Chapter 177
Chapter 177
“No! I won’t accept this!”
“I refuse to believe I can’t deal with three wet-behind-the-ears brats!”
Just as Li Jiao approached the largest black vat to attempt something else, a gigantic bat nearly ten feet long suddenly flew inside.
It landed on Li Jiao’s scalp-stripped head and rubbed against her wrinkled face.
The normally affectionate gesture made Li Jiao bare her teeth in pain.
“What?! An expert is coming toward the villa?!”
“Even the Bat God doesn’t dare slow him down?!”
Terror appeared on Li Jiao’s deranged face.
She kicked the unconscious Li Jinlong hard.
“Damn you, little bastard! Who the hell did you provoke?!”
Afraid that Li Jiao would fly into a rage and hurt someone, Li Feng hurriedly hoisted Li Jinlong onto his back and shielded him.
“Little Sister, this isn’t the time for blame. We need to run!”
Only then did Li Jiao suppress her vicious fury. She gazed greedily at the unconscious Li Jinlong.
“Run? Of course we’ll run. Right now!”
“I’m not ready to die before I’ve enjoyed my darling nephew!”
Cackling, Li Jiao left the villa and walked to the edge of the Chaotic Graveyard.
She cut her wrist with the scissors, scattering blood across the graves as she chanted strange, incomprehensible syllables.
“GENILU, WUHNAKFI. RUXISJA, OSHSHSH!”
In the blink of an eye, mummified corpses in varying stages of decay crawled from the graves.
Several had rotted completely into skeletons.
They rushed into the villa, hoisted the evil god’s statue, ox skulls, clay jars, and black vats of every size, then ran toward the deep mountains.
Seven bats-one large and six small-carried Li Jiao in a suspended basket as she led the way.
Li Feng and his two subordinates panicked and shouted after her.
“Little Sister, where are you going? Wait for us!”
Li Jiao waved a hand, sending several corpses back to carry Li Feng and the others.
“Useless! Men are all useless!”
“If I didn’t crave your bodies, I wouldn’t care whether any of you lived or died!”
The Li siblings fled for more than an hour before reaching a cave behind Huimu Mountain.
The passage was extremely narrow near the entrance.
They could only hunch over and creep forward little by little.
After traveling roughly a third of a mile, the cavern opened abruptly before them.
Two rows of ancient bronze lamps burned in niches along the surrounding walls.
After they entered a great hall, the light became even brighter.
But the lamps emitted a ghastly white glow.
Their burning oil gave off a greasy sweetness.
At first, the scent was strangely pleasant.
But after breathing it for too long, one began to feel drowsy and dazed.
At the center of the stone cavern stood an eerie statue more than sixteen feet tall.
It had four heads and eight arms and was skeletal everywhere except for its split, grotesquely swollen belly.
It looked like a woman about to give birth after years of severe malnutrition.
Eight smaller, sinister deities of various forms surrounded the statue.
Some lacked limbs, some were hideously ugly, some were deformed, and others had their organs exposed.
Not one of them looked normal.
The sight of those yin deity statues turned Li Feng deathly pale.
“L-Little Sister, when did you have this place built? Why didn’t your Second Brother know anything about it?!”
Li Jiao cackled and dropped onto a dust-covered stone bench.
“I discovered this place by accident after returning from learning the Head-Lowering Art.”
“I copied some of the writing on the walls and asked people to identify it, but no one could!”
“Only one old ghost told me the script was older than oracle-bone inscriptions and must be more than five thousand years old!”
“Cackle, cackle! The writing doesn’t matter. It’s just a pity I don’t know the title of this great deity!”
As Li Jiao spoke, she reached out a bloody hand to caress the enormous statue.
“If I could enter this honored deity’s service, then in the future…”
Before she could finish, the giant statue suddenly trembled.
The evil god’s statue carried in by the corpses exploded into fragments with a boom.
Far from alarmed, Li Jiao was overjoyed. She immediately knelt before the giant statue and repeatedly kowtowed.
She continued until the skin of her forehead stuck to the floor.
“This disciple thanks the honored deity for granting me refuge! Thank you for granting me refuge!”
If even Li Jiao behaved this way, the mummified corpses that followed her naturally prostrated themselves completely before the statue.
On closer inspection, they were clearly trembling in terror.