Life Dungeon Game

Nock noted here that he took this report with his eyes closed, so the text may be a little unclear.

Although this kid is mostly reckless, his first-place ranking didn't come for nothing. He has a fairly clear understanding of the field of mysticism and knows what he can and cannot see.

Then comes the report content.

Although most of the magic circle was destroyed, FBI occult experts deduced that it was a 'linked sacrifice magic circle'.

This is a magic circle used by cultists to please the evil god they worship.

However, this kind of sacrificial ritual is different from ordinary communication rituals or sacrificial rituals. The 'believers' who preside over this kind of ritual are usually core believers who are close to the gods, or even church leaders themselves.

This type of magic circle requires the worshipper to offer certain 'special items' to gain the favor of the gods and deepen their connection with them.

Different evil gods have different requirements for special items, which are generally based on the evil god's preferences and attributes.

The author of this report did not provide specific examples, perhaps because he was unaware of the preferences of those evil gods, or perhaps because he feared that such secret knowledge might be leaked and misused by those with ulterior motives.

In short, the expert could not identify which evil god's sacrificial array it belonged to.

However, he analyzed that the magic circle was very likely activated, and most of it was destroyed. It is possible that some deviation occurred during the operation of the magic circle, causing it to collapse.

Then the report abruptly ended.

Upon seeing this, He Ao paused for a moment.

In fact, what happened next was easy to deduce. In the deepest part of the senator's villa, on the third underground floor where identity verification had to be carried out, who could safely set up a sacrificial ceremony in the underground garden where the senator often came, without being discovered?

Moreover, this sacrificial ceremony doesn't look like something that can be set up in a short time.

The answer is already there.

The senator himself was performing a ritual to a cult in his own underground garden.

but

Is it possible for a federal senator to engage in such an evil god sacrifice?

No.

Therefore, the report was not written any further, and the case became an unsolved mystery.

The gist of the matter is quite clear: the senator himself performed a ritual to a cult, but something went wrong during the ritual, leading to his accidental death.

The assassination of the senator had already caused a great sensation at the time and attracted widespread attention throughout the federal government.

Therefore, the case could not be investigated any further, and the FBI adopted a delaying tactic of giving it the cold shoulder.

People's patience is always limited. Every day, new and sensational news attracts people's attention. Once everyone forgets about this matter, the case is considered 'over'.

He Ao flipped through the case files at the back, and found that the frequency of case documents became extremely low, with a bland report appearing every one or two months.

Finally, after a year-long investigation, the case was hastily concluded with the conclusion that a cult member had assassinated a senator.

After that, the FBI never investigated the case again.

He flipped to the front of the file, had Eve create a virtual web address, and used this address to log into the FBI intranet and access the online files.

These online archives, stored on the FBI's cloud servers, also contain a large number of on-site photos and videos from that time.

He Ao flipped through the photos of the scene one by one.

The initial photos were all taken at the scene of the senator's death, and these photos were mixed with first-hand video footage from the body camera at the time.

The video begins with violent shaking, followed by FBI agents filling the entire corridor.

The scene quickly shifts to a child lying in a pool of blood, with several FBI agents attempting to rescue him.

The child appears to be Genos, who was only eight years old at the time. From the discussions among the FBI agents in the video, it seems that it was Genos who reported the incident.

On the other side of the screen, the senator's body lay sprawled on the ground, his face contorted with anger and disbelief. His eyes were wide open, bloodshot and filled with bright red veins, as if he were unwilling to die like this.

The next video is from a different perspective, and it seems to be on a timeline following the previous video.

The senator remained lying on the ground, while next to him was little Genos, covered in blood, huddled in a corner, his face filled with terror.

Young Genos was draped in a red blanket, holding water handed to him by an FBI agent, trembling all over, his eyes filled with fear and confusion.

He was placed on a stretcher and wheeled out of the scene by some FBI agents.

Meanwhile, other FBI agents were taking photos and examining the scene.

The video is short, only a few dozen seconds long, and ends quickly.

He looked at the other photos.

Perhaps because it involves evil gods, there aren't many photos of the underground garden.

However, He Ao still found what he was looking for in these few photos.

A photo taken inside an underground garden.

In the center of the photo, blood-stained flowers surround a small circular pool.

The clear pool was now stained red with blood, and among the blood-stained flowers around it, there were...

A patch of flowers was cleared, and along that cleared, a path stained with blood, carved out of the flowerbed, stretched all the way to the garden entrance.

It appears that Genos's father struggled to run out of the garden from here.

It appears that this small, round pool is the site of the 'sacrifice,' and this pool should be the same dried-up pool near the center that He Ao saw when he visited today.

Judging from the fallen flowers around the pond, a small conflict must have occurred, but it was probably short-lived and ended almost immediately.

He Ao's gaze, however, remained fixed on the pool stained with blood.

The entire pool seemed to contain nothing but blood, with some areas remaining clear and transparent where the blood hadn't stained it.

He Ao took out a life potion and stared at the milky white, translucent liquid.

If the Fountain of Youth doesn't change color when diluted, then its original liquid should also be milky white, rather than transparent like the pool in the photo.

Furthermore, if there had been a fountain of youth in the pool, the FBI agents at the scene would not have missed it.

They may not have a strong ability to sense life force, but they can still recognize such a large and extraordinary object as the Fountain of Youth right in front of them.

He put down the life-saving potion and fell into a brief moment of thought.

If it's not the Fountain of Youth, then where does the rich life force that has remained to this day come from?

He Ao looked up at Roger, who was still studying the grass roots beside him, and asked, "Roger, if the sacrificial ritual of the Church of the Goddess of Life fails, will the goddess send down some kind of monster to kill the person presiding over the ritual?"

"How could that be?" Roger looked at He Ao in surprise. "The goddess is very gentle. She usually doesn't use any bloody methods. She just sucks people dry. The whole process doesn't hurt."

He Ao: ······

He didn't know where to begin his rant.

But compared to those divine punishments that readily reduce everything to ashes, the goddess of life does seem quite 'gentle'.

He thought for a moment, then continued, "Do you know what needs to be sacrificed in the life goddess's ritual of connection and sacrifice?"

"What sacrificial ceremony?"

Roger looked up at He Ao.

······

He sighed.

He shouldn't have had any illusions about a priest who doesn't even read the holy scriptures.

He shrugged and asked, "Could you ask your senior brother for me?"

“Alright,” Roger put down the grass root in his hand, raised his bracelet to input information, and casually said, “The goddess likes all things that have life. The stronger the life force, the more it will please her. If you are going to perform a sacrificial ritual, just choose a sacrifice with strong enough life force.”

"Do you think..." He Ao glanced at the file displayed on his bracelet, pondered for a moment, and asked, "Does the Church of the Goddess of Life have core believers at the senator level?"

He Ao had expected an ambiguous result, but to his surprise, Roger firmly shook his head.

"We never develop politicians as core followers; they are the most cunning and treacherous, and will do anything for their own benefit."

Betraying the church, and often being the most indifferent to life, displeasing the goddess of life, means that developing such a core group of believers could potentially lead to being drained of their life by the goddess.

The goddess of life dislikes politicians.

Although evil gods are generally insane and chaotic, they often have relatively clear and extreme likes and dislikes.

However, most of the time, humans cannot understand their thinking.

If you don't like something, you just don't like it.

If that's the case, Genos's father was most likely not a member of the Church of the Goddess of Life, so the evil god he worshipped at the time should not have been the Goddess of Life.

He Ao's thinking once again reached a deadlock.

He snapped out of his reverie and decided to put the problem aside for the time being and see if there were any other clues.

He continued scrolling through the archives of videos and photos taken at the time.

The remaining images contain almost no useful content; most are just repetitions of previous images.

These photos appear to be from different photographers and are not entirely in chronological order.

When He Ao flipped through the pages, the scene from when the body was first discovered even began to appear.

These repetitive scenes didn't make much sense, so he quickly flipped through the photos.

This continued for about ten seconds, and after flipping through countless photos, his hand suddenly stopped.

This is a photo with a similar scene to the previous one, showing a group of people examining a body, with traces of the crime scene around them.

However, unlike the previous photos, this one is different.

On the lower left side of the photo, a small part of the back of a head is visible.

A red object can be vaguely seen under the head; it's a blanket draped over the body.

This little head belongs to Genos.

At that moment, while everyone was staring at his father's body, young Genos was also staring at his father's body.

Normally, it is quite normal for a child to gaze at their father after his death.

But He Ao had a vague feeling that something was wrong.

The old senator's expression when he died was not 'friendly'; the distorted state was beyond what an eight-year-old boy could bear.

Furthermore, Heo sensed that something was wrong with how little Genos was staring at his father's corpse.