Such Devotion

Lu Yuan woke in his cell and checked himself all over. Nothing seemed to have changed. If anything, after a good night's sleep, he felt refreshed.

He had been sleeping poorly for some time. There was no helping it. What undercover agent could sleep soundly deep in the enemy's camp? Lu Yuan wasn't that big-hearted.

He checked the system and found that his Divine Sense had indeed returned to 24. Now he could be sure that Divine Sense was probably related to his mental state, perhaps something like how alert he was. If the value fell too low, he would become very sleepy.

Thinking back to that strange bird, Lu Yuan felt a little worried. Clearly, the bird was probably closely connected to the cult.

In the end, it had discovered that he wasn't asleep. Although it had fled, if it was conscious and could speak, and told Li Tailai about it, Lu Yuan would be in danger.

That worry did not come to pass.

A little later, Zhang Cheng led the four of them into a fairly spacious room, where all the cultists were eating.

The cult's food had always made Lu Yuan frown deeply. Lu Yuan's simple belief was that an organization might still be saved even if it murdered, committed arson, and stopped at no evil. But if an organization couldn't even aspire to a decent meal, it probably was beyond hope.

The cult... had no future.

Previously, Zhang Cheng had brought meals to the cells for Lu Yuan and the other three. Now they were allowed to eat with the other cultists, a sign of trust.

But why had they suddenly started trusting us? Lu Yuan didn't quite understand, but he soon found the answer in Xu Wenbin.

The two ate at the same table, and Lu Yuan felt a little like he was eating with Zhou Xiyun. They were all around the same age.

Lu Yuan saw that Xu Wenbin still had marks on his face. The injuries Guo Huai had given him a few days ago probably hadn't healed yet. He asked with concern:

"Xu Wenbin, how are your injuries? Brother Cheng is pretty easy to talk to. How about I ask him for some medicine for you in a bit?"

Xu Wenbin looked up. To Lu Yuan's surprise, his eyes were shining. It wasn't the lively light of youth Lu Yuan had seen when they first met, but an indescribable fanaticism.

"I'm fine!" Xu Wenbin exclaimed in praise. "I've never been better!"

His voice trembled with excitement.

"Thanks to the Divine Lord's blessing, every second I spend is in paradise!"

With that, Xu Wenbin spat out the food in his mouth, dropped to his knees, and shouted:

"Holy!"

He kowtowed fiercely in the direction of the prayer hall, his forehead thudding against the cold concrete floor.

Following his lead, the other two high school students who had undergone the ceremony also knelt and did the same.

Lu Yuan froze for only a second before immediately copying them. He didn't want to be found out and beaten to death.

Their behavior stirred all kinds of envy and jealousy among the cultists around them.

"Look!" someone said. "They're so devout!"

"The Holy Descent Ceremony really does let people shed their mortal bodies and be reborn!"

"It's a pity we weren't so lucky!"

Lu Yuan lay on the floor, pretending to prostrate himself in total reverence to pass unnoticed, while inwardly he was shaken beyond measure.

He didn't know about the other two, but he knew exactly what Xu Wenbin had been like. The kid had joined the cult only to learn a move or two of spiritual magic, and a few days ago he had been beaten so badly that all he wanted was to go home.

Someone like that could never have become such a fanatical cultist in just a few days.

So the bird had caused all of this. It had probably changed Xu Wenbin's mind completely.

The thought filled Lu Yuan with belated fear. If he had let the bird burrow through his ear and into his brain, what would he be like now?

Would he have admitted outright that he was with the Internal Affairs Bureau?

Would he have forgotten his parents and his younger sister?

Would he have laid all his secrets bare?

What the fuck kind of bird was that?!

He shuddered at the thought.

After the meal, Lu Yuan and the others weren't taken back to their cells. Zhang Cheng allowed them to move around freely, though they still weren't allowed to leave the underground compound.

It seemed that after the changes brought about by the Holy Descent Ceremony, the guards were no longer wary of them.

The cult's underground base was quite large, with fairly complete living facilities. Many places showed signs of excavation. The cultists might have expanded an existing underground facility.

After going around a few corners, he could see the exit from the underground compound. A heavy iron door stood closed there.

Two cultists dressed in black guarded the door. When they saw Lu Yuan, they scolded him.

"Go back! No one leaves without a guard's permission!"

Lu Yuan explained, "I took a wrong turn."

One of the cultists nodded, his tone no longer as harsh. He pointed the way. "Go back that way. Don't come near here."

Lu Yuan nodded and left, calculating his odds of winning if he faced the two of them alone.

He had made good progress practicing his Body-Protecting Shield. By adding points beyond the limit, he could now mobilize 16 ling of True Essence. The two cultists didn't look like cultivators, so he should be able to defeat them.

But whether they had a key, where the door led, and how quickly the three powerful guards could catch up with him were all questions he needed to consider beforehand.

He had only one chance. If his escape failed, Lu Yuan didn't believe Guo Huai would remember he was still a student, take pity on him, and let him off.

Over the next while, Lu Yuan made several escape plans, but soon all of them were rendered useless.

Guo Huai gathered everyone in the prayer hall and announced the plan of action.

Before that, he delivered a denunciation of the Hua People's Cultivators' Federation on the spot to set the record straight!

"The Divine Lord is great! He took pity on the Hua People and sent a messenger to save them from destruction!"

As Guo Huai shouted, all the cultists cried out, "Holy! Holy!"

"But the dogs of the Cultivators' Federation dared to defy the Divine Lord's messenger!"

"They murdered the brothers and sisters of our Holy Church!"

"To hold on to their power, they refuse to let ordinary people cultivate!"

"They are greedy to the bone, unwilling to part with even a little medicine."

Guo Huai listed the Cultivators' Federation's crimes, and he was quite an able speaker. The cultists grew more and more worked up, shouting in unison, "Kill! Kill! Kill!"

Guo Huai pressed his hands down, signaling for everyone to quiet down for the moment. Next, he needed to lay out the whole plan of action.

"To teach the dogs of the Cultivators' Federation a lesson and show those ignorant mortals that our Holy Church will not be bullied, we will destroy what they care about most!"

"Two days from now, on June 7, comes the college entrance exam they care about most."

"We will dye this college entrance exam red with our enemies' blood and make them remember the Divine Lord's wrath forever!"

Hearing this, Lu Yuan's heart skipped a beat. So there were only two days left until the college entrance exam.

Down here, he had lost all sense of day and night and had no idea what time it was outside. He hadn't expected that a month had already slipped by while he was locked up.

Thinking of his parents and younger sister worrying about him outside, he felt a pang of pain again and again.

At the front, after rousing the cultists, Guo Huai stepped aside, and the guard Sheng Hong assigned their individual tasks.

The cult planned to plant bombs at two college entrance exam sites in Jiangzhou and detonate them during the exam. At the same time, they would attack and kill the students' parents waiting outside, coordinating attacks from inside and out to inflict heavy casualties.

The two exam sites had been carefully selected. One was Jiangzhou No. 2 High School, which had the most examinees. The other was Guanghua School, where the students came from families that were either wealthy or powerful.

The hardest part of the plan was getting the bombs into the exam sites.

After all, the Hua People maintained tight security for the college entrance exam. Not only were the exam sites repeatedly inspected beforehand, but during the exam, unauthorized people were strictly forbidden to enter.

Lu Yuan and the other three examinees were the most crucial link in the whole plan.