"Altar master, it’s useless."
The blood from the believers’ buckets was splashed onto the altar, but the altar, like red-hot iron, instantly roasted the blood into a mist.
The temple was in chaos, and the altar master’s face turned pale with anxiety as he murmured repeatedly: "Why hasn’t Teacher Jing come yet..."
Under his desperate expectations, Jing Deng finally arrived, dust-covered from her travels.
She strode up to the altar master and sharply demanded: "What’s wrong with the altar?"
"Teacher Jing, you’ve arrived! Since last night, the altar’s temperature has started rising, evaporating all the blood in the Blood Pool, and the text at the base of the altar is disappearing rapidly..."
The altar master tried to explain the situation to Jing Deng. Her expression darkened like iron.
The altar was built to open the Blood Well, and now, as the time approached, the altar was breaking.
"How could the altar be destroyed?!"
Jing Deng knew the altar’s importance. She dared not delay and threw her handbag to the ground, removing her clothing and walking naked toward the altar.
"Teacher Jing... the altar’s temperature is very high."
Jing Deng was unbothered by the heat; as a Blood Well Spirit Communicator, she was immune to the harmful effects of the heat generated by the Blood Well.
She walked to the edge of the altar, held her breath, and slowly, elegantly stepped onto the altar. She moved to its center and knelt on one knee.
Her hands touched the surface of the altar, beneath which lay hundreds of skulls.
These skulls were sacrifices offered to the Blood Well when the altar was constructed.
With the sacrifices and the altar, Jing Deng had always been able to sense the Blood Well. But now, she felt no response from it.
"No response. The Blood Well isn’t responding."
Jing Deng’s heart sank into despair. Facing the unresponsive Blood Well, resentment filled her heart.
Day and night, the temple had been offering sacrifices to the Blood Well, never ceasing to entreat its favor.
But what did the Blood Well do?
It turned away, severing all connections completely.
"Respond! I beg you to respond!"
Jing Deng struck the surface of the altar with force, but it was in vain.
The Blood Well not only refused to respond but the Otherworldly Alien Ghost Text at the base of the altar had completely disappeared.
"What happened? Overnight, the Blood Well utterly left..."
Jing Deng’s eyes reddened, and tears of despair streamed down her face. Without the Otherworldly Alien Ghost Text, the altar began to crack, and the altar stone aged rapidly.
The hard stone, as if weathered by millennia of storms and rain, inexplicably developed dense, tiny pores.
"Go find the lady... tell her the Blood Well has left, and we no longer have the ability to open it."
Jing Deng rose in despair, returned to where she had removed her clothes before descending the altar, dressed herself, and left the Blood Well Temple under the altar master’s watchful eyes.
In the villa district of Jiuli Manor,
a black car stopped at the deepest end.
The car, nearly new when entering the estate, became covered in rust within thirty seconds, and the transparent glass headlights aged, forming a yellow tint.
Jing Deng encountered these strange phenomena every time she entered Jiuli Manor and had grown accustomed to them. She opened the car door and walked to the fountain, speaking to a maid cradling a cat.
"I need to see the lady."
The maid led her inside and brought Jing Deng to a small attic on the second floor.
Inside the attic were two coffins.
The maid gently closed the door and left. Jing Deng walked to the coffin on the right and, choking back sobs, said: "Lady, the Blood Well no longer responds to us."
"What of the altar?" the woman within the coffin asked.
"The altar is shattered, and all the Otherworldly Alien Ghost Texts have weathered away."
Jing Deng recounted the exact situation from the Blood Well Temple to the woman in the coffin.
"Understood. The Blood Well has found a new temple body; it no longer needs us and deliberately destroyed the altar, leaving the Blood Well Temple."
"Our altar was on the verge of gaining the ability to open the Blood Well, and it was destroyed just like that."
In the woman’s calculations, a few additional days of support from the altar would have allowed her to use human lives to open the Blood Well’s passage.
She might have needed many "human lives," but she wouldn’t hesitate.
Opening the Blood Well would allow her to return three hundred years into the past.
Three hundred years ago in Mingjiang Prefecture, the Ancient Tattoo Clan held a Heavenly God ritual. Though its aftermath was devastating, the ritual contained the vessel she needed.
But now that the Blood Well was gone and the altar shattered, returning to three hundred years ago was almost impossible, at least as far as she could imagine.
"Jing Deng, the altar was destroyed yesterday. What happened in Mingjiang Prefecture yesterday?" the woman within the coffin asked.
Jing Deng thought for a moment and replied: "Yesterday, the Suffering Scholar and the temple master were exposed and hunted by the Bone Elder Association. It’s said to involve someone named Young Master—a person quite familiar to us."
"Zhou Xuan!" Jing Deng said.
"The Zhou Family’s Nuo God who possesses the Blood Well journal?" the woman in the coffin asked.
"Yesterday’s most notable events were the downfall of the temple master and the Suffering Scholar, followed by the destruction of the Blood Well altar. These two occurrences hardly seem coincidental."
"And Zhou Xuan, involved in the Suffering Scholar and temple master’s matters, holds the Blood Well journal in his hands."
"This person is incredibly suspicious."
The woman in the coffin strongly suspected that the departure of the Blood Well and the destruction of its altar were closely tied to Zhou Xuan.
"If the Blood Well can leave for Zhou Xuan, it can also return for him. Jing Deng, find a way to capture Zhou Xuan, bring him to the altar, and force the Blood Well to repair the altar on its own."
The woman’s command left Jing Deng deeply troubled.