Reverse Pinduoduo Amateur Sacrifice Ritual Convention

The Cultivation Database was severely damaged and could not load the relevant modules. Self-rescue failed.

I knew it! Everything was exactly as expected. The Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture was nothing but trash.

Having chosen to lie flat, Yuan Zhu remained calm and unsurprised by the Immortal Scripture's pathetic performance. Ever since he had regained consciousness, this piece of junk had been crying for its father and mother while getting thrashed in every conceivable way. He desperately wanted to find a mute option in his head and block out this endless barrage of soul-crushing mental attacks.

The hidden database had suffered pollution and tampering, partially unsealed, with data lost... Data had undergone unknown distortion. Pollution Level rapidly increased by 11.2%↑, irreversible. Spiritual energy resources could not be detected. Please promptly... Pollution Level 13.8%↑...

Sure enough! Just as expected.

The hidden BOSS Template had undergone an unknown mutation. The Aberrant Spiritual Root resonated with unknown soul pollution, forcibly intervening and absorbing it for use. The Soul Firewall restarted. Pollution Level 17.6%→ (constant). Shielding successful. Soul erosion had ceased...

Yuan Zhu's heart jolted. Hm? What happened?

Would the host load the Aberrant Spiritual Root, temporarily absorb Pollution Energy in place of spiritual energy, and continue down the path of Alien Species cultivation? The situation was urgent. Please make a choice promptly. Self-destruction countdown: 100 seconds... 99 seconds.

???!

At that moment, Yuan Zhu's mind was filled with one huge, capitalized blank stare. This piece of garbage...

So because it could not gather spiritual energy resources and could not defeat the local pollution, the Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture had chosen to join them? To wallow in the mire, cultivating through pollution? Was its bottom line really this flexible?

And what did "self-destruction" mean? Would the system destroy itself and uninstall, giving him back his freedom? Or would it destroy his soul before possessing the next host?

Watching the countdown tick away second by second, what else could he, poor, weak, and helpless as he was, do? He could only focus all his attention on that option and slam into it with all his might. Confirm!

The customer had confirmed abnormal cultivation mode. The user agreement was now in effect. Special welfare compensation would now be issued. Hidden BOSS Template unlocked and loaded: Demon. Mountain Lord (Aberrant Spiritual Root).

The Aberrant Spiritual Root had been activated, beginning to absorb and store special (polluted) spiritual energy. Awaiting designation.

BOSS Template: Aberrant Tiger Demon. Loading complete. Ability list (expandable).

Ding-dong! Your exclusive Game Sprite was now online. Would you like to begin the tutorial?

The host had exited critical condition. A large quantity of special spiritual energy (awaiting designation) resources had been detected. The BOSS Template would be forcibly activated for collection and storage. Automatic healing took effect. Health +1, +1... Full recovery estimated in 10 minutes.

Another flood of messages filled his vision. Yuan Zhu, still lying flat, remained utterly unmoved, even somewhat bored. All of it refreshed automatically, with no sense of interaction or participation. He was merely a vegetable, luxuriating in a life of paralysis.

His body still did not feel much different. There was only that comfortable coolness, thread after thread continuously drilling into his limbs and bones. As for the "Aberrant Spiritual Root" and the Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture, they seemed like hallucinations born of his dying state.

A new panel did appear before his eyes, helping him pass the time while lying flat:

Mountain Lord. Tiger Demon: Monster, BOSS Template

Health: 3.7%↑ (recovering)

Mana: ??↑ (storing)

Ability 1: ??? Pollution repair in progress...

Ability 2: Chang Ghost

Ability 3: Claws?? Pollution repair in progress...

Ability 4: Call the Wind. Pollution repair in progress...

Ability (Secret Art) 5: Universe Within the Belly??? Data disorder abnormality, template matching error!

Ability (Secret Art) 6: Mountain Lord Domain/Ghost Realm?? Pollution repair in progress...

As the data representing his health recovered faster and faster, Yuan Zhu suddenly opened his eyes. Rising abruptly from the bed in mortal illness, he dazedly returned to the human world.

He had come back to life!

At that moment, surging power churned through Yuan Zhu's body. In his ears, he heard faint yet chaotic, vast murmurs... greedy prayers from men and women, each with different demands, along with the deranged voices of their obsessions.

These inner voices connected to him like invisible threads. They came not only from the Evil Cultists before him, who looked crazed, but also from distant places beyond this space.

He was like an anchor point, linked to dozens or perhaps hundreds of spiritual signal sources of varying strengths.

What exactly was going on? Was this the price of being a sacrifice? Had he become some kind of shared psychic radio station?

Dark golden feline pupils opened. His gaze pierced through the cloth covering his face, and he saw everything around him clearly.

This was a sealed, dim indoor hall. Blood-red candles and all manner of strange Sacrifice Ritual offerings had been arranged around him.

Under the bizarre scarlet candlelight lay, in order, headless frogs, deer heads with their eyes sewn shut, crows whose wings had been separated from their bodies, the hearts of unknown creatures, bundles of colorful long feathers, giant vividly colored Mushrooms sprouting arms and legs...

To his left and right were corpse offerings with their chests split open, heads severed, and limbs nailed through. Blood flowed across the floor, submerging densely packed rune formations.

Including himself, there were seven sacrifices in total, each dead in a different way. Compared to the rest, his death had been the mildest. Only the arteries in his limbs had been cut, and a dagger had been stabbed into his chest. He was not even in the center position, merely the second corpse on the right, playing an extra's role and dying in such an ordinary fashion.

"It has descended! It has descended! My lord, grant me a young body and abundant vitality!"

Ahead, beyond the offerings, a hunched figure in a black cloak rushed forward. Stretching out a shriveled arm, it anxiously clawed at the air in Yuan Zhu's direction, its voice urgently demanding.

Immediately afterward, more believers with their faces hidden beneath cloaks waved strange talisman-like objects in their hands, crying out their demands in desperation.

Restoring youth, making their bodies stronger, seeking beauty and charm, curing terminal illnesses, cursing their biological fathers, spending fortunes to seek sons... there was every kind imaginable, each reeking of greed.

These cultists were restless and desperate, utterly lacking the humility of those praying to gods and Buddhas. They were more like people anxiously ordering and pressuring someone, terrified they would fail to snatch discounted supermarket eggs. Their slave-master attitude made him deeply displeased.

Were these people forcing him to grant their unrealistic wishes? Their reliance was on those talisman-like objects in their hands. Could those things really control him?

Yuan Zhu's thoughts now moved clearly and swiftly. In the darkness, every object became visible down to the tiniest detail. In an instant, his brain analyzed the situation and casually blocked out the dense mental noise in his head.

First, he could be certain that he felt nothing toward those "talismans" and was not under their control. He could ignore them completely. Then, within a field of vision that ordinary human eyes could never perceive, his pupils saw an even stranger scene.

The entire sacrificial hall was filled with strange, invisible energies of wildly varying forms. They were impossible to describe with words, more abstract than infrared vision or thermal vision, and could only be characterized by feeling.

Some energy matter resembled floating clusters of blue mist. Some felt like viscous, flowing yellow-green three-dimensional vortices. Others looked like tangled masses of chaotic purple-red threads...

Every kind of energy radiated distinct properties, symbolizing a certain concept, such as deer, frog, or mist. They slowly transformed and flowed like conscious living things, emanating deadly danger as they looked coldly down upon this ritual from a higher-dimensional perspective.

The sources of these energies seemed to be the external "unfamiliar Pollution Sources" described by the Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture. There was not merely one, but more than a dozen.

None of them were particularly powerful. Using those offerings as mediums, like barely opened faucets, they accumulated and gathered their own distinctive Pollution Energy bit by bit within the headless frogs and broken-winged crows.

Some Pollution Energy burrowed into the lit blood-red candles, making their scarlet flames even more bewitching and resplendent. Wherever the red light shone, space itself twisted along with it, yet the believers bathed in that candlelight noticed nothing.

Some unknown pollution circled through the air, wandering back and forth. Others simply occupied the six remaining corpses beside him, borrowing corpses to return souls.

Beyond the overwhelming sense of danger, Yuan Zhu also felt them all eyeing him like tigers eyeing prey. They were investing in the ritual while scrutinizing him. He was like a slab of meat on a chopping board, inspected back and forth by more than a dozen customers as they whispered among themselves and haggled over the price.

Among this diverse array of unknown pollution, only one made him feel exceptionally close to it. From the bottom of his heart, he recognized and accepted it, without the slightest rejection or disgust.

The source of that energy hid in the shadow beneath him, forging a mysterious connection with this body and even the Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture. It continuously supplied "special spiritual energy" to the Aberrant Spiritual Root. As his health recovered, his Mana Value slowly accumulated as well.

As the mana within him—demonic energy, perhaps—slowly increased, he was able to capture more and more information. Much unfamiliar knowledge about Sacrifice Rituals also entered his mind along with the cool spiritual energy, offering him ambiguous, half-understood revelations.

At that moment, Yuan Zhu felt like a super signal receiver. Not only was he connected to every believer present, receiving their prayers and wishes, but he could also observe the higher-dimensional Evil God signals in reverse—the sources of pollution—and become a vessel containing a certain Pollution Source.

In fact, the Great Wilderness Immortal Scripture had already accepted the energy in the shadows, forcibly naming it "special spiritual energy." It used that energy to power the so-called Soul Firewall and load the BOSS Template into his body.

The various "talismans" held by those believers likewise corresponded to the Pollution Sources of other suspected Evil Gods.

Thus, he boldly guessed that this was an incredibly chaotic and random amateur sacrificial event.

Perhaps because the success rate was too low, or because the ritual costs were too high, these cultists had simply turned it into a cheap Pinduoduo-style sacrifice. They used a small batch of sacrifices—seven people—to offer to more than a dozen sacrificial targets, Evil Gods, all at once.

Put into Earth terms, some particularly imaginative cultist had maliciously bundled together—forcefully latched onto—a whole crowd of Evil Gods to jointly slash the price of this offering of seven people. As long as even one responded, the ritual could continue.

Faced with such a tasteless morsel, the Evil Gods would, in keeping with the principle of "since we're already here," more or less invest a small portion of their power and pay attention to the sacrifice. A small gamble for entertainment, betting on probability—what if they were the one who struck gold?

If one of them was truly hungry, it might even personally enter the fray, bidding against the other Evil Gods and adding more power to fight for ownership of the sacrifices. In the end, these believers would always hook some target to fulfill their wishes and ensure the sacrifice succeeded.

This hooligan style of sacrifice—offering innocent people, latching onto a pile of Evil Gods to split the bill with a single slash—was indeed quite imaginative, aside from being blasphemous and bound to cause trouble sooner or later. What a fucking little genius!

Were this world's believers really this bold? Not only did they possess no devotion whatsoever, they were also scamming Evil Gods in bulk and freeloading off them in reverse.