It's so hard being a hero!

In front of them stood a giant stone gate, about five meters high, covered with densely packed runes and images unsuitable for children.

Each of these pictures and texts was so lifelike that Sophia felt a chill.

But it must be said that human sexual desire is indeed the best source of power.

After thinking for a moment, Sophia raised her right hand, and a golden light shone from her palm, which she then shot towards the stone door.

She eventually dug a hole in the door.

Sophia crawled right through.

After passing through the stone gate, she arrived at a huge cave.

It is filled with purple, glowing minerals, like an inverted starry sky.

In the very center of the mountain, there is an altar, on which stands a stone statue about three stories high.

This is a stone statue of a woman, with a seductive figure. The surface of the statue emits a pinkish-purple glow, as if living liquid is slowly flowing in the veins of the stone.

At the foot of the stone statue, a dense crowd of people were kneeling.

Sophia glanced at the crowd and counted at least 20,000 people.

Men, women, and children were all present, dressed in uniform dark purple robes, kneeling around the altar and making a prayer gesture.

They were not dead; they were chanting some kind of low, eerie incantation, the sound merging into a buzzing echo that reverberated throughout the entire mountainside.

No one could see any expression on their faces.

His eyes were open, but there was nothing in his pupils, as if his soul had been taken away by something, leaving only a shell mechanically carrying out the commands he had given in life.

"Have they all been controlled and turned into slaves to their desires?"

A chill ran through Sophia.

She had seen people brainwashed by cults before, far too many in her past life, but these people in front of her were different.

They lacked the fanaticism of someone who had been bewitched, and they didn't have that morbid obsession; they were completely drained.

They are like containers, holding a little bit of remaining life force to keep this massive ritual running.

Soon, her gaze passed over the kneeling crowd and saw several stone chambers on the other side of the mountain. The stone doors were half-closed, and a certain smell emanated from them that made her instinctively uneasy.

The smell was bloody, and there was another, even stronger smell.

Sofia lowered her body and moved quickly along the shadow of the mountain wall, bypassing the kneeling crowd, and arrived at the door of the nearest stone chamber.

She glanced inside from the side, then froze on the spot.

The stone chamber is about two or three hundred square meters in size, and the floor is piled with human skeletons.

Some have been completely reduced to skeletons, scattered randomly in corners, as if they have been piled up here for many years.

Some were still very fresh, with their muscle tissue not yet completely rotten, and some even vaguely recognizable as they were before they died.

A rough estimate suggests that there are at least a thousand skeletons in this stone chamber.

Sofia clenched her fists.

But she did not immediately lash out; instead, she turned and walked toward the second stone chamber.

The moment the door was pushed open, an even more bizarre scene came into view.

This stone chamber was larger than the previous one, with dozens of rows of stone platforms neatly arranged inside. On each platform, a man and a woman were embracing and doing things that were inappropriate for children.

"Ah! As expected, human desires are Lilith's greatest source of power."

At the same time, she finally understood where all the men of Truk Fortress had gone.

These men were either captured and used as sacrifices, their souls drained and thrown into these stone chambers.

The women and children were left in the outer city areas, treated as a kind of resource.

The man dies, but the woman can still give birth, and the child is then raised to become a new generation of believers or sacrifices.

This is a chilling resource cycle.

Sophia stood at the entrance to the stone chamber filled with corpses, feeling a fire burning in her chest.

But she didn't rush out and smash the statue immediately.

Because Bellis was still waiting outside, once she made a move, the commotion would definitely not escape her notice.

And the most troublesome thing is this stone statue in front of us.

Sophia stared at the eerie stone statue, three stories high, on the altar. The power of desire emanating from that statue was far more than just intense.

This thing is an amplifier, sending out the power of desire many times over.

If she were to violently destroy the statue, the resulting force would surge like a burst dam, impacting the entire mountainside. Of the more than 20,000 people kneeling there, not one would survive.

Their souls will be drained in an instant, and they will die on the spot.

Therefore, she couldn't use brute force to smash it; she could only try to break the formation that gathered the power of desire.

Sophia squatted down, her mind racing.

A direct, forceful approach won't work; being too aggressive could result in the deaths of too many people.

But if it's not demolished, the soldiers and civilians outside will never wake up, and even if Shinoya defeats Baird and Belis, this fortress will be completely reduced to ruins.

She needs a more win-win solution.

Sophia's gaze fell on the stone statue again, and she began to carefully perceive its energy structure.

This stone statue itself does not generate the power of desire.

It simply receives and amplifies.

The source is not here.

She closed her eyes and carefully probed the stone statue with her spiritual power, bypassing the dense layer of desire on the surface and directly touching its internal structure.

Soon, she discovered something.

Embedded in the heart of the statue is a fist-sized object, resembling an irregular purple crystal.

It was a heart-shaped crystal.

It exuded an aura that made her heart instinctively tighten—a power she had felt before her death in her previous life, a power belonging to Lilith herself.

"Is this an energy crystal containing Lilith's original power? It seems this place has become a branch of the Temple of Desire."

She had dealt with Lilith for so many years in her past life, she wouldn't mistake something like this.

As long as this fragment remains, the statue can continuously receive power from Lilith's true form, amplifying it and spreading it outwards.

If this fragment is destroyed, the statue will be just an ordinary stone, and the entire ceremony will be interrupted instantly.

The problem is, if she touches that fragment, Lilith herself will definitely sense it.

Sofia was conflicted.

Her thoughts raced through her mind; she was struggling with a decision.

If the crystals are not touched, the pressure on Shinoya will only increase.

If anything happens, Lilith will know that someone is cutting off her power source, and then she can follow that lead and possibly trace it back to her.

She wasn't ready to confront Lilith head-on.

But?

Sophia looked up at the people kneeling on the ground, then turned to look at the stone chamber filled with bones.

She gritted her teeth.

"Screw the preparations."

She stood up, her gaze hardening.

"I'm not here to hide anything; I'm here to solve problems."

Chapter 69 Facing Lilith

Sophia used her senses to examine the believers again, and after confirming that they indeed had no self-awareness, she used wind magic to take flight.

She flew towards the statue of Lilith and landed on the statue's outstretched arm.

Sophia glanced down at the statue of Lilith, and the memory of being toyed with by Lilith flashed through her mind once again.

This memory infuriated her, so she stomped on Lilith's head while cursing.

"Slut, shameless, disgusting, despicable..."

Sophia unleashed almost every curse word she could think of.

This shows that her relationship with Lilith was a lifelong nightmare.

After venting her frustration, she took a deep breath, raised her hand, and a ball of earthy yellow light shone from her palm.

This is the penetration of earth-attribute magical substances.

She placed her palm on the head of the statue, and the next moment, her hand seemed to penetrate into soft mud, reaching inside the statue.

Her hand soon touched a hard, warm object.

This must be the crystallization of desire.

The crystal emitted a soft, warm pink glow, like a living heart beating rhythmically.

The moment Sophia's fingers touched it, an indescribable tingling sensation surged up her arm from her fingertips.

That feeling was familiar, like the sensation of being pinned down and pushed around by Lilith in a past life.

"Pooh!"

Sophia cursed under her breath, grabbed the thing, and pulled it outwards with force.

The next moment, she pulled the crystallized desire out of the statue.

The purple crystal shone brightly in her hand; it was beautiful, like a fist-sized amethyst.

Sophia stared at the purple crystal for a while, and finally revealed an excited smile.

"Let's collect interest first, Lilith. We'll see what happens in the future."