Chapter 232 - Cauldron
They slowly made their way down the cave. No one said anything as they walked. Even though they continued walking for a long time, they had yet to reach the bottom; it was as if the cave was never ending. Luckily the deeper they walked, the wider the cave got. Due to this, it was not as oppressive as it had been near the entrance.
“Wait, stop.” Li Huowang saw something and kneeled down. He stared at the footprints within the cave.
“These are the footprints of an adult. Looks like someone else also came into this cave before... Everyone, be careful. Let’s continue walking.” Li Huowang stood up and continued walking down the cave. Compared to the evil beings, he was more afraid of encountering another human.
After all, if a human could enter this cave filled with evil beings so easily, then that would mean that the human had to be extremely powerful.
After a while, there was a turn in front of them. Sun Baolu stopped nervously and spoke, “Back then, when I passed through this point, one of my friends disappeared.”
Sun Baolu’s fear soon affected everyone else causing all of them to become a lot more alert.
Li Huowang pulled Sun Baolu back and walked to the front of the bend. He held his sword and stood there while surveying his surroundings, but in the end, nothing attacked him.
“Are you sure it’s here? There’s nothing on the ground except for two dead lambs,” asked Li Huowang.
“Dead lambs?” Sun Baolu and the rest carefully approached Li Huowang and raised their glowing rocks. Just like Li Huowang said, there were two dead lambs and nothing else within the darkness.
Looking at their mummified bodies that were covered in dust, it was clear the lambs had lost their way in here and then died from hunger.
After a moment, Li Huowang sliced open the mummified lambs, causing the dried up organs within them to fall out.
However, Li Huowang did not stop there, and stomped the corpses of the lambs to bits. He was being cautious of the lambs suddenly being reanimated and attacking him.
Even though it might seem like he was being overly cautious, he would rather be safe than sorry in this situation.
After turning both the lambs to dust, Li Huowang sheathed his sword and continued walking.
Even though the cave became wider and larger the deeper they went, Li Huowang still couldn’t see what was within the darkness.
The darkness within the cave was bizarre; it was as if it was even darker than the darkness found in other places. The glowing rocks in their hands only allowed them to illuminate a short distance away, while Li Huowang’s eyes could barely see any further than that.
After walking for some time they soon encountered even more mummified lambs, but this time Li Huowang did not destroy them; there were just too many of them. They were littered across the floor, and there were at least 800 of them!
“We could attribute there being one or two dead lambs to them wandering in here and getting lost,, but more than a few hundreds? It’s clear that someone did this purposefully. Someone herded the lambs into the cave and waited for them to die. But, who did this?” Li Huowng pondered out loud.
The body of the lambs were fine as well; there were no traces of them being bitten.
With all these indicators, it was clear that the Black Taisui was not around here. After all, it would never give up on the lambs since it required their meat to survive.
After giving it some thought, Li Huowang took out the dead Black Taisui skin from his pouch and once again placed it in front of Bun. “Bun, smell this and help us find its source.”
Bun licked its lips and hesitantly walked forward.
Li Huowang waved his hand and everyone quickly followed after him. “Stay close. Don’t fall behind.”
“It should be fine in the short path ahead, but if we walk for another seven minutes or so, we will arrive at the place where I was hit by the brush last time around. That was also the farthest I went back then,” Sun Baolu nervously reminded them.
The dead lambs littering the ground did not stop as they went deeper and deeper into the cave. Finally, after walking for ten minutes, they saw something different.
It was a massive bronze cauldron, roughly ten feet tall.
The giant bronze cauldron was covered in green rust and dust; it was as if it hadn’t been used in a long time.
“Huh. This wasn’t here when I last came here,” said Sun Baolu, confused.
This fact instantly caused Li Huowang to raise his guard. He looked at the cauldron and then at the mass of dead lamb behind them. He felt that both of them were somehow connected. Li Huowang knew that a cauldron was an important object in ceremonies.
After a moment, Li Huowang circled around the cauldron and looked behind it. Just as he had expected, he found plates made from white jade, as well as the rotting carcasses of several animals that had been used as a sacrifice.
This place was indeed being used by someone for ceremonies.
Didn’t Baolu say that this was the place where all the evil beings hid? Then why is there a ceremonial ground here? Unless... was it the evil beings who were conducting the ceremony? If so, what are they worshiping?
Li Huowang carefully approached the cauldron and looked inside. However, other than ashes, there was nothing else inside it.
“Ah!”
At that moment, a sudden cry rang out, surprising Li Huowang. When he swiftly turned around, he saw Bai Lingmiao hugging her Second Deity tightly.
“What’s wrong? Did you see something?” Li Huowang quickly ran forward and asked.
“Lamb! The lamb!” shouted Bai Lingmiao as she pointed toward the left side of the cave. At the same time, she hugged the Second Deity even more tightly.
Seeing this, Li Huowang carefully approached the location that Bai Lingmiao was pointing toward and illuminated the area with his glowing rock. There, he found even more lamb corpses.
However, these corpses were different. These corpses were half human and half lamb! The corpse of an old man was just beneath Li Huowang’s feet. When he checked, he saw that the old man had spiral horns growing out from his forehead. Right before his death, the old man had been touching his face with his hooves, his face filled with despair.
There was another corpse right beside the old man’s corpse. The top part of this corpse belonged to a lamb, and had been skinned, but the bottom half was distorted, looking like a combination between a human and a lamb.
This was merely the start.
As Li Huowang raised his glowing rock and illuminated even more of the dark corner, he saw more and more corpses that were transformed half way through, each more horrifying than the last. It was no wonder that Bai Lingmiao was so scared.
As he looked at these half-human half-lamb corpses, Li Huowang instantly remembered the lamb corpses he had seen before. “Those weren’t lamb corpses! Those were humans! They were transformed into lambs and then made into sacrifices!”
After coming to this realization, Li Huowang quickly ran toward the cauldron and saw rows and rows of lamb corpses, each of them placed neatly.
Upon realizing that the lambs were originally humans, it finally dawned on Li Huowang just how much danger they were in!
Someone had killed thousands of people over here just to offer sacrifices and worship!
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