Blood Soul Bewitching Heart

The three of them looked grim as they entered the second room.

Pushing open the wooden door, they found the same scene—remnants of rituals, evil symbols painted everywhere.

Only, there was a man tied backward to a chair in this room, his head already gone.

Chen Xia remained expressionless. None of the three spoke as they continued their inspection.

Most of the rooms along the way were like this. In one room, there was a partially burned Identity Card left on the ground. After brushing aside the ashes and half a mosquito coil, Chen Xia picked it up and examined it. He could only make out that it belonged to a man; everything else was unclear.

This meant that a man had also died here. Judging by the recent missing persons case, Edel had likely been conducting experiments all along before finally using women as sacrifices.

The basement stretched on for a long distance. Steel plates and round wooden pillars supported the surroundings, preventing a collapse. There were more than a dozen rooms along the way, all bearing the same sight, like a slaughterhouse.

In some rooms, there were photographs of the victims from when they were alive—some with their arms around each other, some showing couples holding children, others showing farmers. Occasionally, writing remained on the walls: Great Blood God...

As they went deeper, the last room turned out to be a cesspit. Rotten biological matter vaguely showed through within it, making Jiang Xinglan unable to stop herself from cursing inwardly, "A pack of beasts!"

Lin Qinghan was equally furious. At some point, a green bead had appeared in her right palm, and her fist clenched tightly around it.

At the end of the path, a staircase leading downward appeared.

The three continued forward lightly and quietly, reaching the second basement level. Suddenly, they stopped moving.

They faintly heard footsteps approaching from afar.

When the footsteps neared the stairs to the second level, they paused. The three of them stirred inwardly. Had they been discovered? Lin Qinghan was just about to use her invisibility technique when the footsteps rang out again.

A tall figure then revealed half his body and turned his head, immediately seeing the three of them.

However, before he could shout, a dagger pierced through his neck. Then came the second strike—his heart.

The man collapsed on the stairs with a faint sound. Before long, another figure came from the corridor. As soon as he approached, Jiang Xinglan flashed forward, and he fell.

Finding no one else ahead, the three continued on.

"Ah!" A piercing scream suddenly came from deeper within. After walking more than ten meters, the three reached a doorway and saw a sight that froze their blood solid.

The room had a hall-like layout and could accommodate dozens of people. Wooden poles and stone piers around it supported the iron plates overhead.

In the center of the hall stood a massive stone altar, covered in strange Runes.

More than twenty young girls had been tied up and thrown onto the ground, crowded around the altar.

Their wrists had all been slit, their blood flowing through grooves in the floor toward the center of the altar. Six men in Black Robes stood around it as well, wearing ferocious masks and holding blood-dripping daggers.

The six muttered incantations amid a chaotic din mixed with the screams of women. Further out, more than a dozen members of the Gathering Justice Mercenary Group knelt on the ground, praying devoutly as well.

On the mud wall at the far left was a mirror roughly two meters across, with waves of blood mist rising from its surface. Beside it stood a fair-skinned foreign middle-aged man in a black robe, chanting hoarsely at the mirror, "With pure blood as the guide, with fearful souls as the sacrifice, we welcome the descent of the Blood God!"

The man's hands kept moving, tracing symbol after symbol. Blood energy rose from his body and tainted the blood of the girls on the floor, making the entire altar seem to emit a red glow.

The bound girls rolled their eyes back, smoke rising from their bodies as though something within them was about to be extracted.

"The time has come!" Edel, the leader, shouted excitedly. "Great Blood God, emerge..."

The blood on the altar transformed into a sky-filling mist and surged toward the mirror.

Edel also held a basin filled with the blood of girls born in yin year, yin month, and yin hour. Only enough Yin Evil could establish an energetic connection with the Blood God.

As he drew the Runes, the blood in the basin surged into the mirror as well. The mirror seemed to activate, blazing with light. A savage red face appeared within it, and a pair of blood-red, indifferent pupils swept toward them.

In an instant, the temperature throughout the room plummeted, as though the mirror had opened a passage to another world.

The Blood God?

Seeing this, Chen Xia felt his heart nearly leap from his chest. An evil, icy aura filled the entire room, making his consciousness tremble as if it, too, might be pulled away.

Just then, something shot in from afar—a dagger flew toward the mirror. Edel's expression shifted slightly, but he did not act. As the dagger neared the mirror, it was automatically knocked away.

Only then did everyone notice that someone had broken in through the shadowy doorway.

"Kill them!" Edel ordered coldly, without panic.

The Gathering Justice Mercenary Group charged first. They had been waiting for Edel to finish so they could receive a reward of Essence Blood. They had never expected someone to ruin their plans. With a wave of Cao Yi's hand, more than a dozen martial artists rushed forward.

"Protect him," Jiang Xinglan instructed Lin Qinghan before charging in.

When Cao Yi and the others saw that she was a woman, they sneered and did not take her seriously at all. But even in their wildest dreams, they had not expected this woman to be so formidable.

She looked young, but with a short blade in hand, she moved like a phantom. Her first slash stabbed a squad-leader-level fighter to death.

Then came the second. Jiang Xinglan drove a fist into his chest, sending his more than two hundred pounds of weight flying like a cannonball. He slammed heavily into the mud wall, making the entire room tremble as dust fell from above. The basement seemed on the verge of collapse.

One man charged in wielding a big knife, a blade capable of chopping through even steel bars. Yet he could not touch so much as the shadow of his opponent. Then a sharp pain exploded in his stomach. By the time he reacted, he had already been kicked hard into the wall behind him. He spat out blood and died on the spot.

Whoosh!

Another big man was sent flying. Jiang Xinglan's fists and kicks were superb; every strike killed. Chen Xia and Lin Qinghan stood to the side without even a chance to act. Jiang Xinglan was like a barrier—however many came, she sent just as many flying back.

Cao Yi turned and saw several of his brothers die miserably, unable to block even one move. Though he possessed the strength of a Grade 2 martial artist, he did not dare step forward after witnessing that scene. Knowing this matter would be hard to settle peacefully, he shouted for the others to attack while turning to open a small door behind him and flee.

There was a small door in the hall leading to other secret rooms and the way out. After Cao Yi ran, several Gathering Justice members came to their senses and immediately fled as well.

"I'll chase them!" Chen Xia said.

"Tongxin Village has already been surrounded. They can't escape." Just as Chen Xia was about to pursue Cao Yi and the others, Jiang Xinglan grabbed him.

"Hehe, they have some skill. Let the girls stop them!" Edel's hoarse voice sounded again.

The six Night God Sect Members had already untied the girls. Using an Evil Technique, they released great quantities of blood mist from their bodies, which drilled into the bodies of the bound girls. The girls immediately lost consciousness, then all stood up and swarmed forward, blocking the doorway.

After being controlled, these victims bit and clawed wildly, giving Jiang Xinglan a terrible headache. She could kill the others, but not these kidnapped girls.

More than twenty girls sealed off the entrance, preventing Jiang Xinglan and the others from entering for the moment. Under normal circumstances, she could have kicked them aside with one blow, but she could not do that now. If she struck too heavily, she might kill the girls.

The six Night God Sect Members controlled the girls. At the same time, they exchanged glances before blood mist erupted from their bodies, and they began using the Blood Soul Bewitching Heart technique on Jiang Xinglan.

Blood-red shadows lunged at her and collided with Jiang Xinglan. She focused her mind and steadied her breath, then let out a thunderous roar that shook the six blood shadows away.

The blurry blood shadows began attacking the second person, but Lin Qinghan herself was a Grade 3 spellcaster, so she was naturally able to withstand them.

"Control the man behind them. His mind is the weakest!"

After exchanging looks, the six cultists began attacking Chen Xia together. They wanted to control him and make him stab Jiang Xinglan and Lin Qinghan in the back.

Jiang Xinglan had just pushed several girls away when even more rushed in and bit at her madly. She had to divide her attention to deal with them, only to see six blood shadows crawling along the ceiling, circling around before flying down and drilling into Chen Xia's body.

Chen Xia was behind them. If he were controlled, they would be caught between attacks from both front and back.

Lin Qinghan also glanced at Chen Xia and found his eyes blood-red, as though he were about to transform. She hurriedly hugged his arm to keep him from losing control.

The six blood shadows assaulted Chen Xia's mind, plunging him into a scene of mountains of corpses and seas of blood. Unlike last time, there were six crimson full moons in the sky, and six evil, towering Red shadows appeared before him out of thin air.

Within the illusion, Chen Xia spread his hands as giant nails pinned him to a bloodstained cross. He stared at the six figures before him, and one pair of eyes seemed vaguely familiar.

The other party also looked somewhat puzzled before saying coldly, "It's you!"

One of the men from the Night God Sect recognized Chen Xia.

The Blood Soul Bewitching Heart technique they used was more than merely an Illusion Technique. It could enter another person's spiritual world, and the aura of one's spiritual world could not be disguised.

The Night God Sect man looked at Chen Xia as though he were already dead. He sneered. "So you were the one who fought me last time. You made me recuperate for several days. But it doesn't matter. You're going to die here today anyway. Hehe."