, then exclaimed in surprise: “What’s going on? Didn’t the ritual succeed?”
On the screen, the people within the formation were collapsing one by one. They certainly wouldn’t believe they were just sleeping.
The ritual clearly succeeded just now, but now this situation…
“Someone is fine; he’s getting up.”
Seeing this, even through the screen, the thin man felt as if facing a formidable enemy. When a ritual fails, there are usually no survivors!
Someone being alive is more terrifying than everyone dying!
…“Run first!”
The man in sunglasses stroked his chin. He showed no panic, maintaining a calm tone: “I’m a little curious.”
“Curious my ass!”
The thin man moved agilely and had already gotten into the driver’s seat at some point, starting the vehicle and stomping on the accelerator.
“Did you sacrifice ‘fear’?”
“Hmm… my god doesn’t accept eyeballs.”
Several cars simultaneously darted out onto the streets near the park.
Clearly, they weren’t the only three paying attention to this place.