Chapter 2857: The Doctor's Ritual

Destroying someone else's tomb and damaging someone else's bones was certainly morally wrong. After learning the story of Jin De Er and the dragon beast, Xia De didn't want to do this even more. But wanting to and doing it were unrelated. Before Emilia completed the Time War, he had to try every means to remove the targets corresponding to those four seats:

"No problem, the power of that dragon beast is weaker than the demon and the 'Keeper.' If it weren't for the fact that it always came from other times and thus could not be completely killed in our time, it would have been removed long ago.

But don't take action yet. Let's see what the church can find in that black dragon's nest. There must be a reason it was chosen. After losing its wisdom in the transaction with the demon, what did the ancient tree take a fancy to?"

The arrival of the Great Witch of Fate meant that except for Ao Dai Li and the Mei Gen sisters, the eight Great Witches Xia De was familiar with had all arrived. And having a highly skilled diviner by his side was quite advantageous for the upcoming actions.

To welcome Bella's arrival, everyone held another banquet on the ship that evening, and even Miss Dan Ni Si Te came to meet her.

The Countess originally planned to arrive last weekend, but because someone sighted a giant dragon in the coastal waters near Moon Bay, the church intervened, and she, as the speaker of the city council, needed to cooperate to cut off the spread of the news, so they were delayed by one day. This time, in addition to herself and Ma Di Er Da, she also brought a whole team of professional diviners, which greatly supplemented the current team's shortcomings.

However, Xia De couldn't stay at the banquet all the time. The doctor planned to start his ritual at ten o'clock in the evening, so he had to set off for the woods after eight o'clock.

"I will ask everyone about you and Fu Luo La later."

The blonde Countess said before Xia De left, clinking her wine glass lightly against Xia De's, her golden eyes full of smiles:

"Or, if you have time after you come back tonight, would you like to take a walk with me? It's been so long, I have many things I want to tell you."

Approaching the end of the Month of Withered Leaves, the weather was getting colder day by day, and the whistling wind in the woodland at night already had the bone-chilling feeling of winter. It was now the 27th day of October, and this Saturday would be November.

When Xia De was walking through the woods, what he was thinking about was not his winter plan but the Day of the Red Butterfly; this Day of the Red Butterfly was Friday. It was just that Emilia would definitely be back this week, and the matter of the Weisi Ta Woodland was nearing its end, so this Day of the Red Butterfly would probably still be postponed.

The moon tonight looked exceptionally large. After the sky, which was gloomy during the day, cleared up at night, people in the woods could clearly see the brilliant sea of stars and that huge yellow moon.

When Xia De saw Doctor Shi Nai De's cabin again deep in the woods, the doctor was also standing at the door of the cabin looking up at the moon.

"Good evening, Doctor, what are you thinking about? Are you worried about what's coming?"

Xia De asked while carrying his sword. The doctor sighed slightly:

"It's been almost half a month since I left Tuo Bei Si Ke. I miss that city a bit. I admit the air in the woodland is better, but this is not a familiar place after all... Come on, I'm ready, let's start the ritual now."

However, he told Xia De in advance:

"After the ritual, I will return to Tuo Bei Si Ke very soon. So before I fully recover, I won't be able to help you directly."

In other words, once the ritual was held, Xia De would have one less key combat force by his side.

"It doesn't matter, Doctor, you will have plenty of opportunities to help me in the future."

Xia De didn't care much about this. If the doctor's problem wasn't solved, he would be a ticking steam bomb by his side in the future:

"Let's start now, I hope everything goes smoothly."

A large clearing had already been cleared by the doctor at the door of the cabin. After he summoned the wind to sweep away the fallen leaves and floating dust on the ground, Xia De saw a huge circle formed by a total of thirteen strange symbols.

Just looking at those thirteen symbols gave one the feeling that their eyes were being polluted. Xia De frowned slightly:

"Are these the marks of those thirteen demons?"

"Yes."

So Xia De tried to find the mark representing the "Demon King." After all, that was the legendary first demon, and it might even be related to the demon in the fable told by his friend Mr. Xiao En A Si Meng.

But very magically, although there were only thirteen marks on the ground in total, and Xia De could match twelve of them one-to-one with the demons the doctor had mentioned and they had encountered together, he could not identify where the thirteenth mark was.

This was a cognitive problem, not that the Outlander had developed senile dementia. He looked at the doctor again with suspicion, and the doctor explained:

"In an unknown era, that terrifying existence was divided into different parts, and its existence itself was hidden to prevent it from reviving due to too many people becoming aware of it. Therefore, any symbols and written records related to it will show phenomena that cannot be observed like this."

"So if one day people find that they can know its stories and legends by reading, does it mean it has woken up?"

Xia De confirmed, and the doctor nodded with a heavy face:

"Theoretically, that's the case, but that's after it has fully woken up. Before that, you would definitely find that I have a problem... Let's not talk about this. Did you bring the 【Demon Hunter's Notes】?"

"I brought it."

Xia De handed over the black-covered book. This book would not manifest power if not opened, and even the doctor could touch it.

"Okay, then now use your 【Night Watcher】 to carve the symbol representing the hunter into the center of the circle formed by those demon symbols."

The doctor continued to instruct, and Xia De continued to follow suit. While he was busy, the doctor summoned more wind to completely clear the ground nearby, allowing the ritual base he had spent a whole day carving to appear completely under the moonlight.

This ritual base was slightly more complex than what Xia De saw on the parchment when he visited last week. Its main core was the thirteen symbols representing different demons, while the other secondary ritual cores on the ground corresponded to all the spiritual runes on Doctor Shi Nai De's current life ring.

In other words, this ritual was simulating his life ring.

Complex rings were nested one by one in the form of grooves on the ground, eventually forming a dazzling pattern. The blasphemous demonic language formed the overall framework of the ritual, and in terms of ritual symbols, the doctor took out the demon materials he had accumulated from hunting demons over the years.

Most of these dangerous things were related to demons hunted in the past. Even those that had been burned as firewood by the nuns, the doctor had actually kept a part of the demon's body.

Each type of demon had a correspondence, and for the most critical demon, the material provided by the doctor was the "golden roast rabbit meat" from last night, which was a part of his own soul.

Except for the hunter symbol drawn by Xia De in the center, the entire ritual was full of various traces strongly related to demons, which was also because the focus of the ritual was to obtain a "demon."

And after Xia De finished drawing the symbol, even though nothing happened, just because of the thirteen demon marks around, the hunter symbol began to glow faintly, even driving the 【Night Watcher】, which hadn't reacted much, to radiate silver light in its scabbard.

After everything was ready, Xia De retreated to the door of the cabin. The doctor finally exhorted:

"Various things might happen in a while, and I dare not say I have thought of all possibilities. In short, the most critical thing is, once I cannot control myself and my body has a tendency to transform into a demon, you kill me. I am not joking. If I really lose control completely, it will be too late by then."

"Doctor, although you have always been unlucky, you should have a time when your luck can get better."

Xia De comforted. Bi Er Shi Nai De smiled bitterly, grabbed the book, and walked from the edge of the huge ritual base to the center. The glowing hunter symbol certainly made him, who possessed demonic power, quite uncomfortable, but after enduring it slightly, he stepped onto the symbol surrounded by demon marks.

He didn't look at Xia De again, but looked at the starry sky tonight for the last time. After he lowered his head, black mud spread from his feet to the ground and quickly covered the circle surrounded by the thirteen demon marks.

The gurgling black mud, after covering the hunter's symbol, began to slowly infect the faintly glowing demon marks, and then extended along the complex ritual lines, spreading towards the entire ritual base.

This scene under the moon was silent, but the surrounding light gradually dimmed as this process proceeded. A thick black cloud appeared in the clear night sky at some point, and that cloud completely covered the three moons in the blink of an eye.

After the moonlight disappeared, some whispers appeared in the surrounding woods, as if many people were hiding around the clearing, peeking and whispering.

And in the center of the ritual, after all the ritual lines and symbols were activated by the black mud, the black mud flowing out from the doctor's body instead went upward, wrapping him up. This step was to connect him with the ritual on the ground.

Those black muds, or pus-like substances, eventually formed a structure similar to a "cocoon," and Xia De saw very clearly that before the cocoon completely sealed him at the doctor's chest, the doctor's right hand made the action of opening a book.

Thus, the sound of the wind stopped completely. Here, only the sound of mud flowing along the grooves on the ground and those whispers remained. Xia De tried to distinguish what those voices were saying, but what he could barely hear were only cowardly curses, painful curses, and crazy gibberish.

These voices were not loud, and Xia De felt a bit stuffy at this time. The atmosphere seemed to become more and more oppressive, until even he instinctively breathed only lightly, as if he was afraid of disturbing something.