Chapter 45: The Holy Maiden

Huh—

A cold wind brushed past.

Wu Xiaoyou instinctively pulled her collar tighter, trying to draw warmth from it, but it did nothing.

She stared at the old village chief and Wu Wang ahead, her gaze filled with complex emotion.

This little madman behaves strangely.

Last night he threatened me with an AK.

This morning he forbade anyone to touch me.

Wu Xiaoyou didn’t doubt he was mentally unstable—she’d already confirmed that long ago.

She just felt every odd action of his hid some deeper meaning, yet she couldn’t pinpoint what.

“Just keep climbing to the top—you’ll see it.”

The old village chief’s voice sounded weary.

He had no desire to bring these two here.

But they threatened to kill everyone in the village, and they held the one thing he wanted most.

It’s fine. He could endure.

He’d endured two hundred years—this little while was nothing.

Once he absorbed the presence’s aura and claimed the Yin Yuan God’s position, wouldn’t these two brats be entirely at his mercy?

“Climb over this mountain! The world will hear your voice!” Wu Wang ranted as usual.

Yet his eyes grew colder.

As expected, this old bastard had no good intentions.

Yesterday’s suspicions were just guesses.

Nothing compared to the direct clarity of the Abyss God’s soul vision.

His inner filth was laid bare.

All three harbored secret motives.

Before long, they reached the summit.

“Ah…”

Seeing the scene below the opposite mountain, Wu Xiaoyou instinctively clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle another cry.

On the other side of the mountain lay a basin-like depression.

Inside, barren and lifeless, not a single plant or animal stirred.

All she saw was a blinding expanse of white.

A mountain of bleached bones loomed, grotesquely mixed with several corpses half-decayed but not yet reduced to bone— their horrifying state made Wu Xiaoyou’s stomach churn after breakfast.

“I’ll leave you here. If you want to go down, I won’t accompany you.” The old village chief spoke coldly.

Saying this, he turned and walked back toward the village.

【He cannot approach this place】

【He desperately wants to leave】

Wu Wang watched the old chief’s back.

The inner reactions above his head surprised him.

So there were places even this old bastard couldn’t go?

“Hey… are we really going to…”

Swish-swish-swish—

Before Wu Xiaoyou could finish her question, Wu Wang slid sideways down the slope.

She glanced at the black ghostly shadows flickering among the bones.

She gritted her teeth and followed him down.

“Strange. The decomposition is too slow, and the stench is too fresh. Old lady, mind telling me how you died?” Wu Wang muttered, crouching beside a corpse still partially intact.

Wu Xiaoyou forced herself to approach, fighting nausea.

She gasped in horror—he was flipping through the corpses, occasionally using gloved fingers to pick at scraps of flesh clinging to their cheeks, prying open jaws to inspect mouths, even shoving his hands into chest cavities to examine internal decay.

Where did he get gloves!?

What the hell is he doing!?

Wu Xiaoyou’s scalp prickled at his gruesome autopsy routine.

She finally couldn’t hold back.

“Puke!”

Rainbow-colored bile spewed from her mouth.

Left a mosaic on the ground.

“Done puking? Now ask these old ladies what their last wishes were—they might feel shy around a handsome guy like me.” Wu Wang casually removed and discarded his gloves.

Never mind anything else, I’m an expert in autopsies.

As a man who had read medical textbooks and personally Poukai his own chest nearly fifty times, Wu Wang’s expertise rivaled that of most professional doctors.

He noticed the corpses’ decay rate was abnormal.

If the Yin Yuan Holy Maiden hadn’t awakened last year,

then the most recent of these corpses would be from two years ago.

Yet over five corpses in the skull pile still retained traces of flesh, even some internal organs not fully decomposed.

Over so many years, corpses exposed to the wild should have been reduced to bare bones long ago—without deep burial, even the bones would have been dragged off by beasts.

Yet they lay here quietly.

Preserved in the exact posture they fell from the mountain.

No signs of being moved.

【Spiritual Power: 35—32】

Wu Wang suddenly felt dizzy.

His spiritual power had dropped by three full points.

Upon closer look, a black ghostly hand had seized his wrist.

“Don’t you dare touch me!”

He wrenched free violently, and the dizziness eased.

But Wu Xiaoyou’s face grew even paler.

She shifted left, then stepped back, again and again.

As if fleeing something unseen.

“Abyss God, activate!”

Wu Wang rolled up his sleeve and stared again into the red vertical pupil.

Moments later, his eyes glowed with an eerie red hue.

Everything around him sharpened—

Just like last night in the forest, countless black ghostly shadows surrounded them.

This time, they stood right among the ghosts.

Perhaps because of daylight, their forms appeared more insubstantial, lacking the tangible horror of before—instead, an eerie, unnatural dread.

“Can you tell me… how did you die? What unfinished wishes do you have?” Wu Xiaoyou’s teeth chattered as she repeated Wu Wang’s question, forcing herself to speak through terror.

She could indeed see ghosts since childhood—

But damn it, she’d never seen two hundred at once!

Not fainting on the spot already proved Wu Xiaoyou’s mental fortitude was extraordinary.

“Thirty years ago, she awakened us…”

“Yin union is the sacrifice…”

“She wants to come down…”

“The chief… defiled us…”

A dense murmur echoed through the valley.

Wu Wang’s lips twitched as he watched his spiritual power plummet.

In mere seconds, it dropped from 32 to a pitiful 5.

Nightmare-tier dungeon was truly terrifying.

Any normal player would’ve found this valley but could never communicate with the female ghosts.

Every word they spoke carried spiritual contamination.

Real-life talk therapy!

“You chat. I’m gonna die for a bit.”

Seeing Wu Xiaoyou showed no signs of being affected,

he quietly slipped behind a pile of skulls.

Pulled out his dagger and stabbed through his own brain.

Instantly, his mind cleared.

“Come on! Keep talking! Worst case, I’ll die again!”

About ten minutes later.

The murmurs around them grew sparser, then vanished completely.

The ghostly figures also silently disappeared where they stood.

Wu Xiaoyou, pale-faced, walked around the pile of skulls to find Wu Wang and said uncertainly, “I now know the whole story.”

“Spill it,” Wu Wang said, rubbing his temples to gather his thoughts.

He had only heard fragmented whispers.

But Second Sister seemed to understand every word those female ghosts said.

“They say that before the Great Sacrifice, each Holy Bride of Yin Bond is called to the ancestral hall by the village chief, and then…”

Here Wu Xiaoyou paused.

Her face turned unnaturally pale, her lips trembling as if she wanted to speak but couldn’t—her expression filled with fury.

After a moment, she continued: “Then the village chief defiles her. Though he never directly rapes them, he tortures them to the brink of death with unspeakable instruments, like a form of execution.”

“Finally, on the day of the Great Sacrifice, their chests are ripped open and their hearts are torn out to please the Yin Bond Deity.”

“Their corpses, cast into the wild with lingering hatred, should never have awakened.”

“Until thirty years ago, a strange and powerful presence stirred them back to consciousness.”

“Though their souls remain bound by the Yin Bond Deity and cannot leave this place, they now have a sliver of hope to break free.”

“And they also discovered the true purpose of Yin Bond Village.”

Wu Xiaoyou pulled a stone from her pocket.

She held it out to Wu Wang and said: “The Yin Bond Deity manipulates the body of one Holy Bride each year to form a Yin Bond with the villagers.”

“Those who form a Yin Bond are granted one wish.”

“But they don’t know the cost is their own soul!”

“The Yin Bond Deity seeks to combine the extreme hatred of each year’s Holy Bride with the ‘voluntarily’ offered filthy souls of the villagers—accumulating them bit by bit until it finally descends upon the mortal world!”

Wu Xiaoyou’s face grew even paler.

She hadn’t just heard the ghosts’ account.

She had also seen the horrific cruelty they endured—the village chief’s twisted, grotesque face in the ancestral hall, his eyes brimming with greed, and the infernal future of the mortal world engulfed in flames after the Yin Bond Deity’s arrival.

Though she didn’t know if it was an illusion.

But it had all felt so real.

Even recalling it made her tremble uncontrollably.

After a brief pause,

she touched the stone in her hand—pitch-black and freezing to the bone.

She solemnly handed it to Wu Wang: “They asked me to give this to you. They said you carry the presence of that one—you should be able to fulfill their final wish.”

【Memory-Washing Stone (Epic): Plot-critical item, cannot be stored in inventory. When used on a target, it erases all memories related to the Fuben , including the resentment, wishes, and everything else born from those memories.】

【Note: Forged from the unwilling heart’s blood of the wronged Holy Brides.】

【Give these bastards a fucking death! This is our defiance!】

【Relevant Targets: Yin Bond Deity, Zhang Jie, Wu Xiaoyou】

【Uses Remaining: 2】

Wu Wang took the Memory-Washing Stone and his expression hardened.

“That one’s presence” naturally referred to the Abyss God.

It seemed the Abyss God’s corruption had not only shown the old village chief the hope of replacing the Yin Bond Deity—it had also awakened these wronged victims.

No wonder their corpses hadn’t fully decayed.

As long as the sacrifice continues, how could suffering rot away?

“I’ll take this job.”

“Resistance against feudal sacrifice. Defiance.”

“Watch closely—I’ll shove this stone straight into the Yin Bond Deity’s mouth and make it swallow.”

“And I’ll make Yin Bond Village know—”

“Blood buns aren’t so easy to swallow.”