Waves of eerie palpitation rose like a steady stream of tremors in the forest. A thick, dark red halo-like blood plasma surged from the center of the ritual circle and out into all directions.
“Gaze, despair. Ear blindness, hearing loss. Demon shades, split soul. Broken limbs, tangent…”
A vague voice got into Lin Sheng’s ears. It was intelligible at first, but in just a few seconds, it evolved and adjusted into a frequency and language that Lin Sheng could understand.
A translucent blood-red arm stretched out from the plasma-like red light as if a rescued person came out from a well, grabbing the edge of the red light.
As a deep inhalation sound spread in the air, a second arm reached out to grab the halo edge. After that, a third arm followed, and then the fourth, fifth…
The deep sound of inhalation got more rapid and denser when more and more arms emerged. It was as if some living creature trying to climb out of the halo got anxious.
Suddenly, an invisible mental shock ejected a strange pale-red huge creature from the halo. It looked like a pale-red cloud with hundreds of pairs of arms, inlaid with colorful rotating compound eyes. Just like the eyes of a dragonfly, they were round.
“Very good… Very good… You’ve summoned me, the Great Bloodgazer Tyr. You’ve been lucky!”
The cloud dark spirit floated in front of Lin Sheng. At three or four meters wide and six meters high, it appeared like twisted modeling clay. Its arms were swaying mindlessly like the tentacles of a sea anemone.
“Come on… tell me your wishes and I will fulfill them!” The thing bent down, almost touching Lin Sheng’s face.
Lin Sheng looked up with a complex expression of astonishment and longing on his face. “Any… any wishes?” his voice quivered.
“Of course, this is a fair deal. So think before you ask.” The eyes in the cloud-like, dark-spirit body flickered and produced a low strange voice.
Lin Sheng could not control his body from shivering, and he swallowed involuntarily as if he was terrified.
“I… I… I…”
His voice trembled. He tried to speak, but he could not piece together a sentence.
“I… want… want…”
His voice got weaker and softer, almost imperceptible. So the dark-spirit cloud had to get closer to hear more clearly.
“What do you want?” the dark spirit urged.
“Want… your everything!”
Suddenly, Lin Sheng raised his head, his right arm planted into the dark spirit’s body with a creepy smile on his face.
In that instant, rays of pure-white, holy light shone from his arm. Like the sharpest spike in the world, the pure-white holy power exploded in the dark spirit’s body. The ensuing shockwave came in the form of arrows flying out in all directions.
The holy power purified everything that it came into contact with, vaporizing half of the huge body of the dark spirit. It cried in pain in his back, struggling to get back to the realm of the dark spirits. But it was too late. As the holy light shone on the ritual circle on the ground, it cut off the dark spirit’s route of retreat.
“No!”
The agonizing shrill faded as the holy light burned away the body of the dark spirit, leaving behind a blood-red sphere the size of a fist in Lin Sheng’s hand. Like an eyeball, a pupil was moving inside the sphere, watching everything around it.
Lin Sheng exhaled as he felt he had exhausted half of his holy power. He looked down at the dark-energy bead in his hand. “I didn’t expect this little bait could get me such a big guy. Totally worth it! It was of Level 9 strength! Phew! If not for the sneak attack, I might not be able to finish it off so quickly.”
His approach was nothing new in Blackfeather City. Many powerful magicians used this method to catch powerful dark spirits and demons. Some of them used the dark spirits and demons as their slaves. Others simply turned them into a synthetic material. Some even ate them as food, or fed them to their pets. But only the most powerful magicians could do this. And this was also the case in the empire to which Blackfeather City belonged. Just like what Lin Sheng encountered in his dreams. Some magician caught the Thunderbeast and trained it as a guardian monster.
Lin Sheng examined the remaining ritual circle. Of the five living people he used as ceremonial consumables, three had disappeared. But two skeletons remained. Not bad for his luck. It was only because Lin Sheng killed the dark spirit and cut off part of the ritual reward.
“Let me eat it first.” Lin Sheng looked at the dark-energy bead in his hand. It was a pure soul-bead, purified by the holy power. Because of the holy power purification, the bead carried Lin Sheng’s holy power’s energy.
Lin Sheng used the best method to minimize exhaustion. The blood transformation ritual could convert the soul power into the blood of the dragon. He was familiar with the ritual. But he had insufficient ritual materials, which were good for two rounds of rituals. So he had to get resupplied.
After a burst of soft red light, the fist-sized dark-spirit bead changed into the pure blood of the Rock Dragon. His had further transformed Lin Sheng’s bone marrow, making him one step closer in getting the full physique of the Rock Dragon.
“That’s over 50%, almost 60%! What a catch!” Lin Sheng spat out a spark to ignite the residual traces of the ceremony. He then directed the vault guard to clean up everything else before heading back to the mansion.
While on his way, Lin Sheng felt that half of his Rock Dragon blood was incubating an inexplicable power. His body was undergoing a crucial change, after which, a qualitative leap would be on the horizon.
The next morning, Lin Sheng led a few teammates—Melissa, Bella, and three other gutsy members—to begin their routine patrol mission. And just as he had expected it, a dozen clashes had happened in the town in just one night.
However, these people did not commit their crimes in broad daylight, at least, as if they were allowing Baine University to save face. But even so, at least four people were injured, missing, or killed last night. Of course, this figure did not include the five people that Lin Sheng killed.
After mediating a few disputes, news finally came from the silver mine that the team of professors decided to come out from the hole. Lin Sheng’s team had got a request from the chief commander to beef up their patrol.
As ordinary students coming for the credits, no one was counting on them. Lin Sheng could not have cared less. As long as no one bothered him, he would not want to bother anyone else. But he just could not help himself. Especially at night, when he would use fire as bait in the forest to entice those people with evil intentions in their hearts. And just as before, he would eat them as supper, turning humans into an oblation to bait the big boy dark spirits.
