I reign supreme in the Western fantasy world for eternity.

After finishing breakfast, Lilith began to seriously consider how to perform the soul search next.

A full-scale soul search? No, no, my spiritual energy reserves aren't that large yet, and if we alert the hidden dangers, Mia and I definitely won't be able to handle it. I don't want to ask Ji Tian for help right away.

After much deliberation, he told Ji Tian his decision: "Ask him normally first, and if you can't get any information out of him, then we'll try to kill him."

Ji Tian agreed with this.

Mia had already come out of the next room. Today she was wearing a drab gray outfit, with her trousers tucked into her boots, looking like a girl going out with her parents.

The three walked out along the village road.

The village was already bustling with activity in the early morning.

Smoke drifted from the chimneys of several houses. A middle-aged woman was squatting by her door, picking vegetables. When she looked up and saw them, she smiled and said, "Good morning! How did you sleep last night?"

Lilith recalled the ghostly figure that had floated there last night, and a chill ran down her spine. She forced a frightened expression onto her face.

"This is not good... To be honest, we encountered something strange last night."

The woman paused, her hand, which was picking vegetables, stopped in mid-air: "Strange thing? What strange thing?"

"Someone knocked on our door in the middle of the night. We asked who it was, but no one answered. Later, I opened the door and saw a woman in a white robe floating outside—it was terrifying!"

As Lilith spoke, she patted her chest in a gesture of respect, appearing as if she were still shaken.

"Oh, is that so..."

The woman avoided Lilith's gaze and continued picking vegetables. "The village is remote, and there are many forests nearby. Sometimes there are some... monsters that can transform into human form. Don't take it to heart. Just keep the doors and windows closed and everything will be fine."

Lilith, who had also transformed into the appearance of a human woman, felt that the other party was implying something. She stared at her for two seconds, but unfortunately, she couldn't see anything.

Most of the nearby villagers were out, so it wasn't appropriate to just start a fight.

Next, she changed her strategy and targeted people who were alone and walking on secluded paths.

At the corner of the village road, a young villager carrying a basket on his back was walking forward with his head down. The basket contained a few cabbages and a bunch of scallions.

Seeing that she had succeeded in her attack, Lilith smiled and nudged Ji Tian, ​​who had followed her over.

"Hey, Ji Tian, ​​aren't I amazing?"

"Well done."

"Of course, I'm a genius!"

Lilith crouched down, pressed her hand against the forehead of the fallen villager, closed her eyes, and quietly activated the Soul Searching Technique.

Memories unfold like a slideshow.

She saw a desolate field, with cracked soil spreading under her feet, and in the distance, the roofs of several mud houses had collapsed halfway, and the smoke from their chimneys was so thin that it was almost invisible.

That was indeed the scene during the Great Drought in the North. The villagers were emaciated and pale, too weak to even speak, and everyone was waiting for death to come.

But this memory was suddenly interrupted one day.

It's as if an invisible pair of scissors cut off the end of that memory and then pasted in a completely different one:

Since then, the fields in the village and the surrounding villages have become fertile, and the rainfall has become abundant. The crops have yielded unprecedented harvests in just a few months.

What's going on?

Lilith frowned and continued scrolling down.

She discovered something even stranger: the village and its inhabitants seemed to have no real names, referring to each other by objects such as "village chief," "hoe," and "sickle."

Moreover, there were gaps in the other party's memory, as if a part of it had been deliberately removed and then arbitrarily filled in.

Deep within her memory, Lilith discovered a recurring image:

Every month, one night, all the villagers gather on the hill behind the village, light torches, and form a circle. They watch as a masked priest performs a ritual, the offering of which is—

At that very moment, the villager on the ground twitched his eyelids and his breathing became rapid.

"Ji Tian, ​​my soul-searching seems to have malfunctioned; this villager's recovery speed is too fast!"

As they were talking, Lilith struck again with her stick, knocking him unconscious once more.

Ji Tian crouched down and reached out to check the man's pulse:

"Something is protecting the memory. Touching it will trigger a kind of stress-protective mechanism, forcibly waking the person being searched. Otherwise, with your current skill in soul searching, the other person would at least be asleep until noon."

Lilith said somewhat disappointedly:

"Then all my learning of the Soul Searching Technique was for nothing?"

"That's not necessarily true. We can just put them into a deep sleep again. Let's try another one."

Lilith quickly set her sights on another target.

This time it was an older woman squatting by the river washing clothes.

Lilith took the opportunity of helping carry the water bucket to get closer, knocked him unconscious, and quickly searched his soul.

The results were almost identical: a sudden day of favorable weather; villagers' memories being erased; real names mysteriously disappearing; and monthly sacrifices.

The third, the fourth, the fifth.

Lilith knocked five people unconscious with a club, and the results were all strikingly similar.

……

Deep within an ancient, greyish-white palace in the capital city.

"who--!"

A hoarse voice echoed through the hall, carrying suppressed anger and disbelief.

He sensed it.

Just now, one of the believers whose "mark" He had planted had his memory stirred up, and it felt like someone had pried open a box that He had locked himself.

"Who dares to harm my followers?!"

His consciousness surged forth like a tide, crossing the walls of the capital, the wilderness and the rivers, the parched plain, and heading straight for the village on the northern edge that He had "cared for" for many years.

He wanted to see clearly who was touching His pieces.

So He "looked" in that direction.

In His perception, the gray-white rooftops gradually emerged, along with the outlines of the field ridges, the smoke from cooking fires, and the figures moving in the morning light... everything was clearly visible.

But just as His gaze was about to reach the edge of the village, a pair of eyes met His.

Faster than Him, heavier than Him, colder than Him.

His consciousness collided with that gaze in mid-air, like a blunt object hitting an iron wall.

"—!"

The withered figure trembled violently, its limbs embedded in the stone wall twitched a few times, and a look of pain appeared on its shriveled face.

He tried to look away, but it was too late.

Before withdrawing his gaze, he lightly "grinded" it for a moment.

A sharp pain shot through the depths of His consciousness, as if something invisible had torn a hole in Him from within.

Dark purple light seeped from His seven orifices, slid down His cheeks, dripped onto the stone slab, and evaporated into wisps of blue smoke.

His body was tilted to one side, his shoulders heaving slightly, and it took him a long time to catch his breath.