Walker Of The Worlds

Chapter 3901: A Fearful Ritual

Lin Mu carefully picked up the final stone.

Compared to the previous entries, this one carried much deeper scratches. Several characters had almost cracked the surface of the rock itself. Whoever had written it had clearly pressed far harder than before.

His eyes slowly moved across the carved words.

"Four pools and thirteen fingernails of time.

The others keep talking about a ritual.

Nobody will explain what it truly is.

Whenever I ask, they simply laugh and tell me to wait.

They keep saying everyone joins eventually.

One old man smiled with only three teeth left and told me that I would understand after seeing it once.

I asked whether people die there.

He only laughed harder.

I asked whether there would be food.

He laughed again.

I do not understand why everyone laughs here.

Later, after everyone lay down to sleep, I heard them talking.

At first I thought they were awake.

Then I realized they were dreaming.

They kept muttering about the ritual.

Some begged for forgiveness.

Some cried.

One man kept saying he could still hear it breathing.

Another kept repeating that it had too many eyes.

One woman screamed for someone named Brother Yuan to run before suddenly becoming silent.

Even after she stopped speaking, her body kept shaking.

They all sounded terrified.

When they woke up, none of them remembered saying anything.

Or perhaps they pretended not to remember.

Tomorrow...

Or whatever tomorrow means in this place...

I will be joining the ritual too."

Lin Mu silently stared at the stone for several long moments.

There were no more words. The final line ended abruptly and no explanation followed. There was no record of what the writer had experienced and no mention of whether they had survived.

Lin Mu slowly placed the stone back onto the pile.

"So that was the last entry..." His voice barely rose above a whisper.

The diary simply ended there. Whether the writer had died, gone mad, or simply stopped recording... There was no way to tell.

He searched the rest of the camp thoroughly. Every crude shelter, every pile of scrap and every makeshift piece of furniture scattered around. His Immortal Sense swept across every hidden corner while carefully remaining beneath the limits of the Abyssal Horizon Veil Seal.

But he found nothing. There were no more carved stones, no scraps of cloth with writing, no hidden journals and no carved messages upon the walls. Either nobody else possessed the habit of recording their thoughts... Or they had hidden their records somewhere else.

Lin Mu eventually returned to the pile of stones and his gaze lingered upon them.

"The ritual..." That single word had appeared repeatedly.

It was enough to make it impossible to ignore. Everyone supposedly joined it and the prisoners refused to explain it. Even while sleeping, they muttered about it with obvious terror.

Whatever the ritual truly involved... It left deep scars upon the mind.

Lin Mu slowly looked around the empty camp once more. The fire pits immediately caught his attention. Earlier, he had merely glanced at them. Now he crouched beside the largest one.

The ashes remained undisturbed.

He gently rubbed a small amount between his fingers.

’Cold.’

Even so... They had not yet scattered. A few pieces of charred wood still retained their shape. The surrounding ground also carried plenty of footprints. Someone had lived here recently, very recently.

Yet... The camp remained empty.

"They all left together." Lin Mu quietly muttered.

His eyes shifted toward the primitive shelters and confirmed that nothing appeared abandoned in panic and nothing had been overturned. The prisoners had simply walked away.

Considering the diary the answer seemed rather straightforward.

"They went to the ritual."

Whether it had already begun, or whether everyone had gathered beforehand... Lin Mu could not tell.

He doubted they had already returned. Otherwise the camp would hardly remain deserted. That left only one decision.

"I should find it." He quietly stood.

Finding a gathering somewhere inside the Mad Demon Depths sounded almost impossible. The underground labyrinth stretched for an enormous distance and countless tunnels branched apart.

Even with his Spatial Perception, searching blindly could consume weeks.

Fortunately the prisoners had left behind something useful: Tracks.

Lin Mu slowly lowered himself toward the ground.

"hmm..." The dust covering the stone remained uneven.

Ordinary cultivators might overlook it completely but his enhanced eyesight revealed faint depressions. There were footprints... dozens of them. Some were deep and some shallow while many overlapped each other.

Occasionally they disappeared entirely where the stone became too hard. Then they appeared again farther ahead. Several had become partially smeared. Perhaps by someone dragging their feet or perhaps through later movement.

The trail certainly lacked clarity.

Even so it remained enough and Lin Mu quietly began following it. The journey proved far longer than expected. One tunnel merged into another and the footprints disappeared. He searched until finding them again several dozen meters farther ahead.

Another passage descended sharply and the trail curved around a massive underground pillar before climbing upward once more. Hours quietly slipped away while the Night Eye Trumpet Flower continued granting him clear vision.

His footsteps remained almost completely silent as four hours passed. Lin Mu had almost begun wondering whether the trail would continue forever.

Then the final tunnel suddenly widened.

He emerged from another cave and the moment he looked ahead... He stopped.

His pupils slowly contracted.

"...What..."

Before him rose an enormous mound.

At first glance... Lin Mu genuinely believed it consisted entirely of bones.

Some were white, some gray and some yellowed by age. Countless skeletal remains covered its surface. The mound towered upward nearly a hundred meters. Skulls rested beside ribs, entire spines protruded from the slopes and arm bones crossed over broken femurs.

Countless skeletons appeared half buried throughout the structure.

The sheer quantity defied imagination.

"Thousands. Perhaps tens of thousands." Lin Mu muttered and found himself stunned.

He slowly walked forward and the closer he came, the more details emerged. Eventually, he realized his first impression had been mistaken. The mound itself possessed a rocky core, a natural hill.

The bones merely covered it.