Chapter 424: Golden Pearl

The further inward he walked, the more he could feel the entire space filled with malice. The sensation of facing a god became increasingly clear; whispers, murmurs, and even completely incomprehensible sounds of pain emerged, as if the empty temple were actually filled with unseen figures.

He felt a fishy, damp wind blowing from the direction of the holy emblem like a sharp blade. Cracks appeared on Xia De's face, but then golden light seeped out.

He felt a surging fire rising from beneath his feet like a giant beast. The pain touching his soul lasted only for an instant before being suppressed by a more powerful force.

He felt the thunder of destruction falling from above his head like a giant hammer in the hands of a god. The power resisted and impacted him, but this familiar high-dimensional force only made Xia De more excited.

He felt the lingering water wrapping around him like the hands of the most gentle lover. His pace became slow, but it was firm. Even 【Desire】 could not stop him, and these illusions could not stop him either.

The power behind the holy emblem was resisting, resisting this mortal carrying the divinity of an Outer God, but this only made Xia De more excited.

Looking up at the holy emblem, the eerie spiral pattern made Xia De feel increasingly severe dizziness. Around the path leading to the high platform where the holy emblem and altar were located, phantoms of ugly fish-men appeared one by one.

They reached out, trying to grab Xia De, but were wary of the divine radiance. The white bones piled under the altar seemed to come alive, and the undead shrieked as they lunged at Xia De from the front, but they could not make Xia De stop his steps.

Just as 【Desire】 had said, when a certain desire is strong to a certain degree, all other emotions will be suppressed.

All the statues in the entire temple seemed to tremble at this moment. When Xia De struggled to reach the first step below the high platform, the immense pressure he bore even caused the skin on his body to turn a terrifying bright red.

Lifting his foot onto the step, the golden scars on his body instantly intensified. Xia De's eyes, nose, mouth, and ears were all bleeding, but the power attracting him from ahead left him with no intention of stopping at all.

Finally struggling to reach the top of the high platform, the pressure caused Xia De to stumble and fall forward, but fortunately, he steadied himself by grabbing the rough stone altar and did not collapse.

The base of the altar consisted of four kneeling fish-men, who together extended their hands to hold up the huge stone basin above.

The bright red blood in the stone basin was all dripping from the surface of the holy emblem. Because the High Priest of the Scarlet Secret Sect was dead, no one now knew what these eerie liquids were, but if the blood, rich in blasphemous elements and vast spiritual power, were bottled and sold, one bottle would at least be able to...

"What am I thinking?"

Steadying himself by holding the edge of the altar with both hands, the holy emblem was within reach. But 【Desire】 had said that if he did not want to be watched after becoming a thief, he had to pollute the Sea Return Ceremony before taking that thing away.

Xia De knew the method of blasphemy; Mr. Edmund, who guarded the old lighthouse, had proposed a bold approach, which was to carve the holy emblem of a hostile god onto the holy emblem of the 【Lord of the Scarlet Spiral】.

But Xia De was worried that he would be struck dead by a bolt of lightning immediately, so he planned to use another method that would not cause trouble.

"This is an important investment."

Taking out the small bottle containing fish scales, because he had to hold the altar with his hands to keep from falling, Xia De could only crush the glass bottle with his bare hands. Ignoring the injury to his right hand, he threw the 【Scales of the Drowned Fish-man】 into that basin of blood.

Plop~

The altar was clearly resisting this thing, but the relic still penetrated the surface of the liquid and fell in, splashing blood onto Xia De's sleeve.

After an eerie moment of silence, the altar shook violently, and the glowing blood illuminated Xia De's face. Under his gaze, the pool of bright red blood bubbled like it was boiling, and the bright red blood quickly rotted and stank; the disgusting smell finally made Xia De actually vomit.

Vomiting the food residue along with gastric bleeding into the altar, this act was probably even more blasphemous than before.

A loud boom came from above the temple, as if thunder had struck here directly. Accompanied by the violent shaking of the ground, cracks actually appeared on the floor of the ancient temple.

The walls were peeling, and dust and stones kept falling from above. Even the holy emblem stopped dripping blood, its golden luster gradually dimming, as if the god had abandoned this place.

The pressure gradually eased, and Xia De looked up at the bone holy emblem coated with blood.

He took off his mask, and a strange sound came from his mouth. This was an ancient mermaid incantation, passed down from the oldest ages to the present. This language could not be easily recorded, but when the fish-men sealed 【Desire】 half a century ago, it was perfectly remembered by 【Desire】.

For a Grade 0 relic, this wonderful language might be much younger than it.

And as Xia De chanted, the progress of the temple's collapse became faster. The small statues of fish-men and mermaids cracked one by one, and the giant stones and beams of the ceiling fell toward the sea waves beneath the ground along with the countless skeletons hidden above.

Xia De did not run away; his mouth moved as he chanted the incantation, his eyes fixed on that holy emblem.

The holy emblem trembled with the collapse of the temple, and then, it cracked.

The remains of the holy emblem fell along with the dust, and a huge crack appeared on the wall behind it. A heavy heartbeat sound of "thump, thump, thump~" came from within, and a streak of ultimate golden light illuminated Xia De's face in front of the altar.

Except for the high platform under his feet, one-third of the temple's floor had already fallen into the sea waves. The shaking became more and more intense, and dust and red rain fell from the sky.

The crack on the wall became wider and wider, until Xia De saw the rotting blood vessels and flesh in the mermaid's chest cavity through that crack, and saw the fist-sized golden pearl embedded in the center of the black heart.

The golden light echoed with the cracks on Xia De's body, and he widened his eyes, reaching out his finger toward the top as if unconsciously:

"This is truly... my treasure..."

【Outsider, do not be deceived by desire.】

Xia De could no longer even distinguish whether this sentence was his own thought or if she was really reminding him.

Ashes mixed with blood rain fell, behind him was the temple that was about to collapse completely, and hundreds of small statues slanted into the floor, about to be submerged by the seawater. The golden light illuminated the outsider in front of the altar, illuminated his hands, and illuminated those strange cracks on his body.

As Xia De reached out his hand, the golden pearl embedded in the giant mermaid corpse's chest cavity automatically detached from the heart and flew out because of the call of the incantation.

A strange impulse made Xia De reach out to grab it, but as soon as his fingertips touched it, Xia De let out a cry of pain as if bitten by a cat and retracted his hand.

The golden pearl fell into the altar filled with boiling blood. Xia De saw that his fingertips had actually turned pitch black, but they quickly returned to normal.

"Why... is the divinity of an Evil God resisting me?"

There was no abnormality when he obtained the divinity of the 【Creator of Innocence】 last time, because that drop of divinity was a gift sent to Xia De by the ancient god across a thousand years, and that power was friendly to him.

But this drop of divinity was the power of the Evil God 【Lord of the Scarlet Spiral】; it would not obey Xia De and let him touch it. In fact, if it weren't for Xia De's own considerable adaptability to divinity, he should have died just from touching it. ===== CHAPTER 425 =====