The chime was crisp and ethereal, a refreshing sound with an endless, reverberating echo that carried a strange, sacred quality. The moment he heard it, Su Zhou, who had been feigning composure, immediately lifted his head and listened intently.
'He was certain this was some kind of modified, improved Spirit Sound!'
"It's finally starting!"
"The stars have finally aligned!"
Several members of the Continuous Prayer Meeting, who clearly had inside information, broke into joyful expressions. They immediately dropped what they were doing and surged toward the Prayer Hall deeper in the cavern. Even those who had wanted to question Su Zhou's origins had no time to waste. At most, they shot a strange glance at the youth, who was also smiling, before turning to leave.
Naturally, Su Zhou didn't just stand there. He put down his cart and moved forward with the crowd, then gradually slowed his pace until he was at the very back, silently memorizing the direction they were headed.
Soon, when the passages on either side were empty and no footsteps echoed from behind, Su Zhou turned and headed straight for the deserted warehouse area.
The passage wasn't long. For convenient storage and retrieval, the supply warehouse wasn't located deep within the tunnels. Instead, it was housed in a converted subterranean cavern. Following the tunnel lights, he arrived in less than half a minute.
He could see that it was a huge subterranean cavern, an artificially smoothed, semi-circular hall. Wooden railings sectioned off different areas where various supplies were haphazardly stacked: large quantities of compressed food, jugs of purified water, all sorts of tools, mining suits, compressed oxygen tanks, and spare electrical cables and electronic components.
Su Zhou could even hear a generator running nearby. His eyes lit up. 'They must be using it to power the tunnel lights,' he thought. 'If I destroy it, the Continuous Prayer Meeting will be plunged into darkness deep inside the cavern, which should cause some chaos. Of course, that would also tip them off. It has its pros and cons, so it's probably not the best move.'
In any case, that wasn't his primary objective.
Weaving around a few toolboxes scattered on the floor, Su Zhou took a few more steps and arrived at a hidden cavern off to the side of the storage hall. He strode inside.
And there, laid out before him, were rows upon rows of neatly arranged weapons of all kinds!
It was an armory!
'No guards? Just as I'd expect from a loosely organized Mysterious Organization. It's just like that case Dad told me about!'
Su Zhou's heart leaped with joy as he scanned the room.
He saw pistols, rifles, and submachine guns. They were probably decommissioned military surplus from various countries, but they were well-maintained. Off to one side sat a separate wooden crate marked with a hazard symbol. While others might have been puzzled, Su Zhou could tell at a glance what was inside: hand grenades. And if he wasn't mistaken, they were Zhengguo-style stick grenades!
In addition, there were bulletproof vests, bayonets, daggers, gas masks, and other cold weapons. He even spotted crossbows packed in boxes, with clusters of assorted arrowheads next to them.
A grin spread across Su Zhou's face at the sight of these weapons, but something even more outrageous lay ahead. He looked up and froze. Tucked away behind all the other armaments was a long, black tube.
A Ross Country RPG-7?!
The man-portable rocket-propelled grenade launcher. The simplest infantry anti-armor weapon in the world. Even some random guy in Africa could pick it up and know how to use it!
His breath hitched at the sight of it, and he rushed forward.
'RPGs aren't that rare. It's not surprising that a group with the Continuous Prayer Meeting's influence could get their hands on one. But... were they prepared to fight a small-scale skirmish with the official forces of Shan Country the moment they were exposed? And how did they even get it in here?'
'The local government must be colluding with the Continuous Prayer Meeting,' Su Zhou thought as he began to inspect the RPG and its warheads.
But the inspection only left him scratching his head. The propellant in this case of warheads was either damp, or the tail fins were bent. It seemed the members of the Continuous Prayer Meeting hadn't maintained them at all, simply buying them and tossing them aside to collect moisture.
Out of forty rockets in total, only a single one was in good condition. The rest would either fly a few meters and blow up their own men, or have a post-launch trajectory as erratic as a Zhu Country Brownian motion missile!
'But it's enough!'
With this ultimate weapon in hand, Su Zhou's eyes filled with glee.
'These Continuous Prayer Meeting guys really came prepared. But now, it's all mine!'
He put on a bulletproof vest and a mining helmet, loaded a magazine into the submachine gun, and slung it across his chest. He tucked a dagger into his belt and hung a few stick grenades from it. A few minutes later, now fully armed, he pulled back the gun's bolt. With the RPG launcher on his back, Su Zhou walked out of the armory with a cold smirk and strode toward the Prayer Hall.
—*Of the myriad forms of Martial Arts, this is being fully armed!*
Su Zhou hurried toward the depths of the cavern. Along the way, he noticed the passages growing more ancient. The signs of recent, man-made construction grew sparse, and large murals began to appear on the walls.
On both sides of the deep cavern passages, he could see crude images sketched in what looked like simple graphite. These ancient murals undoubtedly caught Su Zhou's attention. He followed them, examining their content as he pressed forward.
The murals were neither large nor intricate. Their content was disjointed, and the style was inconsistent, as if many different people had contributed to them over time, each drawing one section. Without dedicated study, an ordinary person probably wouldn't even be able to make out the images, let alone understand their meaning.
But as Su Zhou hurried along, viewing them in sequence, he was able to grasp their general meaning.
It was the story of the ancient Ancestors who worshipped the Holy Snake.
In ancient times, there lived a group of Ancestors who worshipped the wisdom and power of the snake. Of course, this so-called Holy Snake was nothing like a real snake. In the murals, the "snake" was just an amorphous line, winding through the sky and across the earth, sometimes thick, sometimes thin. It was less a snake and more a randomly sketched black line.
This line, the "Holy Snake," symbolized a great power. It could determine a tribe's prosperity, the falling of rain, the fertility of livestock, and even the outcome of wars.
The snake's form was ever-changing. Traces of it could be found in the west and the east, the north and the south, even on the other side of the planet and beyond the world itself. Its form was also mutable—with seven heads, eight branches, nine heads, or even a hundred or a thousand heads. Form did not affect its power, and names held no symbolic meaning.
—The Holy Snake Spirit was the embodiment of wisdom and authority, of the Immortal and Reincarnation—it was the very Soul of the World!
「Meanwhile, in the Prayer Hall.」
In the ancient Obsidian Hall, numerous members of the Continuous Prayer Meeting had formed a circle, like a serpent biting its own tail. Holding Secret Seals and chanting Secret Spells, they worshipped the Void Scripture Orbit on the central altar.
On the altar, the current Leader of the Continuous Prayer Meeting, a white-haired, white-bearded Bedouin man, was dissecting a two-headed giant python that was a full eleven meters long. His gaze was impassive as he calmly used an obsidian knife, which swirled with green light, to slice open the giant python's Scale Armor. Strangely, the python did not struggle, as if paralyzed by a terrifying Suppression that transcended life itself.
Soon, the Bedouin Leader extracted the snake's heart. Using its heart's blood as ink, he began to trace Runes in midair. The dark red blood, brimming with Spiritual Energy, coalesced in the air, forming a dense cluster of Runes that vaguely took the shape of a Great Serpent biting its own tail, its body a perfect circle.
As they chanted the Secret Spell, the voices of the Continuous Prayer Meeting members echoed throughout the ancient grotto. Layers of light, streams of Spiritual Energy, could be seen rising from everyone's bodies and finally gathering directly above the Array.
This Spiritual Energy, like swarming fireflies drawn to a vacuum, spontaneously poured into the circular Great Serpent. It acted as fuel, rapidly accelerating its maturation. Soon, as the snake blood spread to form a circular Array that encompassed the entire Prayer Hall, the phantom of a self-devouring, self-birthing Giant Serpent began to emerge. It spun, kicking up a tornado of wind that whirled through the hall, accompanied by a pleasant, soothing Spirit Sound. It seemed on the verge of descending, of becoming real.
And within this nearly corporeal phantom, a speck of blood-red light, like a Gemstone, was gradually forming and growing stronger!
"Excellent… The Orbit is a success… Quick, bring all the 'offerings'!"
The Bedouin Leader's face was ecstatic. He commanded in a loud voice, "First the 'Blood Offering,' then the 'Spirit Offering'! The great Holy Snake Spirit will descend today and grant us the path to eternal life!"
"Eternal life!"
Shouting "Eternal life!" in the spiritual language of the Secret Spell, the hall erupted in a fanatical, wave-like roar. Hearing their Leader's command, several members at the edge of the Orbit turned, opened the great doors of the Prayer Hall, and prepared to bring in the various offerings stored in the adjacent cavern.
Sukra, the man from Zhu Country, stood at the very center of the Orbit. He, too, was chanting the Secret Spell, his eyes fixed in anticipation on the scene before him—on that slowly gestating point of blood-red light.
—*The Holy Snake Spirit Blood, the Elixir of Immortality*—
'A Holy Artifact that could grant a complete Rebirth and forge a Divine Body. Even if an ordinary person obtained it, they could Transcend the Mortal World in the coming New Era and gain the potential to achieve an Immortal existence!'
However, for some reason, the members sent to retrieve the offerings were taking a long time. The Bedouin Leader's expression, once joyous, shifted through confusion, anger, and coldness, finally settling on a frown of alarmed suspicion. The other Continuous Prayer Meeting members, weary from the prolonged chanting of the Secret Spell, were beginning to falter. The Spell Combination Technique was becoming ragged, and the phantom of the coiled Giant Serpent, which had been on the verge of solidifying, was now growing faint and illusory once more.
Just then, however, the sound of a door creaking open was heard. The great doors to the Prayer Hall swung slowly inward, and everyone let out a collective, quiet sigh of relief.
But what came through the doors was not a cart laden with offerings. It was—
Hand grenades!
WHOOSH—As everyone stared, dumbfounded, four stick grenades were tossed almost simultaneously into the Prayer Hall. And just like that—they exploded in mid-air!
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!!
The violent explosions and their concussive shockwaves instantly killed more than a dozen of the nearest Cultists. The shrapnel that followed filled the hall with wails and cries of pain. The sounds of people screaming for their parents blended into a single cacophony. But it wasn't over! A few seconds after the explosions died down, a figure executed a clean combat roll through the doorway. Without a moment's hesitation, the figure raised the submachine gun at his chest, pressed the trigger without a shred of Compassion, and began spraying bullets at every living thing in the hall!
"The times have changed, you cultist freaks!"
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!
In an instant, the entire hall was filled with muzzle flashes!
—*Of the myriad forms of Martial Arts, this is the machine gun sweep!*