The birthing ritual of the Great Mother Goddess concluded hastily and absurdly under the stern rebuke of a certain Holy Son.
Under the direction of the Assistant Priest, Li Yu stood up with the other slaves and orderly left the sacrificial ground.
As he exited through the main gate, he glanced back at the altar, where the lofty Main Priest was muttering incantations, seemingly indifferent to everything else.
Li Yu instinctively felt that this Holy Son was different from them.
Unlike the numb sacrifices around him, unlike those gloomy priests, and even unlike himself.
He was not someone trapped here.
After leaving the sacrificial ground, Li Yu, as in previous days, departed from the group at the third intersection, and after walking seven hundred steps, he left the group for the second time, slipping into his narrow stone room.
He no longer thought about the Holy Son, as he had more important matters to attend to.
Reciting the scriptures.
Life here was simple and dull, with half the time spent reciting scriptures and half participating in rituals.
Ordinary concepts of time did not apply here, for there was neither night nor day, and in this place, wherever you were, light illuminated everything around.
Li Yu felt this was abnormal, suspecting it might be some sort of spell... but as soon as he thought of this, he dismissed the notion.
According to the scriptures, spells were forbidden, and spells did not exist.
The only power was that granted by the Great Mother Goddess.
The reason there was light here was because the Great Mother Goddess decreed there should be light.
After turning the first page, Li Yu once again attempted to make a mark in the scriptures, but as with the previous day, he failed.
In this place, aside from the people themselves, it seemed everything was indestructible.
The scriptures, the walls, the stone bed, those blood-red redwood vines, all were the same.
Seizing the opportunity while turning pages, Li Yu stealthily drew a line on the inside of his thigh, marking the passage of time.
Today, he was particularly cautious, for some reason feeling as though someone was watching him.
In the Holy Son’s large stone room.
Zhang Ze sat cross-legged on the stone bed, his hands picking at the edge of the bed, yet after much effort, he could not remove even a small piece of debris.
Just like in the stone chamber before.
As Zhang Ze picked at the earth, he communicated with Profound Identification using a secret technique to exchange information.
"You mean there’s a total of a thousand people here besides me? The number of priests and slaves is the same, five hundred each?"
[Yes, there are also five hundred priests, they take turns participating in the ceremonies]
[Moreover, the residences of the priests and slaves correspond one-to-one, after leaving the sacrificial ground, slaves go left, priests go right.]
"So what is this place supposed to be for me?"
[A separate area, located just above the priests’ living area.]
"Have you confirmed the cultivation levels of those people?"
[Confirmed, all one thousand, whether slave or priest, are Nascent Souls.]
"The slaves being used as sacrifices don’t resist?"
[Yes, they don’t seem to realize their own power, nor do they have any desire to resist.]
"Do the priests know they are part of the Wooden Fish Sect?"
[No, they think they belong to the Great Mother Goddess Cult.]
Zhang Ze scratched his head, a bit puzzled, as he had never encountered such a situation before.
One thousand Nascent Souls wouldn’t even be a concern for the Sect Leader, but for him, it seemed he truly couldn’t handle them...
This was precisely why, after being born as the Holy Son, Zhang Ze didn’t take immediate action to capture the Wooden Fish Taoist but instead used his Holy Son status to temporarily dazzle him.
Even if those five hundred Nascent Souls wouldn’t retaliate, the remaining five hundred would be more than enough for him to handle.
Moreover, this was a closed area, essentially a death trap, with nowhere to flee.
"Leaving that aside, what about the Great Moth... Mother Goddess?"
[Great Mother Goddess.]
"Right, what’s with the Great Mother Goddess’s scriptures and that slave who’s always watching me?"
[There’s something wrong with that slave. When I went to monitor him, I found he was also trying to damage things here and marking numbers on his leg.]
[Yes, exactly numbers.]
"Alright then, everyone needs a little hobby, tell me about the Great Mother Goddess."
[It’s too much to write, you see for yourself.]
A large stream of information flowed into Zhang Ze’s consciousness.
Both the Human and Barbarian Races once had periods of ritual worship, but back then, they worshipped the primordial Innate Demon Gods.
By the time of the Ten Kingdoms Chaos, the Barbarians, and the predecessors of Dragon Tiger Mountain, the Celestial Sect, and the Buddhist Sect mostly ceased idol worship.
After all, it was useless, human incense couldn’t go through that path. Rather than worship things that might have died or been fabricated, it was better to do something practical. The most update n0vels are published on n0velfire.net
Statues were more about respect and commemoration.
The Western Barbarians also broke free from worship of the Innate Demon Gods, turning instead to worship ancestors and the heavens in a conceptual sense.
As for the Demon Race, they worshipped nothing.
In the past, they devoured the heavens and the earth, following a self-centric might is right philosophy.
Nowadays, they joke around; if you give them eggs, believe or disbelieve whatever you want.
In summary, starting from Dongqi, the act of god-worshiping basically equaled being part of the Demon Sect, an exclusive of deviated Evil Cultivators.
Tricking people into becoming their blood sacrifices, or racing madly down the dead incense path.
And this Great Mother Goddess was precisely such a cult, though its emergence was curious, first appearing during the Ten Kingdoms Chaos, then disappearing, only to reappear briefly before the fall of Dongqi.