Zhao Fu no longer wanted to bother with the old man; he found him somewhat nauseating. A vast surge of fiendish power flooded into the old man's body, easily taking control of him and beginning to read his memories.
The old man had just said that he knew a great secret, and Zhao Fu was rather curious about what that secret was.
Before long, Zhao Fu understood what that secret was.
The secret was that the old man knew Darkness Land had sealed away some unknown existence. This existence possessed a kind of power—the power to turn people into gods. More precisely, it turned them into things akin to gods.
However, the power these things possessed could not compare to that of true gods; they merely had certain divine abilities weakened by many times over.
They had lived here for several hundred years. They had abundant food and clothing, suffered neither beast attacks nor natural and man-made disasters, and even enjoyed increased lifespans. It could be called a land of paradise.
Yet beneath the beautiful and peaceful facade of this paradise lay bloody and cruel methods.
Because they had mastered a method of becoming something similar to a god.
This method required them, every ten years, to seize a girl under eighteen years old, who had to be a virgin.
Then they would gouge out the girl's eyes, cut off her ears and nose, sew her mouth shut with needle and thread, and insert two wooden plugs into her ears to seal the ear canals. The plugs were generally driven deep enough to puncture her eardrums, turning the girl deaf.
After doing all this, they had to ensure that the girl remained conscious and did not die.
This allowed the girl to fully experience the intense agony, but it was