Chapter 891 - 432: Witch Sacrifice Village (Part 2)
The young girl nodded lightly. "My name is Diao."
"Diao, hello."
He had never heard this name before; Li Ang could not recall whether he had seen her.
After the young girl finished saying her name, she fell silent for a while, merely leading Li Ang forward through the shallow water that had just barely covered the tops of their feet.
Ahead, on the horizon of the marshland plain that resembled eternal night, a few wavering flames could be seen; that was the witch sacrifice village they were heading to.
Though this was a place detached from the world, transcendent, where everyone cultivated the Ancient Witch path, there was still a hierarchy here. It was just that the class distinctions were not as sharp as in the outside world; titles were basically divided only by the depth of one’s cultivation, and only the few ranked near the front, and those revered by others, could issue commands that others would follow.
Diao calling Li Ang "Great Witch" was a title he had obtained back then.
The ordinary residents here were Witch People; those who achieved results in cultivation were Priests; among them, the rare few outstanding ones were Great Witches; and finally there was the true sage who led all, the Great Witch.
Li Ang glanced at the young girl’s status panel.
[Name: Diao]
[Race: Unknown]
[Profession: Druid, Tier 7. Witch Doctor, Tier 6. Mage, Tier 6]
[Summoned Creatures: Cloud Spirit, Wetland Spirit, Forest Spirit, Tier 7. Ancestral Spirit, Tier 6. Four Elemental Spirits, Tier 6.]
[Energy Source: Resonance of Ten Thousand Spirits, Tier One to Tier Ten [limited within Sanctuary of All Spirits]]
[Equipment: Ancient Witch Robe with Curse Patterns, Tier 7. Ritual Bone Ornament, Tier 7.]
[Secret Techniques: Comprehensive Secret Technique - Spirit of Anger. Professional Secret Technique - Multi-Beast Form Assault]
[Skills: Druid [Spiritual Affinity, Beast Transformation: Deer/Eagle/Fish/Bear/Tiger, Vine Manipulation, Wildfire, Thunder Summoning Technique], Witch Doctor [Poison Mastery, Woodland Elf Transformation, Piranha Summoning], Mage [Elemental Affinity, Healing Water Wave, Elemental Summoning, Celestial Fury Totem], Long Robe [Basic Curse, Spiritually Active], Ritual Bone Ornament [Sensory Enhancement]]
[Combat Power Amplification: 81%]
Huh.
With this, Li Ang could be certain that Diao coming to receive him was no coincidence.
The people of the Land of Ten Thousand Spirits valued Li Ang greatly; that sentence, repeatedly mentioned by the Great Witch, was no empty talk. They had not forced him to stay, but they had waited for him, hoped for his return.
Even on this land where Spirituality flourished to a high tier, following the ancient path was profound and intricate, and cultivation was not easy. The powers they mastered were much harder to learn than those of similar professions in the outside world.
A talent like Diao was simply one in ten thousand.
Using the system’s panel-observation ability, he could also look at the others here.
Back then, Li Ang had felt they were special; now he could get deeper, more factual information.
She was the successor chosen by the Great Witch? Li Ang guessed.
Just as he was thinking that, the young girl suddenly asked softly, "Great Witch Li Ang, in the outside world... have you been well?"
Li Ang froze for a moment and scratched the back of his head.
"Still... okay, I guess."
From his perspective, this wasn’t the sort of thing witch priests would be curious about at all; it was purely a question asked from the young girl’s own standpoint.
"Are you curious about the outside world?"
"I..." Diao looked at Li Ang, hesitating to speak, her amber eyes flickering slightly.
In the end, she still answered Li Ang’s somewhat off-topic counter-question.
"A little, I suppose. After all, I’ve never gone out; I’ve only heard from ancient records about those islands hanging in the sky and the Bloody Red Land."
Diao’s voice was faint and gentle, like a whisper coming from a void-world.
"Because of your return, the Great Witch allowed me to leave the Spirit Realm for a while. Just now, I saw the legendary world with my own eyes, but I didn’t take a closer look."
Bowing to Li Ang, the young girl said, "The most important thing, of course, is that you have come here."
She placed her palm on her chest and spoke sincerely. "You left back then because you had to face matters of the outside world. If ever there are difficulties beyond, the Land of Ten Thousand Spirits will forever open its arms to you—that is the united voice of the Ten Thousand Spirits."
"Mm." Li Ang gave a simple nod.
After that, the young girl seemed to suddenly open up the floodgates of conversation and wanted to say more to him, but he had already stepped ahead and did not respond to her.
The witch sacrifice village looked far, but in the Sanctuary of All Spirits nothing could be measured by common sense; as long as the heart yearned, the speed of arrival could be vastly accelerated.
With Li Ang’s current Spiritual Manipulation ability, plus the bit of Spirituality he had secretly strengthened, the distinctive cluster of rooftops—woven together from beast bones, feathers, and withered vines—of the witch sacrifice village quickly came into view.
At the village entrance, he slowed his pace slightly, letting Diao lead the way. The young girl had been watching him all along, and now she pressed her lips together and walked in front.
The constant rise and fall of murmurs became real voices once they entered the village, but more than that were the many gazes—calm yet rich with layered meaning.
The Ancient Witches wore similar yet different garb, each bearing markings with distinct symbolic significance. Some were laden with complex witchcraft items; some had returned to simplicity, wearing only a single garment with minimal cloth; some had beast feathers and leather bound around their bodies.
The houses in the village—some stood on high stilts above the water, some simply let the water flow directly inside, even the beds built from piled stones—could all be seen clearly through their wide-open doors.
Aside from that, the various Spirits here were so dense that Li Ang did not even need to consciously sense them; he could see them vividly.
Diao walked straight to the center of the village. On a high platform built from countless bones—each of which would be called top-quality material in the outside world—along with roughly processed ores and timber, an elderly man wearing a feather crown stood leaning on his staff, clearly having waited for quite some time.
"Li Ang, you’ve come."
The old man’s face was gaunt, his wrinkles deep as ravines, making it impossible to retain a concrete impression of his features; the only concept that could encompass him was "old."
His voice was hoarse, yet it was as kind and gentle as an elder of the family looking upon the younger generation; his somewhat clouded eyes looked at Li Ang as though they could see through much of him.
"Great Witch, long time no see."
Li Ang went straight to the point. "I’ve come back because I have something to ask of you."
"No need to speak of requests. Whatever the Ten Thousand Spirits need of you, all things are permitted," the old man said.
The weight of this statement was immense.
Li Ang felt even his heartbeat sink a little.
If he had heard this back then, he would still have thought the same, but he would not have had this kind of palpable feeling.
When he first sought out the Sanctuary of All Spirits, he had treated it as a legend—either a Professional Holy Land or a treasure trove—simply as a place to raise his strength.
But everything here carried a sense he could not put into words.
After reaching Tier Nine, encountering Zoe on Satus Island, obtaining the system, making contact with demons, the Dragon God, and the world’s truth, when he looked again at the attitudes of the people here, he felt this was absolutely no ordinary matter.
So what made his heartbeat grow heavy were things that tugged at far larger scales.
On the smaller side, it was the inheritance of the Spiritual Manipulation master lineage, or the circulation of Spirituality through the world; on the larger side, it was the fate of the world, even the very survival of the world itself.
He had long since received a key word—Spiritual Forger.
The system’s demand to complete the witch Professional Inheritance also pointed here.
The world’s past, the Primordial Beings who triggered great calamities, the Deus People, and the power of Spirits were all tightly intertwined.
A mass of tangled thoughts dispersed under the tapping of the Great Witch; Li Ang came back to himself to see the old man knocking his bone staff with withered knuckles.
Though he appeared frail and powerless, the knocks rang out with a Spirit-sound strong enough to reverberate through Li Ang’s entire body.
Unable to resist, Li Ang opened the panel to inspect the old man, only to find that, like Farlonio and Akuya and those very few others before, the system could not see his information.
More unfathomable meaning seemed to surface in the old man’s eyes.
"Come with me."
The old man turned and walked down from the platform.
Li Ang did not move his feet for a moment, because the old man walked extremely, extremely slowly, and there was a strange tradition here: neither Diao nor the other young people would ever go to support him; they only watched the Great Witch walk on his own.
Yet even though he looked as if he might crumble into a pile of bone dust at any moment, Li Ang had never seen him stumble. His steps were always utterly steady. He had already been this old back then, and now he still lived; the passing of several years seemed to have had no impact on him at all.
"Since you’ve returned, you must have encountered some major problem. Though I can guess a few possibilities, you should still talk it over with me," the Great Witch asked in the tone of a kindly old neighbor.
"Demons." Li Ang was succinct.
"Mm. Truly troublesome—no wonder you’d want to come back."
Why did that sound faintly resentful?
Li Ang looked at the old man and shook his head. "Isn’t it still because you all wanted me to carry out that kind of extremely radical ritual? I see you haven’t given up on it. Otherwise, why have Diao come fetch me?"
"Oh, so you recognized her."