Chapter 221: The "Polluted" Godhead Shard
Chapter 221: The "Polluted" Godhead Shard
India, a magical country. A nation that everyone else considered a complete mess, yet viewed itself as incomparably powerful.
For example, some might say that America was a paradise for drugs, the most deeply poisoned country in the world. If you excluded India, that statement would be entirely correct.
But the moment India was included, it lost its validity.
This was a country that had been taking drugs since its mythological era, a place where the government and religious sects distributed narcotics together. They did not even include these distributed drugs in their statistics!
Compared to this nation, America could almost be called benign. After all, they at least had not put a clear price tag on the corpse trade!
India, West Bengal, Calcutta.
As one of the country's major metropolises, this was once the capital of British India and currently stood as its third-largest city.
Bai Yang disembarked at the Port of Calcutta, instantly assaulted by an unbearable, putrid stench hanging in the city's air!
It was a complex miasma, an amalgamation of bacterial infections, decomposing bodies, rotting matter, excrement, and industrial exhaust, a dreadful synthesis of every foul odor imaginable.
The city's sky was hazy. A yellowish-gray smog shrouded the heavens above and weighed heavily upon the hearts of the people below."Ugh... why do I suddenly regret coming here?" Bai Yang could not help but mutter.
His first impression of this city was simply too abysmal.
No wonder so many Indian bloggers claimed that if you thought everything said about India online was just a stereotype, then adding all those stereotypes together and doubling them would give you the reality of the country!
"The aura of the Godhead Shard is growing weaker. I dare not imagine what kind of thing could actually pollute a Godhead Shard," Bai Yang commented.
Before him lay the true face of the city: congested roads, yellowing buildings, and a starkly divided populace.
To the left of the road was the slum, a sprawling collection of shacks cobbled together from wooden planks, straw, leaves, and felt. To the right stood modernized buildings, towering skyscrapers, and electrified infrastructure.
There seemed to be an endless generational gap between the two sides, yet they existed here, blending together in a bizarre harmony.
But Bai Yang could not stomach this place. His telepathic senses were blaring frantic alarms. The population density in this area was simply too high, and the horrifying amalgamation of their thoughts caused him to suffer a brief bout of mental chaos!
'What do they mean the dog from yesterday was not bad, so they will try it again today?'
'What do they mean the shit they took in the middle of the road yesterday was not perfectly round, so they need to drop another one today?'
'What do they mean their wife ran back home, so they have to sell her again just to trade for a meal?'
'There are even people who saw a decent-looking woman on the street, fantasized about her, and decided to kill her tonight to sell her corpse?'
Bai Yang stared at these passing thoughts in absolute silence. Was he truly in a modern country, a nation that had undergone over seventy years of modern development?
Rather than in a primitive society, an era of savagery devoid of any civilization?
In a renowned metropolis, through the most superficial layer of telepathic scanning, this was the kind of vile information he gleaned?
"This country... is thoroughly sick!" Bai Yang sighed emotionally. Without exception, all these thoughts originated from the slum.
The people here were ignorant, apathetic, rigid, and crude. Ignorance was their foundation, religion their spiritual anchor, and suffering the sole expression rooted in their hearts.
"Crown, this country truly is... incredibly diverse!"
Alvin also sounded awestruck. He had initially thought that America represented the absolute limit of this world's diversity. He never expected India to be a nation that surpassed even its master.
Bai Yang did not want to listen to these thoughts any longer. He erased them and temporarily shut down his telepathy. He was afraid that listening to too much would pollute his own mind. Why on earth were people debating the comparative comfort of sleeping with dogs versus cats?!
Just how diseased was this country?!
He took a step forward, crossing more than half the city in an instant, arriving at the absolute limit of where he could sense the Godhead Shard.
This place appeared to be a crematorium, as many people were carrying corpses here, lining up to wait for the "burning."
Yet Bai Yang could see that although the fires were constantly lit, there was not a single corpse inside them. The workers toiled away tirelessly, but they were merely burning wood.
As for the corpses that were brought in, after passing through two sets of hands, they were stuffed into a separate, special room. Then, some "corpses" were wheeled out and tossed into the flames.
Those were merely corpse mannequins. Many were empty shells that melted as soon as they hit the fire, perfectly completing the transfer and concealment of the real bodies.
Did you think that was the end of it? Not at all. After watching the "corpses" melt away, the crematorium staff would gather thugs and approach the families who brought the bodies to intimidate them!
"The corpse you brought is unclean. It cannot reincarnate directly! You need to pay a reincarnation fee!"
"Look, the body burned up instantly. This is a sign of impurity!"
"If you do not pay, his death will curse everyone in your family, ensuring that none of you can successfully reincarnate in your next lives!"
Such words would sound like a joke to anyone with a modicum of worldly experience. But in the eyes of these dark-skinned, low-caste people, they were truer than gold. They hastily took out every penny they had on them, begging and praying until the staff accepted the money, successfully "pardoning" their family's "sin."
This scene caused no stir among anyone present, because this was simply the daily routine at the crematorium.
"I sense the aura of the Godhead Shard. It is among that family!" Alvin stated. He was, of course, referring to the family that had just handed over their money to pardon their family's sins.
Thus, the two followed this family, clearly of a low caste, arguably even untouchables, back to their residence, a small shack located in the slum.
Since all the family's money had been spent on atoning for their sins, they had nothing left to buy food. As the head of the household, Jia Li Moore Kovind chose to work at a nearby factory.
And the work he took on was helping them clean corpses.
In this city, the corpse trade was not some dark, underground gig. It was an open business, a livelihood operating in plain sight that many people were well aware of.
Consequently, Jia Li hauled a corpse back from the factory, had his family set up a large cauldron, and began processing the body. The processing method involved boiling and soaking it, then stripping away the bones, skin, and flesh.
But while processing this corpse, Jia Li's wife felt something on its hand.
Startled, she lifted its hand and discovered a "ring" engraved with her husband's name, a bone ring.
The woman was instantly terrified. She screamed at the top of her lungs, drawing everyone's attention, and then revealed the identity of the corpse!
It was the corpse of Jia Li's father, Moore Kovind. They had just been processing a member of their own family!
That meant the corpse they had sent over earlier had never been cremated. Instead, it was sold to the factory, destined to be turned into bones and shipped all over the world!
And now, they had received this very corpse and were expected to dismember it themselves. It was glaringly obvious that they had been scammed by those people!
Everyone was horrified, dropping to their knees in prayer. Jia Li shouted in unparalleled fury, desperate to vent his rage, yet just as his fist was about to smash down, he stopped himself.
Ultimately, he ordered everyone to continue working, to butcher the corpse, extract the bones, and flay the flesh, exactly as they usually did.
Even if what they were butchering was his father's corpse, the bones of his own flesh and blood!
Soon, the household fell into silence once more, filled only by the man's heavy sighs and the woman's quiet, lingering sobs.
Behind this crushing silence, a flickering Godhead Shard was absorbing everyone's prayers and emitting a faint, weak glow!
"Crown, why don't they go confront those people and demand an explanation?" Alvin had some understanding of this world, so he knew how deeply most of its cultures valued matters of life and death.
This made him incredibly baffled by the behavior of these people.
"Why? Because they are Dalits, while the people who did this are basically Shudras or Vaishyas. They are of a higher caste!"
Bai Yang said indifferently. "Furthermore, their family has no money left. To survive, even if the person in front of him is his own father, he must dismantle the bones properly, sell them, exchange them for money, and buy food!"
He could hear the man's inner voice, so he saw much more beneath the surface.
What left him somewhat speechless was that even in his moment of greatest fury, the man never once entertained the thought of 'revenge.' He merely experienced a fleeting surge of towering anger.
It seemed that in his mind, taking revenge against someone of a higher caste was something absolutely unthinkable.
And that Godhead Shard flew away right before their eyes. It seemed to have sucked dry the Wish Power of this area and was looking to move on to the next.
It was truly audacious. Bai Yang himself did not dare absorb the Wish Power here, fearing he would be assimilated by this masterless energy. Yet this Godhead Shard actually absorbed it. No wonder no information had leaked out for such a long time.
Bai Yang beckoned with his hand, attempting to draw the Godhead Shard over, but failed. This brought him a sudden realization. Sure enough, after spending so much time in an area so rich in faith and Wish Power, this shard had already been "polluted" by the majestic, chaotic Wish Power of this place!
But that was all there was to it. He beckoned again. The shard was forcefully pulled over by God Power. At that very moment, the Divinity of Lies made contact with the Spirituality lingering on the shard.
The very nature of that Wish Power manifested within Bai Yang's consciousness!
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