The families of the two burly men were so overjoyed that they wept, murmuring with suppressed emotion, "Great! They've been chosen!"
Xiao Cheng commented with mixed feelings, "Is this some kind of cult?"
“Isn’t that right?” Fang He looked at the statue that gleamed in the sunlight. “No wonder it’s a bootleg Nezha. Its brain is like a lotus root, full of holes.”
The statue was placed steadily on the altar. The village chief recited a rather difficult passage in a language that Xiao Cheng and the others couldn't understand, and then knelt and kowtowed three times before the statue.
When he stood up again, the locust wood on the altar suddenly burst forth with a dazzling light, and then all the peach wood also lit up, shimmering with a resonant glow.
Overjoyed, the priestess ran to the altar and picked up the locust wood again.
She stepped over the pool of blood, raised the locust tree high, and began to perform a sacrificial dance.
Bloody footprints were left on the ground, one on top of the other.
The wood shone even brighter, and all the villagers chanted in unison, "Welcome again—"
The village chief, in an even more impassioned tone, shouted, "Please, God, descend!"
The statues on the altar burst forth with dazzling golden light in an instant, completely overshadowing the brilliance of all the wood, and even dimming the midday sun.
The priestess stared directly at the statue, her eyes stinging and tears of blood streaming down her face. Yet she remained unmoved, even drawing closer, as if gazing upon the true god's countenance through the golden light.
After a long while, she turned around and slowly said to the villagers, "Come forward one by one."
Her face revealed a divine compassion: "The true God is with you."
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