Along the Mediterranean coast, a tall and mighty centaur snorted, its bare organs exposed beneath its robust muscles.
Its thick hooves stepped into the sea, kicking up splashes of pearl-white foam.
Beautiful women with human torsos and fish tails frolicked in the seawater. Accompanied by their enchanting singing, a thin layer of mist drifted across the surface of the sea.
“Come, come, my hero, drink with Dionysus. The intoxicating sweetness of wine, the moving fruit of love—everything is here.”
On a modern fishing boat, the captain steering the vessel had vacant eyes. A sweet smile curled at the corners of his lips as he steered the boat into the mist without a single backward glance.
“Come, come, come...”
As the sound of large birds flapping their wings echoed, creatures with human bodies and avian wings landed on the boat one after another.
These creatures were all blonde and blue-eyed, with stunningly beautiful features, looking as pure and beautiful as angels in a mural.
They unfurled their voices without restraint, forcing these poor, stray lambs to willingly become food for the sirens.
...
In Brazil, tucked away in the corner of a bustling amusement park, was a dilapidated Gypsy hut.
The hut was filled with a dazzling array of items: dried canary feathers hanging on the wall shimmered, sage gave off its aroma, frogs hung upside down with their tongues sticking out, and dried rabbit feet were tied into a bundle.
On the table sat a crystal ball covered with silk, and a pure white bowl was filled with crystals of various colors.
A brown-haired Gypsy woman, dressed scantily and boldly, was grabbing a screaming mandrake and tossing it into a cauldron in front of her to stew.
Beside the cauldron, a tablet on a phone stand was playing a video from distant Huaxia over and over again.
The brown-haired beauty stirred the cauldron and blew an incredibly charming, bold kiss toward the green-robed female cultivator in the video:
“My dear, you are so moving. What price must I pay to get a kiss from this lovely lady?”
She happily pulled out a bare skull and announced loudly:
“Mama, we are going to Great Xia!”
...
Outside Cheong Wa Dae in the Kimchi Nation, countless men and women in black robes and bare feet held candles as they walked down the streets to petition for their "god."
Specks of candlelight gathered, slowly forming an astonishing river of candle fire:
“We should erect a monument for the gods!”
“We demand the government step down and recognize the legal status of the gods!”
“Great Xia has gods! That is the last pure land in the mortal world, the only Garden of Eden!”
...
In a residential home in Tailande, the corner of a dark, windowless room was filled with jars and pots.
These bone jars, decorated with human bones, skulls, and fresh flowers, were covered in blood-drawn runes of unknown meaning.
Four men knelt on the floor with their palms pressed together, piously chanting. In front of them sat a bowl filled with fresh crow's blood.
A barefoot man sat before an altar, grabbing a handful of still-wriggling maggots and stuffing them into his mouth while muttering incantations. Before long, the straw doll hanging on the altar seemed to react—
The crow's blood seemed to have a life of its own, wriggling as it fell onto the floor and eventually spelling out a passage of words:
【There are no gods in Great Xia. Go and kill that wicked blasphemer, and bring them before me.】
The middle-aged man leading them had a serious expression. After staring at the floor for a long time, he bared a mouth full of large, yellow teeth and called out to his disciple in stiff Great Xia speech:
“Chai, the great and omnipotent Ba Yan God has handed down a divine decree. It wants its most loyal servant to kill that wretched blasphemer and offer her blood and flesh for our god to feast upon...”
The thin, small man nodded. He took a deep look at the screenshot of the green-robed woman in the video, then dropped to all fours and bowed to the strange doll on the altar.
...
Within Great Xia, in the Liangguang region, a man wearing a white shirt and carrying a briefcase squeezed off the subway, following the crowd toward a residential area.
Aside from the small portrait of the Great Freedom Joy Auspicious Holy Mother hanging around his neck, he looked no different from an ordinary white-collar worker.
He had an ordinary appearance, wore glasses, and carried that distinct, half-dead aura unique to office workers.
With heavy steps, the man walked out of the elevator and unlocked his front door with a key. Suddenly, his aura completely shifted.
The room's decor was extremely minimalist: a bed, a coffee table, and other than that, rows of human spines hanging on the walls.
“I'm back.”
He casually picked up a spine with a smile, skillfully crushed it, and opened his mouth to suck on it—
The instant the unknown substance entered his mouth, he seemed to age backward by decades. His muscles swelled across his entire body, and veins bulged along his neck as if a heart-fire were burning within him.
The next second, through the gap in the half-drawn curtains, a dot of red light landed with pinpoint accuracy right between the man's eyebrows.
Before he could react, there was a soft pfft.
The sound was as quiet as a fully inflated water balloon popping.
“Holy Mother above, the heart-fire shall never be extinguished!”
“Now is the era of cultivation! It is our era!!”
The man's face contorted in rage. With a scorched bullet mark right in the center of his forehead, he leaped forward, trying to escape through the front door.
“Pfft.”
“Pfft.”
“Pfft, pfft, pfft.”
More red dots fell upon him. Silenced gunshots turned the man into a sieve. His skull shattered, and a yellow-and-white mixture spilled all over the floor.
The security door was kicked open, and Yu Lan, clad in a black uniform, rushed in with her team. Taking in the situation inside the room, she grabbed the walkie-talkie by her ear and reported in a deep voice:
“The suspect has been neutralized. Confirming, the suspect has been neutralized.”
She looked down at the pile of mangled flesh on the floor and couldn't help but sneer:
“Heh. Your era?”
...
At Baishan Temple on Mount Emei, Zhuang Sinan knelt before his master and uncles, dutifully recounting what he had witnessed in the southwest region several months ago.
“Master, Uncles, is there something wrong with that Mountain Lord?”
Zhuang Sinan still wore his hair long. He had a clean, fair face and a smile that easily made people feel close to him.
The masters of Baishan Temple looked at one another. After a long pause, someone finally spoke:
“You already know about the emergence of the Demon Suppression Division and the diversion of the Yellow River, right?”
“Right now within Great Xia, there is probably no practitioner of any repute who doesn't know about this. That green-robed female cultivator who has the ability to divert the Yellow River and bring spring back to both banks overnight must be a true cultivator.”
Zhuang Sinan's smile faded as he said slowly:
“The authorities have clearly not met them for the first time. As for the Demon Suppression Division... I've never heard of it. Master, Uncles, in your opinion, could this news be true?”
“Eighty percent likely to be true, twenty percent likely to be false. It's a mix of reality and illusion, truth and falsehood. It cannot be easily distinguished for the moment.”
Zhuang Sinan's master, Master Liao Jing of Baishan Temple, spoke:
“According to the news from the authorities, in the past, our Great Xia's cultivation world encountered a calamity. The immortal realm shattered and turned into secret realms scattered all over the place. One of the entrances to these secret realms lies at the bottom of the Yellow River. As for that green-robed fellow cultivator, she should be a cultivator of the past who has awakened from one of those secret realms.”
“No wonder.”
A look of surprise flashed in Zhuang Sinan's eyes:
“I once heard Grandmaster say that in the past, the spiritual energy of heaven and earth dried up, and practitioners could no longer cultivate. This led to a gap in the inheritance of cultivation, and even our Baishan Temple's 《Bodhi Purity Manual》 was only passed down in half. In that case, cultivation and Foundation Establishment are real, and ascending to become an immortal is also real?”
“Amitabha. The world has its own destined paths. Everything is merely acting in accordance with the will of heaven.”
The masters all pressed their palms together and chanted Buddhist prayers.
Rate on N.U.
