The Altar of the God of Abundance

A tiger in death is like a sheep; a man in death is like a tiger.

The corpse of the man who had suddenly died before their eyes awakened the throat-slitting terror hidden deep within everyone's bloodline. It suffocated them until their skin prickled, their blood surging upward!

"Save... me..."

No, he wasn't dead yet.

A faint stream of air squeezed through his clenched teeth, stirring a tiny speck of dust without causing the slightest ripple.

Crimson blood gushed out, flooding the old floor tiles and coating the ground in a bloody mirror, reflecting a pale, bloodless face.

The D-Class personnel, his organs emptied out, slowly rotated as he hung upside down in the air. His body was torn open enough to expose his entire soul, while an insane blasphemy ravaged cowardly human nature.

He looked like a sheep that had been drained of blood and prepared for slaughter.

Yet there was no killer to be seen anywhere around him. Everything seemed to be an extension of divine will, the work of vengeful spirits.

"A demon... a demon—"

A distorted, twisted scream came from behind Ning Xiuyuan.

A female D-Class personnel stared at the scene with a twisted face and bulging eyes. She could no longer suppress the surging terror and ran madly toward the end of the corridor.

There was a door there, a wooden door leading to the second-floor balcony.

"Ah—"

"Run!"

The D-Class personnel whose Sanity value had plummeted to zero screamed and panicked, crying out for their fathers and mothers. They no longer cared about the furious roars in their earpieces and frantically followed the woman, as if a beast with gnashing teeth and blood-dripping jaws were hot on their heels.

"Creak!"

The wooden door swung open. Afternoon light, pale as lead, streamed through the narrow doorway into the villa, driving away the terror.

That sliver of light brought the woman boundless hope. Like a flame in a biting cold wind, it seemed precious beyond measure and filled her with warmth.

Joy appeared on her face as she hurried across the threshold, trying to embrace the light.

She felt the light!

It was formless, soft, and bloated, yet it brought the ultimate agony of a twisted soul.

She looked down in astonishment. A great heap of writhing organs was piled beneath her feet, and viscous blood spread across the floor, reflecting a body reduced to a bloody mess.

—She had already begun to slowly float upward.

"Giggle... no, no..."

"Demon!"

"Monster—"

The D-Class personnel who had sprinted after the woman suddenly stopped. The horrifying scene, identical to the one before, made their teeth chatter and their minds completely collapse.

They retreated in terror toward Ning Xiuyuan.

"Da, Daniel, what is this?"

"We're all going to die, aren't we?"

"I don't want to die! I don't want to die! Save me, save me!"

The D-Class personnel broke down as they grabbed Ning Xiuyuan's clothes, questioning and begging him.

Daniel, where's the altar?

The Foundation's questioning voice also came through the earpiece.

Faced with this inhuman scene, Ning Xiuyuan remained expressionless and unmoved, saying nothing.

He focused on the space behind the hanging man. It was an empty bedroom, its wallpaper peeling and its walls filthy. A window with missing panes swayed gently.

The bloody filth covering the floor was as still as the surface of a blood-filled lake.

Now and then, a few drops of viscous fluid fell, creating ripples so faint they were almost imperceptible.

Ning Xiuyuan's spirituality spread through Heart of the Beast and into the puppet Daniel. Heart of the Beast remained silent, but Plague Disciple told him that there was something in the room.

The moment he sensed that thing, "Ning Xiuyuan" trembled all over.

"Great God of Abundance, Verdant Form, my lord, You are fairness and justice, You are my refuge. These lambs are the sacrifices I offer You. Please bestow Your grace and divine gift!"

Daniel suddenly began chanting with fervor.

—This was the closest he had ever been to the god.

In his daze, Ning Xiuyuan actually couldn't tell whether he was controlling Daniel or Daniel had broken free of his control.

When the voice faded, the D-Class personnel gathered around Ning Xiuyuan turned pale and hurriedly backed away.

"Daniel... what are you going to do?"

"He's going to sacrifice us!"

"Kill him! Kill him now!"

They instinctively retreated one after another. A few were even roused into ferocity, shouting angrily in terror.

The god seemed to have heard their pleas.

Daniel suddenly shuddered all over, like a can being struck off the bottom of a bottle. Wine-red juice wrapped around colorful flesh and splashed across the floor.

Daniel's body floated into the air as well.

"Ah—"

The D-Class personnel, who had still been furious at Daniel's words and actions, completely lost their minds.

The deaths coming one after another ground their reason to dust.

They screamed and scattered in all directions.

Two of them charged up to the attic, while the others rushed into different rooms and desperately slammed the doors shut, trying to keep the indescribable terror outside.

"Ah—"

"Help—"

Screams rang out one after another on the second floor, and they also echoed beside Ning Xiuyuan's curled-up true body.

At the instant the puppet Daniel was attacked, Ning Xiuyuan should have severed the link, but for some reason, he was a step too slow.

That single step left him like a child flying a kite, his hands tightly wrapped in the kite string.

The gale roared and the kite went mad. The more he suffered, the tighter the strangulation around his soul became, the more violently his limbs seemed to tear apart!

Daniel—the kite whose fate was entirely beyond his control—slowly rose into the air without a sound, hanging upside down in the corridor.

At that moment, Ning Xiuyuan clearly sensed an invisible liquid filling the hollowed-out cavity, seeping into the shell and pickling his soul.

Daniel was dead, yet not dead.

He stared with hollow eyes at the upside-down world of the second floor.

"Tap, tap, tap..."

Another burst of hurried footsteps approached. Of the two D-Class personnel who had rushed upstairs, only one remained. His face twisted in terror as he ran back down.

He ran while looking over his shoulder.

He saw nothing, yet stumbled and fell, rolling in a heap to the foot of the second-floor stairs.

He looked at the hanging Daniel and suddenly began begging frantically.

"Where's the altar? Where's the altar?"

"Please, tell me!"

Daniel, where's the altar?

A questioning voice also came through Daniel's earpiece.

—The Foundation had discovered through the instruments strapped to Ning Xiuyuan that he was still alive.

"Fir... st... floor..."

Daniel moved his lips and made a nearly inaudible sound.

The remaining D-Class personnel instinctively tried to rush downstairs, but the moment he stepped onto the first stair, the last shred of his reason forced him to stand frozen.

There was nothing on the second floor, and nothing on the third. In theory, the altar should have been on the first floor.

The problem was, they had just come up from the first floor!

Get to the first floor!

The roar in his earpiece became the final straw that made his decision for him.

He instinctively obeyed and ran down the stairs.

The moment he passed the bend, the living room filled with decrepit old people came into view. When they saw the D-Class personnel running down, satisfied smiles immediately spread across their faces.

"Child, come down! Come down!"

"Oh, heavens, my lord, spare this ignorant lamb!"

They screamed and cheered as they eagerly backed away, trying to come up and grab the D-Class personnel.

The D-Class personnel broke down.

He turned and ran, but the roar in his earpiece made him stop again. His own consciousness and the outside consciousness tore violently at his fragile, pitiful soul.

"Boom!"

Just then, an explosion suddenly erupted in the first-floor living room.

—The one who had exploded was clearly one of the cultists who had remained on the first floor.

The explosion cleared a large empty space in the living room and also awakened a sliver of reason in the D-Class personnel on the stairs.

His desire to survive gave him courage. He gritted his teeth, leaped from the stairs, landed in the space cleared by the explosion, and frantically charged toward the entrance.

He bared his teeth, his expression feral, letting the foul-smelling wind pour into his mouth!

To hell with the mission!

I'd rather be executed by firing squad than stay in this devil's dwelling.

Closer, closer!

The villa's wooden entrance was right before his eyes.

A glimmer of hope appeared on the D-Class personnel's face. Smack! At that moment, an old man by the entrance grabbed his arm.

"Get away! Get away—"

The D-Class personnel screamed in terror, trying to shake off the old man's grip.

But it was too late.

In that instant, two or three more hands grabbed his clothes.

"Get away—"

The D-Class personnel cursed frantically, but tears and mucus streamed down his face. He knew he was finished. After falling into such a strange place, he would never escape alive.

Suddenly, he stopped and whipped his head around to look at the villa's living room.

—Before he died, he wanted to see whether that damned altar to the evil god was really on the first floor!

Smack!

A rotten palm covered his face.

"Child, don't look back. Run!"

The pale words squeezed from rotten vocal cords rang beside his ear. While he stared in bewilderment, the several arms resting on him frantically pushed him out of the villa.

"Bang!"

The broken wooden door slammed shut, sealing all the strangeness inside.

The dazzling sunlight outside the villa made him squint instinctively. Dense red spots of light appeared across his greasy face, smeared with cold sweat and tears.

475264, when was the last time you saw your mother?

The cold voice from the earpiece left the D-Class personnel, who had abruptly escaped from a place of ultimate terror, dazed for a long while.

"I—I last saw her last night... No, no, don't shoot! I dreamed of Mom. The last time I saw my mother was before the execution... I—I—I don't remember the date. Don't kill me. Give me time, let me think..."

475264 instinctively raised both hands and answered the question with a pleading, desperate expression. Yet his chaotic thoughts made it difficult for him to recall even the simplest detail.

Okay, sanity check passed. Come over!

475264 froze. After a while, he tentatively took a step. When nothing unusual happened, delight at surviving a disaster burst across his face, and he took off running.

"Pfft!"

The moment he took that step, a strange gushing sound suddenly came from inside his body.

He felt his body go hollow and instinctively looked down. The ground was covered in colorful crimson flesh, reminding him of what he had seen as a child when he cut open a rabbit's belly.

Perhaps... he was that rabbit.

His vision spun. The world turned upside down, then rapidly rose away from the ground and passed over the villa.

He saw the floating corpse he had seen on the way in; the armed personnel hidden in the forest; the satellite command vehicle on the country road; and the drone hovering in the air.

He saw... a pitch-black raven.

In the raven's eyes, a flower seemed to be blooming, opening into full splendor!

Ning Xiuyuan finally saw the altar!

The altar of the God of Abundance.