Chapter 347: Chapter 311: Human Sacrifice

When Sang Que woke up, Qiao Ling also opened her eyes suddenly, but Xia Chan, sleeping in the middle, was still lost in a beautiful dream.

The night was very silent, and some footsteps could be heard outside. Sang Que and Qiao Ling exchanged a glance, and Sang Que signaled Qiao Ling to stay while she went out to have a look.

In the village, twenty young men with black headscarves, led by a man who clearly looked different from them and wore a silver earring on his right ear, quietly infiltrated the village.

The man with the earring quickly gathered some stones and set up a strange stone tower at the village entrance. He picked up a stone and drew runes on it with his own blood, placing it at the top of the stone tower. He then untied the water pouch from his waist, pouring the strange blood-like liquid around the tower while chanting an eerie tune.

A sinister wind arose around the stone tower, swirling fallen leaves into the air.

The wind grew stronger, dark clouds rolled in and quickly covered the moon, forming thick rain clouds that completely shrouded the village in darkness.

“Hurry up, remember to twist their necks, don’t cause bleeding, then move all the corpses here.”

The man with the earring whispered, and the twenty Qianshou Soldiers nodded and swiftly dispersed.

“Hey!”

Suddenly, a clear shout came from above. Instinctively, everyone looked up. Out of nowhere, strands of grass rope appeared, instantly strangling the necks of the twenty Qianshou Soldiers, hanging them from nearby trees, their legs kicking in struggle.

The man with the earring was cautious and did not look up, thus not triggering the suicide rope’s rule. But before he could ask who approached, he was suddenly overshadowed from behind.

The man’s heart skipped a beat, and he turned to face the beautiful face of the Red Ghost.

The Red Ghost grabbed the man’s neck. As the man opened his mouth, a finger-thick red venomous snake shot out, biting the Red Ghost on the neck.

If the Red Ghost were alive, the snake’s venom would be fatal, but as a zombie, the Red Ghost had no fear of snake venom.

Crack!

The Red Ghost exerted force, snapping the neck of the man who had just ordered others to twist the villagers’ necks.

The Red Ghost released his grip, and the man fell to the ground, a small black snake slipping out from under his clothes and darting into the grass.

Whoosh!

A short arrow shot out like lightning, the arrowhead of the Ten Victory Stone piercing the snake’s head. The small snake immediately dissolved into black smoke, vanishing in the air.

Sang Que stood beside the Red Ghost, leisurely putting away her hand crossbow.

The man’s body on the ground rapidly withered and aged, and the twenty Qianshou Soldiers hanging on the trees also lost their breath.

Using her Ghost Eye, Sang Que looked at the withered corpse on the ground and quickly pieced together the story.

Nearly eight thousand Qianshou Soldiers had already reached the outskirts of Sancha River Pass, but the pass had ten thousand garrison troops. The fortress faced the river on three sides; normally, it was only crossable at noon.

However, if the Qianshou Soldiers were still on the river, they would become targets for the garrison troops on the walls.

So they had enlisted a Ghost Witch from Yunzhou to perform a ritual to the Water Ghost, intending to use the Water Ghost’s power to breach Sancha River Pass.

This type of ritual had been abolished at the beginning of the Xuan Dynasty, with no records left anywhere, except the Ghost Witches of the Yunzhou Tribe still held the key knowledge.

The Ghost Witch set up a grand altar, promised the Water Ghost, and at the agreed time and place, offered human sacrifices to the Water Ghost.

Sang Que remembered that during the late primitive and slave society periods, the dynasty’s witches would slaughter living people as sacrifices to the gods or nature. These sacrifices were the human offerings.

As early as the Eastern Zhou period in Huaxia, this system was gradually abolished.

Tonight, Sang Que prevented only this scout team; other teams had infiltrated upstream of the Three Rivers, slaughtering villagers to gather human offerings.

They would twist these people’s necks, kill them, paint the totems of human sacrifice on their faces, then bleed them and throw them into the river.

If the timing wasn’t too far off, around three or four in the morning, the Water Ghost would receive the sacrifices outside Sancha River Pass and release Ghost Slaves to attack.

Even after such a ritual, the cost to pay afterward would be enormous.

Sang Que continued to use her Ghost Eye to trace further back, wanting to see what this ’Ghost Witch’ looked like.

Just as she glimpsed a hunched figure, the scene abruptly turned into a mass of various insects crawling together on a rotting corpse, making her scalp tingle, followed by a sensation of countless bugs crawling in her mind, devouring her brain.

It was an illusion, capable of causing great mental damage.

But Sang Que wasn’t afraid. Her eyes abruptly turned crimson, staring angrily at the insect-covered scene.

The Yin Child is the Holy Daughter of Yunzhou, and anyone attempting to harm her with Gu Technique would be met with backlash.

With a scream echoing through the night, deep within the Qianshou Army’s camp a hundred miles away.

The guards heard the sound and rushed in, seeing the Ghost Witch’s Gu jar burst open, inside a pile of dead insects, while the Ghost Witch curled up on the ground, her eyes weeping blood, continuously kowtowing in the direction of Sancha River Pass.

“Holy Daughter, forgive me. Please, Holy Daughter, forgive my sins…”

In the small village, Sang Que closed her eyes, calming herself for a moment.

Her interference here wouldn’t change the events of tonight; they were inclined to gather more than enough human offerings.

Sang Que put the bodies on the ground and those in the trees, along with the Red Ghost, into a painting, and quietly returned to their house, informing Qiao Ling of the situation outside.

After listening, Qiao Ling asked Sang Que, “Should we inform the commander at Sancha River Pass? If the Water Ghost appears, both sides will fight, and in the end, it’s the civilians who die. If we can stop the Water Ghost from breaching, Sancha River Pass can be preserved, allowing more people to survive.”

Sang Que sighed, “Even if they survive for now, without solving the fundamental problem, this battle will happen eventually.”

“So how can we solve the problem fundamentally?” Qiao Ling asked softly.

“Peace is built on absolute strength.”

Qiao Ling fell silent.

“Pack up, take a ride with the Five Ghosts carrying the sedan, and we should make it in time.”

Sang Que decided to inform the commander at Sancha River Pass, putting the still-sleeping Xia Chan and Xuan Yu into the painting. Xia Chan, being Evil People, wouldn’t be harmed in the painting; Xuan Yu would be slowly eroded, but just one or two hours would be negligible.

Sang Que and Qiao Ling squeezed into the flower sedan, with the Red Umbrella Ghost leading the way. The flower sedan sped downstream along the river with great speed.

When they reached the confluence of the two rivers eastward, Sang Que and Qiao Ling saw a large number of bodies drifting down from the northern river channel, under the bright moonlight, staining the river red with blood, and their faces painted with blood-red paint, a shocking sight.

Sang Que stayed by the river momentarily, collecting over a hundred corpses with the Yin Child and Red Ghost into the painting, waiting for a while to see no other bodies before continuing their journey.

In less than an hour, they saw the grand city standing at the confluence of the Three Rivers, a vast open plain by the river, with an unobstructed view.

Qiao Ling retrieved a white mask representing the Nine Songs Bell Doctor from her box, “Stop outside the city; don’t force entry. With my identity, getting in won’t be difficult, just follow my lead.”

Sang Que nodded, knowing that the Nine Songs Bell Doctor was a character welcomed by all forces, especially during times of war.

The flower sedan stopped outside the city, and mask-wearing Qiao Ling exited, with Sang Que placing a mark by her eye, temporarily pretending to be Qiao Ling’s guard.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep