Chapter One Hundred Sixty-Four: Are You Not Going to Attend the Sacrificial Ceremony?
As the saying goes, one has nothing to fear if they haven’t done anything wrong.
Lu Yibei had done many wrong things, and there really was a female ghost knocking at her door, which made her quite flustered.
“Knock knock knock—knock knock knock—!”
The knocking continued, and perhaps because no one answered for a long time, it gradually grew faster and heavier, as if impatiently urging the person inside the dilapidated temple to open the door, causing Lu Yibei’s emotions to become inexplicably tense.
“Offering? Are you referring to those things in the water tank?”
“Didn’t you say that the offerings are urban legends from the outside? Why would Hui Mother come to you?” She pressed a kitchen kn*fe against Meng Raoze’s neck, straining her voice to question him.
Lu Yibei suddenly felt that she had become quite skilled at threatening others with a kn*fe to their neck, consciously controlling the blade just enough to induce pain in Meng Raoze without cutting into his flesh.
Realizing this, she couldn’t help but sigh internally, thinking that after having set fire to the mountains, infiltrating the Siye Society, and secretly learning their spells, she seemed to have taken another small step down the path of becoming a criminal.
Under the dual pressure of the kitchen kn*fe and the Hui Mother’s knocking outside, Meng Raoze’s face clearly showed panic, and he weakly said, “There… there haven’t been many living offerings for some years, so we can only use people from the village as substitutes. But no one wants to d*e, so…”
Meng Raoze did not continue, but Lu Yibei already understood what he meant.
So, they were going to use those deformed babies in the water tank, raised by some unknown method, as substitutes for those who didn’t want to d*e.
“…” After a moment of silence, Lu Yibei narrowed her eyes and threatened softly, “You’d better deal with Hui Mother quickly, or you’ll be in trouble.”
As for those Hui Mothers, Lu Yibei had only heard the name once and didn’t know what they looked like, how strong their abilities were, or if they had any particularly difficult powers to deal with.
If it weren’t for the necessity, she didn’t want to confront the Hui Mothers directly yet; it would be better to figure out their details first before taking action.
“But I…” Meng Raoze opened his mouth, struggling to shift his body on the ground.
In the dim light of the bl**d-red lantern, Lu Yibei noticed that his movements were very strange, his whole body flaccid, looking like a human-shaped snake writhing on the ground.
She paused for a moment, quickly regaining her composure, and said in a low voice, “You can’t move, can you?”
“Yeah, it’s broken, all my bones are broken,” Meng Raoze replied in pain. “This is punishment the deity has placed on me for revealing the secrets of the village.”
“Stop with the useless talk!” Lu Yibei yelled fiercely, “What should we do now? You can’t open the door; if they keep knocking like this, it’s bound to cause trouble!”
“Yes, yes…” Meng Raoze stammered, then suddenly seemed to remember something, and his eyes brightened.
“You go! You can welcome the Hui Mothers, can’t you?”
“I?” Lu Yibei’s expression darkened, applying slight pressure with the kitchen kn*fe, leaving a shallow cut on Meng Raoze’s neck. “Do you think I’m an idiot? Opening the door for them is no different from sending my head in!”
Feeling the terrifying chill spreading through his body from the wound, Meng Raoze quickly said, “No, no, I didn’t mean that! The Hui Mothers don’t care who comes to greet them, as long as the person can understand the language of snakes, it’s perfectly fine!”
“In the Hui Mothers’ eyes, anyone from the village is essentially the same; they are all servants of the deities.”
“Really?” Lu Yibei squinted her eyes, scrutinizing Meng Raoze with suspicion.
“Really, really, how could I lie to you? If I neglect the Hui Mothers and delay the sacrificial ceremony, I would be in trouble too; I wouldn’t lie to you!”
Lu Yibei carefully considered his words and found some credibility in them. Slowly, she retracted the kitchen kn*fe and hid it in her pocket, rising to her feet.
“Can the coat be transformed into a village girl’s outfit?” Lu Yibei whispered.
When acting, you have to go all out!
Although Meng Raoze said that in the eyes of the Hui Mothers, looks didn’t matter, and all villagers were the same, Lu Yibei felt it was hard to guarantee that everything he said was entirely true.
As if responding to Lu Yibei, the collar of the coat turned up, gently brushing against her cheek, and then, after a bit of wriggling, transformed into a dull gray coarse cloth outfit.
Not sure if it was her imagination, but Lu Yibei felt a chill on her lower body. Looking down, she saw two snowy-white legs exposed beneath the wide outfit.
“Where are the pants?!” she gritted her teeth, her voice low and filled with frustration.
The coat, “…”
The witch was so fierce!
(っ╥╯﹏╰╥C)
After Lu Yibei’s reminder, the coat wriggled again, lengthening the coarse cloth outfit into a long garment resembling a qipao.
Sensing the coat trembling, Lu Yibei thought, “Fine, this will have to do!”
……
Rain started falling from the sky at some point, the drizzles seemingly following the Hui Mothers outside.
In the rain, a faint white mist spread over the small courtyard filled with water tanks.
Raindrops fell into the water tank, creating gentle sounds, the surface rippled with irregular circles, and beneath the water, strange shadows flickered past occasionally.
Lu Yibei gazed at the pitch-black wooden door at the end of the small courtyard. Though she couldn’t see what scene lay outside, her eyes began to feel slightly burning.
The intensity of the burning was stronger than when she encountered the Decapitated Senior but not to the extent of the four reckless classmates from Shihhekou Middle School…
The source of the burning came from three…
After a moment’s thought, she felt that if a direct confrontation occurred, her chances of winning by brute force would be quite high. After all, she was no longer in the state of ignorance she was in when she infiltrated Shihhekou Middle School.
Kitchen kn*fe, talismans, and the spells she learned from Du Sixian were all effective against urban legends.
If it came to worst… wasn’t there a spell that her father had taught her before she entered the Bamboo Slips Illusion?
She didn’t know if it would be effective, but it seemed somewhat impressive; she had been looking for an opportunity to try it out!
Lu Yibei thought, gripping the kitchen kn*fe in one hand while holding onto the latch on the dilapidated temple door with the other. Taking a deep breath, she pulled forcefully, and the door creaked open.
Outside stood three women, almost identical in stature, dressed in bright red wedding attire, their pale faces resembling the dead, with red cloth covering their eyes and foreheads.
The lanterns they carried flickered with scarlet light, the glow seeming alive as it crawled, soon turning the entire small courtyard into a dark, muted red.
In that instant of opening the door, Lu Yibei realized that her method of judging the strength of her enemies based on the pain in her eyes was flawed.
Her gaze fell on the Hui Mothers, and she suddenly noticed something hidden behind them, something composed of twisted, dark lines.
Those semi-transparent, twisted lines coiled around each other like a cluster of bizarre poisonous snakes, exuding an extremely oppressive and negative emotion.
At that moment, Lu Yibei knew she saw the power of that already mad mythological species urban legend hidden behind the Hui Mothers.
Thankfully, she didn’t confront them directly; had she acted rashly, she might have attracted that urban legend.
However, this might not be a bad thing. Once she officially became a Siye Society member, not only could she utilize the Society’s methods to judge the strength of urban legends, but she could also see their hidden powers, avoiding being preyed upon by those who pretend to be harmless! Lu Yibei thought.
Just as she was anxiously deliberating whether to suddenly strike and use the spell that seemed somewhat impressive, learned from her father, to take the initiative…
The Hui Mothers spoke, their red lips lined with bl**d hissing out snake language.
“We are here to collect offerings.”
Seeing the leading Hui Mother speaking, Lu Yibei secretly relaxed.
At least Meng Raoze hadn’t lied to her; in the eyes of these Hui Mothers, the old man half-buried in the ground was no different from a delicately beautiful girl.
She withdrew the kitchen kn*fe from her hands, clasped them before the three Hui Mothers, bowed slightly, and showed a respectful gesture. “Please follow me.”
With that, she turned, her gaze sweeping around the water tanks in the small courtyard, soon zeroing in on one, stepping forward to stand before it.
This thing… how should she fish it out? She should have asked that old man!
As she stared at the water tank, she suddenly felt a chill behind her and caught a glimpse of the three Hui Mothers standing quietly behind her, waiting.
Though their eyes were covered by red cloth, Lu Yibei could sense the cold gazes hidden beneath them, gliding over her body like a reptile.
Seeing this, she gritted her teeth and forced herself to reach into the water tank.
“Splash—!” Water spilled out of the tank, splattering onto the ground with a gentle sound.
As soon as Lu Yibei submerged her entire hand into the water, a wave of goosebumps erupted across her skin.
The water in the tank looked clear and clean, but the texture felt extraordinarily slippery, as if it were filled with the slime of amphibians.
d*mn, if they say they are raising deformed babies for life-sustaining purposes, will a big frog pop out when I fish it out?
Lu Yibei cursed in her heart, holding back her disgust, tiptoeing and leaning forward, plunging her entire arm into the water tank.
After stirring around for a moment, she suddenly grasped something. Seizing the opportunity, she pulled it out from the water tank, revealing a deformed monster baby with blue skin, a bulging abdomen, and legs stuck together.
The moment it was pulled out of the water, the deformed baby, with its oddly shaped head, reflexively curled up, its weak, boneless lower body wrapping around Lu Yibei’s arm, its mouth filled with sharp teeth ready to bite her fair arm.
However, just as it was about to bite Lu Yibei, as if sensing something, it twitched all over, its body going limp and collapsing, then let out a loud cry.
“Wahhhh—!”
The piercing cry sounded like some monster roaring. Lu Yibei covered one ear with one hand while using the other to lift the monster baby and present it to the three Hui Mothers.
The three Hui Mothers tilted their heads to examine the monster baby before turning to look at Lu Yibei, as if trying to discern why she wasn’t being bitten by it.
The synchronized, mechanical movements of theirs, reminiscent of puppets, combined with their bride-like makeup, was inexplicably eerie.
After a long while, just as Lu Yibei felt her anxiety rising under their scrutinizing stares, they nodded in unison, saying, “Okay.” They took the monster baby from her hands and cradled it in their arms.
With no unexpected situations arising, Lu Yibei heaved a long sigh of relief in her heart and turned to walk towards the next water tank.
……
As the saying goes, practice makes perfect.
With the experience of the first time, Lu Yibei quickly became familiar with the water tanks and the things inside them. Before long, she had checked nearly half of the tanks in the small courtyard.
Apart from the first time, most of the monster babies she fished out did not satisfy the Hui Mothers, until the seventeenth or eighteenth time when she finally fished out a chunky little boy.
At that moment, they all simultaneously said to Lu Yibei, “That’s enough.”
“Hu—!” Lu Yibei exhaled heavily, shaking off the slime on her hands, and bowed to the three Hui Mothers, saying, “Then you three have a pleasant journey! I won’t see you off.”
As soon as she finished speaking, she saw the three Hui Mothers, who were already holding the monster baby and turning to leave, suddenly stop, their heads spinning one hundred eighty degrees to look at her, revealing an almost palpable malice through the red cloth covering their eyes.
Lu Yibei, “…”
What’s going on? What did I say wrong? Should I eliminate witnesses?
While she was in a panic, the eerily toned voice of the Hui Mother echoed in her ears.
“You, are you not going to attend the sacrificial ceremony?”
