Ritual

"How many gangs are still left on Emerald Lake Street?" Chen Jue asked.

The Scarface martial artist looked at Chen Jue in astonishment.

Yet Chen Jue's face remained calm, as though he had asked something utterly insignificant.

"Three remain." Afraid that the young man would slaughter him with a single stroke, the Scarface martial artist answered truthfully.

"They moved rather quickly..."

Chen Jue muttered to himself, then continued, "When did you small gangs get in touch with the Room Fire Cult?"

"..." The Scarface martial artist's face went pale.

Without even asking, the other party had already concluded that Emerald Lake Street's gangs were involved with the Room Fire Cult.

Clearly, the authorities had already uncovered something and had sent these two to confirm it, letting them claim credit for nothing.

"Not talking?"

Chen Jue's expression did not change. With a turn of his blade, he sliced a chunk of flesh from the Scarface martial artist's shoulder.

The Scarface martial artist hissed softly and instinctively tried to cover his shoulder wound, only for the cold flat of the blade to knock his hand aside.

"With the authorities watching, how much longer do you think the Room Fire Cult can run wild?"

"Confess honestly, and you may not die. But if you refuse to speak, you will definitely die."

Chen Jue lowered his gaze. His clear, star-bright eyes carried a threat chilling enough to freeze the blood.

The Scarface martial artist's heart went cold at his words.

That was right. If he could not even survive the crisis before him, what meaning was there in guarding against the Room Fire Cult's revenge later?

"Our Red Blood Gang got in touch with the Room Fire Cult a month ago..."

"At that time, the Rat Gang had been wiped out, and the inner-city force behind it had gone out of contact. The income we small gangs earned from 'drug testing' plummeted, so we could only seek other sources of income..."

"Then the Room Fire Cult from the southern district came knocking."

"They were extremely generous. The major inner-city powers paid two thousand for living human test subjects and one thousand for the dead, but the Room Fire Cult paid four thousand for the living and two thousand for the dead..."

As Chen Jue listened to Scarface's account, two blood-soaked phrases flashed through his mind: people were treated like pigs and dogs, lives as worthless as blades of grass.

"What nonsense are you spouting? Didn't the drug-testing recruits from the inner-city pharmaceutical factories have to sign a Voluntary Drug Testing Agreement?!"

While Chen Jue inwardly condemned this godforsaken world, Wu Nanyuan, who had been listening the entire time, could not help but rebuke him.

"..." Chen Jue and the Scarface martial artist both froze for a moment and instinctively looked at her.

"You should go keep watch at the mouth of the alley... This scene isn't quite suitable for you."

Chen Jue did not want to corrupt a child.

Wu Nanyuan herself had been oppressed by her clan until she could barely breathe. Seeing the expressions on their faces, she gave it a little thought and immediately understood the crux of the matter.

So long as profit existed, "unwilling" could become "made willing."

She had once known only that life in the Wu Clan was bitter for her. Now she understood that fate did not single her out; all living beings suffered.

Seeing Wu Nanyuan sink into thought, Chen Jue turned back to the Scarface martial artist and continued asking, "Is the Room Fire Cult's sacrificial site in the abandoned factory buildings by the lake?"

"What major thing have they been doing lately..."

"No, what major thing are they going to do tonight during the late watch?"

Chen Jue suddenly recalled that Zhang Wei had deliberately moved his patrol shift to the late watch.

For a man so full of schemes, using this to set him up was perfectly normal.

The Scarface martial artist's expression changed again.

"You already know that the Room Fire Cult's shaman-priest will sacrifice living people at the lakeside factory tonight, praying for the descent of the retainer shadow guards?"

The moment those words left the Scarface martial artist's mouth, an incomparably violent and sinister fiery energy erupted from his body.

His features rapidly twisted like rubber clay. His nose bridge rose high like a pig's, the corners of his mouth tore open like ripped paper, and two white tusks swiftly grew out.

"Lost one! Do you wish to learn the secrets of the Room Fire God?!"

In the blink of an eye, the Scarface martial artist had transformed into a monster with a pig's head and a human body.

His eyes burned crimson, strange bloody light flickering within them as they stabbed directly toward Chen Jue's clear, star-bright gaze.

"No."

Unmoved by the pig-headed monster's eerie stare, Chen Jue swept his blade horizontally and severed its entire head.

"How dare you!!"

The pig-headed monster had apparently not expected Chen Jue to be immune to its mental attack, much less to strike immediately and cut off its head.

"You're no longer the martial artist from before, are you? Does your Room Fire Cult have some evil art that seizes other people's bodies?"

Chen Jue swung his blade and cut off the headless corpse's limbs.

"You!" The pig-headed monster's expression changed drastically. Just as it tried to deny it, Chen Jue blew its head apart with a single slash.

The next instant, a strand of utterly bizarre fire-aspected spiritual energy flew from the pig-headed monster's body. It moved as swiftly as lightning, passing through Chen Jue's lower abdomen and charging straight toward his dantian.

Chen Jue's expression changed sharply. In an instant, he mobilized all the Five Elements true qi in his body to surround and intercept it.

"Haha! You dare kill me? You'll die even more miserably than I—"

The moment that strand of bizarre true qi carrying the monster's consciousness entered Chen Jue's dantian, it saw a furnace that reached from heaven to earth. Within it hung a fiery red sun, radiating astonishing heat and light.

"No! What the hell is this thing?!"

Under the illumination of the fiery red sun, that strand of strange fire spiritual energy screamed in terror. Like snow melting in summer, it instantly vaporized into a wisp of purest fire spiritual energy, along with a faint, almost imperceptible mysterious sediment.

"That's it?!"

Chen Jue had made a huge show of mobilizing all his true qi.

Yet before he could even make a move, the bizarre true qi carrying the monster's consciousness had been vaporized by the furnace in his dantian.

He felt both surprised and speechless.

"Are you all right?"

Seeing Chen Jue remain stiffly rooted in place after blowing apart the pig-headed monster, Wu Nanyuan stepped forward to ask.

"I'm fine. I just didn't expect the Room Fire Cult to be so sinister. If those great figures in the inner city still refuse to step in and punish them, a monstrous calamity may befall the outer city."

Chen Jue held out a hand to Wu Nanyuan. "Do you have a handkerchief?"

Without thinking much of it, Wu Nanyuan took out a handkerchief from her pocket and handed it to Chen Jue.

Under Wu Nanyuan's incredulous gaze, Chen Jue used the handkerchief to wipe the blood from his blade, then tossed it into a nearby mud pit.

"You?... That was my handkerchief!" Wu Nanyuan said.

"Oh, thank you."

As Chen Jue thanked her, he stomped hard on the bluestone bricks beneath his feet. When a flying stone slab rose level with his shoulder, he suddenly flung his blade, sweeping the stone toward a nearby rooftop.

Crack!

A fan-shaped burst of sword light exploded across the rooftop. The stone shattered, and a figure leaped down from above.

Holding his saber in one hand, Chen Jue slowly advanced toward the figure.

Wu Nanyuan remained silent beside him, her hand gripping the longsword at her waist as she followed closely behind, her heart filled with vigilance.

"Friend! This is a misunderstanding! I'm not a bad man!"

"I also came to gather information about the Room Fire Cult!"

Seeing Chen Jue and Wu Nanyuan approaching from either side with blade and sword in hand, Liang Ben realized that he was in danger. He hurriedly sheathed his sword and raised both hands.

"I'm a reserve operative of the God-Understanding Organization, acting under orders from my superiors to investigate the Room Fire Cult."

"You must have heard of us. We are a righteous organization dedicated to resolving the descent of the Star Gods and determined to bring peace to the human world."

"Sorry, never heard of it." Chen Jue frowned at his words, and his blade instantly slashed toward the man who had just landed.