The Ritual

That day, after killing Sima Yi, Lin Qing had immediately absorbed his soul and gained a great deal of information. Most valuable of all was what he learned about the Spirit-Devouring Demon Child.

"Every Evil Spirit has several rituals. Each has a different effect, and one of them can reveal the rough location of the person possessed by the Spirit-Devouring Demon Child."

Lin Qing considered this as he placed the blood of five sacrificial animals on an altar table. He murmured an invocation while walking slowly around it.

"Azure spirits, silent and still; dark night, deep and heavy—"

"Blood opens the way for five beasts; livestock is offered to the netherworld—"

Before long, Lin Qing had circled three times counterclockwise and four times clockwise, taking eighty-nine steps in all. At the same moment, he finished reciting the invocation.

In that instant, Lin Qing shuddered and plunged into an Illusion Realm. The world before his eyes changed drastically. Everything he could see appeared in black and white, while clusters of eerie blue ghostfire drifted through the air. Far, far away to the east, an enormous mass of blue ghostfire blazed, staining the pitch-black night sky blue-gray.

Five breaths later, the Illusion Realm shattered, and Lin Qing returned to the real world.

"Due east, beneath Prefectural City, west of Azure Sky Tower."

Lin Qing recalled what he had seen. Beside that mass of blue ghostfire stood a tall azure building called Azure Sky Tower, formerly an inn.

He had recognized it at a glance because of its distinctive shape, as though it had been built from azure blocks.

Moreover, a few years earlier, a horrific murder had taken place inside it. Thirty-three guests had died there.

The murders had left Azure Sky Tower abandoned to this day.

"If I performed the ritual