National Guardian's Gone and We're Done

None of the other villagers of Xia Shui Village,

not even Chang Bailin’s own son, Chang Zimo, had the audacity

to rise from the ground like Chang Bailin,

and laugh aloud with such a twisted, sick expression.

A chill ran through Chang Zimo as he watched his father’s crazed state,

as if countless tiny, cold hands were clawing wantonly at his heart.

He was secretly grateful for his relationship with Chang Bailin as father and son.

’Otherwise,’ he thought, ’I might have been ruthlessly sacrificed during one of the previous rituals

to this so-called "great" but utterly terrifying Lord Mountain God.’

The rest of the Xia Shui villagers only dared to steal a few glances at Chang Bailin

before quickly lowering their heads, their eyes glued to the ground.

Their bodies trembled and swayed gently, like fragile candles flickering in the wind.

Their hearts were filled with extreme terror. For them, every sacrificial ritual

was a nightmare capable of crushing their very souls.

The ghastly scenes and the bloody, cruel process were seared deep into their memories,

becoming shadows that could never be erased.

These once-simple farmers, who knew only how to toil with their faces to the dirt and backs to the sky,

were now keenly aware that their actions went against their conscience.

Those young people, lured here to be sacrificed to the Mountain God,

were certainly facing a one-way trip to their deaths.

And whose precious children were they, with their faces full of youthful energy and life?

"What? Are you getting soft-hearted?" Chang Bailin turned around.

His sharp gaze, like a blade, swept across the villagers’ faces,

naturally catching the subtle expressions they revealed.

He instantly understood what they were thinking and began to taunt them mercilessly. "If you don’t want to sacrifice them to the Mountain God, then offer up your own children instead!

Maybe the Mountain God won’t be full this time. Why don’t a few of you stand up and volunteer yourselves right now?"

His voice dripped with sarcasm and menace,

as if he were testing the villagers’ limits while also reminding them not to even think about resisting.

"No, no, no! That’s not what we were thinking.

The village chief is right. Those people should be the ones to die.

They’re doing a great service for our Xia Shui Village this time.

It wasn’t a waste for us to take them in last night and benevolently bring them food."

One villager, his face pale as paper with fright, frantically waved his hands and then spoke with utter shamelessness,

completely forgetting that the young people had paid for that very food.

Back then, the villagers who delivered it had been grinning from ear to ear, happily accepting the payment.

"That’s more like it."

Chang Bailin nodded in satisfaction, a sinister smile spreading across his face.

He was extremely pleased with the villager’s response.

The exchange between the two men struck like a series of heavy hammer blows,

slowly waking the other Xia Shui villagers who were still mired in fear and guilt.

’They’re right,’ they thought.

’If these young people don’t die, then it will have to be our own people from Xia Shui Village.’

Over the years, they had lost count of how many vibrant lives they had sent to their doom.

Those young people vanished one by one in the rituals, like leaves in the wind.

Eventually, to ensure they had enough offerings,

the entire village, as if possessed, had begun frantically and ceaselessly procreating

just to rapidly increase Xia Shui Village’s population.

After all, the sacrifices to this Lord Mountain God had to be living people.

This was the terrifying, deeply ingrained belief in their hearts,

and it was the root of the darkness that shrouded all of Xia Shui Village.

Under a sky that had been completely devoured by a tide of endless darkness,

a series of bloodcurdling scenes was quietly and silently unfolding.

The pitch-black canopy of the sky was like a giant swath of black silk,

but now, it seemed to be wantonly torn open with hideous rifts by a pair of invisible, evil hands.

From within them, hemp ropes, each carefully twisted into the shape of a noose,

driven by some evil force from the Hell Abyss,

began to descend from the ethereal depths of the darkness.

They crisscrossed in a dense web,

like a bizarre "rain of ropes." Within a mere ten minutes,

they had filled the entire sky so thickly that not a gap remained. The sinister atmosphere felt almost tangible,

suffused with the suffocating stench of death,

announcing to the world that a bloody sacrifice was about to begin.

These ropes, as if imbued with some unnatural, evil power by a Demon,

writhed and weaved bizarrely in mid-air,

like sentient, deadly vipers flicking their tongues in the dark,

unerringly searching for and locking onto the panicked young people below,

who were scattering in terror like headless chickens.

Each rope was a cord of death controlled by a malevolent will. Once a target was locked,

it would, with a jaw-dropping speed that defied human comprehension,

wrap itself mercilessly around a young person’s fragile neck in an instant, like lightning tearing through the night sky.

What followed was a horrifying tightening, an action powerful enough to crush all hope of life.

In a flash, a deep, concave mark was gouged into the neck caught tightly in the rope’s grip,