Chapter 341: The Ritual is Over... Forever
Orange-red flames flickered and rose amidst the drifting mist behind him, and the slightly warm air carried a hint of a burnt smell.
Xia Nan walked alone through the canyon, his backpack already stuffed full of Mist-lamp Grass used to complete his collection quest.
With the deaths of the Mist-lamp Monster and the Druid, the mist permeating the canyon had thinned considerably. Perhaps due to psychological factors, he even felt that the oppressive sensation brought about by this "forbidden land," which never saw sunlight year-round, had lessened significantly.
He did not deliberately conceal his presence, but instead let his footsteps be heard.
As the canyon gate, made of dark oak, gradually entered his field of vision as the distance closed, Fuyuki and Lilyai—who had been waiting quietly and cautiously near the entrance according to his previous instructions—turned their gazes toward him.
Upon seeing that the newcomer was Xia Nan, the two clearly breathed a sigh of relief.
"How is it? Any danger nearby?"
Xia Nan asked casually, his gaze sweeping over the two.
"None, none at all. It's very safe here," Fuyuki shook his head repeatedly, his attitude grateful and respectful. "I just don't know why, but the surrounding mist has thinned a lot. Though, you've probably noticed that as well."
Nodding slightly, Xia Nan turned his gaze to Lilyai, who was looking at him.
"And you? Any adverse reactions in your body?"
Xia Nan had rarely used the "Lesser Healing" effect of the [Tears of Spring Breath] pendant and wasn't entirely sure of the specific healing efficacy of this first-circle spell.
Time had been pressing earlier, and he hadn't had the chance to check thoroughly; now that he had the opportunity, he needed to confirm.
"No reactions, Mr. Xia Nan." Hearing this, the girl raised her hand and rotated her previously injured arm, indicating she had fully recovered. "Not even a scar was left. Thank you very much for your treatment!"
Perhaps noticing the pale green plant fluid on Xia Nan that wasn't there when they first parted, Fuyuki hesitated slightly. Then, lowering his voice in an exceptionally cautious manner, he asked hesitantly
"Mr. Xia Nan, you..."
Sensing the other's gaze, Xia Nan knew roughly what he was thinking.
This simple youth was likely still struggling with the contradiction between his beloved and the sacrificial ritual.
Without deliberately hiding it, Xia Nan straightforwardly told him about the records he had seen in the experimental log and his subsequent encounter in the Hidden Garden.
The sacrificial ritual might have been somewhat useful at the beginning, when the Druid had not yet entered a state of long-term slumber.
After all, for the sake of the experiment's success, the Druid truly would have helped the villagers drive away monsters and ensure a bountiful harvest.
But later, as the intervals between the Druid's awakenings grew longer, those so-called "sacrifices" simply became tools for the Village Chief to maintain his own rule and authority.
"The Village Chief... but Brother Aspen..."
Fuyuki's eyes widened, his face filled with an expression of disbelief.
"No... that's impossible. How could it be..."
Having the cognitions instilled in him since childhood overturned caused him to instinctively refute it as if talking to himself.
And as Xia Nan recounted his discoveries in the log, even taking the diary left by the Druid out of his backpack...
The youth's body began to tremble.
It was not out of fear, but from the boiling rage surging in his heart.
"So this sacrificial ritual... there was no need to hold it?"
"So Brother Aspen's daughter back then, she actually didn't have to..."
"So he chose Lilyai as the sacrifice, not for the continuation of the village, but purely for himself?"
"Is that right, Mr. Xia Nan?"
His tightly clenched fists made the skin over his knuckles turn pale. He trembled with such force that the muscles and veins beneath the skin of his forearms could be seen twitching and bulging.
Fuyuki gritted his teeth, the anger in his eyes almost manifesting as a physical substance.
Xia Nan had no doubt that if the old Village Chief were standing here right now, the youth before him would pour out his rage upon him without reservation.
Meanwhile, Lilyai, standing on the other side, reacted quite differently from Fuyuki.
As the "sacrifice" for this ritual, if Xia Nan had not appeared, she would likely have died alongside her beloved under the attack of that Mist-lamp Monster.
She should have felt indignation and resentment.
But now, compared to the emotionally volatile Fuyuki, the girl appeared exceptionally silent.
It was hard to describe the expression on her face.
She had shouldered the heavy burden of ensuring the village's survival and had prepared herself for sacrifice.
Only to discover in the end that it was all a complete lie.
Including herself, the countless young lives that had died for this cause were entirely meaningless.
The girl said nothing; within her frozen, vacant eyes was an indescribable sadness and loneliness.
Xia Nan stood quietly to the side, carefully observing the reactions of the two.
He could, of course, understand Fuyuki's violent reaction, and he could see the turbulent emotions beneath Lilyai's silent exterior.
He even felt that the two were being very restrained.
If he were put in their current situation... he feared the Village Chief's head would have already bought a plane ticket and been ready for takeoff.
Regardless, the fact that he could stand here meant that the lie deceiving the villagers had been exposed, and the potential threats within the canyon had been cleared.
From now on, the sacrificial ritual filled with blood and tears would cease to exist.
Without saying more, he gave the two enough time to digest the truth, thinking that he would inform them of the detailed cause and effect of the ritual after the cleanup work was completely finished.
Xia Nan looked at the towering wooden gate ahead, pondering how to get these two to the other side in a moment.
Just as the scene fell into silence, suddenly, an unusual sound came from the other side of the heavy wooden gate.
*Clack...*
It was the crisp sound of metal chains rubbing and colliding on the door bolt.
Xia Nan's heart stirred; in the next second, he had Fuyuki and Lilyai stand behind him.
As expected, just as he had predicted.
The gate, which should have been opened on the second day after the ritual ended, slowly opened a crack amidst a series of grating sounds.
Non-glaring sunlight seeped into the canyon through the widening gap, allowing Xia Nan to see the scene behind the door.
The villagers who had left earlier were now standing quietly at the canyon entrance, led by the Village Chief and Aspen.
They might be ignorant, but they were not stupid.
Fuyuki, who was close to Lilyai and had grown up with her, yet suddenly disappeared on the day of the ritual;
Xia Nan, the adventurer who had declined the banquet invitation, targeted the Mist-lamp Grass in the canyon, and was supposed to enter the canyon the next day led by the villagers, yet vanished after the ritual ended.
With these factors added together, the whereabouts of the two were obvious.
They just hadn't expected such a coincidence; before they had time to search and confirm, the figures of the three appeared before them the moment the wooden gate opened.
And when the gazes from outside the gate swept past Xia Nan and Fuyuki in silence and landed on Lilyai...
Panic and fear erupted among the crowd in an instant.
"Lilyai! She—how is she still alive!?"
"That adventurer... we shouldn't have allowed him into the village!"
"Damn it, it must be that audacious Fuyuki who obstructed the ritual! Punishment! He must be punished in the most severe way!"
"Oh, great and merciful Spirit of the Canyon... please forgive the disrespect of your humble servants..."
"There's still time! Quickly, tie up Lilyai and send her in before the sun sets!"
The villagers' reactions were fully visible. Before Xia Nan could speak, Fuyuki, who had been suppressing his emotions after learning the truth, suddenly leaped forward.
He waved his fist forcefully toward the deceived villagers, loudly revealing the truth
"No! It's not like that!"
"The sacrificial ritual is all a lie by the Village Chief! There is no Spirit of the Canyon at all; inside is just a mindless monster!"
"That monster has already been killed by Mr. Xia Nan! From now on, there's no need to hold the ritual anymore!"
But strangely, facing Fuyuki's explanation, although the villagers quieted down again, the looks they cast upon him were filled with doubt and disbelief.
Before Fuyuki could further explain his experiences in the canyon, the elderly Village Chief, whose face was full of wrinkles and who stood at the front of the crowd, suddenly moved.
It was as if he were completely unaffected, utterly indifferent to the questioning in Fuyuki's words.
His gaze bypassed Fuyuki and landed on Xia Nan behind him.
A familiar humble smile appeared on his face as he bowed, his clear voice carrying across the entire area
"Respected and powerful Mr. Xia Nan, you... are truly incomparably brave, but I fear you have misunderstood."
He opened his arms and turned to the villagers.
"How could the wrath of the Spirit of the Canyon be appeased simply by killing one of Its servants?"
"Have you all forgotten the calamities that descended upon us in the past?"
"The true ritual is only complete after the sacrifice enters the holy land and offers themselves to the deity... otherwise, calamity will fall upon every one of us in an even more terrible way!"
"For the sake of the village, we must... complete the ritual!"
Clearly, the prestige the Village Chief had accumulated over many years, combined with the villagers' brainwashed dependence on the sacrificial ritual, could not be overturned by a few simple sentences from Fuyuki.
The doubt in the villagers' eyes vanished instantly after the Chief's inflammatory speech, replaced by an uncertainty stemming from future calamity, and a fanaticism and extremism driven by the instinct for survival.
"Complete the ritual!"
"Complete the ritual!"
"Complete the ritual!"
The villagers became restless, and countless hostile and vicious gazes were cast toward Lilyai behind Xia Nan, causing her to instinctively lower her head, her slender body trembling slightly.
In contrast, Xia Nan, standing between the two parties, appeared completely composed.
The powerful strength he possessed allowed him to completely ignore those bewitched and incited villagers; with a simple swing of his longsword, he could decide the outcome of the scene.
Xia Nan didn't even know what the Village Chief was thinking at this moment.
Did he think Xia Nan was too kind, to the point where he would be swept away by the will of the villagers and make a choice against his own wishes?
Or did he think that since Xia Nan had completed the collection of Mist-lamp Grass, the lives of Fuyuki and Lilyai didn't matter, and he could let the two innocents suffer a punishment they didn't deserve, or even die, right before his eyes?
The only thing that could be considered wise was that the man did not incite the villagers to direct their hostility toward Xia Nan; he even actively downplayed Xia Nan's responsibility, shifting the hatred onto Lilyai and Fuyuki. Of course, this did not change the Village Chief's fate in Xia Nan's heart.
Waving his hand to the trembling Lilyai behind him to signal that she didn't need to worry, Xia Nan's eyes shifted slightly. He released just a small amount of killing intent, and wherever his cold gaze swept, the emotionally charged and noisy villagers instantly fell silent.
His gaze finally stopped on the figure at the front of the crowd, who stood one step behind the Village Chief—a burly man as silent and solemn as an iron tower.
Stepping forward, Xia Nan handed the Druid's notes to him.
With a complex expression, Aspen hesitated slightly before taking the notes and, at Xia Nan's signal, flipping them open.
The air on the field fell into a dead silence.
Pairs of eyes silently watched Xia Nan and the middle-aged hunter before him.
Time passed second by second.
Aspen's brow furrowed deeper and deeper, and for some reason, the movement of flipping the pages became hurried, his fingers even trembling slightly.
"Druid... sacrificial ritual... sacrifice... Village Chief..."
One character after another, overturning his cognitions, flashed before his eyes.
What surfaced in this middle-aged man's mind, however, was only that petite figure who had long since passed away.
"Jenny..." His voice was hoarse and trembling, his face blurred by shadows. "I'm sorry... Daddy should have persisted..."
A lie, a lie more ridiculous than any other.
It made the countless nights he woke up from nightmares, the agony of choosing between the "village" and his "daughter," and the blood and tears that flowed in his heart...
Seem so laughable.
At this moment, Aspen felt as if he were falling into an abyss. Regret, pain, anger, sadness... countless emotions intertwined in his heart, forming an indescribable, complex expression.
Collapse.
He froze in place.
On the other side, the Village Chief's gaze had been fixed intently on the hunter since the moment Xia Nan handed the notes to Aspen.
He didn't know what was recorded in the notes.
But the turbulence in his heart after the lie was exposed made him unconsciously feel guilty.
The Village Chief stared closely at Aspen's face, watching as that face transitioned from initial stiffness and seriousness to shock, and finally to pain and pallor.
He seemed to realize something.
If Aspen learned the truth of those years—how he had 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 authority in the village—what he would encounter...
No! I absolutely cannot lose all this!
Panic submerged the Village Chief like a stream of ice-cold water.
"This is blasphemy!" he roared, his voice nearly cracking. "The ritual must be completed!"
His seemingly aged and hunched body suddenly displayed an explosive power far beyond that of an ordinary person as he rushed rapidly toward Lilyai.
His past experience as an adventurer meant that even though he was now old and frail, he still possessed decent combat capability.
With a flick and a shove of his hands, he threw Fuyuki, who tried to block him, to the side.
And just as he drew a short dagger from his waist, attempting to get closer and pierce the girl's chest with the blade...
*Swish!*
The whistle of tearing air sounded from behind him.
*Squelch—*
Flesh was pierced.
Coldness, accompanied by intense pain, surged up like a tide.
Looking down.
What entered his vision was an arrow stained with blood, piercing through his neck from the spine.
Further back, Aspen maintained the posture of a drawn bow, having just released the arrow, the taut bowstring vibrating slightly from the residual force.
*Thump.*
The dull sound of the corpse hitting the ground echoed across the field.
Xia Nan quietly withdrew the mental gravitational pull he had been circulating at his fingertips.
After firing that arrow, Aspen didn't look at the corpse once. He simply turned around slowly to face the villagers, who had lost their speech in horror.
He raised the longbow carved with his daughter's handwriting, his voice hoarse
"The ritual... is over."
"Forever."