Chapter 635: Heart of Stone
The juvenile Purple Rakshasa before him wasn’t actually powerful.
Its ability was simply bizarre.
Probably because it was in a juvenile form, many of its powers hadn’t fully manifested.
Human juveniles and anomalous juveniles were not comparable at all.
And at such a young age, its acting was superb—cunning and cruel in temperament.
It even knew how to play submissive to lower others’ guard.
If this weren’t Chen Ye, others would have been killed by this juvenile Purple Rakshasa long ago.
The Taoist obviously had some skill; knowing he couldn’t beat that Taoist, the creature hid its powers.
If Chen Ye hadn’t intended to offer this thing as a sacrifice,
Chen Ye might never have seen its true abilities.
If it were an adult Purple Rakshasa, Chen Ye thought it best to keep as far away as possible.
Seeing its tricks were useless,
the demon trembled, then reverted to its juvenile form: purple skin, a round head with two short horns, arms reaching past its knees.
“Milord… I beg you, spare me!”
The juvenile Purple Rakshasa’s body began to shake.
“Why do you call me milord?”
“You can’t say! You can’t say it, milord!”
The Purple Rakshasa, who called himself Little Black, pleaded with trembling.
“Milord, I don’t want to die. If you spare me, Little Black is willing to be your servant forever and ever!”
Chen Ye remained unmoved; the nearby Smoke Breath Mist churned, as if something terrifying was taking shape.
“Milord, I… I don’t want to die!”
“I don’t want to be a sacrifice, milord…”
“Milord, please, spare me. My parents are waiting at home…”
Little Black continued begging.
His voice was full of tears, delivering repentance worthy of an acting award.
If Chen Hao were here, her saintly heart might have triggered and she could easily have freed this anomaly!
After all, this juvenile Purple Rakshasa did resemble a human child.
From within the Smoke Breath Mist crawled a huge Human-Faced Scorpion!
The Human-Faced Scorpion was formed entirely of smoke, but its face had become that of an adult Purple Rakshasa.
The adult Purple Rakshasa face stared at the juvenile one!
The juvenile trembled in fear!
“Milord, I’m still a child. I’ve never hurt anyone!”
“Milord, please…”
A childish sob had crept into its voice, making it seem pitiful.
“Look into my eyes!”
The child looked up blankly, and saw a blood-red eye—blood-red, with a red pupil.
Unknown runes turned inside that pupil.
The child froze, then seemed to be controlled like a puppet, standing up in a daze.
The Blood Eye’s power—Abyss control.
Abyss control could not only dominate humans, it could also control anomalies.
But his fusion with the Blood Eye had not yet completed, so most of the Blood Eye’s power had not fully manifested.
Using the Blood Eye to control anomalies had only ever been seen before in Rong City, where the Abyssal Blood Pupil acted.
And now… Chen Ye was the one deploying this ability.
The juvenile Purple Rakshasa stiffened, then extremely reluctantly began walking toward the Large Circle.
Behind it, the Human-Faced Scorpion’s mimicry fixed its gaze on the little creature without blinking.
Within the Smoke Breath Mist, countless Crawlers were preparing.
Even knowing this was only a juvenile, Chen Ye still planned no carelessness.
When the little creature stepped into the Large Circle,
the entire formation began to emit purple light.
Within the Small Circle, the Resentment Dragon’s Dragon Scales exhaled waves of black vapor, half of which flowed into the Hundred-Ghost Eater’s blade.
The other half poured crazily into the Large Circle along the rune chain.
These energies formed restraints around the juvenile Purple Rakshasa inside the Large Circle.
The Tangled Remnant Limb glowed with black energy as well.
If you looked closely, you could see that this energy had been extracted from inside the remnant limb’s body.
Perhaps with prolonged use, the stored energy in these materials would also be partially depleted.
There was also Hatred: a willow branch extended autonomously from the blade’s handle, following the purple rune chain and directly winding into the little creature’s body.
Through the Blood Eye’s energy feedback, Chen Ye could clearly feel the juvenile Purple Rakshasa wildly mobilizing its internal energy.
Its body reacted frantically, as if unwilling to become a sacrifice.
The juvenile seemed to want to break free of the restraints and transform into a demon,
but was repeatedly bound by multiple energies.
Fanged white teeth had already emerged on the Hundred-Ghost Eater’s blade, which opened its mouth and slowly crawled toward the sacrifice in the Large Circle.
Seeing the Hundred-Ghost Eater, the juvenile trembled even more and its struggles grew more desperate.
Step by step, the Hundred-Ghost Eater closed in; a thin, elongated tongue slid out, covered in saliva, as if the juvenile Purple Rakshasa before it were an exquisite delicacy.
“Mi… milord…”
The pleading voice did not stir even the slightest pity in Chen Ye.
A few minutes later,
the sacrificial ritual ended.
This was the first sacrifice accepted by the Hundred-Ghost Eater.
The Smoke Breath Mist dispersed.
“Yezi, are… are you all right!”
Iron Lion’s simple voice came.
But he still followed Chen Ye’s instructions; without Chen Ye’s permission, he had not turned around.
“I’m fine!”
“Iron Lion, let’s… go!”
“Oh… Yezi, I just sensed the anomaly’s aura. What were you doing?”
“Nothing!”
“Oh…”
And so, the two figures—one large, one small—left that thicket.
Excitement was repressed at the corner of Chen Ye’s mouth.
He had been itching to check the Hundred-Ghost Eater’s information.
But the commotion back there had surely drawn attention.
Returning to the convoy was safest.
Besides, the ritual was over—he could examine things at leisure once back.
Including Ding Shen’s earlier sacrifice, the Hundred-Ghost Eater’s prison now held two anomalies.
Although these two anomalies weren’t strong, they were definitely useful.
They made it back to camp uneventfully.
There were some prying glances, but once people saw two Sequence 3s together, no one dared pick a fight.
Chen Ye, however, didn’t let his excitement show.
Back at camp, everything proceeded as usual.
He ran two more rounds of the Blood Moon First Set of Broadcast Calisthenics.
He felt he was still one thin sheet of paper away from breaking into Sequence 4.
Now he only needed a catalyst, the right catalyst, to reach Sequence 4.
But when that catalyst would appear, Chen Ye had no clue.
He checked the time: it was already midnight.
Four hours remained before departure.
Many people in the camp had already slept.
Even breaths came from not far away.
After greeting Iron Lion, they both turned back toward the huge tent in the center of the camp.
Tonight, Iron Lion planned to sleep there, and someone had already taken his bedding over.
Chen Ye still couldn’t sleep.
Back in the truck bed, the faint, watching eyes around him seemed to fade away.
Only then did Chen Ye draw out the Hundred-Ghost Eater from behind his waist.