Chapter 227: Sacrifice and Return

In the nation of Biao, in the city of Feicui, deep within a long-abandoned jade mine, there lay a natural cavern carved by erosion.

The cavern was not dark; its walls were covered in pale white mycelia threaded with dark red veins, emitting a biological cold light that glowed faintly across the entire space, like the interior of some colossal organism.

The air was thick, saturated with the mingled stench of rust and sweet, rotting decay—each breath felt like swallowing congealed plasma.

Videl stood on a slightly raised platform at the cavern’s center, looking down.

His attire differed from the other believers: a simple dark casual suit, more like that of a scholar who had wandered into a heretical sanctuary. But in his eyes burned a fierce, clear fanaticism.

“Has the coordinate been calibrated?” His voice rang sharply through the empty cavern, the echoes immediately absorbed by the damp mycelial walls.

“My lord,” a high priest bowed, voice hoarse, “Anchor One locked on China’s Yangtze River Delta, Anchor Two on India’s Mumbai, Anchor Three on France’s Paris, Anchor Four on Akka’s Xincheng…”

Each location he named was a critical node in human population centers, covering the entire globe.

Videl gave a slight nod.

“Excellent. This will be humanity’s final grand performance…”

His gaze shifted to the cavern’s ceiling, where countless human bones and dark green sacrificial stones were inlaid and woven into a vast, inverted vortex pattern—a precisely structured altar base.

Each skeleton came from real victims of previous sacrifices, revered by the believers as “holy bones,” believed to be the first to have “returned.”

“Begin altar resonance detection.”

“Resonance has reached 92% of critical threshold—continuously rising in sync with the low-frequency fluctuations of the fragments within her…” another high priest replied, his instrument’s screen flowing with eerie, waterfall-like waveforms.

This was Videl’s true weapon. His theft of Yang Yi’s DNA, his spreading of panic, his manipulation of public opinion—none of it was merely to trouble her.

It was to drive her onto that path, to that extreme, to awaken the fragments suppressed by her consciousness…

“Sacrifice is never murder,” Videl whispered to the void, as if to his most core followers, “but ‘return.’ This is not evil—it is the execution of a higher cosmic ecological cycle. All colonies flourish and decay; morality is irrelevant—only the efficiency of energy transformation matters…”

He paused, his brown-black pupils glinting with cold light.

“...She is always hungry... We are not destroying anyone—we are feeding, returning to the source... A man addicted to poison, suddenly submerged in an ocean of 100% pure toxin—his will, his humanity, his so-called ideals—will at that moment be drowned, fused, reshaped by the very offerings of those he sought to save…”

He descended from the platform and walked to the cavern’s edge, where a small, still underground lake lay, its waters black as ink.

Videl knelt on one knee, reached out, and touched the water’s surface—the lake subtly boiled, reflecting countless flickering, chaotic human faces—angry, weeping, cursing, praying in churches, attacking Yang Yi online, protesting in the streets…

“The tide of public opinion is sufficient to drown the altar,” he murmured, as if admiring a masterpiece nearing completion, “Now, only one final gust remains—a perfectly timed betrayal, one that will isolate her utterly, plunge her into despair, perhaps shake the very foundation of her protective belief…”

He rose, took from a believer the last “artifact”—a sealed transparent container holding a small, constantly writhing, dark-black energy mass, its fluctuation frequency astonishingly similar to Yang Yi’s power.

“A derivative extracted from the cloned remains of the Akka monster…” Videl explained, his tone gentle and refined, as if introducing a newly developed experimental substance: “At the ritual’s climax, it will serve as the trigger, ensuring the energy surge precisely ‘ignites’ her. This is science, gentlemen—an elegant application of thermodynamics and psychology on a cosmic scale.”

One of the high priests hesitated, then crossed his hands over his chest in salute to Videl: “The Divine Punishment Organization pledges eternal submission beneath the altar, offering our lambs to our Lord…”

Videl smiled, his gaunt face half-hidden in shadow: “Rest assured, as the Lord’s eternal servant, I never deceive my own…”

He scanned the cavern, waved his hand, and the believers began chanting twisted incantations.

The mycelial glow flickered violently in rhythm with the chants; the altar rose and fell like a living thing; the black lake erupted in concentric ripples shaped like human faces.

The entire space was slowly activating, forming a dual bomb targeting both civilization and the individual.

“Await the signal,” Videl gave his final order, his voice merging into the twisted chanting: “When, in the world’s eyes, she transforms from a flawed savior into a monster that must be eradicated—when the final thread of trust connecting her to humanity snaps…”

“We shall crown her.”