Free Web NovelChapter 315: Chapter 314: Experience the Sins of Your Ancestors
"Oh my god!"
The white man, whose eyes had held a look of arrogance and condescension, had his expression change in an instant. He knocked over a chair in the small shop, his gaze toward the Celestial Master’s Mansion filled with terror and bewilderment.
’I’m dozens of meters from the front of the Celestial Master’s Mansion, and my Magical Power is concealed within my body. On the surface, I look like a completely ordinary person. How did they discover me?’
The white man couldn’t understand the meaning of the words that had just rung in his Divine Soul, but he fully grasped the strong sense of warning. Now that he had been discovered, he didn’t dare to linger. He scrambled up from the ground and bolted out of town.
The tourists in the small town watched in surprise as the grizzled, white-bearded man fled in a panic. Then, they turned their heads to look at a short man who had fallen to the ground at almost the same time but had immediately prostrated himself devoutly.
The man spoke in a strange accent, "Reporting to the revered master of the Celestial Master’s Mansion! This humble one has the blood of Celestial Xia and is no southern barbarian. I have been fortunate enough to achieve some success in my cultivation and beseech you to allow me to return to my ancestral roots! I beg for your mercy, revered master!"
As soon as he finished speaking, he began to kowtow repeatedly.
The surrounding tourists either stared at him oddly, pulled out their phones to record, or called the police and an ambulance, thinking he had mental problems and had suddenly had an episode.
But at the same time, a few sharper individuals noticed the direction he was kneeling, then looked over at the not-so-distant Celestial Master’s Mansion.
"Did you guys hear that? Sounded like a dull clap of thunder just now."
"Yeah, I was just saying, thunder in winter? I was wondering if someone was undergoing a tribulation on Dragon Tiger Heavenly Mountain. But it was just one clap, and then nothing."
"You don’t think that guy mistook it for cannon fire, do you? He doesn’t look like he’s from the Middle East."
"No," one of them pointed out. "If that really was thunder just now... who ever heard of just one clap of thunder? Besides, it’s broad daylight and the sky is clear. How could there be thunder?"
Everyone looked at the sky, then at the Celestial Master’s Mansion, and then back at the man, speechless for a moment.
"There have been a lot of rumors online lately."
"Holy crap, don’t tell me it’s real."
"A friend of a friend of mine works on the Mongolian Steppe. I heard that a lot of company offices over there have started putting up statues of The Three Pristine Ones."
"The Mongolian Steppe? What happened?" someone who didn’t know asked strangely. "Daoism isn’t even popular on the Mongolian Steppe, is it? Why would they put up statues of The Three Pristine Ones?"
"There was a mining accident on the Mongolian Steppe a while ago. The story goes that a Taoist Family master used his techniques to rescue over a hundred people trapped underground. Afterward, all the people who were saved went to a Taoist Temple to fulfill their vows and even placed Three Pristine Divine Statues in their homes."
"What? Are you serious?"
Just then, two more cries of alarm sounded from not far away. Everyone followed the sound and saw two middle-aged men in their forties or fifties stumble out of a restaurant. They walked up to the main gate of the Celestial Master’s Mansion and stopped.
"Kishimoto Yuchu! Ogasawara Junhong!"
"We pay our respects to the Celestial Master of the Celestial Master’s Mansion!"
"We only came to tour and sightsee. Why has the Celestial Master launched a sneak attack against us?"
"We did nothing, yet the Celestial Master issued a warning. This goes against the decorum of a great celestial nation!"
"To punish without teaching, to discipline without cause—we cannot accept this! We ask the Celestial Master to state our crime so that we may be thoroughly convinced!"
The two Sakura People spoke one after another, leaving the surrounding tourists utterly confused. Some even subconsciously looked around, searching for hidden cameras or a film crew.
"This sounds so weird."
"Are they filming a movie?"
"Judging by their names, they’re Sakura People, right? What are they doing at the Celestial Master’s Mansion?"
"I heard that the Shintoism of the Sakura People is a new religion that formed after our Daoism spread over there, just like their Sword Dao and Tea Dao. Maybe they’re from the Shinto religion?"
"It seems like they also suddenly fell down in the restaurant just now."
As the two Sakura People spoke at the entrance to the Celestial Master’s Mansion, Gu Zhao’s expression had already darkened.
The expressions of Taoist Zhi Qing and Taoist Zhi Xiu darkened as well. "Sect Leader, let us go and deal with these two."
They weren’t fools; they knew what scheme these two Sakura People were plotting.
There is a saying that a gentleman can be deceived by appealing to his principles. These two Sakura People clearly believed that the masters of the Celestial Master’s Mansion cared about their reputation. Since they hadn’t done anything to offend the mansion, they assumed it wouldn’t act ruthlessly against them.
They had already inquired about what happened at Berkeley. When the master from the Celestial Master’s Mansion made his move, he even drove away the mortals. Despite the huge commotion at the time, only three people actually died in the aftermath.
Connecting this to the fact that the ones who acted were Daoists, and further considering the strict precepts of Daoism that apply to oneself and others, they were seventy percent certain that the masters of the Celestial Master’s Mansion could not attack people without reason, or it would surely hinder their cultivation.
With that in mind, they could relax significantly. The next step, of course, was to find a way to discover why these Daoists of Celestial Xia had suddenly become so powerful.
However, they had been here for a long time without discovering anything different about the Celestial Master’s Mansion. And until they found something unusual, it was not convenient for them to make a move.
After all, besides Daoists, Celestial Xia also had law enforcement.
But now that something unexpected had suddenly happened at the Celestial Master’s Mansion, they wanted to probe for information. At the very least, they needed to interact with these people. Whether the interaction was good or bad, they were bound to learn something.
So they chose a method that was perhaps not friendly, but likely effective.
They were betting that the masters of the Celestial Master’s Mansion did not yet want to reveal their holy power before the common people of Celestial Xia, and that they couldn’t just kill them without reason and risk causing an international incident.
Therefore, the Celestial Master’s Mansion might just invite them inside!
Kishimoto Yuchu and Ogasawara Junhong exchanged a look, their eyes flashing with a sinister, triumphant smile that spoke of a successful scheme.
However, before they could even laugh out loud, the sound of a bell began to ring in their minds.
"DING-A-LING... DING-A-LING..."
At the same time, a faint, whispering voice began to chant by their ears, each word penetrating directly into their minds.
"Since ancient times, Celestial Xia has had traditions of ’leaping the Dragon Gate’ and ’climbing the heavenly ladder.’ Therefore, to achieve your goal, you must pass through a trial. If you can endure the sins committed by your ancestors, I will grant you an opportunity to meet me."
As the voice faded, their vision blurred, and the world around them changed in an instant.
"This is?"
"An Illusion Realm?"
They looked around and found themselves locked in a basement cell. The cell was windowless and stuffy. A dim electric lamp hung on the wall outside the iron bars. Looking at the surrounding equipment and objects, everything seemed to be antiques from the last century.
"Where is this?"
"What did they mean by what they just said?"
The two men looked at each other, a terrible premonition rising in their hearts.
The next moment, the door at the end of the basement corridor opened. A group of men in last century’s Sakura military uniforms, accompanying several people in white lab coats, walked in and came straight to the two men’s cell door.
"Let’s take these two," said a bespectacled, gentle-looking middle-aged man, pointing at them.
One soldier stepped forward to unlock the cell, while another, who seemed to be of a higher rank, curiously asked the middle-aged man, "What experiment are we doing today?"
"A blood-transfusion experiment," the middle-aged man said flatly. "We’ll draw out their human blood and inject them with horse blood."
A man in a white coat next to him, who appeared to be an assistant, explained, "Injecting horse blood can make a person go berserk and become incredibly strong for a short time, but they will grow weak and die after the effect wears off.
We need to conduct continuous experiments, modifying the values or combining it with other drugs, to find a certain critical point that allows soldiers to have a short burst of immense combat power without dying afterward."
"Sōka!" the officer nodded in understanding.
"Fortunately, these ’maruta’ are numerous and worthless, so we can experiment on them as we please," the man in the white coat said with a gentle smile.
Kishimoto Yuchu and Ogasawara Junhong could, of course, understand this conversation, and endless terror instantly appeared on their faces.
They knew where this was.
"Baka yarou! We’re Sakura People too!"
"Stop! This is just an Illusion Realm!"
But no matter what they said, these people didn’t seem to hear them. Their Magical Power also seemed to have vanished; no matter how they tried to channel it, there was no response.
So, despite their desperate struggles, the soldiers easily subdued them and tied them down in a laboratory outside.
The two men looked at each other.
"Endure it! This is just an Illusion Realm!"
"That’s right! It’s all fake!"
The two men tried to bolster each other’s courage, but everything—what their eyes saw, their ears heard, their noses smelled, and their skin felt—was incredibly real. They knew that even if it was fake, the feeling of the impending torture would be horrifyingly realistic.
And they, of all people, knew exactly how cruel this impending torture was. So even though they knew it was fake, they couldn’t suppress the terror in their hearts.
Then, they could only watch helplessly as they were strapped to an operating table. The gentle, intelligent-looking middle-aged man then injected a tube of bright red reagent into their bodies.
"AHHHHH!!!"
