Book 3, Chapter 59: Offering

The person kowtowed a few times, and the mutated tissue on the stone tray turned into a rotted, black mass. White smoke then came out of the raccoon statue’s orifices.

This meant that things had gone into effect, so the person looked up.

As a famous exterminator, he didn’t rely solely on brute strength to kill his targets, unlike the other martial artists. Instead, he used the supernatural being bound by an old cult.

This creature was much more useful than a head-on fight or guns.

The condition to use the supernatural being was easy. As the person casting the ritual, he had to get hurt.

In the old era, the ritual master had to personally approach the target and get attacked, but with the advancement of technology, he no longer needed to do that.

Since a person’s biofield was treated as part of them, all he needed to do was use technology to make his biofield projection appear before the target and create an abnormal atmosphere. Then, once the target chased out his biofield projection or attacked him, the conditions would be fulfilled.

It sounded like an easy process, but it was not. If the target turned off their Realm Pass, everything would come to naught.

Hence, his plan consisted of three steps. First, he tested and observed whether the target had a resonator. If they did, the first thing he had to do was perform domain interference and block them out.

Second, he made the target come into contact with a person with functional dysregulation syndrome. This was necessary to place his biofield signal on the target’s Realm Pass. The next time they came into contact, the target wouldn’t be able to turn off his signal within a short amount of time as he controlled things remotely.

With the first two steps set up, he could proceed to the last step.

According to his information, the target went to Oceanview Hall once every month. Since the place was in a remote area, where only one tram went every day with few passengers, he decided to attack there.

In order to increase the strength of the supernatural being and kill the target as quickly as possible, he offered up some of his organs and mutated tissue before performing the ritual kowtow.

Just then, someone contacted him on his Realm Pass, and he heard a flat voice. “Phantom Form, your client is asking when you plan to kill your target.”

“Tell him that I’ll be done soon,” Phantom Form answered hoarsely.

***

Meanwhile, the tram arrived at Chen Chuan’s station. He walked out of the tram station before realizing that even though his second self had been flickering nonstop since he came to the city, he had suddenly begun blurring out worse, and the effects seemed to be intensifying.

In just a few steps, his second self had become so blurry that Chen Chuan was practically unable to see him anymore. He was also still unable to use his Realm Pass.

While Chen Chuan had encountered his fair share of supernatural beings, he had never met any that could attack him so viciously within such a short period of time.

But ever since his second self transformed and grew from his battle with Wei Wusheng and his joy at feeling himself improve from his training, his overlap time had increased to two days and four hours. Even though his overlap time was still being whittled away, his second self should be able to last until he solved this problem.

Chen Chuan then cast a glance at the Arcane Palace. He couldn’t step onto campus grounds while this bizarre thing was happening to him.

While he believed that the university had a way to solve this problem, they might also figure out what was going on with him, so, after some thinking, he didn’t return to the Arcane Palace. Instead, he turned around and left.

Chen Chuan went to Golden River Drinks, the place where Wu Ruo had treated him to a warm drink. The shop had a vintage feel, and it was drizzling outside right now. As Chen Chuan listened to the piano piece playing on the gramophone, he watched the rain outside. The atmosphere was pretty good.

Then, he called a waitress over and ordered a warm drink before picking up the newspaper provided by the shop. With all things set, he leaned back against his chair and started reading.

All that he could do was wait and see who would be the last one standing.

***

Phantom Form kept getting up in his dark house and kowtowing, but as time passed, he realized that something was wrong, because he didn’t get the results he wanted.

It meant that the target wasn’t dead.

He was shocked. While martial artists were resilient and could stay alive for a long time, it had been more than an hour since the ritual. The target was also just a Martial Valor University student who hadn’t reached the Third Limit yet. No matter what, the supernatural being should have devoured him. Did he... take medicine?

Suddenly, Phantom Form remembered something. According to the information he had, this student had taken medicine to win against a Third Limit martial artist before. So, it was possible that he had also taken medicine to stay alive when he noticed something going wrong.

If that’s the case...

With a fierce glare in his eyes, he cut open the wound that had already healed and took out more clumps of mutated tissue. He spilled all of them on the statue’s tray. Then, he kowtowed to it again.

***

Chen Chuan turned to another section of the newspaper. Golden River Drinks’ newspaper featured rich and varied content. It had rumors, stories about famous people, along with reviews about clothes and drinks. Chen Chuan found it quite fun.

Even though he wasn’t using his Realm Pass, he wasn’t bored. Instead, he felt a rare moment of relaxation.

Since the drinks shop operated throughout the night, it had the most customers at dawn. Chen Chuan decided to just sit there the entire night.

When the sun rose, he was still getting attacked, but the damage was much weaker than before. Even his Realm Pass was recovering, though he still couldn’t contact anyone.

But based on his past experiences, the supernatural being wasn’t going to disappear just like this. This was more likely just a small intermission. Something else was going to happen later.

This was the first time Chen Chuan encountered such a troublesome supernatural being. By the looks of it, he needed to make some preparations.

After a moment of consideration, he got up, paid for his drink, and while his abnormal state wasn’t so obvious, returned to the Arcane Palace and grabbed the last bit of ritual materials from his room.

For safety's sake, Chen Chuan had set aside some ritual materials before he began drawing the arrays for the puppet's rituals, though that ended up with him almost not having enough for the second ritual. Fortunately, he hadn't needed to tap into his backup stash. With these materials, he could set up the simplest binding ritual, though he would have to find a suitable place for it.

Wu Ruo’s old house was a good place for that. It was located in a secluded area, and no one would bother him there. With his decision made, he removed the Realm Pass from the Resolution Department and put on his old one before grabbing his luggage bag and leaving for the tram station.

***

Phantom Form had been kowtowing for an entire night, so much so that the area where his head hit the floor had sunk down. Even so, he still received no word about the student’s death.

He had a feeling that things were going bad, because this ritual had one flaw that couldn’t really be considered one—once the ritual started, it could not end without an offering.

If Phantom Form couldn’t kill his target, it was highly likely that the supernatural being was going to turn on him and make him into the offering.

Just what was going on?

Frustration boiled in him, but until he got news about the student’s death, he could not stop. It would be no different from giving up on his life.

Hence, while kowtowing, he tried to figure out whether the student had died, but his target seemed to have entered the Arcane Palace. Phantom Form couldn’t break through the biofield in there, so he could only continue kowtowing.

***

An hour later, Chen Chuan arrived at the deserted area and picked a collapsed house that could provide him shelter. He drew a simple array inside and stood in the middle of it.

After waiting for a while, he sensed something and looked toward the shattered glass windows.

In the reflection on one of the pieces, he saw something resembling a raccoon clinging to his back.

With a sharp glare in his eyes, Chen Chuan reached out, grabbed it, and dragged it off his back.

The creature seemed to have been formed from smoke. It clung to his back with claws, but once Chen Chuan pulled even harder, it finally reached the limit of its strength and scattered into smoke that disappeared without a trace.

***

At the same time, Phantom Form screamed in pain while kowtowing to the statue. Claw marks appeared on his stomach and back. His skin and flesh were torn apart, revealing the bones and organs beneath.

Hurriedly, he crawled to the side and took the medicine he had prepared beforehand. After a while, his wounds healed as anger and fear shone in his eyes.

The ritual had failed.

He hadn’t died because the supernatural being had decided to spare him. It was waiting for him to recover so that it could devour fresh blood and flesh. This was going to keep repeating itself, unless Phantom Form killed his target.

His expression turned dark. If that was the case, then he would have to kill his target with the most direct method.

***

When Chen Chuan sensed that the supernatural being was gone, he left the deserted area and contacted Wu Bei to tell him what had happened. Wu Bei then told him that he had been unable to contact him since the day before. In the beginning, it might have been due to someone interfering with the domain’s signal, but later, Chen Chuan’s Realm Pass broke down.

“This should be an anomalous effect. I switched to another Realm Pass, since I couldn’t turn off my previous one. I think someone has tampered with it remotely. Is that possible?” Chen Chuan asked.

“You usually can’t do it without getting close to a per—That’s right!” Wu Bei suddenly exclaimed. “It’s the fright disorder person! It had to have been him!

“If someone came into contact with you and transferred a dominant domain signal onto your Realm Pass, they could do that, but you need to be really skilled to pull that off. You also need an expensive biofield.”

“So, if a person had these things, they could do it?” Chen Chuan asked for confirmation.

“If it was me and I had those things, I could pull it off, though with some difficulty. It shouldn’t be too hard for someone even more skilled than I am to do it,” Wu Bei answered.

Chen Chuan nodded, then said, “You mentioned that someone might have transferred a dominant domain signal onto my Realm Pass so that they could control it, which means that they left behind domain traces. Could you track them down?”

“If the dominant domain signal hasn’t been deleted, I could do it,” Wu Bei replied.

Realm Nodes were required to connect domain signals. Hence, for a certain period of time, domain traces would be left behind, and a lot of work was required to delete their traces. Due to this, technicians usually deleted just the final domain trace, because that would mean that they had shut down the “door” leading to the other traces. Without it, no one would be able to locate the other domain traces.

Chen Chuan pondered over it and said, “It should still be around.”

He had been unable to use his Realm Pass, so he had taken it off and made it impossible for his attacker to use it to attack him. After that, Chen Chuan went to the Arcane Palace. No matter how good his attacker was, they wouldn’t have been able to bypass the Arcane Palace’s domain barrier.

“If it’s still around, then I have ways to find it,” Wu Bei guaranteed.

Chen Chuan nodded at that and returned to the university. Since there was a possibility that he could be discovered bringing his Realm Pass out and give the attacker a chance to delete the domain traces, Wu Bei told Chen Chuan to put the Realm Pass into the box with which it came to him. The special resin contained within it could block off domain attacks.

Once Chen Chuan took care of the Realm Pass, he didn’t go to Wu Bei’s apartment. Instead, they agreed to meet in a garage. Chen Chuan arrived first, and a few minutes later, Wu Bei came as well.

They exchanged a few words before Wu Bei opened the box and quickly checked the Realm Pass. Then, with glee, he said, “The signal is still here!”

With his hands on the Realm Pass, he said excitedly, “Let me see where this guy is...”