Super Righteous Player
Chapter 254 - 252 Continuous Summoning (3rd update)_1

Chapter 254: Chapter 252 Continuous Summoning (3rd update)_1

"Remember, nine mice hearts tainted with daffodil pollen can be used to replace a baby’s heart during the ceremony," the Wizard slowly began to teach, "Because nine is the number of blood and desire. However, each heart must have no more than a third of it covered in daffodil pollen, otherwise Lady Silence would ’reject’ it."

Only four or five people quietly widened their eyes, watching the Wizard perform miracles.

As for the others, they had taken Deafening Potions—a cheap transformative substance that temporarily causes deafness, quickly restored by the smell of feces.

Before each ceremony began, those ’White Snakes’ high up in the hierarchy who were not yet qualified to learn the rites, but hoped to become core members, would conscientiously ingest Deafening Potions.

They also knew that this was for their protection.

In recent years, they had seen too many die horribly from failed rituals...

Without proper lineage, they would never dare to use the rituals they overheard in fragments.

...But as the saying goes, they still had to watch.

Those who came here were the upper echelons, the core members. Take Bob, for instance—the tall, thin sneaker, who also had the privilege of attending core meetings.

The ordinary members on the periphery didn’t even know whom they were serving; and those who were slightly closer to the core kept the secret about "Old Pappy," using the "Church of Rot" as a front.

The reason was quite simple.

They all believed that they could become "Old Pappy’s" apprentices.

Most of these core members were not natives of Roth Fort—they were apprentices who had followed "Old Pappy" through several cities.

The reason they came here was the very generous offer from the Church of Rot. Moreover, Viscount Roth Fort had long known about their existence and had allowed them to develop—this was also fundamentally why "White Snake" had managed to control Roth Fort’s entire underground power structure without anyone realizing it.

"White Snake" was just their lair after all.

Performing rituals required amassing a large number of rare materials. If purchased in bulk, it would raise the suspicion of the Silver Baron Church, which also possessed some transcendent knowledge.

So, they secretly killed the original leader of "White Snake" and used the power of this Underground Gang to collect ritual materials slowly under the guise of logistics.

"Old Pappy" was in it for the money, for the treasures.

They were just here to "learn."

To learn this forbidden knowledge—

"But in this ritual, we use a mouse’s heart instead of a baby’s because a mouse’s heart combined with a cat’s heel can form another simple combination, allowing us to forgo using ’Hunter’s Heel’ and ’pieces of the prey it has captured.’ Remember to use a rust-covered Ceremonial Knife when cutting to manifest the essence of killing," said the Wizard, slowly speaking while cutting the cat’s heel into three pieces, arranging them into a triangle.

"This symbolizes the ’stalker’s stride’ and the ’life of the hunted that has perished.’ And a frog’s heart soaked in Panacea can resume beating after being electrified... The moment its heartbeat stops again is when the ceremony begins—it signifies the instant life succumbs to death."

"Old Pappy" continued to explain, his hands never stopping their work.

His explanation was very detailed.

But he deliberately did not speak of the "quantities."

Proportions are every Ritualist’s lifeline.

It’s also the means to control their own apprentices... ensuring that they don’t get any dangerous ideas about their mentor’s life or knowledge.

This would ensure that after the apprentices had grown, they would work extra years for their mentors as "assistants," gaining ample exposure to numerous rituals, and accumulating enough experience before being timely sent away—or killed to silence them.

"Is that all we need, Old Pappy?"

The tanned, tattooed woman with a smiling inquiry asked, "You’re not keeping any secrets from us, are you?"

"Of course not, Green Scale,"

Old Pappy glanced at her casually and replied without concern.

Just like the nickname "Old Pappy," the tanned woman also had a moniker—she was known as "Green Scale."

The reason for not using their real names was twofold; on one hand, they were aware of the dangers of curse rituals, and they neither had the money nor the status to hire an Idol Wizard to create a decoy for themselves. On the other hand, it was to guard against their own teachers, students, and classmates.

"Old Daddy" added in his hoarse voice, "What we’re summoning is the skeletal raven of the God of Funerals, the Faceless Poet. It possesses the ability to detect and harm the deceased... When you’re ready to steal a corpse, you can summon one to keep watch for you.

"This ritual is a simplified version. To summon the skeletal raven specifically, you need ’remnants of a silent funeral’ as a beacon—otherwise, you might attract the ’Invisible Hunter’ or the ’Woman in the Mist.’ You might succeed, of course, but you could also fail due to insufficient power. The worst cost of failure could cause your hearts to stop beating for thirty seconds."

"So, when you see a funeral with this kind of atmosphere, you can walk around to collect influences, as they are easy to remove. Crying out loud before it echoes can cleanse this influence."

Although "Old Daddy" had been concealing something from them previously.

After "Green Scale" pointed this out, he honestly and carefully explained it to them.

And as the heartbeat of the frog’s heart ceased.

"Old Daddy’s" expression suddenly turned solemn, and everyone else instantly became quiet.

He quickly lifted a human leg bone and placed it horizontally above the ceremonial site.

Then, a layer of haze suddenly covered his aged pupils.

After a brief delay, dense cold sweat oozed from "Old Daddy’s" forehead.

In front of everyone, those nine hearts suddenly began to burn simultaneously, releasing grey, dim flames. After they had all burnt out, the flames did not disappear—instead, three clusters of black flames appeared and slowly began to burn the cat’s heels.

At this moment, a rustling sound arose.

It was similar to the noise of many building blocks being put into a bag and shaken vigorously.

But the apprentices quickly realized—this was the sound of bones clashing against each other.

In front of "Old Daddy," countless fragments of avian bones emerged from the void, then collided with each other and assembled into a raven about half a meter tall.

It was composed solely of bones, with gray flames burning within its skull... yet it could still fly.

The skeletal raven flew in a circle—in its gaze, when it looked towards a certain place, it suddenly let out a loud "caw" and immediately flew over there.

—If Xitan Pulan could see this scene, she would have immediately realized that this was exactly where she had stood the longest!

Then, a trail of blood appeared beneath the skeletal raven.

It moved awkwardly on the ground, avoiding everyone, and stopped in front of the shelves.

That was the route Xitan Pulan had taken!

"As expected, there’s a ghost."

"Old Daddy" sneered with a hoarse voice, "This might not be the crow’s doing, it could be the Skeleton Lord’s work. It could also be a wild undead.

"We need to summon more things... to ensure our self-protection capability.

"Watch carefully—during ’fear,’ you can perform continuous summons.

"The necessary materials for summoning the ’Abomination’ I taught once before. Essentials are that the summoner possesses strong emotions of fear, sorrow, pain, or remorse—plus a burnt old photo album, a kidney from a male shooter who has fallen into despair, and poison that has been expired for over ten years and not used. We have stock... go get them."

"Old Daddy" ordered slowly.

In his narrow eyes was an overflowing sense of fear. Yet this fear did not affect his speech and thinking.

Being well-versed in religious knowledge, he obviously knew this was not something the Skeleton Lord could do.

—This was a trace of the "Half-Dead Woman."

The only possibility was that Tan Juan Geraint had discovered them... and had hired a Half-Dead Woman to conduct preliminary probing.

Fortunately, his apprentices couldn’t read these traces.

On one hand, "Old Daddy" needed them to be his assistants. To fetch various items needed for the ritual.

And on the other...

An "apprentice who encounters betrayal" can also serve as a material for the Skeleton Lord’s ritual... turning into a strong skeletal guardian.

But skeletal guardians won’t assist, so that would inevitably be the last summon.