This time I chose Paladin

“Many people like to view works of art in the sunlight, but I prefer to see them placed in different environments.” He walked over, put one hand on the corner door that was trying to close it, slowly applied pressure, and slowly pushed it open.

"...like under the sword and in the interrogation room," he said.

He stared at the person behind the door through his sunglasses.

It was a familiar young man.

——The person who told him the information in the sun, Li Mingzhe.

The description of the passive skill has been modified. Sorry, it was not rigorous enough before.

\Daily success! //

Chapter 99: This World is Full of Fantasy

"Have you eaten?" Nie Weiyang asked.

"Should I...eat?" Li Mingzhe asked cautiously.

"?" Nie Weiyang laughed dumbly: "If you say that, how can I not let you eat?"

"Then I ate it." Li Mingzhe replied immediately.

Have you eaten? Yes.

Did you eat it? Yes.

This seemed like a provocation disguised as obedience. So, what kind of person would provoke someone like Nie Weiyang?

Fool, or he has other intentions.

Or maybe this wasn't a provocation at all, but weakness disguised as composure.

Nie Weiyang narrowed his eyes slightly and stared at Li Mingzhe silently. All emotions disappeared from his face hidden by sunglasses.

At this moment, the two were sitting in Li Mingzhe's small room.

The room was so narrow that it was obvious at a glance. There was a wooden table, stools, and a 'bed' made of some broken wooden boards, which was kept warm by hay and thin bedding. An easel tried to block the inside and outside, but it failed to hide anything.

It's like an interrogation room.

During the Dark Ages, the residential areas of human settlements had to be shrunk. When these houses were built, officials required that unnecessary space be minimized as much as possible, and it was best not to have any unnecessary corners in the rooms to prevent possible monsters from hiding in them.

Moreover, the small room is more conducive to retaining heat - even though the real 'winter' has not yet arrived, the temperature in late autumn is freezing enough to kill people.

At this moment, the room was getting colder.

Nie Weiyang stared at Li Mingzhe quietly. As he did so, he naturally released a calming pressure. Soon, beads of sweat began to form on Li Mingzhe's forehead, and his once straight back slowly bent.

But two minutes later, Li Mingzhe lowered his head.

A little cleverness, a little courage, but not much. This is a man who is as obvious as this room.

"Tell me, what did you experience after seeing that green light?" Nie Weiyang asked.

Li Mingzhe previously said that when he was up at night, he saw several people secretly performing a sacrifice, even letting blood as a sacrifice. They were surrounding a pattern that looked like a magic circle. After coming into contact with blood, it emitted a strange green light...

and then?

At the time, Li Mingzhe said he was frightened and ran away, unaware of what happened next. But this is unlikely: the Artist Market is not large, the rooms are even smaller, and the only public restroom is right next to the market stalls. In such a cramped area, there's probably not much room for "several people" to worship together. The biggest problem is that where there is space, there's no shelter, and where there is, everyone can see.

Perhaps the lack of obstructions can explain why the sacrificial scene can be seen every night, but it cannot explain why Li Mingzhe is still alive.

"In an era where killing people and hiding bodies is so easy, it would be easier for them to kill you than anything else. Unless... they have no one guarding them." Nie Weiyang said.

He sat on a stool, crossed his legs neatly, and clasped his hands on his knees.

"Is this possible?" he asked, "or is there something else that might be going on?"

The voice was sincere and gentle. Li Mingzhe's sweat dropped to the ground. The dirt floor, covered with hay and a few wooden planks, exuded a chill from the star. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

"It's not comfortable to be a watchdog for them, is it?" Nie Weiyang asked.

Li Mingzhe's whole body was stiff and numb, and the dog ears on his head drooped.

The heart tightens and the hands and feet go numb. Many people will have such reactions when a lie is exposed. He has no professional training and is not a special person, so it is natural that he will have the same reaction.

"The professional characteristics of a performer make you sensitive to sound, making you a perfect candidate to be a sound editor," said Nie Weiyang.

He patted Li Mingzhe on the shoulder.

"Look up. Aren't you very dissatisfied with those people? You brought the matter to a Paladin. Do you want him to help you out, or do you want him to remove the stumbling blocks for you?" Nie Weiyang asked. When Li Mingzhe slowly straightened up stiffly, he found that he was even smiling. "But you want to get rid of them. As long as I come here, you have already succeeded, right?"

"No! I..." Li Mingzhe subconsciously wanted to say something. But he still couldn't say it.

excuse?

theory?

struggle.

It was all just a struggle. The powerful man in front of him obviously possessed more than just martial power.

"...I just want to stop this...development." Li Mingzhe lowered his eyes, "I..."

"Look at me." Nie Weiyang said.

Li Mingzhe's eyelids moved.

"If you look away again, you'll die before them." Nie Weiyang said slowly, "Now, this is the interrogation room. If you want to answer questions under the blade, I can satisfy you."

Li Mingzhe let out a broken laugh.

"Well, you're different from those people," he said. "Not only do you not have red tape, you don't care about human social rules..."

"Correction, I care about social rules." Nie Weiyang said, "So, those who break social rules are not considered human."

……

Ten minutes later, Li Mingzhe let out a sigh of relief as if exhausted.

He confessed everything - those who performed the ceremony were his friends, and they had come into contact with these things before the blood moon rose.

"We found the book in an elite monster's lair. It was palm-sized, beautifully crafted, and looked like some kind of cultural artifact. Paper is precious, you know. There were two or three painters among us, so we picked it up and planned to split it up among us."

Li Mingzhe smiled bitterly.

“When I was a teenager, I imagined the end of the world many times. I also imagined traveling through time and space to another world or some kind of divine dimension.

"At that time, I never imagined that one day I would really travel through time and space, but I wouldn't even have a piece of paper to write music on... No, I wouldn't even have paper to wipe my butt with."

"..." Nie Weiyang's face was expressionless. "Speak to the point."

Li Mingzhe silently gave up playing the victim: "The point, oh, the point is, that book records some spells. We tried some simple spells and found..."

"I've discovered that those spells are indeed effective. You only need to sacrifice blood and some body tissue to gain powers beyond your combat profession." Nie Weiyang continued, "You are smart. Cut off your hair and nails and let these regenerative and painless tissues pay the price.

"After using those spells for a while, you began to feel dissatisfied with low-level spells and attempted to advance to mid-level and high-level powers, only to discover that mid-level spells required a higher price. Furthermore, this time, it directly specified which body parts needed to be sacrificed—you realized something was wrong and began to back off."

He tilted his head slightly and stared at Li Mingzhe.

"But they don't want to," he said. "Right?"

Li Mingzhe was covered in cold sweat. He always felt as if he was being watched by this person from beginning to end, but how could that be possible?

"You made the right choice. The intermediate-level spell 'Voice of Sacrifice' requires the sacrifice of a specific body part, while the advanced spell requires the person to provide the component." Nie Weiyang clicked his tongue and shook his head. "That's inconvenient, isn't it? What if it requires you to sacrifice a child? In this world, young boys and girls are not easy to find... Oh, who knows, maybe your friends will sacrifice you before that."

He smiled and spread his hands.

"You said, if I go out and act like I'm disappointed in you and won't come to chat with you again..."

Li Mingzhe's legs went weak and he knelt on the ground.

He knew exactly what was going to happen to him—if you talk behind someone's back, you have to be prepared for the victim to find out. What he said that day was so shocking, it was impossible for the people in that team not to have heard it. If this got out, where would he go from here?

"Save me...save me! I don't want to follow them anymore!"

Li Mingzhe's voice trembled as he knelt close to Nie Weiyang and was about to hug his legs. Nie Weiyang frowned and suddenly stood up and walked away.

"Stand up," he said. "Don't let me see you kneeling to me again."

Li Mingzhe lay on the ground, took a deep breath with trembling hands, then slowly stood up, holding on to the easel.

"They have secretly killed three people these days." He whispered, two of them were strangers, and the other was the owner of this easel, my best friend - they will not let me go, even if it is only because of my friend..."

Nie Weiyang faced the window, looking at the moonlight shining through the window frame, his arms folded, as if thinking about something.

"I've explained everything." Li Mingzhe whispered, "You..."

"What is their doctrine?" Nie Weiyang asked.

"Doctrine?" Li Mingzhe was a little confused: "What doctrine?"

He still believed that this was just a sacrifice to test magic, rather than an organized and premeditated cult spread.

Nie Weiyang didn't intend to tell him too much, and just said calmly: "It's what they often say. It's organized, has its own logic, and is short, directional, and purposeful."

Li Mingzhe tried to recall for a long time and shook his head: "No."

No?

Nie Weiyang tilted his head in disbelief.

"The Voice of Sacrifice", this is a pseudo-book.

In the New World, so-called pseudo-books are all texts bearing the name "Voice of XX," aside from the official remains of previous civilizations. Their creations have varied intentions, and their contents are equally diverse. Most are ill-intentioned, while a small number are reference books written by serious individuals, borrowing the name to promote wider dissemination.

There are three verifiable "canons" left by the official authorities of the previous civilization, namely "Voice of Hope", "Voice of Glory" and "Voice of Dawn".

These three canons, named after the three major space stations, record secret knowledge about the sky, the earth, and humans. Nie Weiyang has only read Voice of Glory, so he knows a lot about this planet, but Hope and Dawn did not appear in the previous life. They may have been taken away by the Sky-crossing Demon, or they may have just been scattered in the world and the void, and never fell into the hands of humans.

Now, "Voice of Sacrifice", this familiar name reminded Nie Weiyang of the many demonized people he had to deal with in his previous life - the essence of the spells in this book is to exchange the soul for a trace of the power of the Sky-crossing Demon, and the flesh and blood are only used to activate the magic circle to connect to the Sky-crossing Demon. After the magic circle is activated, the flesh and blood disappear, and they are just teleported to another place.

If this power is used to the end, the result will be a broken soul and becoming a demon.

This thing is not a normal spell book at all, but a guide to sky-crossing magic rituals with some procedures modified by the Return Sect!

It was a wise decision for those guys to secretly distribute their ritual guides widely. The world was so vast and dangerous, there were always going to be some people who would become addicted to this power. As long as one out of a hundred people who came into contact with it started using it, the Cult of Return would profit. Because the energy required for the ritual and the activation of the magic circle had to be paid by the user themselves, the Cult of Return was simply lending money at high interest rates, collecting the payments in a fully automated manner.

I just didn't expect that they would start doing it so early.

——Could it be that those guys printed "Voice of Sacrifice" as an illegal publication on Earth?

"That's all I know..." Li Mingzhe whispered, "Tonight, they will..."

"Don't worry."