154: Chapter 154 Flesh grew from the mouth of the one chanting sutras.

Early in the morning, in the camp of the Pure Fire Cult, the second ritual began.

This time it was the "Blessing Ritual", which was small in scale and aimed to bless their weapons and runes with the power of purification.

Present were the core priests and prayer reciters of the cult.

What they were using was precisely that batch of holy oil "laced" by Jiang Ming.

The ritual was proceeding very smoothly.

The holy oil was carefully applied to the blades of the burning knives and the carvings of the runic wood.

As the prayer reciters chanted the prayers in low voices, the implements smeared with holy oil began to emit a faint light.

A strange sweet fragrance permeated the air.

That was precisely the unique fragrance of corpse oil under high temperature.

However, not a single priest noticed anything unusual.

They merely assumed that the quality of this batch of holy oil was exceptionally mellow.

As the chanting of the prayers deepened, the mutation occurred without warning.

A young prayer reciter standing in the back row suddenly made a slight "click" sound in his throat.

It was as if something had snapped in his throat.

He wanted to keep up with the rhythm of the prayer, but a large amount of white foam suddenly surged out of his mouth, mixed with tiny specks of blood.

The companion beside him immediately sensed that something was wrong and reached out to support him.

At that very moment, the young prayer reciter opened his mouth wide in agony.

His companion clearly saw that beneath the base of his tongue, which had turned purple due to hypoxia, a tender red granulation bud with mucus at the tip was slowly and firmly bursting through the flesh.

Like a sapling that had just sprouted.

"Steady your minds, it is an intrusion of evil filth!"

The Old Priest discovered the commotion immediately and let out a stern roar.

He tried to use a stronger power of faith to suppress this sudden mutation.

Yet his command became the fuse that ignited the powder keg.

His roar made the other prayer reciters, who were already unsettled, even more fearful, and the neat rhythm of the prayers instantly fell into chaos.

Chaos spread like a plague.

"My... My eyes!"

A prayer reciter screamed while covering his face, and black blood gushed out from between his fingers.

From the crevices of another priest's fingernails, several tiny, earthworm-like blood-colored roots drilled out, digging viciously into the flesh and skin of his own hand.

More than a dozen prayer reciters showed abnormalities at the same time.

The solemn words of purification in their mouths also changed their tune.

They turned into an out-of-tune, awkward imitation of the Dead City broadcast, mixed with static and screeches.

A more senior priest tried to use the burning knife in his hand to cut off the granulation bud that had just grown in his throat.

However, his blade had just touched that granulation bud.

The granulation bud shrank back abruptly like a frightened worm.

The next second, that granulation bud hanging with sticky blood filaments stubbornly drilled out from his left nostril.

Deep within the Dead City.

Jiang Ming's will, through the corpse oil and medicinal liquids mixed into the holy oil, like an audience sitting in the top-tier box of a theater, remotely "enjoyed" this grand drama of collapse directed by his own hands.

He didn't even need to do it himself.

At the most chaotic moment of the ritual, he simply issued a very low-frequency psychic pulse through the Broadcast Tower toward the direction of the cult's camp, completely contrary to the rhythm of the prayers.

This pulse became the last straw that broke the camel's back.

It drove the prayer reciters, whose minds were already on the verge of collapse due to fear and mutation, into complete madness.

"Stop! Stop all rituals immediately!"

The Old Priest finally issued a desperate command.

He ordered all members showing abnormalities to be isolated immediately.

But it was already too late.

The core of the Pure Fire Cult's faith was completely shattered at this moment.

The ritual they relied on to purify the world had actually turned into a hotbed for breeding monsters.

At night.

In a tent used to isolate the mutated individuals, a young prayer reciter was sitting quietly on the ground.

With his fingernails, he slowly drew a distorted, incomplete cult rune on the muddy ground.

In the center of the rune, he drew an extra closed eye.

Outside the tent, the companion guarding him looked at him uneasily through the gap in the tent flap.

That isolated prayer reciter slowly raised his head.

He parted his lips and said softly in a tone that completely did not belong to him, mixed with countless noises.

"Purity is nourishment."