Sacrificial Ritual

Dark green fluid flowed down the steps of the altar, which had been piled from white bones.

Lu Ping stepped across the slick stone slabs, his breathing steady.

The cursed energy pressure all around him was almost solid enough to condense into matter, yet not even the rhythm of his breathing faltered.

A trace of relief flickered through Lu Ping's heart.

Before awakening his current power, the cursed energy within him had been extremely weak.

In order to survive in the dangerous Jujutsu World, he had once seriously considered stepping behind the scenes to become an assistant supervisor.

To that end, he had pored over countless obscure ancient texts and spent a period of time studying the underlying logic of Barrier Technique day and night.

Those once dry and tedious theories now allowed him to strip away the surface of this massive domain before him and keenly perceive the core of its workings.

The seemingly useless knowledge he had accumulated in the past had become a lifeline capable of saving his life.

"Kamo-senpai."

Lu Ping turned around, his gaze falling on Qian Chun's bloodstained hands, his tone firm.

"Your attack was ineffective not because it lacked power. As the ultimate point-to-point strike, Piercing Blood's destructive force is beyond question."

Qian Chun's brows furrowed slightly as she waited for him to continue.

"Since we can't break open the domain from within, there are no more than two possibilities." Lu Ping raised two fingers.

"First, this is an extremely complete closed domain with a flawless shell. Second, when constructing the domain, the caster employed some extreme Binding Vow in exchange for an indestructible inner shell."

He paused slightly, giving her time to think.

"Considering how recently this Cursed Womb was born, it simply lacks the foundation to construct a perfect barrier. The answer can only be the latter."

As a first-rate elite sorcerer from the Three Great Families, Qian Chun had an exceptionally sharp instinct for jujutsu theory and understood immediately.

Her eyes widened slightly as she quickly caught on.

"You mean this Serpent God Curse Embryo used an extreme Binding Vow like 'do not actively harm targets within the domain' as the price for absolutely reinforcing the domain's inner walls and maintaining the stable operation of this sacrificial ritual?"

"Though it may have done so unintentionally, that is precisely the case."

Lu Ping nodded in agreement, then raised his hand and pointed at the [Twin-Snake Egg] at the center of the altar, its surface covered in cracks.

"At first, I wasn't completely certain. I couldn't understand why this Cursed Womb could be born early when the ritual was clearly incomplete. But the moment I saw this egg, I understood the entire chain of logic."

He began walking, avoiding the writhing mass of snakes beneath his feet as his voice echoed through the empty dome of light.

"According to common knowledge in the Jujutsu World, twins are regarded as a divided single existence and represent an ominous curse. Given this cursed spirit's traits, I infer that the Snake God's original form was a malformed monster with two heads, a human body, and a serpent's tail."

"Because the sacrificial ritual in the real world had long failed to obtain enough blood, its descent was obstructed. As a result, the head that developed intelligence earlier was forced to separate prematurely and descend into the Living World in the form of a premature infant. The other head, which possessed greater power, remained hidden within the egg in slumber."

Lu Ping's deduction was like a blade, dissecting the complex battle situation bit by bit and exposing the behavioral logic of the [Twin Cursed Spirits].

"We are currently inside the domain deployed by that prematurely born Cursed Womb. This ritual is meant to nourish and gradually awaken the other Cursed Womb that remains asleep. If we can disrupt or completely interrupt the ritual, we can greatly reduce the completeness of this Serpent God Curse Embryo and, in turn, weaken its power."

Qian Chun listened silently to his tightly reasoned analysis, her heart roiling with shock.

In this desperate situation, where they could lose their lives at any moment, the young man before her showed no trace of panic. Instead, in just a few minutes, he had deduced the enemy's trump card from nothing but scattered clues.

She suppressed her surprise without letting it show on her face, merely nodding solemnly.

"You're right. That explains why it doesn't dare confront us directly. What do you need me to do? I'll follow your arrangements and cooperate with everything I have."

"Since we've deduced that the domain is currently harmless due to the Binding Vow, we need to test it."

The moment Lu Ping finished speaking, he walked straight toward the center of the altar.

His steps were steady, and he did not activate any defensive technique.

The grotesque snakes that had been wildly twisting around instantly seemed to lose their instinct to attack when they touched him, merely sliding away blindly.

The test was a success.

"Stay at the edge of the altar and be ready to provide support at any time."

Without looking back, Lu Ping instructed, "Don't follow me down. We need to keep one mobile position that can respond immediately if anything goes wrong."

Qian Chun stopped walking and stood guardily at the very top of the steps, keeping watch.

Lu Ping walked alone into the depths of the altar.

As he approached the center, he discovered that the altar's inner walls were not covered by snakes.

Ancient murals had been carved into the stone walls with rough, bold lines.

These weathered images completely recorded the origins of this region's primitive Snake God worship and its sacrificial process.

He stopped to stare, quickly interpreting the information contained in the murals by the faint light filtering down from above.

In the first mural, a group of people held down a thin, living person, carved complex symbols onto their back, and then locked them inside a separate wooden cage.

—This was the process of carving a curse mark onto the sacrifice and isolating it from the crowd.

Its purpose was not only to make it easier for the Snake God to identify the sacrifice while feeding, but also to allow the sacrifice to accumulate the highest concentration of negative emotions through confinement and fear.

In the second mural, a full moon hung high in the sky as the sacrifice was pushed into the center of an altar nearly identical to the one before them.

—On the day of the ritual, the living sacrifice had to be sent into the altar.

This was to ensure that the sacrifice retained the most abundant vitality before coming into contact with the Snake God.

In the third mural, a massive serpentine monster emerged from the shadows and coiled its body around the sacrifice layer upon layer.

—This was the assimilation process.

After appearing, the Snake God would cover the sacrifice with its own cursed energy, depriving and infiltrating it on the level of life itself.

In the fourth mural, the monster opened its enormous mouth and swallowed the indistinct sacrifice whole, while horns began growing from its head.

—Devour the sacrifice, and the ritual would be declared complete.

Through this, the Snake God fused and assimilated, absorbing centuries of faith and devouring fresh life to complete the ultimate leap in power.

Lu Ping's gaze lingered on the third mural as he rapidly worked through the possibility of altering the ritual.

If he wanted to break this deadlock, the only opening lay in the third step.

If, when the Snake God attempted to assimilate the sacrifice, some being could resist that assimilation in reverse and even turn the tables, devouring the weakened Snake God itself while assuming the role of the sacrifice, then the entire descent ritual would collapse at once!

At present, one head of the two-headed Snake God remained asleep, while the other had fallen into extreme weakness after forcibly deploying its domain.

This plan was entirely feasible.

Lu Ping lowered his head and glanced at the ground beneath his feet.

Under his control, that mass of pitch-black shadow was boiling restlessly.

He needed a sacrifice capable of accomplishing this feat in place of a human.

He thought of the shikigami that had recently begun stirring within his [Ten Shadows Technique]—the [Great Serpent].

According to ancient records, shikigami were spirits and deities not belonging to the Living World, commanded by sorcerers, their origins traceable to ancient Onmyodo.

Only a small number of sorcerers could summon them through cursed talismans or specific techniques, then bring them under their command through cruel subjugation rituals.

Ordinary people who were not sorcerers could not glimpse the true forms of these spirits and deities at all.

There could be no more suitable sacrifice than this shikigami, which possessed immense cursed energy, to replace an ordinary human.

Whether it was the terrifying energy contained within it, its status as a spirit deity not belonging to the Living World, or its innate resonance with the Snake God as beings sharing the same serpentine origin, all of it was enough to bypass the barrier's judgment and qualify it as the highest-quality sacrifice.

The only thing still missing was the curse mark carved onto the sacrifice's body.

Lu Ping emptied his mind and pushed the cursed energy within him to its limit.

Under the terrifying enhancement of the [Three Corpses], his dynamic vision and memory reached inhuman precision.

He stared at the curse mark lines on the mural and slowly raised his right hand.

A faint black glow wound around his fingertips as he traced those complex, twisted patterns through the air.

Once. The lines shifted slightly off course, and he immediately erased them.

Twice. The framework of the curse mark had taken shape, but the cursed energy output at the nodes was still somewhat awkward.

Three times. The black glow left a perfect trail in the air, every turn identical to the ancient totem on the mural.

He had learned it.

At that moment, the [Twin-Snake Egg] behind him began to shake violently.

Huge cracks spread across its stone shell as dark green slime surged wildly from the gaps.

The sleeping head was about to cross the boundary between life and death and awaken completely.

Qian Chun, standing at the edge, felt her heart tighten.

The blood in her palms had begun to faintly boil, and she was ready at any moment to rush down and forcibly pull the young man standing at the center of danger back.

But Lu Ping showed no sign of retreat, racing against every second.

He understood very well that the reason sacrifices had to be isolated from the crowd, aside from accumulating fear, was more importantly to preserve the absolute purity of the cursed energy within them.

Once a shikigami completed its master-recognition ritual, the sorcerer's cursed energy would continuously flow into the shikigami and strengthen it.

Though this could greatly enhance the shikigami's combat power, that cursed energy, mixed with the auras of two beings, would lose its qualification as a pure sacrifice.

Therefore, using the unsubjugated shikigami [Great Serpent] as the sacrifice was perfect!