When light fell, midnight turned to dawn.
With the cruise ship at its core, one "torch" after another lit up. Pale blue halos spread outward from each point, and the entire ship and everything around it entered the mist.
The ritual of slaughter had begun.
"This is the Martial Arts Ceremony."
Yet from atop a certain tower, the scene in Lu PingAn's "field of vision" was entirely different.
He saw waves from another realm expanding around each "focal point," tugging at everything nearby.
Resonance, harmony, or something similar caused the entire area to begin slipping free from the restrictions of the main world.
Once it reached a critical point, it vanished.
". . . This feels familiar. Uh, no, it's exactly the same. So these so-called righteous gods really aren't fundamentally different from evil gods."
Of course it felt familiar. It was the same thing as when Lu PingAn and Guan Xinxian had fought the murloc followers by the lake.
Several "nodes"—altars—served as the core, gradually tearing open space and dragging an area into another realm. Or, to use a more common term—"otherworldization."
But in Lu PingAn's current eyes, he could see far more of the process.
He watched those nodes continuously "resonating," dragging the entire area into "acceleration" as it gradually plunged deeper into other spaces.
He could even see the operating mechanisms of those nodes, including how they were created.
"So we're all Sacrifices."
Lu PingAn understood why they had needed to wait for a period of time before holding the Martial Arts Ceremony.
During that time, every site—and soul—that had died for "martial combat" had itself become part of the Martial God's "rules." They were part of the ritual's process, burning torches.
Now, their remains and the places where they had fought to the death had become