Don't disturb the sorcerer's scientific research

Chapter 180 The insidious Jia Xiu plans to smuggle something into the ceremony.

Ram pried open the door to the secret sanctuary hidden beneath the ancient castle, a place belonging to the Moon Mother Goddess Cult.

However, the scene inside the door was completely different from the sanctuary that Jia Xiu had come to know.

In Jia Xiu's view, even a small-town cult should be able to amass some wealth.

A sanctuary that no one else is allowed to approach is often the high priest's repository for sacred artifacts, and also his private treasury.

Surely this sect can't be completely without any desire to make money, and be purely driven by a "grand ideal," right?

However, no gold or silver treasures were found in the sanctuary, only an altar emitting a sinister red light, surrounded by rows of stone coffins. It was more like a strangely constructed tomb than a sanctuary.

Using a cemetery as a sanctuary, someone who didn't know better might think the Moon Mother Cult was a bunch of necromancers.

"What exactly is this place for?" Mia murmured to herself.

"The lair of evil forces, the place of bloodthirsty priests, it is Knight Bubu's responsibility to destroy this place!"

Bubu said, trying to sound calm.

Unfortunately, his cool moment only lasted two seconds.

"It looks so scary. In stories, places like this are haunted."

Jia Xiu replied helplessly, "Bubu, strictly speaking, you are also a kind of ghost. What are ghosts afraid of?"

"But if people can be afraid of people, why can't ghosts be afraid of ghosts?"

Jia Xiu was speechless for a moment.

That makes sense.

"Alright, I'll go check out what this altar is. Bubu, get ready to use Blink. If anything seems wrong, immediately take everyone away from here."

As Jia Xiu spoke, he cautiously walked toward the altar.

To be honest, this thing doesn't look like an altar. It doesn't have the kind of decorations you'd see on religious items; instead, it looks very simple and unadorned.

It's just a large stone platform, more like the base of something than an altar.

When Jia Xiu first came in, he mistook this thing for an altar because of the vampire magic it emitted and the bone carvings that he guessed were placed there by successive priests.

Those bone carvings once again demonstrated the sect's decent level of craftsmanship.

The workmanship is quite exquisite.

It is very incompatible with the style of the very "rough" table below.

Jia Xiu tried to discern the information about the platform.

Only some incomplete results were obtained.

【The Foundation of Blood and Moon (Fragmented, Legendary)】

[Function unknown]

It really is a base.

This is the first legendary-level item that Jaxiu has ever seen.

I'm not sure if it counts as a magical artifact.

I've never seen any information about genuine artifacts, so I wonder if the information section will directly state that it's an artifact.

However, even a legendary level is valuable enough.

Just like legendary-level extraordinary beings, legendary-level items have a huge gap between their upper and lower limits.

The weaker legendary items are actually only slightly better than rare items, which means they've reached the threshold of being legendary.

The powerful legendary items are said to possess the power to directly destroy a city.

Judging from the fact that we don't understand the function of this base, the effect should be pretty good.

Jia Xiu leaned closer for a closer look and saw that several lines of text were engraved on the edge of the base.

Perhaps due to the passage of time, much of the text has worn away, and in many places it is completely illegible.

Moreover, it was a script he had never seen before, and it was different from the common language, Elvish, Dwarven, and Demonic languages ​​that Jaxiu had seen so far.

Fortunately, unfamiliar characters are not a problem under the effect of the Eye of the Rune.

If it's just voice, that would be a problem; I'll just translate the text directly.

Jia Xiu struggled to make out the shapes.

"The world...the passage...descends, the last survivor...destruction...the chosen invitee...tombstone..."

What the hell.

I totally don't understand.

There are too many worn-out areas.

But judging from the few remaining words, it doesn't seem to be anything good.

According to Jia Xiu's understanding, this thing can open a channel, attract something, bring disaster to the world, and in the end, the remaining people are selected and their fate is unknown.

It sounds like a declaration of an advanced civilization invading a less advanced one.

Moreover, it seems that the narrative of the Moon Mother Goddess's descent into heaven originated from here; they are very similar.

They might recognize the language, but cult members mostly interpret the selected invitees as women.

Or perhaps the believers of that time saw a version that was still intact and that truly depicted a woman.

That makes this thing a little scary.

Set aside the worn parts for now.

What does that tombstone refer to?

There was only a stone coffin in the sanctuary; not a single tombstone was visible.

He's not an expert in this kind of thing; let the scholars in this field deal with it from now on.

Life experience taught Jia Xiu that if you don't know what something is for, it's best not to touch it, to avoid causing any big trouble.

Then the problem is coming.

How exactly does the high priest's sinister power of bestowing blessings upon people come about?

It can't really be her own power, can it?

That's impossible. If they had that kind of ability, why would they be playing tricks in this small place?

He could easily become a guest of honor in various organizations, responsible for giving ordinary soldiers super vitality, ensuring that his status is much higher than that of the cult leader in the valley town.

But why don't I see any "code" representing magic on this base?

I clearly sensed the fluctuations of vampire magic when I entered.

Just as Jia Xiu was wondering, Ram suddenly spoke.

"Boss, can you smell blood?"

"The smell of blood? Where is it?"

Jiaxiu trusted Ram's sense of smell quite a bit; it could track off a creature several kilometers away in the mountains and forests—a skill that even untrained dogs couldn't match.

“Right here, on the ground, everywhere.”

"On the ground?"

Jia Xiu looked down and saw that the ground was indeed uneven. He hadn't paid much attention to it before, thinking it was just a decorative pattern on the floor.

Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that the patterns resembled channels, converging from all directions to the central base, with numerous sarcophagi stored in the sanctuary at the other end.

The recessed areas of the texture are a dark reddish-brown color that is almost black; it is not paint, but dried blood.

So the stone coffin contained those people who were sacrificed with blood?

The Moon Mother Cult's practice of blood sacrifices is not solely for creating an atmosphere of terror and maintaining a bloody rule; it is genuinely effective.

Beside the patterns, the Eye of the Runes saw the source of the vampire's magical fluctuations.

Column after column, densely arranged "code".

The sheer density of these structures is so intense that anyone with trypophobia would likely faint at first glance.

Jia Xiu had never seen spell codes so densely packed before.

It turned out that the sides of the channel pattern were engraved with runes as if they were micro-carved. They were so small that Mia would need to use her druid microscopic vision spell to see what kind of runes they were if she didn't have the Eye of Runes.

That's why the Eye of the Runes effect wasn't triggered earlier; these runes are just too tiny to be seen unless you get close.

Jia Xiu didn't care about hygiene anymore and lay down on the ground to carefully study the runes.

The problem is that there are just too many runes. Every line and side is covered with runes. Although Jia Xiu hasn't finished looking at every piece of the temple floor yet, judging from the current situation, he estimates that the entire temple floor is covered with them.

A mega-project.

Why make it so complicated?
Even if it's a legendary item, isn't this scale a bit too exaggerated?

Jia Xiu studied it for more than ten minutes, but still couldn't figure out all the effects of the runes in front of him.

Not only did it contain a large number of rune effects he had never encountered before, but these were also converted into code, and the code was completely incoherent.

In addition, the Eye of the Rune has always had the problem of not commenting on its conversion code and using random variable names.

Jia Xiu straightened up, rubbed his slightly blurry eyes, and glanced at the vast sanctuary once more.

It was practically an ocean of runic code.

Let alone a few days, even assuming his intelligence is sufficient and he doesn't encounter anything he can't understand, it would take at least a year to research something on such a large scale.

The good news is that it can be confirmed that these things were definitely not the work of the Moon Mother Cult.

They couldn't possibly be at that level.

Moreover, it's certain that the Cult of the Moon Mother probably didn't even understand what this thing was for.

The effects that Jia Xiu saw in the tiny bit of rune he deciphered were effects that the cultists had never used.

The ability to bestow blessings upon people may only be one of the many functions included here, which cultists have discovered through some unknown method.

It belongs to the category of cases where the principles and methods are unclear, and people rely on experience to make do with what they have for now.

I understand. The runes here are to the Moon Mother Cult what fluid dynamics is to physics!

Although I don't know why, I've come up with a seemingly reliable formula, so it will continue to work until it's proven to be unusable.

Although Jia Xiu was interested in studying these runes, there simply wasn't enough time for him at the moment.

It's impossible to figure it out in just a few hours each night.

Therefore, Jia Xiu abandoned the idea of ​​lying on the ground to study them one by one, and instead thought about it from the perspective of a cult.

Blood sacrifice, blood sacrifice...

Since they have made blood sacrifices so important and mastered their usage, the runes related to blood sacrifices should be near those stone coffins.

"Lamu, please help me open the stone coffin."

"Um, isn't that inappropriate? They're already dead, it's impolite to open their coffins."

“We’re just trying to prevent more people from dying, and the poor souls in the sarcophagus probably didn’t voluntarily get put in there. After we’ve dealt with all this, we’ll find them a good place to be buried.”

"Makes sense."

Ram thought for a moment and walked to the group of stone coffins.

Which one to drive?

"Drive as you please."

Jia Xiu felt that if so many stone coffins were here, they must all be useful, and perhaps each one had the same runes on it.

"Ok."

Ram walked around and picked one randomly based on her intuition.

"Hey—whoosh—"

The moment the stone coffin was opened, a strong stench of blood, which even Jia Xiu could smell, wafted out.

This smell, which represents danger and death, is naturally unsettling.

Jia Xiu forced himself to endure the pungent smell and approached the opened stone coffin, muttering, "I'm sorry."

After all, this place is likely filled with victims.

Inside the stone coffin, there were indeed several rows of magical runes. Moreover, there were many spikes piercing different parts of the body lying inside.

Next to the spikes are drainage channels that direct blood flow to the ground.

A bloodletting "assembly line".

Visually, it's exactly what a vampire would do.

Just as Jia Xiu was about to begin studying the runes inside the stone coffin, he suddenly noticed that the wounds on the corpse were somewhat peculiar.

His body had large areas that were charred black, almost carbonized.

The only things that can cause this effect are fire or electric shock.

electric shock.

Jia Xiu had a somewhat absurd thought: Could it be...?

He began to read the runes inside the stone coffin.

The runes here are simpler, clearer, and more complete than those carved on the outside.

The columns implement a modular function.

Jia Xiu's comfort zone.

He was very familiar with this kind of modular code.

A few minutes later, he came to a conclusion.

"I roughly know what the High Priest's blessing to his followers is all about. I still don't understand the power amplification part, but the reason for their super survivability is clear: these are runes used for damage transfer and conversion."

"Hypocrisy transfer?"

“Yes,” Jia Xiu explained, “I don’t know how, but the individual in the stone coffin is connected to the person who was blessed. When the person who was blessed is injured, the damage will gradually transfer to the body in the stone coffin. The person who was originally hit will then show signs of gradual recovery. The electric shock injury on this body was probably caused by the alternating current I used. I estimate that if we open a few more coffins, we can find the ones that were cut by Bu Bu.”

Mia blinked.

"So the blood sacrifice they're going to perform is actually to find injured substitutes for the people who will receive the blessing. The original batch has been almost completely destroyed, so they need to find a new batch."

"That's probably the gist of it."

"They're basically a bunch of parasites. They drain a batch of male sacrifices, then find another batch to suck their blood. They're not vampires, but they're even worse than vampires!"

"I like your summary."

Mia scratched her head. "Then why did Priest Samantha die so quickly after being drained of blood?"

Jassi replied, "I think it's because the body that was already bleeding out couldn't withstand any more blood loss. So if Bubu had slashed it a few more times, Priest Samantha would probably have bled to death."

"What is the conversion function?"

Mia still remembered what Jasshu had just said about transfer and transformation.

"Once the damage has completely overflowed, these people will be transformed into vampire offspring, those strange offspring found in the forest."

Hearing Jashu's explanation, Ram said somewhat angrily, "So these people who were used as sacrifices will not find peace even in death, and will eventually become mindless derivatives."

"That's how it is at the moment."

"We have to destroy this sect."

"I'm very serious," Ram said.

"That's what I've always thought, but since it's just the few of us, to be on the safe side, we either need to call in reinforcements, or I have an idea that can wipe them all out in one fell swoop."

"what idea?"

"On the day of the awakening, during the final ceremony, this base will definitely need to be activated. When it is activated, the guardian runes will be triggered."

Guardian runes are a very flexible and versatile spell. They can be used as a conditional trigger, where another spell can be triggered when certain conditions are met, such as touching or entering a certain distance.

“I plan to add a sect leader’s spell.”

"The sect leader's magic? It must be incredibly powerful."

Jashu's sect leader has always been a mystery to Mia.

"Um, I guess so..."

(End of this chapter)