Bustling

"Present sacrifices!"

The Missing Tooth Sacrificer shouted in his ruined voice, hot grease-slick sweat streaming down his gaunt neck.

The Great Hammer pounded the drumhead, smashing up a thin mist of water.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Early in the seventh month had yet to leave the plum rains behind. The sky was dim and drizzly, and the heavy drumbeats fell upon their hearts like muffled thunder. Tens of thousands of villagers stood beneath the fine rain, watching in silence.

Iron chains swung as the Water Beast was brought onto the platform.

A sharp blade plunged in.

Scalding heart's blood sprayed forth, and a rolling stench of blood blasted into their faces!

Small children clung fearfully to their parents' legs.

Yet their parents showed no fear at all. Instead, several traces of excitement appeared on their faces, saliva gathering in their mouths.

Meat! Good meat!

The idle men who had hurried dozens of li since dawn to join the excitement and wait for meat watched the Water Beast lose its life with their own eyes, their pupils filled with shock.

The four stages of a Martial Master—Galloping Horse, Wolf Smoke—were too distant and too vague for ordinary folk. But this Water Beast, who knew how many times larger than a man, lay right before them in the flesh. A turn of its body could crush earthen houses; a flick of its tail was like an Earth Dragon Turning Over. Even standing near its edge, the sunlight was wholly obscured, leaving them unable to draw breath.

The chains binding it were thicker than a thigh and flashed with blue light. When even half an iron link struck the ground, it punched out a crater the size of a human head. And it had died just like that? The Yixing River God Sacrifice.

An