Chapter 101 The Divine Corpse (Bonus Chapter at 34,000 words) and the Ritual of the Heirs of the Bone Society...
Slime Street, which has become part of the apartment complex, still looks exactly as it did when Zhou Fangdong left.
The buildings that had been pieced together on the street were covered by large swaths of black silt, turning normal buildings into sticky, soft structures made of slime.
Because the features of the buildings were completely covered by the black substance, it was impossible to distinguish between the supermarket and the residences; one could only vaguely make out what appeared to be the shape of houses. The sky and the ground were also covered in silt, with black substances constantly falling from the sky like mud splatters... The entire street looked like a clay sculpture casually made by children playing house.
More abstract than the buildings was the giant black slime that suddenly appeared on this street.
The slime suddenly sprang to its feet, extended two tentacles that wrapped around the buildings on either side, and launched itself outwards.
But after cosplaying Spider-Man, his huge, muddy body suddenly started boiling, as if he were carsick and vomited up a bunch of things... an urn, a giant blade with barbs, a sandalwood memorial tablet, some human remains, and some strange, tangled-up machines.
After lying on the ground for a while, the giant slime gave up launching itself and wriggled its body to swallow the urn, the giant blade, and the memorial tablet back into its body.
Zhou Fangdong didn't know what those cultists had done in the mirror world, but he felt that his slime body was a little out of control.
It wasn't the kind of sudden loss of self-awareness that leads to a loss of control, but rather the kind of loss of control that comes from a sudden surge in power, like having a toddler control an adult's body.
Originally, this slime body felt right at home in the mirror world, its power completely unrestrained.
But Zhou Fangdong feels a bit too free here now... Too little pressure is also a burden, and he's finding it hard to even maintain his slime form.
If he used to be like dough for making dumplings, now he's like a batter with too much water.
What made him even more desperate was that the sandalwood memorial tablet, which was perfectly fine in the apartment, became completely silent and refused to communicate with him after he stuffed it into the slime's body.
I thought that after collecting all the ghosts and monsters and arriving in the mirror world, I could directly use the connection between the ghosts and their corpses to find those corpses.
But to everyone's surprise, even through the memorial tablet, the ghosts were particularly averse to this slime body.
In addition, the drastic changes in the environment of the mirror world made Zhou Fangdong feel a little uneasy.
...I don't know if we can complete this urgent task within three hours.
The system shouldn't trick him regarding matters related to the Bone Inheritance Society. Hopefully, this sandalwood memorial tablet will have other uses after he truly enters the Mirror World.
Zhou Fangdong dragged the slime's body to the edge of the street.
On this short street, he vomited the whole way, like a lump of ice cream melting rapidly under the scorching sun.
As he moved, the dark substance on his body kept falling off, and the giant lake clone that had been devoured by the processing plant last night was now more than half gone.
But after half of the body detached, Zhou Fangdong felt that the slime's body was easier to control, which made him breathe a sigh of relief.
Leaving the slime streets that had been transformed into apartment perimeter facilities, he entered the real mirror world.
The world in the mirror is different from the real world. The scenes are disconnected from each other and connected by black mist. The size of each area also varies. Some are only the size of a bedroom, while others are an entire neighborhood. It's as if countless images reflected in mirrors of different sizes have been pieced together.
Compared to Zhou Fangdong's last visit to the Mirror World, there were fewer cultists this time. During his time in the Mirror World, he didn't even see a single patrol team.
Zhou Fangdong felt a chill run down his spine for no apparent reason.
I'm a little uneasy... These cultists are definitely up to something big.
Zhou Fangdong hid his shrunken body behind a wall, disguising himself as part of the wall's shadow. Then, he used a tentacle to pull out the memorial tablet from his body and examined it carefully.
His name was still written on the front of the memorial tablet, unchanged, but on the back... words suddenly appeared on the back of the memorial tablet.
It says "Head West" above.
...It turns out that there is no need to communicate with the ghosts in the memorial tablets; the memorial tablets that are inhabited by ghosts themselves have a navigation function.
Zhou Fangdong lifted his muddy head and looked at the sky.
...By the way, which side is west?
In this mirror world, the sky is filled with upside-down buildings, the sun is nowhere to be seen, and it's impossible to tell which way is which.
Seemingly sensing Zhou Fangdong's confusion, the memorial tablet trembled, and the inscription changed to "Go left."
Now I understand.
Zhou Fangdong held the memorial tablet with his tentacles while continuously teleporting it to the left.
After the inscription on the memorial tablet changed, he changed direction and continued to teleport, eventually arriving at a large gate.
Before us was a building resembling an auditorium, with an arched semi-circular stained-glass window above the main entrance, and below the window was a double-leaf, ornately carved, luxurious wooden door.
It has a very Western feel, as if you would see a staircase leading to a high platform when you push open the door, where a king wearing a crown and holding a scepter stands, ready to hold an awarding ceremony for the knights who push open the door.
However, the door was covered with densely packed talismans, and Zhou Fangdong hesitated for a moment before not daring to touch it.
The red scribbles on the talisman looked familiar; they seemed to be the same runes I saw yesterday in the underground cave used to suppress the power of the evil god's clone.
Just then, the sandalwood tablet held by the tentacles suddenly trembled again, and a charred hand reached out from the tablet, its fingertips, burned and torn, touching the door talisman.
The next instant, flames ignited on the talisman, and the talisman that had sealed the door instantly turned into a pile of black ash.
Noticing that the talisman had disappeared, Zhou Fangdong pressed his body against the door, pushed it open a crack, and squeezed through.
The scene inside was not the magnificent award ceremony he had imagined; it was dilapidated, as if it had been vandalized by bandits.
The benches in the auditorium lay scattered on the ground, covered with gravel and wood chips. Several holes in the towering dome cast down pale beams of light, in which fine dust swirled.
Amidst these ruins, the only intact and enormous stained-glass window directly opposite the main gate stands out prominently.
The huge rose window contrasts sharply with the surrounding walls with peeling paint, and light shines through the colorful stained glass onto the floor, leaving dappled patterns of light.
Following the spot of light, Zhou Fangdong noticed that there were many mahogany coffins placed under the huge stained-glass window.
There were six redwood coffins in total, none of which had their lids on.
Zhou Fangdong climbed to the coffin closest to the door and peeked inside.
Inside the coffin was a lifelike corpse, as if it had just died yesterday. The skin was a bluish-white from excessive blood loss, the limbs were emaciated, and the abdomen was swollen high... It was the corpse of a pregnant ghost.
Behind the pregnant ghost's corpse was a coffin containing the corpse of a sick ghost whose skin was ulcerated and covered in pustules. Like the pregnant ghost, his corpse showed no signs of decay and looked as if he had just died.
Next was the coffin containing the charred corpse of the ghoul in Room 301.
Unlike the previous two coffins, this one was pressed tightly against the other, with the corpse's hand resting on the edge of the coffin, tightly holding the hand of a living person... The living person lying in the other coffin should be Lu Mingbian. Although her eyes were closed, you could vaguely see what she looked like when she was a child.
Zhou Fangdong wanted to extend his tentacles to check if Lu Mingbian was still breathing.
However, to his surprise, before he could even get close to Lu Mingbian, another charred hand emerged from the memorial tablet and slapped away his tentacles.
...Fine, I won't touch it then. Anyway, the mission didn't fail, so Lu Mingbian should still be alive.
Behind Lu Mingbian's coffin were the coffins containing the corpses of the Long-Tongued Ghost and the Wedding Dress Ghost. Like the other ghosts' corpses, their bodies showed no signs of decay.
They found all the ghost corpses and Lu Mingbian in one go, it was that simple?
But none of the tasks were completed.
As Zhou Fangdong was puzzled, all the ghosts in the memorial tablets suddenly came out. Like puppets being controlled, they stiffly walked to the coffins where their respective corpses were placed, slowly lay down, and merged with the corpses.
As these ghosts merged into their corpses, the entire auditorium suddenly shook.
It was a rhythmic tremor, as if a giant heart was beating underground.
With the vibration, dust and plaster fell in a flurry, and the only intact stained glass window made a slight, crackling sound like an egg breaking.
The cracks hidden beneath the exquisite lines were gradually widening, and when they reached a certain threshold, with a crisp cracking sound, the huge stained-glass window exploded instantly.
Countless shards of glass cascaded down, like a colorful rain. Zhou Fangdong reacted swiftly, extending his body to shield the six exposed coffins.
The shards of glass all pierced Zhou Fangdong's slime body, causing no pain or itch.
Even after the glass stopped falling, Zhou Fangdong didn't pull himself back; his attention was completely drawn to what was behind the stained-glass window.
There is a corpse behind the stained glass window.
A large, ancient, long-dead skeleton.
It lay there, time had come to an end for it, leaving only an empty shell.
It resembles a pile of dried, heavy soil, vaguely resembling a human figure, with layers upon layers of cracks covering its entire body, like the rings of an ancient tree.
Even in this state, one can still feel its immense power when gazing upon the corpse... It seems to have once been a pillar supporting the sky, a cornerstone of the earth, a manifestation of time, and a source of sustenance for all things to grow.
But it died.
And so, it seems that the world is dying little by little, irreversibly.
Even gods, even the world itself, eventually reach the end of their lifespan.
This is the corpse of a god; this is the fall of a god.
The corpse chosen by the bone-laying ceremony to represent 'old' is the body of a deity who died of old age.
Zhou Fangdong also noticed that there was a huge hole in the center of this old torso, from which a thick, black 'river' slowly flowed.
Following the direction the river extended, Zhou Fangdong saw a middle-aged man wearing a melon-shaped hat sitting in the space behind the corpse.
The middle-aged man had no face; instead, his face was replaced by a swirling black vortex that seemed to lead to an unknown void.
He sat cross-legged on a complex array of runes, holding a bowl filled with dark red blood in one hand and a talisman folded into a triangle in the other.
The triangular talisman paper spontaneously combusted without fire, and its ashes fell into the bowl.
He stirred it with his index finger and poured the black liquid from the bowl onto the ground, onto the dark 'river' flowing from the chest of the old corpse.
A diamond-shaped black core slowly separated from the 'river' and was held in the middle-aged man's hand.
As the core appeared, the 'rivers' on the ground disappeared.
Judging from the speed at which the black substance was flowing out of the cavity in the corpse's chest, it would take a long time for it to accumulate before the 'river' reappears on the ground.
The middle-aged man examined the core he had created, wrapped it in talisman paper, and gently placed it aside.
Zhou Fangdong sensed the core that exuded a familiar aura... This was the core of the evil god's clone.
The talisman in the middle-aged man's hand was likely a gift from the evil god. When combined with the substance flowing from the corpse, it could create the core of the evil god's clone. Through further sacrifice, this core could be transformed into a monstrous, sludge-like creature that only knew how to devour.
No wonder these cultists have no reverence for the avatars of evil gods and treat them as mere tools; this is how they are made.
After doing all this, the middle-aged man slowly stood up and muttered to himself, "The core of the divine avatar is more than enough. I can begin to revive the divine consciousness."
He slowly walked to the corpse, looked up and examined it: "This body needs further modification before it can be used by the gods..."
As soon as he finished speaking, he turned his head to look in Zhou Fangdong's direction. The black vortex that replaced his facial features was slowly rotating, as if his eyes were moving and scrutinizing Zhou Fangdong.
"So that's why the divine clones have been going out of control so frequently lately... It turns out that one of the smaller clones has developed self-awareness."
"Little thing, do you intend to seize this body, disrupt the divine resurrection ritual, and then take its place?"
The middle-aged man walked to the spot where the stained glass window had been and stood unsuspectingly between Zhou Fangdong and the corpse of the god.
He looked at Zhou Fangdong and the six coffins he was protecting, and let out a disdainful sneer, "A mere lump of unformed filth dares to dream of becoming a god? How laughable..."
"Let me show you what a true god looks like."
He lowered his head slightly, his toes tapping the ground lightly in a peculiar rhythm. "The blood sacrifice ritual is fully prepared. The sacrifice is ready. The resurrection ritual is officially beginning..."
"We respectfully request the arrival of the divine beings."
As he finished speaking, crimson runes simultaneously lit up beneath the god's corpse and the six coffins.
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Author's note: Sorry for the late post. I finished writing it this afternoon and put it in my drafts folder, but then realized I forgot to set the time. orz
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