The Saintess's Entrustment - Kill Them For Us!

Whoosh.

An eerie wind gusted past.

Wu Xiaoyou instinctively shrank her neck, hoping her collar would offer some warmth. It was useless.

She watched the Old Village Chief and Wu Wang lead the way, her expression growing complex.

The little psycho was acting strange again.

Last night, he'd threatened her with an AK. This morning, he wouldn't let anyone lay a finger on her.

It wasn't that she suspected he had mental problems; that was a long-confirmed fact.

She just felt that each of his bizarre actions held some deeper meaning, but the specifics always eluded her.

"Just a little further up, and you'll see it."

The Old Village Chief's voice was tinged with helplessness. He hadn't wanted to bring them here at all.

But they had threatened him with the lives of the entire village. They also held something he desired above all else.

It's fine. I can endure it, he thought. I've endured for two hundred years. What's a little more time?

As long as I absorb the aura of that existence and obtain the godhood of the Yin Fate Great God, these two brats will be putty in my hands.

"Cross this mountain! The world will hear your voice!" Wu Wang shouted, acting as unhinged as ever.

But his eyes grew increasingly cold.

Just as I thought. The old codger has ill intentions.

Yesterday, it had just been a guess. Now, with the Abyss God's mind-reading, it was a certainty.

The filth in the old man's heart was laid bare.

Each of the three harbored their own ulterior motives.

Before long, they reached the summit.

"Ah…"

Seeing the scene at the foot of the opposite mountain, Wu Xiaoyou clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp.

The other side of the mountain formed a basin. It was a barren, desolate wasteland, devoid of any life.

As far as the eye could see, there was only a stretch of ghastly white. A mountain of bones, a truly jarring sight.

Mixed within the pile were several corpses that had not yet fully turned to bone. The gruesome state of the bodies made Wu Xiaoyou's recently-filled stomach churn violently.

"This is as far as I go. If you want to go down, you're on your own," the Old Village Chief said coldly.

With that, he turned and headed back toward the village.

【He cannot approach this place】

【He desperately wants to leave】

Wu Wang stared at the Old Village Chief's retreating back, the mental feedback surprising him.

So, there's a place in this village the old codger can't go?

"Hey… are we really going to…"

Whoosh.

Before Wu Xiaoyou could finish, Wu Wang slid straight down the slope.

She glanced at the black, ghostly shadows flickering within the bone pile below.

Gritting her teeth, she climbed down after him.

"Strange. The decomposition rate is too slow, and the stench of decay is too fresh," Wu Wang muttered to himself. He crouched beside a corpse that hadn't fully decomposed.

"Old aunties, would you mind telling me how you died?"

Fighting back her nausea, Wu Xiaoyou approached.

To her horror, the psycho was turning over the corpse. He used a gloved finger to pick at the flesh hanging from its cheek, pried open the jaw to inspect its mouth, and even reached into the chest cavity to check the organs.

Where did he get gloves!? No, wait, what is he doing!?

His clinical, autopsy-like actions made Wu Xiaoyou's scalp tingle.

In the end, she couldn't hold it back.

"Blegh!"

A rainbow of vomit spewed from her mouth, leaving a pixelated mosaic on the ground.

"Done vomiting?" Wu Wang asked, nonchalantly stripping off his gloves and tossing them aside. "Once you're done, come ask these old aunties about their last wishes. They might be a little shy around a handsome young man like me."

Say what you will, but when it came to autopsies, he was a professional.

As a man who had read medical texts and then cut open his own chest nearly fifty times, Wu Wang's expertise was on par with most doctors.

He had noticed the abnormal decomposition rate. If there hadn't been a Yin Fate Saintess last year, then the newest corpses here were from two years ago.

Yet within this tower of skulls, more than five bodies still had flesh on them, their organs not fully decayed.

Exposed to the elements for so long, they should have been reduced to bare skeletons. Wild animals should have scattered the bones.

But they just lay here, undisturbed, in the exact positions they had landed in after being thrown down the mountain. There was no sign they had ever been moved.

【Mental Strength: 35 -> 32】

A sudden wave of dizziness washed over Wu Wang. His Mental Strength had just dropped by three points.

Looking down, he saw a black, ghostly hand gripping his wrist.

"Don't you fucking touch me!"

He shrugged it off violently, and the dizziness subsided.

Beside him, however, Wu Xiaoyou grew even paler. She shuffled to the left, then retreated a few steps, as if dodging something unseen.

"Abyss God, activate!"

Wu Wang rolled up his sleeves and stared at the Red Vertical Pupil on his arm.

A moment later, a strange red tint colored his vision. The world around him came into sharp focus.

Just like in the forest last night, countless black, ghostly shadows swarmed the area. This time, he and Wu Xiaoyou were right in the middle of them.

Perhaps because it was daytime, the spirits looked more ethereal and illusory. They lacked their previous tangible terror, possessing instead a different kind of gloom.

"Can you tell me… how you died?" Wu Xiaoyou asked, her teeth chattering. She forced back her fear and relayed Wu Wang's next question. "Do you have any unfulfilled wishes?"

She may have been able to see ghosts since she was a child, but she'd never seen over two hundred of them at once.

The fact she hadn't fainted on the spot spoke volumes about her mental fortitude.

"Thirty years ago, That One awakened us…"

"Forming a Yin Fate is the real Sacrifice…"

"It wants to descend…"

"The village chief… defiled us…"

Dense whispers echoed throughout the valley.

Wu Wang's mouth twitched as he watched his Mental Strength plummet. In just a few seconds, it had dropped from 32 to a pathetic 5.

Nightmare-level instances were truly terrifying.

A normal player would never be able to communicate with these ghosts, even if they found this valley. Every word they spoke was a psychic attack, a form of Mental Contamination.

After noticing Wu Xiaoyou was completely unaffected, he told her, "You keep chatting. I'm gonna go die for a bit."

He ducked behind a tower of skulls, took out a dagger, and stabbed himself in the brain.

His world went white, but his thoughts instantly cleared.

"Come on!" he yelled. "Let's keep talking! The worst that can happen is I die again!"

About ten minutes later, the whispers faded and finally fell silent.

Once they had finished speaking, the ghostly shadows vanished.

Pale-faced, Wu Xiaoyou walked around the tower of skulls and found Wu Wang.

"I know the whole story now," she said, her voice uncertain.

"Spill it." Wu Wang rubbed his temples, organizing his own thoughts.

He had only caught fragmented whispers, but it seemed Wu Xiaoyou had understood everything.

"They said that before the grand ritual, every Yin Fate Saintess was called to the Ancestral Hall by the village chief, and then…"

Wu Xiaoyou paused, her expression turning indignant and unnatural. She seemed to be holding something back.

After a moment, she continued, "And then they were defiled. He didn't assault them directly, but he used all sorts of unspeakable implements to torture them to the brink of death, a drawn-out execution."

"Finally, on the day of the grand ritual, their chests were cut open and their hearts removed to please the Yin Fate Great God."

"They died filled with resentment, their bodies discarded in the wilderness. They shouldn't have been able to awaken."

"But thirty years ago, a strange and powerful aura woke them."

"Their souls are still bound by the Yin Fate Great God, unable to leave this place, but they've gained a sliver of hope for escape."

"At the same time, they discovered the true purpose of Yin Fate Village."

Wu Xiaoyou took a stone from her pocket and held it out to Wu Wang.

"Every year, the Yin Fate Great God controls the body of a Saintess to form a Yin Fate with the villagers."

"The villagers who do this get a chance to make a wish."

"But they don't know the price is their own souls!"

"The Yin Fate Great God uses the extreme Resentment Qi from the Saintesses, combined with the filthy souls 'voluntarily' offered by the villagers, to accumulate power. It wants to descend completely into the mortal world!"

Wu Xiaoyou's face grew even paler.

Just now, she hadn't just heard the ghosts' account. She had seen it.

She had witnessed their torture and death. She had seen the ferocious, twisted expression on the village chief's face in the Ancestral Hall, his eyes burning with greed and desire.

She had even seen a vision of the future after the Yin Fate Great God's descent. A hell on earth, a sea of fire.

She didn't know if it was an illusion, but it all felt terrifyingly real. Even now, the memory made her tremble uncontrollably.

Calming herself slightly, she caressed the jet-black, bone-chilling stone in her hand.

She handed it to Wu Wang with solemn gravity.

"They asked me to give this to you. They said you have That One's aura on you and can fulfill their last wish."

【Memory-Washing Stone (Epic). A plot-critical item that cannot be placed in the backpack. When used, it washes away the memories of instance-related targets, including resentment, wishes, and anything else that exists due to memory.】

【Note. Formed from the unwilling heart's blood of wrongfully deceased Saintesses.】

【Kill them for us! This is our defiance!】

【Related Targets. Yin Fate Great God, Zhang Jie, Wu Xiaoyou】

【Uses. 2】

Wu Wang took the Memory-Washing Stone, his expression firm.

"That One's aura" must refer to the Abyss God, he realized.

It seemed the Abyss God's contamination had not only given the Old Village Chief hope of supplanting the Yin Fate Great God, but it had also awakened these wrongfully deceased victims.

No wonder their bodies hadn't fully decomposed.

The sacrifice still existed, so how could the suffering ever fade?

"I'll take this job," Wu Wang declared.

"The victims' defiance against a feudal sacrifice, huh?"

He smirked. "Watch closely. I'll personally shove this stone down the Yin Fate Great God's throat."

"And I'll make sure Yin Fate Village learns a lesson."

"Human blood mantou isn't so easy to swallow."