Chapter 102 The Arrival of the Evil God: No Trip Was Wasted, None of Them Wasted...
[Host, throw the sandalwood memorial tablet into Lu Mingbian's coffin.]
Upon hearing the system's voice, Zhou Fangdong did not hesitate at all and threw the memorial tablet inside.
At the same time, the crimson runes on the ground connecting the remains of the ancient god and the six coffins grew brighter and brighter, their eerie light flickering as if they possessed breath and a heartbeat.
As the red light flickered, the air seemed to thicken, and the metallic smell of blood mingled with the cloyingly sweet and fishy odor of rotting fruit appeared out of nowhere.
The red light emanating from the runes began to move, but just as it was about to spread to the six coffins, it encountered a transparent barrier and could not go any further.
The spread of the rune array's light on the ground was hindered, but the revival ceremony continued.
The auditorium began to tremble again, this time the tremor came from above.
With a sickening, metallic clang, the already dilapidated dome of the auditorium was violently ripped open by an invisible force. Fragments of stone and rotten wood were thrown around like toys, revealing the bizarre sky of the mirror world.
The upside-down buildings in the sky are also disintegrating. Unlike the church dome that was suddenly torn apart, the disintegration of buildings is silent, like tissue paper dissolving in water.
The bricks, stones, beams, and pillars all melted away in a soft motion, and finally, a pitch-black crack suddenly appeared in the sky.
The crack was like an unhealable scar left on the world by some foreign substance that had eroded it.
After the pitch-black crack was fully revealed, it remained silent for a few seconds before rapidly swelling. Then, a clump of indescribable, writhing, sludge-like substance broke through the invisible membrane and slowly dripped from the crack.
The silt fell unusually slowly, as if deliberately displaying its terror.
As it slowly fell, an indescribable spiritual pollution began to spread rapidly.
Zhou Fangdong shook off the shards of colored glass and broken bricks from his body, silently rolling his eyes in his mind.
...What are you pretending for?
Zhou Fangdong used the slime body for a long time. After all, this body was something that originated from the same source as the evil god. He could clearly sense that the evil god's consciousness on the other side of the rift void had already taken shape, and there was no need for such a slow fall.
They made such a big fuss without even checking if there were any audience members present.
The evil god's mental pollution only affected the one living person who was conscious at the scene... namely, the middle-aged man wearing a melon-shaped hat who initiated the resurrection ritual.
That idiotic evil god only does things that hurt his teammates.
Zhou Fangdong looked at the middle-aged man who was standing there with his head down like a statue. Taking advantage of the man's inability to move, he bypassed him and climbed behind the ancient god's remains.
He didn't want to watch the cutscene of the evil god's descent; he wanted to grab as much as possible while no one was bothering him.
Behind the ancient god's remains, there was a large space. This seemed to be where the Heirs of the Bone Society stored their cores. In addition to the core created by the middle-aged man, there were more than twenty clone cores.
Zhou Fangdong opened his body and swallowed all the clone cores created by the ritual.
"System, absorb it, hurry up! Even if my body gets destroyed, we can at least salvage some cores."
The system can only process ten cores at a time; the rest are temporarily stored internally.
"It's okay, take it whether you can digest it or not. I'll keep eating, you can take whatever you want."
Besides the clone core, there are some props here that Zhou Fangdong doesn't understand... It doesn't matter, take them all whether you recognize them or not.
Zhou Fangdong has already begun preparing for the mission's failure.
It was because he could sense what was behind the crevice that he truly realized the terror of the evil god and the gap between himself and it.
His current body is at best a derivative of that thing on the other side of the rift; the difference between them is probably like the difference between an elephant and elephant dung.
Zhou Fangdong felt that as a piece of poop, he couldn't possibly swallow an elephant.
"System, those five ghosts in the coffin have been absorbing yin energy in the apartment for so long, they must owe you rent, right? Can you send them all back to the apartment according to the apartment contract?"
The ghosts in the coffins are necessary for completing the mission. The mission is in progress, and teleportation is not possible.
"Sigh, never mind. If we can't send them back, we'll just let them hide in the memorial tablets. The tablets don't look like they're going to break easily."
The only person to worry about now is Lu Mingbian. She is a very fragile living person, and if the mission fails, Zhou Fangdong feels that she will have a hard time surviving in the mirror world.
We need to find a way to save her...
As Zhou Fangdong stretched out his body to swallow something, the silt squeezed down from the crack in the sky accelerated his descent.
Ultimately, the summoned evil god's spirit fully manifested in the mirror world.
The clump of silt floating in the air like a dark cloud appeared to have a physical form, but it gave people a very illusory feeling.
...It looked like a lump of mud, but it also seemed like just a cloud of black mist.
Its color is a chaotic black, like the dirty black that comes from dozens of pigments mixed together in water.
On that pitch-black surface, bubbles kept bursting and reappearing, like boiling water. Only upon closer inspection could one see that those bubbles were all countless distorted human faces.
These faces include men, women, young and old, with expressions ranging from extreme pain to maniacal grins to numbness and blankness. They constantly emerge and stand out on the surface of the mud, only to sink back down and be replaced by new, more distorted faces of despair.
Finally, the spiritual aggregate containing countless distorted human faces plummeted straight down, falling from the dome's opening into the auditorium.
Zhou Fangdong noticed the evil god's movements and sprang back as fast as he could, covering the six coffins with his own body once more.
He had assumed that the clump of mud would burrow directly into the decaying remains of the ancient god, since the body of that god was clearly the one the middle-aged man had prepared for the evil god.
However, the anticipated scene of the ancient god's remains being revived and corrupted did not occur.
The sludge, emanating a nauseating spiritual pollution, evaporated into thin air, and the remains of the ancient god showed no signs of being activated.
Did the restoration ceremony fail?
Zhou Fangdong breathed a sigh of relief.
He said that he had destroyed the resurrection ceremonies in Fengrao Village to the north and Xinxing Resort to the east. Even if the cultists forcibly activated the resurrection ceremony, the evil god they created would be a deformed child with underdeveloped features.
It's normal for this to fail.
Just as Zhou Fangdong was about to drag the six coffins away from the hall, the middle-aged man in the melon-shaped hat who had been keeping his head down suddenly and slowly raised his head stiffly.
His face had completely changed; it was no longer a distorted vortex, but had finally taken on a human form.
...It's just that there are a few more faces here.
It was a "face" pieced together from countless shrunken fragments of human faces.
These faces are of different sizes, skin colors, and expressions, yet they are all tightly packed together... like insects covering their eyes, or like a mirror shattered into a spider web, with each fragment reflecting a different face.
Although each face looks different, their eyes are all fixed on Zhou Fangdong.
To be honest, it's a bit disgusting; even Zhou Fangdong, who suffers from trypophobia, is about to have a reaction.
...Judging from the current situation, the evil god did not use the remains of the ancient god, but instead used the body of that cultist.
The ritual of the Bone Inheritance Society did not expect this outcome.
The body he originally prepared for the evil god was the remains of that ancient god.
Of course, even fallen gods are still gods, and they are protected by divinity even in death, so they cannot be used casually.
So he had been preparing for the resurrection of the evil god for a long time... choosing humans with suitable birth charts and causing them to die from some kind of most painful obsession.
The power of evil gods is inherently highly corrupting, and these six meticulously crafted bodies are the keys to unlocking the divinity of the ancient gods' remains.
During the resurrection ceremony, the corpses of these people are used to contaminate the remains of the ancient god, suppressing the divinity of the remains. Then, using the rune array bestowed by the evil god, the power of the evil god is continuously sent into the body of the ancient god, assimilating it into a form that the evil god can use.
In fact, the middle-aged man in the melon-shaped hat noticed something was wrong as soon as all the runes on the ground lit up.
The normal procedure should be that the rune array lights up, the only living person in the coffin containing the living person will wake up, see the charred corpse of their mother, and have their life force drained by the rune array in pain and despair.
The runes will then turn all six corpses into blood, which will then be absorbed into the body of the ancient god.
But for some reason, the power of the talisman array could not penetrate the coffin.
This is definitely not because of the out-of-control evil god clone on the coffin. Even if the clone has self-awareness, it is still a derivative of the evil god's power and can only devour each other, unable to isolate itself from the evil god's power.
However, the rune array inexplicably stopped working.
Unless the soul of the corpse is retrieved, no method of isolation spell on the market can achieve such perfection.
But these souls should have already turned into vengeful ghosts and remained in the Liwan Apartments. Given the current out-of-control state of the apartments, is it really possible for someone to break into the apartments single-handedly, control these five vengeful ghosts, and then bring them all out?
And how did that person know that the body the Heirs of the Bone Society prepared for the evil god required the corpses of these people as a key?
Before the middle-aged man could figure out what was going on, he was struck by the mental pollution of the evil god and became disoriented.
After that, his body was taken over by the consciousness of the evil god.
The evil god moved its body, and the faces on its face simultaneously opened their mouths, emitting a unique, reverberant sound that was indistinguishable between male and female:
"Humans are truly fascinating creatures..."
"As expected, it's still more comfortable to use the body of one's own believer. It's completely imbued with one's own power, requires no modification, and is easy to control. The only drawback is that its power is not as great as that of the ancient god's body... but it's enough for traveling in this world."
"I really don't understand. None of the high-ranking believers who have received the most blessings from me and who have received the most power from me are willing to offer their bodies and become one with me. Do they really believe in me?"
As they were talking, they suddenly sensed something, and all their faces changed color: "Wait, what sacrifice did you use to awaken me???"
As soon as the words were spoken, another face suddenly grew out of its already crowded face.
It was the face of an ordinary-looking middle-aged man, whose magnetic voice sounded mechanical, like a pre-recorded message:
"Because the Fusu ritual was incomplete, it was impossible to sacrifice the entire population of Linjiang City. In order to bring you down, in addition to the souls and human sacrifices stored in the Bone Inheritance Society, we also borrowed the passage that the main god tore open in the world and a part of its human population."
The evil god's voice was distorted: "Are you saying that you sacrificed the main god's instance in this world, as well as the players who are clearing the instance, to me?"
If it weren't for the fact that the body was entirely imbued with its own aura, the evil god would have suspected that this person was actually a follower of one of its adversaries, deliberately trying to harm it.
The middle-aged man replied in a dull voice, "The Supreme God has repeatedly hindered the development of our church, and even directly targeted your resurrection ritual. We really have no choice but to summon you as soon as possible. Moreover, even if the summoned deity is incomplete, it is still beneficial to us, as it allows us to control you better, which is equivalent to having a more useful evil god avatar."
The evil god didn't care about his last sentence. In his view, it was perfectly normal for his followers to have despicable thoughts, since he used this trait to develop his faith.
What puzzled it was why the Supreme God was hindering the development of their church. Hadn't they agreed to erode and divide the world together?
The middle-aged man continued, "Moreover, you have issued a divine decree, warning us to be wary of the chief god."
"When will I—" He trailed off, the evil god suddenly becoming uncertain.
Its spiritual projections and incarnations are too numerous, and it frequently roams around various parallel worlds, invading whichever world has a weak consciousness and chaotic defenses, developing followers and devouring the world's power...
All of its mental projections can hear the believers' prayers, and it's not really sure which mental projection is responding to them.
Even if it did issue a divine decree, it was only to warn these believers to be careful of the main god, not to allow them to do such a thing.
His followers' actions are tantamount to making it an irreconcilable enemy of the main god. Not only in this world, but the main god in other worlds probably wouldn't let it go either.
...What's going on in them making enemies of it like this?
Even if its followers sacrifice all the copies of the main gods in this world to it, the main gods can still come to this world at any time. Because the torn passage in this world is still there, and the defenses haven't been raised.
How can he possibly fight against the Supreme God with this frail body? Wouldn't that be tantamount to handing over the world to the Supreme God?
"Sigh...humans."
Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's ridiculously stupid.
Zhou Fangdong huddled to one side, happily eating melon seeds.
He finally understood: the bald man in the melon-shaped hat had forcibly performed the resurrection ritual, attempting to use an evil god to fight against the main god, and with a little bit of ulterior motive to control the incomplete evil god, he ended up harming himself and their god.
He didn't treat others as human beings, but he never imagined that in the eyes of the evil god, he was also a useful tool.
He took too much from the evil god and ended up becoming the evil god's most useful vessel, trapped inside the evil god's body, becoming a face that could never be freed.
That was brilliant! What a wonderful skit!
Why are you two acting like evil gods? You should debut as a duo with comedians!
While the evil god was still settling accounts with the middle-aged man, Zhou Fangdong silently crouched down and quietly dragged the six coffins away.
He didn't think his current body was strong enough to defeat the evil god, so he planned to escape quietly... but he still felt a little unwilling to accept that the mission wasn't completed.
Zhou Fangdong looked in the direction where the ancient god's remains were located.
After realizing that he and the main god were already in an irreconcilable enemy state, the evil god prepared to transfer from the human body to the body of the ancient god.
Only by devouring the remains of this god can he have the ability to contend with the main god.
Otherwise, its spiritual projection in this world would be useless, and its power would be wasted.
But unexpectedly, at this moment, the weak derivative that he had been ignoring suddenly started to move.
The tentacles of the derivative pulled a rectangular black memorial tablet from a coffin and then hurled it towards it.
But the memorial tablet wasn't aimed at it; rather, it was aimed at the remains of the ancient god behind it.
The memorial tablet spun like a dart and pierced the hollow in the chest of the ancient god's remains.
This was Zhou Fangdong's last attempt.
Knowing that the task was named "Find the Body" instead of "Find the Corpse," and considering that the task was not completed after finding the corpse of one of the five ghosts, Zhou Fangdong guessed that there might be some other steps he had not completed.
Searching for a body, searching for a body... In this area, which body is there that he hasn't touched?
Furthermore, since the quest prompt mentions a [sandalwood memorial tablet], this tablet must be more than just a place to store ghosts and monsters or a navigation tool.
The system just prompted him to put the memorial tablet into Lu Mingbian's body to protect her from the runes, so this sandalwood memorial tablet is a key item.
...The hole in the chest of the ancient god's remains was large and round, and looked like it would be perfect to stuff something in there.
So Zhou Fangdong decided to take a gamble.
If the mission is completed, he might be able to use the system's power to teleport away, which would be much faster than him dragging six coffins like a lump of mud.
The evil god watched as the weak derivative threw a sign into the remains of the ancient god and let out a sneer.
They're so weak, their intelligence is just as low.
What use is a sign that's barely enough to start a fire, if you throw it into the remains of a deity?
However, before the laughter subsided, the evil god saw his enormous ancient god remains vanish into thin air.
Along with it disappeared the small derivative and the six coffins he was dragging.
Zhou Fangdong made the right bet.
The instant the memorial tablet was inserted into the hollow of the ancient god's remains, a system task pop-up appeared:
[Urgent Mission: Search for Body, Completed]
[Automatically teleport quest items and props back to the apartment]
[Task rewards are being calculated...]
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