In the dark night, on the flowing river, on the cold ice, Lu Ze gasped, looking at Mrs. Sharon's corpse with her skullcap removed. Her brain matter was still steaming, but the blood that had flowed out had already frozen to the ice.
"I feel like I've seen similar scenes before," Lu Ze thought with a bitter smile.
After catching his breath and closing his eyes to meditate, recovering some of his spirituality, he drew his dagger and shakily stood up. The gunshots had occurred a while ago, and although the river channel was a bit remote, curious people might still come, so he had to dispose of the body quickly.
Lu Ze walked to Mrs. Sharon's corpse, contemplating the best way to make the cuts.
At this moment, a thought suddenly surged into his mind.
"Perhaps I should perform a Spirit Medium ritual first to gather more information from her. Whether it's internal details about the Demoness Sect or specifics of the human trafficking, even if I can't tell the captain, at least it can make me less passive."
"Spirit Medium" is a skill that Spirit Mediums like Daly excel at, but Secrets Supplicants and Seers like Lu Ze or Klein can also manage it with rituals, albeit with difficulty. However, it must be done quickly; if the target's spirituality dissipates, it will be impossible.
Thinking of this, Lu Ze no longer hesitated. He used his dagger to create a Wall of Spirituality around himself and the corpse. Then, he sprinkled pure dew and herbal powder, and softly chanted the Evernight Goddess's honorific name in Hermes.
"She is the Evernight Goddess, more sublime than the Cosmos, more ancient than eternity."
During the chanting, Lu Ze couldn't help but feel a little nervous.
"I'm acting privately, bypassing the organization, and I'm even borrowing power from the Goddess. She shouldn't punish me, right? Probably not; she's already provided me with help, so she must tacitly approve of a certain degree of my freedom."
Lu Ze comforted himself this way and continued the ritual, chanting the incantation:
"I implore the power of Darkness;"
"I implore the power of Concealment;"
"I implore You to allow me to communicate with the spirituality of this evil Demoness."
The Hermes incantation echoed within the enclosed space, and a terrifying and hidden power descended, surging into Lu Ze's body. Lu Ze's azure eyes quickly turned deep black, the blackness rapidly spreading, devouring the whites of his eyes entirely, making him appear terrifying and mysterious.
Through these pure black eyes, Lu Ze saw the spirit of Mrs. Sharon that had not yet dissipated from her body. She floated blankly, and only reacted with a resentful expression when her gaze met Lu Ze's.
Lu Ze naturally didn't care about the resentment of the deceased. He reached out and touched Mrs. Sharon, and the Goddess's power connected him with her spirituality.
The scene before him suddenly changed.
In a chaotic street corner, a handsome man, somewhat resembling Mrs. Sharon, carefully examined a note. On it, several lines were written in Loen:
"Sequence 9: Assassin."
"Main ingredients: four claws of an adult Dark Spirit Cat, all feathers of a Concealed Night Hawk."
"Auxiliary ingredients: 80 ml pure water, 5 drops white mandrake juice, 5 grams nightshade powder, 10 grams adult Dark Spirit Cat whiskers powder."
The scene shifted, and the man appeared in a dark alley. His appearance had matured and become much more sinister, looking cold and fierce. Opposite him stood an extremely beautiful woman. He concealed his covetousness for the woman, bowing respectfully as he took the note she handed him. The note read:
"Sequence 8: Instigator.
Main ingredients: heart of a Demon Throat Bee, venom sac of a Dark Lurker.
Auxiliary ingredients: 100 ml pure water, vocal cords of a Demon Throat Bee, 5 drops blue mandrake juice, 10 grams water fern powder, one unpeeled walnut."
The scene continued to change, and finally, the Mrs. Sharon whom Lu Ze knew appeared before him. She lay languidly on a chair, her curves graceful and captivating. She said to Triss below her, "That councilman is almost dealt with. As long as he also stands with us, future transport channels will be much faster."
On the dressing table behind her, there was a statue made of white bone.
It was a woman with an eerie and beautiful appearance, her hair extending all the way to her ankles, each strand thick like a snake, with eyes at the ends.
As Lu Ze looked at the statue, it also reacted. Under the gaslight, the surface of the statue shimmered, and all the snake-like hairs seemed to come alive, wriggling. And just then, the head of the bone-made woman slowly began to turn.
She looked at Lu Ze, her bony, rigid face seemingly smiling.
"Boom!"
The illusory world suddenly collapsed, and Lu Ze's consciousness returned to the ice.
"Ah!"
He clutched his head, letting out a painful scream, as if a sharp blade had split his skull, exposing his brain directly to the cold air. He took a long time to recover before difficultly standing up.
In the instant he met the statue's gaze, some forbidden knowledge was violently shoved into his mind. Recalling it now, it seemed to be an honorific name.
"The honorific name of the Primordial Demoness?" Lu Ze murmured in disbelief.
The Primordial Demoness, the evil god worshipped by the Demoness Sect. He had seen it in the Nighthawks' data; she was an extremely dangerous and terrifying deity who had brought terrible disasters to the world. But this theoretical highest level of the Demoness Sect, encountering Lu Ze, an enemy who had just killed her follower, her first action was to forcefully shove her honorific name into him?
It was as if she was begging Lu Ze to call upon her honorific name!
Lu Ze was speechless, only feeling a numbness in his head.
First the True Creator, then the Hidden Sage, and now the Primordial Demoness… are the evil gods perhaps a little too fond of me?
Speaking of honorific names, among the knowledge granted by the Secrets Supplicant Beyonder characteristic, besides the True Creator, there was also a mysterious existence called Ouroboros. However, the description in this honorific name included "True Creator's subordinate," clearly putting him in the same camp as the True Creator. Therefore, Lu Ze had never prayed to him.
If he prayed, he might gain another mysterious existence coveting him…
Forget it, don't think about these things for now.
Lu Ze shook his head. Time was pressing; it was better to extract Mrs. Sharon's heart first.
So he raised his dagger and approached the corpse with its skullcap removed.
Friends who frequently dissect bodies know that the heart is protected by the ribs, and removing it is not an easy task. Forensic pathologists often need to use a saw to cut through several ribs to extract the heart. Lu Ze exerted great effort but couldn't remove the ribs. He eventually resorted to a ritual, using Flesh Magic, to obtain a complete Demoness's heart.
However, Lu Ze couldn't just take one heart, because Ms. M, who was always monitoring him, would notice the anomaly. Therefore, he also ceremoniously removed Mrs. Sharon's other organs, as well as her hair and eyes. To be fair, some forbidden rituals of the Secrets Supplicant really do use such materials, but Lu Ze wasn't particularly keen on using them, as it seemed too insane.
After completing all of this, Lu Ze didn't rush to leave. Instead, he took out all of Mrs. Sharon's belongings and her precipitated Beyonder characteristic. Afterwards, he used a ritual to interfere with her corpse, preventing anyone from divining or performing a Spirit Medium ritual on it later to find clues about him.
After that, he threw the Demoness's corpse into the Tasok River, walked across the gradually thawing ice, and disappeared into the shadows of the street.