Inside the brightly lit room, several children were chatting around a baby-faced boy. Such a scene might have been reassuring.
But the baby-faced boy was holding a blood-stained knife, and two living people were lying on the wooden board in front of him.
Tianning could see the two men's chests rising and falling steadily. One had no spiritual power and seemed to be one of the mortals who came to Ghost Doctor Valley in the previous batch, while the other was a Nascent Soul cultivator.
The two looked like corpses, completely unconscious, as the baby-faced boy used the knife in his hand to cut off their eyes, noses, and mouths... They didn't struggle at all.
Watching the young man remove the facial features of an ordinary person and then attach them to the face of a cultivator next to him is a chilling scene that inevitably brings to mind plastic surgery!
Unlike modern society, where doctors are extremely meticulous in front of sterile operating tables, the environment here is extremely rudimentary. Blood splatters everywhere, and the baby-faced boy only feeds the cultivator the healing pill after completely replacing the facial features.
The advanced healing pills were very effective; the skin gradually grew and merged with the newly installed organs, and soon the person's face was completely transformed.
No one paid attention to the mortal man on the wooden board whose features had been taken away. As he lost too much blood, his breathing became slower and slower until he died...
However, the people inside the house did not feel any psychological burden regarding this situation.
A child handed a handkerchief to the baby-faced boy and said, "Master Ghost Doctor, you've worked hard!"
Taking the handkerchief, the Ghost Doctor shook his stiff neck and couldn't help but complain, "This method of changing one's appearance is really troublesome. It would be much faster to just take a Face-Changing Pill."
"But the Face-Changing Pill can be easily detected by powerful experts, and it also has a time limit. Unlike your face-changing technique, once successful, it can completely replace that person, making it difficult to distinguish between the real and the fake!" the boy said ingratiatingly.
"That's not easy either. So many people have died, and so far we've only found a nose and mouth that resemble that face. We've looked at tens of thousands of eyes and we're still not satisfied... I just hope that the person we've found this time, that troublesome customer, will be satisfied. I think she looks almost exactly like the portrait."
...
Listening to these conversations, one can vaguely guess the purpose of these people.
Tianning sighed, "This is no good place."
She strongly suspected that the unlucky person the ghost doctor was talking about was her, because ever since she stood in front of Ghost Doctor Valley, she had felt someone's gaze on her.
This old man is really something else!
Seeing that the people inside were saying something unrelated, Tianning went to check out an empty room next door.
The room was filled with herbs, emitting a pleasant fragrance, but even so, it couldn't mask the strong smell of blood.
As soon as Tianning entered, he saw dozens of ordinary people who had undergone face transplants and were placed there. The reason these people were still alive was most likely to preserve the organs that were still needed on their faces.
Looking at the slightly familiar faces of these people, even Tian Ning felt a chilling unease he had never felt before.
That person's nose is three parts like hers, that person's lips are eight parts like hers, and even the way her eyebrows and eyes resemble hers...
Tianning didn't stay inside for long before quickly leaving and returning to the place Yingyi had arranged for them.
The ghost doctor in the next room suddenly looked up and ahead.
"Master Ghost Doctor, what's wrong?"
"It's nothing, just a curious little mouse that wandered in," the Ghost Doctor clearly didn't take this little incident to heart. Anyone who entered this place was already doomed. "Don't let her escape. The guest is in a hurry, bring her over tomorrow."
When Tianning returned home, the girl who had been secretly reading the storybook was furtively placing it on her pillow.
"Ah! You're back... I accidentally knocked your storybook over when I got up in the middle of the night, so I was thinking of putting it back for you..." the girl said hurriedly.
She originally intended to read one page and put it back, but once she started reading, she couldn't stop.
He had no choice but to put the storybook down when Tianning returned.
Tianning didn't pursue the matter further; instead, she asked the girl about things in her village.
"When did our village start holding sacrificial rites?" The girl thought carefully for a moment:
"Actually, it started as early as my great-grandmother's generation. It is said that the old village chief took some young people from the village to the mountains to find some rare things to sell in the county town. Unexpectedly, a sudden rainstorm caused a flood. The old village chief was swept away by the flood for two days and two nights. Just when everyone thought he was gone, he miraculously appeared."
"The old village chief said it was the protection of the gods, who were blessing the villagers."
"Later, the old village chief received divine guidance. He seemed to know everything, treating the village's chickens and cattle, making the vegetables in the fields grow better, and even at over eighty years old, he could carry loads of rice weighing over ten kilograms..."
The girl said she heard these things from her great-grandmother.
Because of the changes in the old village chief, people began to believe in the gods.
The true sacrifice began in a certain year.
“That year, the villagers suddenly fell ill with a strange disease. The old village chief said we needed to seek help from the gods, but constantly making demands would only disappoint them. Therefore, we needed to offer sacrifices…”
Once you've got the first one, the second, the third... become much easier.
Therefore, every three years, a living person needs to be sacrificed to the so-called god.
All those who are sacrificed will disappear without a trace, as if they never existed.
Therefore, the villagers became more convinced of the existence of gods.
After listening to the girl's words, Tianning very enthusiastically lent her the storybook: "Don't be shy, it's so boring here, you have to find something to pass the time."
"Thank you..." The girl accepted it, flattered.
This was the first time she had ever seen a storybook like this. In the past, the ones in her brother's study were all difficult poems.
"If other people can't understand it, you can read it to them."
Tianning was always kind-hearted, so she took out several more books and lent them to the girl.
The book titles read: "The Village Chief's Swapping of the Body Harms Countless People, I Became the Village's Hope!", "Evil God Dares to Sacrifice Me? I'll Roll Up My Sleeves and Slay the God!", "Feudal Superstition is Unreliable, the Master Teaches You 999 Ways to Recognize Scammers"...
girl:"……"
As a result, Tianning went back to bed and fell asleep peacefully.
The remaining girl looked at the title of the storybook in her hand, hesitated, and silently opened it. Then the night passed, and dawn broke.
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