153: Chapter 153 Dead Oil

They finally realized that what they were facing was not an ordinary beast that only knew how to use brute force to tear and bite.

This tree possessed intelligence.

It would even use the holy fire they were most proud of to "cook" a grand feast of flesh and blood for itself.

In the cult's camp, the atmosphere became oppressive and solemn.

The large-scale purification ritual was postponed indefinitely, replaced by several squads composed of elite scouts, who began carefully exploring outward along the abandoned old supply routes on the outskirts of Ash Lamp City.

They no longer trusted this scorched earth that had been plowed over and over again.

They were going to search for a more "clean" ritual location, as well as a more "pure" ritual offering.

Deep within the root network hub of the Dead City, Jiang Ming's will, like a spiderweb covering the entire area, clearly perceived the movements of every scout squad.

He was not in a hurry to hunt down these scattered "little bugs".

His gaze locked onto a more critical pathway—a supply trail secretly transporting "holy oil" and "runic wood" for the cult from the direction of "Hemp Rope Town" in the east.

Holy oil was the fuel for the ritual.

Runic wood was the carrier of the prayers.

This was the "blood vessel" of the cult's war machine.

That night, beside the rugged supply trail, a "corpse" lay quietly in the bushes.

That was a Flesh Puppet transformed from a handyman of the Handymen from Hemp Rope Town who had been completely devoured by Jiang Ming.

There were no obvious wounds on its body; its face was sallow and its lips were dry and cracked, making it look like a pitiful person who had collapsed from dehydration while fleeing.

When the cult's transport convoy passed by, the puppet was discovered.

"Leave him alone, go quickly! It's not safe here!"

An elderly guard vigilantly looked around and urged.

Another younger guard hesitated, looking at the "unconscious" man with an expression of reluctance on his face.

"But... our doctrine is to redeem the world. He is dying."

"We are on a mission!"

"Take him with us, it won't take up much time!"

In the end, the young guard's "kindness" won the upper hand.

That Flesh Puppet was lifted onto a carriage piled high with supplies.

No one noticed that when it was lifted onto the carriage, a drop of turbid, dark brown mucus dripped from its cuff, silently seeping into the cracks of the carriage board.

Late at night, the convoy camped to rest.

The puppet silently "woke up".

Like a boneless shadow, it slid to the side of the tightly guarded barrels of holy oil.

From between its fingernails seeped a small stream of a viscous substance extracted from the surgical floor of the Old Hospital, mixed with high-concentration corpse oil and putrid medicinal liquid.

This liquid silently and slowly seeped inward along the edge of the wooden cork of the oil drum.

Meanwhile, the temporary medical area of Ash Lamp City was brightly lit.

Lin Qiu stood in front of the cold dissection table, her complexion even uglier than the corpse on the table.

She had just finished dissecting the corpse of a priest who had been burned by plasma during the ritual.

The results sent chills all over her body.

The deceased's internal organs showed large-scale, abnormal fibrosis.

Especially the liver; after being cut open, its cross-section unexpectedly presented eerie textures resembling tree rings.

She immediately turned to another corpse of a prayer priest who had died during the ritual.

This time, in the deceased's lungs, she discovered dense black spores like ash.

Lin Qiu took out a spore sample and dripped a drop of the "purification potion" provided by the Pure Fire Cult onto it.

An eerie scene occurred.

Stimulated by the potion, those black spore ashes were not only not cleared, but instead, like seeds watered, began to twitch and sprout violently, growing countless tender red flesh threads finer than a hair!

A terrifying conclusion took shape in Lin Qiu's mind.

These people of the Pure Fire Cult, due to bathing in the holy fire and the power of faith for a long time, their bodies were long no longer the flesh of ordinary people.

While the holy fire was "purifying" them, it also "baked" their bodies into pieces of highly flammable "dry firewood".

Once Jiang Ming's contamination invaded, they would mutate faster and more thoroughly than anyone else!

Inside the observation post, Xu Baiheng listened to Lin Qiu's report and remained silent for a long time.

He walked to the window, looked toward the distant Dead City, and wrote an even more despairing deduction in the thick black tree archives:

"The 'purification' ability bestowed upon humanity by the Survival System may itself be a form of screening. It filters out the most 'pure' and most 'devout' vessels, perhaps precisely to allow a higher-level contamination to 'move in' more perfectly."

At this moment, that batch of contaminated holy oil had been smoothly transported back to the Pure Fire Cult's camp.

The Old Priest personally opened a barrel, scooped up some with a silver spoon, and smelled it under his nose.

"Hmm... This batch of holy oil seems a bit more 'mellow' than previous ones."

He did not find anything unusual, nodded with satisfaction, and issued an order.

"Very good. Pass down the order that tomorrow morning, this batch of holy oil will be used to hold the second 'prayer ritual'."