Chapter 342 The Ritual Is Over... Forever

Tangerine flames flickered and rose through the drifting mist behind him, leaving a faint, burnt scent in the slightly warm air.

Xia Nan walked alone through the Canyon. His backpack was already stuffed full of the fog lamp grass needed to complete his gathering task.

With the deaths of the Fog Lamp Monster and the druid, the mist permeating the Canyon had thinned significantly. Perhaps it was just psychological, but even the oppressive atmosphere of this sunless "forbidden ground" seemed to have lifted.

He didn't bother hiding his presence, letting his footsteps ring out freely.

As the heavy, dark oak gates of the Canyon came into view, Dongshu and Lillie—waiting quietly near the entrance just as he had instructed—looked over.

Seeing it was Xia Nan, the two visibly breathed a sigh of relief.

His gaze sweeping over them, Xia Nan asked casually, "How is it? Any danger nearby?"

"No, no, it's very safe here." Dongshu shook his head repeatedly, his attitude grateful and respectful. "I just don't know why the surrounding mist has thinned out so much, though you've probably noticed already."

Xia Nan gave a slight nod and turned to Lillie, who was looking right back at him.

"What about you? Any adverse physical reactions?" he asked.

Xia Nan rarely used the "Lesser Healing" spell from the [Tears of Spring Breath] pendant, so he wasn't entirely clear on the specific healing effects of this 1st Circle Spell.

He had been in a rush earlier and hadn't had time to check carefully. Now that he had the chance, he needed to confirm her condition.

"None at all, Mr. Xia Nan." Hearing his question, the young girl raised her previously injured arm and rotated it, showing she had completely recovered. "It didn't even leave a scar. Thank you so much for treating me!"

Perhaps noticing the light green plant sap on Xia Nan's clothes that hadn't been there when they separated earlier, Dongshu hesitated. Then, lowering his voice and adopting an especially cautious posture, he stammered out a question.

"Mr. Xia Nan, did you—"

Catching the boy's gaze, Xia Nan pretty much knew what he was thinking.

This simple, honest youth was probably still torn over the conflict between his sweetheart and the sacrificial ritual.

Without trying to hide anything, Xia Nan straightforwardly recounted the records he had read in the experiment logs and his subsequent encounter in the hidden room's garden.

The sacrificial ritual might have had some use in the very beginning, back before that druid entered his prolonged slumber.

After all, to ensure his experiments went smoothly, the man genuinely had helped the villagers drive away monsters and bring about bountiful harvests.

But later on, as the intervals between the druid's waking periods grew longer and longer, those so-called "sacrifices" simply became tools for the village chief to maintain his own rule and authority.

"The village chief—but Aspen—" Dongshu's eyes widened, his face full of disbelief.

"No—that's impossible, how could it be—" With the worldview he had been indoctrinated with since childhood completely overturned, he subconsciously muttered in denial.

But as Xia Nan explained what he had found in the logs, even pulling the diary left by the druid out of his backpack...

The youth's body began to tremble.

It wasn't out of fear, but from the fury boiling in his heart.

"So there was never any need... to hold this sacrificial ritual?"

"So back then, Aspen's daughter actually didn't need to—"

"So he chose Lillie as a sacrifice not for the continuation of the village at all, but purely for himself?"

"Is that right, Mr. Xia Nan?"

He clenched his fists so tightly that the skin over his knuckles turned faintly white. He was trembling, exerting so much force that the twitching, bulging muscles and veins beneath his forearms were visible.

Dongshu ground his teeth, the anger in his eyes almost condensing into something physical.

Xia Nan had no doubt that if the old village chief were standing here right now, the youth would unleash his fury upon the man without holding anything back.

At the same time, Lillie, standing on the other side, had a completely different reaction.

As the "sacrifice" for this sacrificial ritual, if Xia Nan hadn't appeared, she and her sweetheart would likely already be dead under the Fog Lamp Monster's attacks.

She ought to feel furious and resentful.

But right now, compared to the highly emotional Dongshu, the young girl seemed exceptionally silent.

It was difficult to describe the expression on her face.

She had shouldered the heavy burden of allowing the village to continue, fully prepared to sacrifice herself.

Only to find out in the end that it was nothing more than a complete and utter lie.

Including her own, the countless young lives previously lost to this cause were completely meaningless.

The girl didn't say a word. Within her hollow, lifeless eyes lay an indescribable sorrow and desolation.

Xia Nan stood quietly to the side, carefully observing their reactions.

He could naturally understand Dongshu's intense reaction, just as he could see the violent emotional turbulence hidden beneath Lillie's seemingly silent exterior.

He even felt the two of them were being extremely restrained.

If he were in their shoes—the village chief's head would have probably already bought a ticket and been ready for takeoff.

But regardless, the fact that he was standing here now meant the lie deceiving the villagers had already been punctured, and he had completely cleared out the potential threats inside the Canyon.

From now on, the sacrificial ritual, steeped in blood and tears, would cease to exist.

He didn't say anything more, leaving the two of them plenty of time to digest the truth. He figured he would tell them the detailed history of the sacrificial ritual once the cleanup work was thoroughly finished.

Xia Nan examined the towering wooden gates ahead, wondering how he was going to get these two to the other side later.

Just as the area fell into silence, an unusual sound suddenly came from the other side of the heavy wooden gates.

"Clack—"

It was the crisp sound of metal chains rubbing and colliding against the door bolt.

Xia Nan's heart stirred, and in the next second, he had Dongshu and Lillie stand behind him.

Sure enough, just as he had expected.

The gates, which shouldn't have been opened until the day after the ritual ended, slowly pulled open a crack amidst a grating noise.

Non-blinding sunlight seeped into the Canyon through the gradually widening gap, allowing Xia Nan to see the scene behind the gates clearly.

The villagers who had left earlier were now standing quietly at the Canyon's entrance, led by the village chief and Aspen.

They might be ignorant, but they weren't stupid.

Dongshu, who was close to Lillie and had practically grown up with her, had suddenly disappeared on the day of the ritual;

And Xia Nan, the adventurer who had rejected the banquet invitation, aimed for the fog lamp grass in the Canyon, and was supposed to enter it the next day under the villagers' guidance, yet vanished right after the ritual ended.

With all these factors added together, one could easily guess where the two had gone.

They just hadn't expected it to be such a coincidence. Before they could even search and confirm, the moment the wooden gates opened, the figures of Xia Nan's group appeared right before everyone's eyes.

And when the gazes from outside the gates swept past Xia Nan and Dongshu in silence, landing on Lillie—

Panic and terror instantly erupted among the crowd.

"Lillie... how, how is she still alive?!"

"That adventurer—we shouldn't have allowed him into the village!"

"Damn it, that bold and reckless Dongshu must have hindered the ritual's progress! Punishment! We must punish him in the harshest way possible!"

"Oh, great and merciful Spirit of the Canyon—please forgive the disrespect of your humble servants—"

"There's still time! Quickly, tie Lillie up and send her in, before the sun goes down!"

Taking in the villagers' reactions, Xia Nan hadn't even had time to speak before Dongshu—who had been suppressing his emotions ever since learning the truth—suddenly jumped out from behind him.

Waving his fists forcefully at the deceived villagers ahead, he loudly revealed the truth: "No! It's not like that!"

"The sacrificial ritual is entirely the village chief's lie! The Spirit of the Canyon doesn't exist at all; there's only a mindless monster inside!"

"Mr. Xia Nan has already killed that monster! From now on, the ritual won't be held anymore!"

Yet, bizarrely, in the face of Dongshu's explanation, though the villagers quieted down again, the gazes falling upon him were filled with suspicion and disbelief.

Before Dongshu could further explain his encounter in the Canyon, the elderly village chief standing at the very front of the crowd, his face full of fleshy wrinkles, suddenly moved.

He seemed completely unaffected, not caring in the slightest about the accusations in Dongshu's words.

His gaze passed over Dongshu and fell on Xia Nan behind him.

Piling that familiar humble smile onto his face and bowing at the waist, his clear voice spread across the entire area: "Respected and powerful Mr. Xia Nan, you are... truly unparalleled in your bravery, but I'm afraid you have misunderstood."

He opened his arms and turned to the villagers. "How could the Spirit of the Canyon's wrath be appeased just by killing one of Its servants?"

"Have you forgotten the disaster that once descended upon us?"

"The true ritual is only complete after the sacrifice steps into the holy ground and offers herself to the deity—otherwise, disaster will fall upon the heads of every single one of us in an even more terrifying way!"

"For the village, we must... complete the ritual!"

Clearly, the prestige the village chief had accumulated over the years, combined with the villagers' brainwashed dependence on the sacrificial ritual, could absolutely not be overturned by just a few simple words from Dongshu.

The suspicion in the villagers' eyes vanished in an instant after the village chief's highly inflammatory speech. It was replaced by a fanaticism and extremism driven by the uncertainty of future disasters and their own survival instincts.

"Complete the ritual!"

"Complete the ritual!"

"Complete the ritual!"

The villagers grew agitated. Countless hostile and vicious gazes were cast toward the young girl Lillie behind Xia Nan, making her subconsciously lower her head, her frail body trembling slightly.

In contrast, Xia Nan, who was standing between the two sides, appeared completely at ease.

His own formidable strength allowed him to completely ignore these bewitched and incited villagers. A mere swing of his longsword would be enough to decide the outcome of this scene.

Xia Nan didn't even know what the village chief was thinking at this moment.

Did the man think he was so kindhearted that he would be hijacked by the villagers' will into making a choice against his own wishes?

Or did he think that since he had already completed gathering the fog lamp grass, he wouldn't care whether Dongshu and Lillie lived or died, and would just allow the two innocent youths to suffer punishments that shouldn't fall upon them, or even die right in front of him?

The only somewhat wise thing was that the man hadn't incited the villagers to direct their hostility at Xia Nan. He had even proactively downplayed Xia Nan's responsibility, shifting the hatred onto Lillie and Dongshu. Of course, this didn't affect the village chief's ultimate fate in Xia Nan's mind.

He waved his hand at the shivering Lillie behind him, gesturing for her not to worry.

Xia Nan's eyes shifted slightly. By merely releasing a sliver of killing intent, his icy gaze swept over the crowd, and the emotionally agitated and increasingly noisy villagers immediately fell silent.

His gaze finally rested at the front of the crowd, on the muscular, iron-tower-like figure standing silently and solemnly just one step behind the village chief.

Stepping forward, he handed the druid's notebook to the man.

His expression complex, Aspen hesitated slightly before taking the notebook and, at Xia Nan's gesture, flipping it open.

The air in the clearing fell dead silent.

Pair after pair of eyes silently watched Xia Nan and the middle-aged hunter in front of him.

Time ticked by, second by second, minute by minute.

Aspen's brows furrowed tighter and tighter. For some reason, his page-turning quietly grew hurried, and even his fingers trembled slightly.

"druid... sacrificial ritual... sacrifices... village chief..."

Character by character, words that overturned everything he thought he knew flashed before his eyes.

Yet the only thing that surfaced in this middle-aged man's mind was that petite, long-departed figure.

"Jenny—" His voice was hoarse and trembling, his face obscured by shadows. "I'm sorry, Daddy should have held on—"

A lie, a lie that couldn't be any more ridiculous.

It made his countless nights of waking up from nightmares, his agony when choosing between the "village" and his "daughter," and the blood and tears flowing in his heart—

Seem so utterly ridiculous.

At this moment, Aspen felt as if he were plummeting into an abyss. Regret, pain, fury, sorrow—countless emotions intertwined in his heart, transforming into an indescribably complex expression.

Collapse.

His entire being froze in place.

On the other side, the village chief's gaze had been fixed dead on this hunter the moment Xia Nan handed him the notebook.

He didn't know what was recorded in the notebook.

But his surging, fluctuating heart—knowing his lie had been exposed—made him subconsciously feel guilty.

The village chief stared fixedly at Aspen's face, watching with his own eyes as that expression shifted from its initial stern solemnity to gradual shock, and finally to agony and pallor.

He seemed to realize something.

If Aspen learned the truth of what happened back then... having used the villagers and the village as leverage to force the man to send his daughter into the Canyon as a sacrifice, thereby further seizing power and establishing his authority in the village... what he would face—...

'No! I absolutely cannot lose all this!'

Panic drowned the village chief like a stream of freezing water.

"This is blasphemy!" he roared, his voice cracking. "The ritual must be completed!"

His seemingly elderly, hunched body instantly displayed an explosive power far beyond that of ordinary people, dashing rapidly in Lillie's direction.

His past experience as an adventurer allowed him to still possess decent combat power, even though he was already unbearably old.

With a mere flick and sweep of his hands, he threw aside Dongshu, who had tried to block him from the front.

But just as he drew a Short Dagger from his waist, attempting to get closer and pierce the young girl's chest with the dagger in his hand...

"Whoosh!"

The shrieking sound of tearing air rang out from behind.

Squelch—

Flesh and blood tore open.

An icy coldness, accompanied by intense agony, surged up like a tidal wave.

His gaze moved down.

What entered his vision was a bloodstained arrowhead that had pierced right through his neck from the spine.

Further back, Aspen maintained his posture of drawing a bow, having just fired the arrow. The taut bowstring was still trembling slightly from the residual force.

"Thud."

The muffled sound of a corpse crashing to the ground echoed across the clearing.

Xia Nan quietly withdrew the telekinetic gravity circulating around his fingertips.

After firing that arrow, Aspen didn't cast another glance at the corpse. He merely turned around slowly, facing the villagers who had already lost their voices in shock.

He raised the longbow in his hand—the one carved with his daughter's name—and said in a hoarse voice, "The ritual... is over."

"Forever."