Chapter 221
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Chapter 221: The Ceremony
Ink Drench led her teammates to camp outside the village as agreed. The boundary between the inside and outside was very clear, marked by wooden fences.
Although these fences could hardly withstand even the most basic impacts from extraordinary beasts, they still provided some psychological comfort to the people inside.
Night soon arrived, and everyone had agreed not to eat or drink during the day in the Marsh Settlement, so they were now hungry.
After consuming the flavorless nutritional paste, Ink Drench’s team began to rest.
It was a very peculiar experience. On one hand, everyone was wary of the extraordinary beasts that might appear and the villagers inside. On the other hand, these people were still human, and everyone inevitably felt a simple sense of “meeting an old friend in a distant land.”
It was a clear night, with the moon hanging high like a mirror, making the campfire look dim in its light. In the stillness, the superpowered individual "Wind Whisper," who was on watch, slightly twitched his ears.
He strained to distinguish a faint vibration in the air, trying to analyze more information from it.
With the movement of his muscles, his ears moved in a way that was beyond ordinary imagination. After a while, his brows furrowed, as if he had made some discovery.
“Captain.”
He did not open his eyes and spoke softly while sitting in place.
“I’m here.”
Ink Drench, lying flat in her sleeping bag, suddenly opened her eyes wide like a machine that was about to start.
“Something seems off. Should we wake everyone up?”
“From the village?”
“Yes.”
“Is it related to us?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Let’s wake everyone up to go.”
Ink Drench didn’t ask further questions, but she knew something bad must have happened in the Marsh Settlement.
Perhaps she was being too naive; she just didn’t know what kind of problems this settlement had.
Wind Whisper woke up each teammate one by one, signaling them to be quiet. The five of them slipped into the not-so-deep darkness, gradually moving toward the direction of the other village.
They opened the dilapidated wooden fence and sneaked inside.
Wind Whisper led the way in front, possessing the best hearing to effectively avoid risks along the path.
Soon, they arrived at a slightly familiar area.
This was the side of a house, one of the best buildings in the entire Marsh Settlement. The flames and moonlight created overlapping shadows on its side, providing the group with the chance to sneak in.
“Uh, ah.”
A short sound came from the front of the house as an elderly person walked out, mumbling indistinctly.
Ink Drench and her teammates recognized this person. Although the elder might not know them, Zhang Tong had already introduced him during the day. He was a surviving technician, one of the few superpowered individuals from Hope City.
They watched this elderly man walk out of his home toward the area designated by Nick for butchering the prey.
People began to emerge from other houses one after another. Most of the houses were built in a circular layout around the square, so the sides of the houses could not provide one hundred percent concealment.
At the instant the door of the house across opened, Wind Whisper signaled everyone to lower their heads and hide. Only when nearly all the villagers had left their homes did they raise their heads again to observe in the dark.
“What exactly did you hear?”
Amidst the rustling sounds, bipolar disorder asked with evident concern.
“I heard the sound of people getting up. At a certain moment, everyone started to rise.”
Wind Whisper spoke in a calm tone, but his words carried an eerie, ghost-story-like quality.
“They’re moving!”
Everyone quickly turned their gaze toward the center of the circular square, where the villagers, after standing still, had begun to move.
Their steps appeared chaotic, yet it seemed as though they were being controlled by some unseen force.
Amid the irregular movements, one or a few individuals gradually fell into sync, and then more followed.
“I can’t see clearly. What shape is this?”
Mercury muttered from the shadows.
“The rooftop.”
Ink Drench issued a concise command.
In the shadows, Mercury’s body stretched taller and longer, rising slowly like a noodle being pulled.
Soon, he was able to observe the small square in the distance from his elevated position on the rooftop.
At that moment, the villagers’ steps had shifted from disorderly to synchronized. From his High Position, Mercury saw them forming a peculiar series of concentric circles, beginning to rotate in different directions.
There were four layers of concentric circles; the outermost rotated clockwise, while the other three layers rotated in the opposite direction.
“Are they performing some kind of ceremony?”
Ink Drench, standing below, noticed this phenomenon but couldn’t define it accurately.
She had read about the concept of sacrifice in some Old Era documents, but she couldn’t equate it with the behavior of the villagers before her.
The more pressing question was: if they were indeed performing a ceremony, what were they sacrificing?
As doubts swirled in her mind, the villagers in the outermost circle stopped their directed rotation.
They turned to face inward, extending their arms and placing their hands on the shoulders of the two people beside them.
Once their movements ceased, the villagers in the inner layer began to mimic this action, but before forming a ring, they stepped onto the legs of those in the outer circle to reach their shoulders.
It looked as though they were… building a human tower.
The second layer of this humanoid tower quickly took shape, and everyone watched in Sleepless silence, a sense of foreboding growing within them.
The villagers who had secured their positions seemed to possess boundless stamina. They ignored the increasing weight on their shoulders, holding their positions perfectly still.
The third layer formed swiftly, and the individuals of the fourth layer began climbing up the backs of the first three layers of villagers.
At that moment, they finally saw who was on the fourth layer: it was Zhang Tong and several other natives of Hope City.
Suddenly, Ink Drench felt a dark premonition—if those four reached the top, something terrible would surely happen.
After a moment of thought, she said, “We need to stop this… ritual.”
It took her a while to find the right word.
“Bipolar disorder, try to manipulate the hormone levels of the villagers closest to us on the bottom layer. Make them more agitated.”
After careful consideration, Ink Drench decided to rely on her teammate’s ability.
Bipolar disorder’s power had significant potential in interrogation or subtle sabotage, and it activated discreetly, unknown to Zhang Tong and the others.
Others, like Beast Pack, could achieve similar results, but Nick was already aware of his abilities, which might lead to unnecessary suspicion.
“Watch me.”
Bipolar disorder muttered under his breath, focusing on the three or four villagers with their backs turned to him, and silently extended his hand.
