Evil God, Fellow Townsman

After reciting the divine name, Viscount Orson brought forth a Divine Statue.

It was palm-sized and covered by a thin layer of white gauze. One could vaguely make out a standing humanoid figure, but its facial features were unclear.

Placed before the enormous three-legged iron furnace, it appeared incomparably tiny and delicate.

"Star Spirit, Endtime, Law—clearly not gods of the Immortal Path!"

In the Immortal Path System, a long divine name did not necessarily mean great strength, but it absolutely meant a terrifyingly lofty status.

For example: Supreme Jade Emperor of the Golden Palace of Vast Heaven, Naturally Wondrous, Possessing the True Maitreya Reality.

Had he not been summoning an evil god from another realm, Yin Ming would have turned and run without looking back the moment he heard that string of intimidating divine names.

"Sacrifice! Only blood can demonstrate the sincerity I offer to the god."

Viscount Orson waved a hand.

Two serfs had burlap sacks over their heads and were forced to kneel on either side of the Divine Statue.

The sacrifices understood the miserable fate awaiting them. Their bodies trembled beyond the control of their nerves.

The knight's face remained cold and indifferent. With a lift of his hand and a slash of his blade, two heads rolled away like balls.

Blood erupted like a fountain, dyeing the white gauze covering the Divine Statue blood-red.

"Extraordinary power truly intoxicated people. Even when the End of Dharma was approaching in my previous life, there had been no lack of madmen who refined pills with human lives."

Blood slowly streamed down the altar steps.

Yin Ming was among the sacrifices in the front row of the altar. He could even feel the warmth of the blood.

As fellow serf sacrifices, there was no talk of pity or mercy.

He merely recognized with perfect clarity that this was a bloody, cruel extraordinary world where the weak were meat for the strong.

"Mahaye Nuo Xie... respectfully inviting: Void Water-Star Spirit Commander, Endtime Eater, Crimson Warden of Law—descend."

Everything was ready. Only the final step remained before the evil god could be summoned.

Viscount Orson's voice trembled with excitement as he lifted the red gauze, revealing a beast-headed, human-bodied Divine Statue. Chanting a secret incantation, he performed three kneelings and nine kowtows before it.

The black, silent void suddenly began to tremble violently as a vast will locked onto the Divine Statue and descended.

"Lowly humans cannot gaze directly upon a god. Those who do not wish to die, kneel and lower your heads at once."

"..."

Outside the town of Mountain Territory.

Three streaks of rainbow light descended, transforming into a man, a woman, and an old man.

Terrifying biological radiation emanated from their bodies.

Within a hundred-meter radius, snakes, insects, rats, and ants rapidly withered and died. A few bugs underwent inexplicable mutations, swelling several times larger, their appearances becoming savage and twisted as they slaughtered one another without reason.

The only woman among the three had a graceful figure, and her hair was a mass of blazing crimson flames.

She took out a silver wheel-shaped astrolabe, faintly furrowed her brows, and warned them in advance, "I need fifteen minutes to activate the Starfire Disk and seal the void. This is our last chance to hunt the evil god. If you start infighting again, forgive me for refusing to accompany you."

To mortals, sealing the void meant absolute stillness.

Their hearts could not beat, their lungs could not breathe, and they would die from shock within two minutes.

Yet in the eyes of high-level Sixth-Ring Lifeforms, mortals who had not entered the extraordinary were no different from bugs mutated by life radiation.

"First, we join forces to kill the evil god. As for the Godhead, each will rely on their own means." Beside her, the young man's face was corpse-pale, his pupils white and featureless. He nodded gloomily.

"No problem! The main issue is that Ouroboros is too strong and too sinister. So long as he lives, my heart cannot rest easy." The old man's body was shrouded in a black robe, black shattered scales densely covering half his face. His smile was somewhat awkward.

Of the four members of the God-Hunting Squad, only three remained. The dead "Ouroboros" had been set up and killed by the old man.

Such mutual slaughter generally did not happen before hunting gods, not because their moral standards were particularly high.

Rather, even the weakest god possessed strength far surpassing that of a Sixth-Ring demigod wizard.

However, this evil god was somewhat special—especially weak.

It could not replenish its magic power through conventional means, and even using witchcraft was restricted by heaven and earth.

"..."

Descended!

Had they truly summoned an evil god?

Everyone held their breath. The muscles throughout their bodies instinctively tightened, every hair standing on end, as though a pair of enormous eyes in the void were looking down upon them.

Yin Ming's senses were sharper than those of ordinary mortals. He felt the evil god's boundless spiritual power, which surpassed even that of a Corpse-Liberation Immortal. Like mountains, like oceans, it was absolutely not spiritual power a lifeform should possess.

At the first opportunity, his Primordial Spirit left his body, leaving behind an empty shell without a soul. Controlling the Jade Gourd, he was just about to flee when he suddenly heard an angry curse.

"Pah! Pah! Incense Power soaked in corpse oil—which idiot is trying to harm this commander?"

Once Yin Ming made a decision, he never hesitated in the slightest.

Yet that angry curse from the evil god struck him like a bolt from the blue, making him stop involuntarily.

Because the language the evil god used was not this world's language, but the ancient Chinese language he knew best.

"Who was it? Mortals cannot look upon gods. I shouldn't count as a mortal."

Just one look. He would only turn back for one look!

If anything seemed wrong, he would immediately run. An immortal's resistance to evil gods was surely greater than a mortal's.

After struggling for a moment, Yin Ming painfully turned his neck and looked behind him.

"..."

Upon the divine table atop the nine-tiered altar, the red gauze covering the Divine Statue had been lifted.

Beast head and human body—more precisely, a pig head and human body. Fat-headed and large-eared, it wore a dark blue monk's robe, its round belly exposed. Beneath its harmless, endearing appearance lay an overbearing aura that scorned all things.

Yin Ming was far too familiar with this Divine Statue!

Anyone who had read Journey to the West could name it in a single breath.

Though perhaps not. What if it was some evil god of the beastfolk race?

"Hoo..."

Yin Ming took a deep breath.

His gaze moved upward, fixing on the evil god's immense true body that had descended.

It looked seventy percent similar to the Divine Statue. It wore a beast-head chainmail battle armor woven from golden thread, red lotus-silk cloud boots on its feet, and its vicious pig head exposed four tusks. It carried a Nine-Toothed Golden Rake forged from divine iron across its shoulder.

"Zhu—Ba—jie."

Who?

How could anyone in this remote world call out Old Pig's Dharma name?

Zhu Bajie snorted out a stream of black smoke.

Following the sound, he discovered a thumb-sized Jade Gourd floating nearby, carrying a Primordial Spirit.

He extended his index finger and lightly tapped the void.

Space rippled like water. Everything around them dissolved into nothingness, leaving only the two of them facing each other within a pure white space.

This was the Primordial Spirit Space. Yin Ming became the appearance he had possessed before becoming immortal in his previous life, while Zhu Bajie shed his pig-headed human form and became a burly general clad in pitch-black armor.

"Who are you? Not quite immortal, yet not quite otherwise? You possess only an immortal's Fruit Position, but not a trace of magical power? How strange!" Zhu Bajie pulled Yin Ming's soul into his domain. Brilliant light gleamed in his eyes, as though they could see through the soul itself.

When fellow townsmen met fellow townsmen.

And one of them was a legendary mythological figure, making Yin Ming's feelings especially complicated.

In the original Journey to the West, before Zhu Bajie converted to Buddhism, he had also been a man-eating demon. Yin Ming did not know whether, after exposing the evil god's blood sacrifice, he would be silenced forever.

"A child without a mother—there's a long story behind it! I am a Corpse-Liberation Immortal."

Yin Ming briefly recounted his arduous path of ascension during the End of Dharma.

His purpose was to tell Zhu Bajie that he had not even touched the gates of the Immortal Realm, so there was no possibility of him reporting or exposing anything.

"Corpse Liberation? The method of abandoning one's physical shell, smuggling oneself into the Immortal Realm, and mooching off the Heavenly Court's Immortal-Forging Pool to become immortal?"

"But you did not ascend to the Immortal Realm, hahaha..." After hearing this, Zhu Bajie truly could not hold back his laughter, and his merit points plummeted steadily.

"An immortal, yet no different from a mortal. At the peak of the Immortal Path, Hongjun is the ancestor; at the end of the Immortal Path, you are its root. You can be considered as famous as Patriarch Hongjun!"

"The Heavenly Court governs the myriad heavens and worlds. Once a lower realm enters the Age of Dharma Decline and it is determined that no more ascenders will appear, the Ascension Passage is closed. It seems... some immortal official neglected his duty!"

Neglected his duty!

Not necessarily.

Blue Star's spiritual energy had indeed completely dried up, and even ordinary magical artifacts had decayed and lost their function.

Who could have imagined that such an oddity as him would appear during the Age of Dharma Decline, still dreaming of ascension despite having no spiritual energy?

Not only had he cultivated to the realm of a Corpse-Liberation Immortal, he had even found a magical artifact nurtured by heaven and earth.

Noticing that Zhu Bajie bore no ill intent, Yin Ming no longer felt so restrained and directly asked, "By the way! Why aren't you enjoying blessings in the Immortal Realm, sir? How did you end up in this world, and why did you take such a fashionable honorific title?"