Chapter 27 The Tower of Spectral Energy <TOC> Chapter 29 Shen Luoyan
Translator: SumTLMan
It was midnight, and the two people who came out of the great swamp arrived in the suburbs of Avonigarda City.
Li Mei held the Brahman bull and gazed at the city in the darkness, her mouth slightly open in surprise.
Unlike Xin Linfen and Raginbeard, the night in Avonigarda City was not pitch black, but dotted with twinkling lights.
As the capital of Avonigarda Province, Avonigarda City is the only city in the province that has a stable power supply.
The citizens of Avonigarda City can proudly say that they only have six power outages in a month.
According to the information in her memory, Avonigarda City has a population of approximately 120,000. This is considered a first-tier city in the Xingdu Federation.
Avonigarda City can roughly be divided into West City and East City. The outer circle of East City is a slum and industrial area with poor security and high crime rates. The inner circle is a residential area for the middle class and a trading market.
West City, on the other hand, is dotted with headquarters of large companies, luxury shopping centers, and high-end residences and villas.
An invisible boundary divides the city into two halves.
The difference in class is very obvious in the night of Avonigarda City. East City only has scattered lights, while West City is as bright as day, with bright street lights illuminating the roads like a river flowing with flames.
Because the winding Mohanendi River bypasses the suburbs, you need to cross a large bridge to enter Avonigarda City.
It is precisely relying on the Mohanendi River defense line that Avonigarda City can resist the invasion of the Eastern Xia people.
At this moment, the bridge and the riverbank are lit by torches, and a group of excited Xingdu people are holding dozens of wooden frames, constantly shouting short and incomprehensible local dialects.
These Xingdu people are trembling, half from excitement and half from fear. They are afraid of what is on the wooden frames.
The wooden frames hold people, and the first one is a young girl with bruises all over her body, tied up tightly with white cloth on a rough wooden frame, and her limbs are already blue and purple.
A few young people fearfully entered the water and nailed the three trunks to the mud at the bottom of the river.
The three trunks form a triangle, connected by ropes woven from wolf hair.
The middle one is a birch tree, with a dead kingfisher at the top, its feathers still with a beautiful green. The left one is a cypress tree, with the skull of the Brahman bull at the top, and the right one is a larch tree, with a jar of strong liquor at the top.
Several old men with gray hair gathered around a wooden frame. They wore wide leather jackets and wore copper monster masks with strange patterns drawn on their exposed skin with paint.
The bonfire was lit and they danced an odd dance around it. The leather jackets fluttered, revealing their thin but strong bodies.
“Creatures with wings cannot fly here,
Creatures skilled in crawling cannot crawl here,
Creatures with sharp teeth cannot bite here,
You, the demon from the unknown sea,
You should return to the unknown sea.”
They chanted loudly in a strange tone, their voices hoarse, until they stopped from exhaustion.
The leader of the group pulled out a sharp dagger and put the blade in the fire until it became red hot.
A Brahman bull was brought over. It was restless and kept scraping the ground with its hooves.
The emaciated old man held the bull’s head with one hand and pierced its arteries with the red-hot blade with a clean and sharp cut.
The hot bull’s blood sprayed out of the blade and sizzled on the red-hot blade, making a sound.
While humming a strange song, the old man neatly stripped the entire Brahman bull’s skin off along the blade’s edge.
He wrapped the bloodstained skin around the wooden frame girl and tied it up with a rope.
After everything was done, the people holding the wooden frame immediately eagerly pushed it into the raging river.
The originally lifeless girl was immediately horrified and struggled violently as she was swallowed by the water. Suddenly, something bit her under the water and tore her body.
The mournful screams made those by the river shrink back in fear.
Li Mu saw what was under the water, it was a glowing source body. The three trunks and wolf hair had opened a channel between the wasteland and the Source Ocean.
The fear of the girl drew even more essence bodies, which swarmed like sharks that had smelled blood.
The water surface in the triangle area seemed to explode with a bang, while the rivers outside still flowed gently.
“What are they doing, feeding the Source Ocean?” Li Mu was extremely confused.
“No, they are expelling the divers. Ordinary awakeners cannot distinguish between normal people and divers, so someone came up with a method. That is to open the channel between the Source Ocean and the wasteland, and throw the suspected person into it. If he is an diver, then it is equivalent to completing the expulsion. If he is wrongly accused, they will throw down another suspect.” Li Mei said.
It seems that Avonigarda City has infiltrated divers and has made a considerable number of victims. Otherwise, these Xingdu people would not have held a mass trial.
“It seems that a huge channel has been opened. Normally, there are only one or two divers every few years, but now they appear so frequently. This is definitely not a natural phenomenon,” Li Mu speculated.
The suspicious Soul Cult, the abnormally appearing divers, and the slow-responding governor all indicate that the water in the Avonigarda Province is very deep.
When the Xingdu people on the riverbank found out that the girl sunk in the river was not an diver, they were very disappointed. Only a woman was crying bitterly, tearing her clothes in grief. The one who sank into the water was her daughter.
She was too poor, and even after spending all her savings, she could not bribe the elders in the Pancaya Council, so her daughter was the first to be judged. If she could delay a few more people, her daughter might not have to die.
The fanatic people ignored the grieving mother and rushed to the front, frantically bidding for the cowhide that was fished out of the water.
Soon, the second Brahmin bull was brought in. This symbolizes the second sacrifice.
These Brahmin bulls were given special herbs seven days before the ceremony, and their hides were quickly stripped and processed by psychic energy, trapping the divers in the bodies they took. Even if they were expelled to the Source Ocean, they could not escape.
Divers who have lost their ability to act will only become prey to other divers.
Soon, another suspect was pushed into the Source Ocean. In a burst of exclamation, the suspect was devoured.
After two consecutive failures to catch divers, the faces of several old men who presided over the Judgment Ceremony were somewhat unpleasant.
Chapter 27 The Tower of Spectral Energy <TOC> Chapter 29 Shen Luoyan