American variety show world begins with subduing Jason

"When we settled in the New World, those guys had already left this world. The remaining believers and priests were wiped out by the Church of Christ and the Spanish. I don't know much about that."

Serena dipped her slender little finger into the liquid in the groove, brought it to her nose, and sniffed it carefully, looking completely unfazed.

"The life force squeezed out by those who just died is all here. It's nothing more than insidious tricks like blood sacrifice. The native gods of ancient city-states are all the same."

"You're being a bit arbitrary. Please allow me to correct you." His companion's nonchalant expression stirred up Zhu Mingyao's long-forgotten memories, reminding him of the days when he was a half-baked history and folklore student, popularizing science online.

After all, for ordinary people like us, isn't learning some obscure knowledge just for showing off online?

“Primitive indigenous gods, especially ancient gods still living in the city-state era, craving blood and human sacrifice is commonplace and not surprising at all. But even among vampires, there are noble ladies like Miss Serena who are virtuous and unwilling to kill innocent people indiscriminately…”

The collaboration had been pleasant so far, and Zhu Mingyao first flattered the only listener before continuing his explanation:

"Among the Aztec gods, there was also a white lotus, Kukulkan, the feathered serpent god, who utterly detested blood sacrifices and only loved fresh flowers and fruits."

His gaze swept over the indigo axe stuck in the back of the Yaksha demon general, and he coughed lightly.

“This temple, judging from the details, should belong to Him, but the sacrificial rituals are so bloody and cruel, which is really contradictory.”

Of course it's contradictory. Every religious belief has its rules and taboos. Even in a theocratic world, the Buddha might not care if you offer him a pig's head and three sacrificial animals as sacrifices, but the monks in the temple will definitely let you know what it means to be good at Shaolin Kung Fu.

However, in a world where ghosts and gods are real and not fictional, if the sacrificial ritual is performed incorrectly, it's not as simple as just taking a few blows of the Prajna Palm and the Vajra Kick.

"Regarding your question, I think perhaps the things mentioned earlier can answer it..." Serena clearly had no interest in ancient theology. Her eyes shone brightly, and the dark vision of a high-ranking vampire seemed to have seen something. She pointed to something in the distance.

The large volcanic rock wall in front suddenly changed, replaced by neatly pieced-together silver-white steel plates, with fluorescent cold lights flashing. The surroundings were spotless, and the walls were lined with sliding automatic doors, some even with fingerprint locks.

The fantasy style suddenly turned into a science fiction style, and even though Zhu Mingyao considered himself to be well-informed, he was still quite shocked.

The vampire lady's small ears twitched slightly, catching a few short, trembling breaths. She chuckled softly, "I'm not very good at solving puzzles, but when it comes to torture... I do have some experience!"

Before the words were finished, her fair and delicate hands suddenly lashed out, easily tearing open one of the alloy doors and pulling out a figure.

Chapter 343 Feathered Serpent?

"No, don't kill me, I surrender!"

In the confined, silent space, the pig-like screams of terror sounded particularly jarring. The brown-haired man in the white coat huddled together, trembling like a leaf in the wind.

A foul-smelling, yellowish liquid trickled down his legs, leaving a wet puddle on the ground. Serena covered her nose in disgust, let go of him, and tossed him aside.

She deftly twirled a Glock in her hand, the alchemically modified muzzle gleaming with a dull, cold light, hovering half a foot above the man's head, its meaning self-evident.

"I don't want to hear nonsense. Please organize your thoughts carefully. What is this place for? Where is Santana? You have one minute!"

"I said, I said..."

Under intense coercion and with the help of vampire hypnosis, the man, tears streaming down his face, confessed everything at an unprecedented speed.

"You're actually working for the federal intelligence agency? Using large numbers of illegal immigrants as data to help these Nosferatu establish research bases?"

Serena was slightly taken aback when she heard the researcher, who called himself Tim, introduce himself.

Although the Night Clan also has deep cooperation with human elites, it is mostly in the realm of wealth and power, at most with the opportunity to become a vampire as a bargaining chip. They have long abandoned the barbaric style of hunting for pleasure at will, and such bloody slaughter of innocents is something they have never seen before.

The brown-haired man grabbed his hair in indignation and corrected him in heavily accented Latin English:

"To be precise, we were just recruiting...scamming outsourced employees from the local area. I swear to God, if I had known I would be dealing with these cannibalistic monsters, I would have preferred to spend my whole life earning a meager salary in the biology department at the University of Mexico."

"That monstrous woman just drained my colleagues' blood to treat their injuries..."

"This is nothing unusual..." Zhu Mingyao didn't seem that surprised as he tore off the broken alloy door piece by piece.

"Without factions within the party, all sorts of strange things happen. The federal government has always issued orders from multiple sources. If the Bureau of Investigation and a few other agencies still have some dignity, then the CIA's 'reputation' truly resounds from Ireland to the Khitan. Colluding with a group of dark creatures is just routine for them."

He casually tossed out a sentence and stepped into the laboratory-like room without looking back.

"Mexico is, in particular, the intelligence agency’s territory. From gangsters to drug lords, anyone who makes a living in the underworld has connections with them."

Although the tavern is located in the Gobi Desert, far from any town, it's actually less than 200 kilometers from the Northern Federation border. To say they were completely unaware of this blatant operation of a black market establishment here would be to underestimate the agents' keen senses…”

Zhu Mingyao spoke fluently, as if he had expected this all along.

However, the next moment, it was as if a transparent monster jumped out of the void and bit off his next words.

A row of huge glass jars were neatly arranged in the dimly lit room, the orange-red liquid inside shimmering with an eerie light, as if containing some kind of mysterious power.

Inside each glass jar was a small body, their once vibrant skin now only a deathly white, as if time had drained all their life force.

Those innocent figures may have once been filled with laughter and joy, or had endless dreams, or longed to enter a wealthy country.

But at this moment, they could only lie quietly in the cold liquid, at the mercy of fate.

The surrounding environment was unusually quiet, with only the occasional sound of machinery breaking the stillness.

An indescribable sense of oppression permeated the surroundings, as if even the air itself had frozen.

“Yes…” Zhu Mingyao’s voice was dry and weak, as if he were sleepwalking, “The strong men among the stowaways are good materials for blood sacrifice, but what about the remaining women and children?”

The answer was quite obvious, revealed to them in an extremely cruel yet frank manner.

"The fat ones are chopped up for steamed bun filling, and the lean ones are used to fill the river..." The young man smiled gently and calmly, but it was so gentle that it was almost eerie.

"Your way of thinking is quite similar to that of your counterparts in the classical era."

"It has nothing to do with me! It has nothing to do with me..." The chilling gaze, like the river water in the dead of winter, pierced the man's heart with sharp icicles. His heart clenched suddenly, and he cried out in terror.

"The monsters are the masterminds. They use evil witchcraft to destroy the children's will, extract the adrenaline produced under extreme fear, and then hand it over to the Federation as protection money in exchange for cover-ups. My colleagues and I were just responsible for operating the machines..."

"What's the use of that thing?" Serena asked in a deep voice. Despite being an outsider, she had always adhered to aristocratic manners, and the scene before her made her feel instinctively disgusted.

Zhu Mingyao let out a sigh of relief and adjusted his mood. "It's a special hormone that children secrete when they are in extreme fear. It can enhance physical fitness and delay aging. In recent years, some evil alchemists have used it to concoct youth potions. It is also a forbidden substance among superhumans."

He had overheard Madison and the others talking about the witches, who were experts in the field.

The production process of this stuff is so despicable, and its effects are so poor. To accumulate enough for a single dose, who knows how many people it would harm. Once discovered, they would definitely be branded as heretics, and at the very least, the church and the demon hunters would absolutely not let them off the hook.

The cost-effectiveness was so low that even cultists were unwilling to touch it. Unexpectedly, a production site was hidden here.

As for where the extracted hormones go, he could guess with his eyes closed.

In their pursuit of longevity, those at the very top of the pyramid dare to violate all worldly laws and morals, and the fact that they can carry out their dirty work overseas already shows a lingering sense of fear.

Suppressing his anger, Zhu Mingyao asked about the purpose of this trip: "You just said that besides extracting hormones, what else did Santana ask you to research?"

"It's...it's a snake, a winged snake," the man replied, trembling.

Despite his life being in someone else's hands, a hint of untimely longing still shone in his eyes.

"...Its beauty...is almost divine."

……

……

Indigo lightning flashed in the air as a domineering, unstoppable axe swept across the sky, tearing through the solid rock wall with an aura that could shatter the heavens and cleave mountains.

A tall, dark golden figure rushed forward, carving a path through the sparks that flew from the scraped steel plates and rocks.

"Do you think that could be Quetzalcoatl?" Sensing that the target was getting closer and closer, and seemingly giving up on fleeing, Serena began to take out various pieces of equipment, preparing for battle.

Slowly communicating with the Three Yuan Palace, hoping to recover some of their fighting strength before the battle, Zhu Mingyao shook his head and said firmly.

"I'm absolutely certain it's not! As for what it is, the mystery will be revealed soon."

He was speaking halfway through when his tone suddenly turned sharp.

The vermilion talisman flickered in the air and transformed into a blazing fire dragon, flying towards the spacious stone hall ahead!

Chapter 344 The True and False Snake God

The woman was restless and paced rapidly, her white teeth grinding together. Her beautiful face was filled with a dilemma, so much so that she didn't even notice when the glass medicine box in her hand was crushed into pieces.

In the somber gloom before her, a large, circular stone platform could be vaguely seen, upon which a tall, winding shadow sat.

A rumbling sound, like thunder, came from afar, echoing clearly in the confined space.

The sound grew closer, and a fierce killing intent had been firmly entrenched behind them since the beginning. After the strongest method launched by the ancient sacrificial ritual of the temple was broken, the remaining tricks in the lair were not even able to hinder a true master.

In this perilous situation, fleeing immediately would be the most sensible choice, but she had compelling reasons not to simply escape...

She glanced at the "treasure" or "food" that her family had guarded for over a century.

There's no time left...

With a formidable foe arriving in an instant, Santa Nicole forced herself to calm down. After all, she was an alien demon who had weathered a century of storms and snow, and she immediately cast aside her hesitation and made her choice.

Each capsule and pill gleamed with a brilliant golden-red light through the gaps between the fingers, as if holding a handful of stars in the palm of one's hand.

“…The immortal blood hidden within…I hope it will not disappoint my long-held expectations!” Santa Nico murmured to herself, her obsidian eyes reflecting wisps of light rising from her hands and slowly drifting toward the stone platform.

……

……

Flames shot through the sky like ribbons, and scorching heat waves surged and rolled, the rapidly increasing temperature distorting the surrounding air.

A fiery red light pierced the darkness, illuminating the phosphorescent brick walls, the patches of moss, the hollow, towering grotto, and... the overwhelming swarm of brightly colored little snakes!

Ochre red, azure blue, and sapphire blue were crushed into fragments, outlining mysterious fine lines on the silvery-white body, wriggling and entwining as it floated in the air, like a wave that had come to life.

Unlike the high-temperature exothermic reaction produced by ordinary oxidation, the only accelerant required by the Xuanmen True Fire is the spiritual power of the caster. As long as there is a sufficient energy source, theoretically, no matter how many carbon-based organisms' bodies there are, they will only be easily turned into a handful of ashes.

However, anyone with even a basic scientific education can see that this strange swarm of snakes clearly exceeds the definition of "common sense."

—In any case, no reptile in nature grows a pair of bird-like feathered wings.

In the instant the two sides clashed, the dazzling flames rapidly shrank, as if swallowed by something unknown, and were submerged in the serpentine waves in the blink of an eye.

However, with Zhu Mingyao's current level of cultivation, even a casual divine talisman is powerful enough. Before the fierce true qi of the Li Fire was completely annihilated, it successfully dragged most of the flying snakes into nothingness.

Contrary to the expected gruesome scene of flesh and blood being burned to ashes, there was neither black smoke rising nor a foul stench wafting through the air. Instead, a clear and slightly chilly aura emerged, gently entering the senses of the two people.

It was the cool breeze of the air currents, the gentle and nourishing rain, and the scent of the clear wind and rain from the high heavens.

"Well?"

It seems to be slightly different from what was initially guessed...

A thought crossed Zhu Mingyao's mind, but he suppressed it for the time being.

When things come to a head, even if the King of Heaven himself is here, we have to fight first and talk later!

A burst of blue-green lightning erupted between his five fingers, wiping out the remaining swarm of snakes in one fell swoop. The Five Thunder Curse, still unabated, condensed into a long chisel and plunged fiercely into the blurry figure in the distance!