novelraw Chapter 948: A Strange Ritual
Chapter 948: A Strange Ritual
Palm Hand Lu stepped forward and inspected one of them.
"These aren’t part of that ritual." he muttered.
Han Yu’s eyes sharpened.
Ritual?
The subordinates looked surprised.
"My lord?"
Palm Hand Lu pointed toward the corpses.
"The arrangement is wrong."
Han Yu looked again.
The bodies had simply been piled here.
No patterns.
No symbols.
No deliberate positions.
Palm Hand Lu continued.
"They were hidden too carelessly."
One subordinate nodded.
"Perhaps the culprit planned to use them later."
Another shook his head.
"Or perhaps they were already used and abandoned."
Palm Hand Lu’s expression darkened.
Suddenly he smashed his hand into one of the frozen bodies.
BOOM!
The corpse shattered into icy fragments.
The cave shook.
Han Yu was slightly surprised by the strength.
Palm Hand Lu truly was powerful for a Nascent Soul cultivator.
"Dammit!" the man roared.
His voice echoed through the cave.
"I came all this way searching for clues about the ritual and that bastard keeps taunting us!"
The others lowered their heads.
Palm Hand Lu clenched his fists.
"If only he came out openly I’d show him!"
Han Yu remained hidden while his thoughts moved rapidly.
Ritual.
Searching.
Taunting.
Palm Hand Lu was investigating too.
This meant he was probably not involved.
At least directly.
But another thing caught Han Yu’s attention.
The way Palm Hand Lu spoke.
He had not said murderer.
He had not said beast.
He said bastard.
As if he already knew the culprit existed.
As if this had been going on for a while.
Palm Hand Lu took a deep breath and calmed himself.
"Search again."
"My lord?"
"There must be something here."
The group immediately spread out.
Han Yu remained still.
Then something else caught his attention.
One corpse near the rear wall.
The body belonged to an old man.
Unlike the others, one hand remained closed.
Han Yu quietly moved closer.
Palm Hand Lu had not noticed.
The fingers were frozen shut.
Han Yu used a strand of Abyssal Frost Qi.
The ice loosened.
Something dropped into his hand.
A flower petal.
White.
Frozen.
Han Yu stared at it.
His expression changed.
Because he recognized it.
This flower did not belong here.
It belonged near Frost Plume Town.
Near the Harrow Mountains.
Near the place he had first encountered traces of Madam Cold Fang.
Han Yu slowly closed his hand.
His thoughts finally shifted.
Perhaps he had not been wrong after all.
A while later Palm Hand Lu asked the corpses to be taken away and he left as well. But Han Yu kept searching around the area for any signs of another person. Though even after the entire night he found nothing.
As such returned to the town hoping Chitterfang and the others might find something.
And sure enough, a day later, the rats returned with more information than Han Yu had thought.
"Master we found a lot!" Chitterfang told Han Yu that Palm Hand Lu’s men were checking the corpses and had several documents with them.
They recorded everything with the tools the rats had, so Han Yu could take a look.
One of the rats soon arrived with a small crystal and Han Yu held it before information flowed into his mind.
Han Yu sat quietly inside his room at the inn while the crystal remained in his hand.
The image from the recording had long ended, yet his thoughts still lingered on it.
Outside, Tropic Snow Town remained lively as always. Voices drifted in from the streets. Merchants shouted. Cultivators came and went. The strange coexistence of tropical heat and northern frost remained as bizarre as ever.
Inside the room though, silence ruled.
The rats had truly exceeded expectations this time.
Han Yu had expected information.
He had not expected this.
A ritual.
An old one at that.
He replayed the memory again in his mind. Palm Hand Lu’s people had opened several old scrolls and books. The rats had recorded everything through the tiny tools attached to their bodies and now Han Yu possessed all that information.
The first image remained clear in his memory.
A large circular pattern.
At first glance it resembled a formation array.
Yet it was wrong.
The lines flowed strangely. The symbols lacked structure. Instead of spiritual pathways and node connections, the circle used flesh marks, blood paths and strange smiling faces arranged around the perimeter.
Han Yu immediately recognized similarities.
"Curse rituals..." he muttered.
The Blood Sect had entire libraries dedicated to them.
Most disciples ignored those sections due to the danger involved and only experienced elders dabbled in them, but Han Yu had studied enough while investigating the Mind Modifying Doll Seal and Jiangshi.
This ritual definitely belonged to that category.
He continued sorting through the information.
The notes were surprisingly recent. The handwriting changed between sections which meant several people had likely compiled them.
And all of them talked about one thing.
Longevity.
The ritual supposedly extracted life force from humans and transferred it to the user.
Han Yu leaned back.
This alone was not unusual.
The Blood Sect had several such methods.
Some blood sacrifices granted years.
Some curses granted decades.
The strongest ones required cultivators and could grant close to a century.
But all of them had flaws.
Soul damage.
Mental corruption.
Blood deviation.
Instability.
The price always existed.
Yet this ritual...
Han Yu frowned.
It seemed almost perfect.
As long as subjects were continuously supplied, longevity could keep increasing.
No visible side effects.
No mention of soul corruption.
No instability.
The only requirement... Happy subjects.
Han Yu slowly tapped the table.
The smiling corpses.
The child.
The forced smiles.
The hallucinogens.
Everything started connecting.
The smile flower nectar induced euphoria.
The fungal spores altered Frost Qi.
The weak poison suppressed resistance.
And then...
The ritual.
The victims needed happiness.
Or at least the appearance of it.
Han Yu’s expression became strange.
"Who even creates something like this?" he muttered as even the Blood Sect elders would call this bizarre.
Most evil arts sought fear.
Pain.
Blood.
Hatred.
This one wanted smiles.