Chapter 242 - 241: Sinister Cave
Deep in the night.
A full moon hung high in the sky, its clear, cold silver light spilling down.
This was the deserted outskirts of Falling Leaves Town.
The forest shadows rustled. Black beetles, hidden beneath rotting broadleaves, made a soft, scratching sound with their mouthparts.
Occasionally, a couple of mournful owl cries came from the distance, immediately followed by the sound of light, hurried scurrying, and the short, sharp shriek of some small animal being caught.
Then, everything returned to an even more suffocating silence.
Deep in the forest, enormous vines hung down, obscuring the mouth of a cave.
The scene inside, however, was not nearly as peaceful as the one without.
There were no torches in the cave. The only light came from a few Purple Light Crystal Stones embedded in the rock walls.
The faint, ghastly purple light stretched all the shadows within the cave into grotesque, distorted shapes.
The ground underfoot felt rugged and hard. It was not dirt, but a carpet woven entirely from bones.
The bottom layer was gray-white bone fragments, long since weathered and shattered.
The surface was a mix of human leg bones, skulls, and the skeletons of unidentifiable beasts.
Even more nauseating were the cave walls, which were covered in black vines that looked like blood vessels...
No, it was hard to say if they were even vines at all.
They squirmed slightly, their surfaces slick and oily, like freshly flayed muscle tissue.
And it seemed that real blood flowed within them; a single poke would cause it to spurt out.
The air was filled with the cloying, sweet scent of some strange incense, like a mixture of rotting flowers and the stench of corpses.
A normal person would become dizzy and disoriented from a single breath, their Spirit thrown into turmoil.
The entire cave looked like a forbidden Divine Hall dedicated to the worship of an evil god.
In the deepest part of the cave, a massive, natural black stone served as an altar, upon which sat a statue of a bizarre, twisted shape.
The figure depicted by the statue possessed none of the majesty or holiness expected of a deity.
In people’s minds, a normal god usually appeared in human form.
Females were graceful, males severe.
At the very least, they might take the form of an animal, such as a deer-headed humanoid or a great, coiling serpent.
But this sculpture was just a large lump of flesh haphazardly pieced together from black clay, with no aesthetic appeal whatsoever.
No words could describe it, save for "utterly evil and insane."
Atop this indescribable body, where the head should have been, rested a Blood Pearl.
"THUMP..."
"THUMP..."
Light flowed within the Blood Pearl, which pulsed like a living, beating heart.
The rhythm was slow and powerful.
With every expansion and contraction of the light, the black vines clinging to the surrounding rock walls would tremble faintly.
In the clearing before the statue, on the ground piled high with white bones, knelt three figures clad in wide, black robes.
Their hoods were pulled low, hiding their faces in shadow.
Their posture was pious. They remained motionless amidst the grim and terrifying surroundings.
Suddenly, "THUMP-THUMP-THUMP..."
"THUMP-THUMP-THUMP..."
The rhythm of the Blood Pearl’s pulsing abruptly quickened, as if catalyzed by some unseen Power.
At the same time, the sound grew louder and louder, like the pounding of a war drum.
The black vines on the rock walls fell into a frenzy along with the rhythm, twisting in agony like constricting pythons.
The Purple Light Crystal Stones embedded in the walls reacted as well, flashing wildly and stretching the light and shadows in the cave into a chaotic dance of ghosts.
The three robed figures raised their heads in astonishment, not understanding what was happening.
"CRACK!"
A crisp sound, like shattering porcelain.
The Blood Pearl placed where the statue’s head should be had actually shattered.
It burst apart, turning into red dust that slowly dispersed, then quickly faded in mid-air.
By the time it reached the ground, it had become nothing but dull, dead ash.
The suffocating, rhythmic pulsing in the cave also came to an abrupt halt, returning to dead silence.
The three robed figures froze on the spot, their eyes filled with utter disbelief.
Their wide hoods fell back, revealing their true faces.
The leader in the center was an old man, as wizened as a dessicated corpse.
His skin was the gray-brown of cracked tree bark, stretched taut over his cheekbones.
His cheeks were fleshless, his eye sockets deep and hollow.
Where his eyeballs should have been, there were only two cloudy, yellow-white orbs, with no pupils to be seen.
Although still human in form, he looked no different from a Skeleton Soldier.
The robed man on the right, however, had a brawny, powerful build.
He was bald.
But what was most striking were the sinister black tattoos that covered his neck and jaw.
As his emotions shifted, the man’s jaw muscles tensed, and the tattoos writhed like centipedes.
The slight twitch at the corner of his eye and his clenched fists both showed that he was on the verge of explosive rage.
The last was the robed man on the far left.
His frame was rather gaunt, his face as pale as paper, and he had no eyebrows.
His overall appearance was extremely severe, especially his lips, which were so thin they were almost nonexistent.
"The Blood Pearl shattered. The ritual... has failed." The old man in the center broke the silence, his voice low and hoarse.
"How is this possible?!"
The caustic man on the left cried out, his voice as sharp as nails on glass.
"That Undead creature was one we carefully nurtured! It even carried a part of the Old Master’s core! And the Underground Tomb has an Array carved into it that praises the Old Master!"
"Any sacrifice that set foot in there should have been powerless against the spiritual assault! This was a perfect ritual!"
"Hmph... Perfect?"
The brawny man on the right shot to his feet, his bulging muscles rising and falling with his heavy breaths as he roared in a low voice.
"If it was so perfect, then why did the ritual fail?!"
’Could it be...’
The caustic man’s eyes darted back and forth.
"Could Vance have betrayed us? Did he bring those lapdogs of the Pseudo-Gods to the ritual site himself to wipe us out?"
The more he thought about it, the more plausible the guess seemed.
"That’s right... It must be Vance, that greedy bastard! He took our money, but it wasn’t enough! He had to sell us out to the Divine Hall!"
"If that’s really what happened..."
A violent, murderous aura erupted from the brawny, robed man. The bone fragments on the ground around him buzzed from the force of his presence.
"Then I’ll personally drag Vance over here and skin him alive!"
"Enough!"
The old, robed man’s low shout froze the spiraling atmosphere in the cave.
The mere flick of his cloudy, yellow-white eyes was enough to make the other two fall silent as if their throats had been seized, not daring to make another peep.
They lowered their heads and knelt properly once more, assuming a reverent posture.
"Vance’s fate is unimportant. Whether he dies by our hands or on the Judgement Court’s gallows is now meaningless."
The old man slowly rose to his feet, his joints cracking like decaying wood.
"Since the Blood Pearl is shattered, it means our stronghold at Rose Castle can no longer be used."
"This place is no longer safe either. People from the Divine Hall might follow the clues and track us down... We’re moving."