The further he walked inward, the more he felt the entire space was filled with malice. The feeling of facing a god became clearer and clearer, with whispers, murmurs, and even incomprehensible sounds of pain appearing, as if the empty temple was actually filled with unseen figures everywhere.
He felt a salty, damp wind, like a sharp blade, blowing from the direction of the Holy Emblem. Cracks appeared on Xia De's face, but then golden light permeated through them.
He felt a surging fire, like a giant beast, rising from beneath his feet. The soul-piercing pain only appeared for an instant, then was suppressed by a more powerful force.
He felt destructive lightning, like a giant hammer from a god's hand, falling from above his head. The power resisted and impacted him, but this familiar high-dimensional power only made Xia De more excited.
He felt clinging water, like the hands of the gentlest lover, wrapping around him. His pace slowed, but it was very firm. desire could not stop him, and these illusions could not stop him either.
The power behind the Holy Emblem was resisting, resisting this mortal carrying the divinity of an alien god, but this only made Xia De more excited.
Looking up at the Holy Emblem, the bizarre spiral pattern made Xia De feel increasingly dizzy. Around the path leading to the elevated platform where the Holy Emblem and altar were located, ugly merrow phantoms appeared one by one.
They reached out, trying to grab Xia De, but were wary of the divine radiance. The white bones piled under the altar seemed to come alive, and the undead shrieked as they lunged at Xia De from the front, but they could not make Xia De stop.
Just as desire had said, when a certain desire becomes strong enough, all other emotions will be suppressed.
All the statues in the entire temple seemed to tremble at this moment. When Xia De laboriously reached the first step below the high platform, the immense pressure he bore even made the skin on his body turn a terrifying crimson.
He lifted his foot onto the step, and the golden scars on his body instantly intensified. Xia De's eyes, nose, mouth, and ears were all bleeding, but the power attracting him forward meant he had no intention of stopping.
Finally, he struggled to reach the top of the high platform. The pressure made Xia De stumble forward, but fortunately, he grasped the rough stone altar and did not fall.
The base of the altar consisted of four kneeling merrow, who collectively extended their hands to support the large stone basin above.
The crimson blood in the stone basin all dripped from the surface of the Holy Emblem. Because the Grand Priest of the Scarlet Cult was dead, no one knew what these strange liquids were now, but blood rich in blasphemous elements and vast spiritual power, if bottled and sold, one bottle could at least...
"What am I thinking?"
He steadied himself by holding the edge of the altar with both hands. The Holy Emblem was within reach. But desire had said that if he didn't want to be watched after becoming a thief, he had to defile the Sea Offering Ritual before taking that thing.
Xia De knew the method of blasphemy. Edmund, the keeper of the old lighthouse, had proposed a bold approach, which was to engrave the Holy Emblem of a hostile god onto the Holy Emblem of the lord of the scarlet spiral.
But Xia De was worried that he would be struck dead by a lightning bolt immediately, so he decided to use another method that would not cause trouble.
"This is an important investment."
He took out the small bottle containing fish scales. Since he had to hold the altar with his hand to keep from falling, Xia De could only crush the glass bottle with his bare hands. Ignoring the injury to his right hand, he threw the Drowned Merrow's Scales into the basin of blood.
Plop~
The altar clearly resisted this thing, but the relic still penetrated the liquid surface and fell in, splattering blood onto Xia De's sleeve.
After a strange moment of silence, the altar vibrated violently, and the faintly glowing blood illuminated Xia De's face with a crimson hue. Under his gaze, the pool of fresh blood bubbled as if boiling, and the crimson blood quickly decayed and stank, the disgusting smell finally making Xia De truly vomit.
Vomiting food residue and stomach bleeding into the altar was probably even more blasphemous than what he had just done.
A thunderous roar came from above the temple, as if lightning had struck directly here. Accompanied by violent Vibration of the ground, cracks actually appeared in the ancient temple floor.
The walls were peeling, and dust and stones kept falling from above. Even the Holy Emblem stopped dripping blood, its golden luster gradually dimming, as if the god had abandoned this place.
The pressure gradually lessened, and Xia De looked up at the bone Holy Emblem coated with blood.
He took off his mask, and a strange sound came from his mouth. This was an ancient Mermaid incantation, passed down from the most ancient times to the present. This language could not be easily recorded, but when the merrow sealed desire half a century ago, it was perfectly recorded by desire.
For a 0-level relic, this mysterious language might be much younger than it.
And as Xia De chanted, the temple's collapse accelerated. Small statues of merrow and Mermaid cracked one by one, and the giant stones and beams of the ceiling, along with countless hidden skeletons above, fell together into the waves below the ground.
Xia De did not escape, his mouth Creep as he chanted the incantation, his eyes fixed on that Holy Emblem.
The Holy Emblem trembled with the collapse of the temple, and then, it cracked.
The Holy Emblem's remains fell along with the dust, and a huge crack appeared on the wall behind it. A heavy thumping heartbeat sound came from within, and a streak of extreme golden light illuminated Xia De's face in front of the altar.
Except for the high platform under his feet, one-third of the entire temple's floor had already fallen into the waves. The shaking became more and more intense, and dust and red rainwater fell from the sky.
The crack in the wall grew wider and wider, until Xia De could see through it the rotten blood vessels and flesh in the Mermaid's chest cavity, and in the center of the black heart, a fist-sized golden pearl embedded.
The golden light resonated with the cracks on Xia De's body. He widened his eyes, seemingly unconsciously extending his finger upwards:
"This is truly... my treasure..."
Outsider, you must not be misled by desire.
Xia De could no longer even distinguish whether this sentence was his own thought or if she was truly speaking to remind him.
Ashes mixed with blood rain fell. Behind him was the nearly completely collapsed temple, and hundreds of small statues leaning into the floor, about to be submerged by the seawater. The golden light illuminated the Outsider in front of the altar, illuminating his hand, illuminating the strange cracks on his body.
As Xia De reached out, the golden pearl embedded in the chest cavity of the giant Mermaid corpse automatically detached from the heart and flew out due to the call of the incantation.
A strange impulse made Xia De reach out to grab it, but as soon as his fingertips touched it, Xia De cried out in pain as if bitten by a cat, and withdrew his hand.
The golden pearl fell into the altar filled with boiling blood. Xia De saw a dark color appear on his fingertips, but it quickly returned to normal.
"Why... it's the divinity of the evil god resisting me."
The last time he obtained the divinity of The Innocent Creator, there was no abnormality, because that drop of divinity was originally a gift from the Old God across a thousand years to Xia De, and that power was very friendly to him.
But this drop of divinity is the power of the evil god, the lord of the scarlet spiral. It will not obey Xia De, allowing him to touch it. In fact, if Xia De himself did not have a strong adaptability to divinity, he should have already died from just touching it.
