Chapter 50: The Sacrificial Rite

“You should go. If you don’t leave now, you’ll be in danger.”

The middle-aged man quickly calmed himself and spoke to the short-haired girl in a low voice.

“You haven’t gone to the sacrificial rites these past few years. You’ve only been using specially refined flesh and blood to deal with the hunger in your hair. There are some problems with doing that, but it isn’t too serious.

“But you just exposed Lord Sacrificial Spirit’s sacred hair in front of your sister. That is a serious problem. All these years, in order not to affect children of the right age when they go to worship it, Lord Sacrificial Spirit has always kept those strands hidden.”

“What you just did must have already been sensed by it through the hair on my body. Leave before it gets here. Hurry.”

“Dad, are you planning to spend the rest of your life using the flesh and blood of your own body as offerings, just to trade for a slim chance of survival?”

The girl lifted her head, her eyes bright as she looked at her father.

“As an ordinary person who has trouble even staying alive, what else can I do? Being able to live safely for thirty or forty years is already enough to be satisfied with.

“I won’t stop you from doing whatever you want anymore. Take care of yourself.”

The middle-aged man wiped his face hard and spoke weakly.

The girl pressed her lips together, nodded in silence, then turned and left.

Outside the door, the middle-aged woman held a bag of that Angong Pill flesh and blood in her hand, looking at the girl with a worried, reluctant expression.

“Little Ni…”

After the girl took the flesh and blood, the middle-aged woman’s withered, bony hand slowly reached toward her. But she was afraid the girl would be repulsed by her body, polluted and occupied by those strands of hair, and in the end, her hand stopped not far from the girl’s cheek.

“Mother, take care. I’m leaving.” The girl gripped her mother’s arm and pressed it firmly against her own cheek. A cold, tingling numbness spread across the skin of her face.

Then, taking the Little Paper Man with her, she quickly ran out of the village.

Before long, the person and the Paper Figure returned once more to the girl’s stone cave base.

Inside the stone cave, the girl sat quietly before the stone table, no one knowing what she was thinking.

Lu Yuan looked at the dazed girl and sighed inwardly.

The choices made by the girl and her father could not really be called right or wrong.

By worshiping the sacrificial spirit, one chose an inevitable, slow death. By refusing the sacrificial spirit, as an ordinary person in the wilderness, there was a very high chance one would be killed by demonic beasts or weird entities. The possibility of living out one’s life in peace was extremely small.

Perhaps neither of them was wrong. The fault lay in the fact that they were too weak.

This also made Lu Yuan even more cautious about the development of the cave abode. If the cave abode became like this ordinary village, reduced to the vassal of cultivators or weird entities, restricted at every turn, and forced to let them suck blood from his own body, that would truly be a fate worse than death.

As he was thinking, the Little Paper Man suddenly smelled a familiar fishy stench. Its little hand stretched longer and tugged at the girl’s sleeve.

“Something is coming.” It quickly wrote on its own body.

It had just finished writing when great masses of black-red hair suddenly burrowed in through the cave entrance. They poured in endlessly, each strand rushing ahead of the others, and soon filled half the stone cave.

The girl roared. The markings on her body lit up, her muscles swelled, and her two palms turned into two enormous blades, cutting down all the hair around her.

But the black-red hair was not afraid in the slightest. It surged around the short-haired girl, wanting to drill into her through every orifice, every pore, and occupy her body.

The severed strands that had fallen to the ground bounced lightly on the floor, like earthworms split into two sections, their vitality astonishingly strong.

There was simply too much hair. The girl gradually exhausted her strength, and the movements of her hand-blades grew slower and slower.

Seeing this, the Little Paper Man beside her stretched its body countless times longer, and its small hands kept expanding. Like giant palms that could prop up the sky, they scooped up all the black-red hair in one sweep.

Countless strands of hair struggled desperately in the Little Paper Man’s palm. The Little Paper Man inhaled hard, and wisps of black-red aura came from the hair, seeping into the Little Paper Man’s body.

Lu Yuan could sense that the blush on both sides of the Little Paper Man’s cheeks had become even brighter.

Only after it was full did the Little Paper Man release its palm. Countless black-red strands of hair lay dying on the ground.

The Little Paper Man’s actions also enraged the remaining black-red hair. The strands pulled taut, shooting out like sharp arrows. They pierced through the Little Paper Man’s body, leaving behind countless tiny, densely packed holes.

The Little Paper Man paid them no mind at all. It continued scooping up the black-red hair beside it, absorbing the aura contained within the strands.

Its pierced body also recovered rapidly. In an instant, the countless little holes were restored to how they had been.

The hair seemed to possess intelligence. Seeing that piercing was ineffective, it immediately changed its method of attack. Countless strands wrapped around the Little Paper Man and bound it from head to toe without leaving a single gap, then tightened continuously, trying to strangle the Little Paper Man to death outright.

The black leaf on the Little Paper Man’s face fell away, revealing the vivid, obvious blush on both cheeks.

It seemed a little embarrassed and angry. A cold, eerie aura erupted from its body, freezing the black-red hair wrapped around it. The strands turned gray-white, crumbled into fine ash, and dropped to the ground in a thick layer.

It gave the thick ash a gentle blow, and the ash directly melted away in front of the Little Paper Man. Then it picked up the black leaf from the ground and covered its face again.

“Senior, thank you very much for saving my life.” Having narrowly escaped death, the short-haired girl was still shaken. She bowed to the Little Paper Man in thanks.

“Senior, since your strength is so great, I have a presumptuous request. Could I invite you to enter the village with me the day after tomorrow and observe the sacrificial rite?

“Whatever you need, as long as it is within my ability, I will definitely satisfy you.”

“Going there would not be impossible. It is just that I do not need you to do anything. The reason I am going is purely curiosity.

“You also do not need to hold any idea of using me to deal with that sacrificial spirit. I am merely passing through.”

The Little Paper Man swiftly wrote on its own body.

Inside the village ancestral hall, a demonic beast stripped of skin and bone was placed on the large table in the center. Its fresh, tender flesh and blood gave off a strange smell.

Behind the ancestral hall was another room, blocked off by a dark-red curtain. Under the stimulus of the demonic beast’s flesh and blood, waves of movement came from inside, as though something were restlessly swimming around in every direction.

The village chief was a withered old man who looked to be around fifty or sixty. In the village, he was one of the rare long-lived ones. At this moment, he was kneeling on the ground, muttering words under his breath. A huge sac pressed down from the back of his neck, making even lifting his head extremely difficult.

Outside the ancestral hall, more than twenty boys and girls were dressed in ceremonial clothes. Their hair had been combed and washed until it shone black and glossy. Each of them held a clump of black-red hair from some unknown source.

“Dad, I’m a little scared…”

The little girl, Nannan, looked at the dark-red room behind the ancestral hall and felt the waves of restless stirring coming from her own hair. Thinking of the terrifying sight she had seen on her father’s back two days ago, her heart filled with fear.

“Don’t be afraid. Dad is here. Dad will protect you.”

The middle-aged man gently patted the little girl’s shoulder and spoke in a low voice.

“Nan, don’t worry. Dad’s appearance looks ugly, but actually, it’s nothing. After you go in later, you’ll be able to come out very quickly. And there won’t be any pain during the whole process. You only need to follow the village chief’s instructions.”

He comforted the little girl.

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