98: Chapter 96 Dirty Blood

Following the memories of the Withered Soul Saint, Lin Yan came to the absolute western side of the Holy Spirit Cult's stronghold.

After confirming the location, the Soul Power under his feet violently surged, and the ground suddenly collapsed with a booming sound, revealing a deep, diagonally downward corridor.

Following the corridor all the way down, the further inward he walked, the more distinct that sickeningly thick smell of blood in the air became, almost condensing into a substance and stickily drilling straight into one's nasal cavity.

After descending about ten-odd meters, the cramped dimness before his eyes suddenly opened up.

A huge stone chamber built from rough giant rocks abruptly appeared before his eyes.

The stone chamber was extremely spacious, with its four walls and dome built block by block from coarse gray giant rocks, as if it had been forcefully hollowed out from the entire mountain body.

In the center of the stone chamber, a huge blood pool with a diameter of over twenty meters lay quietly across the place.

The surface of the pool was dark red bordering on black, as thick as a semi-coagulated filthy paste, and a thick layer of churning, undissipating black mist lingered above it.

Plasma in the pool would occasionally bubble up with a sticky blister, churning out a deeper, heavier darkness from underneath when it burst, emitting a nauseatingly strong fishy stench.

In this blood pool, at the four directions of east, west, south, and north, a giant metal Soul guide pillar was inserted respectively.

The Soul guide pillars were pitch-dark all over, forged from unknown metals, and their surfaces were carved with complex and bizarre bright red patterns. The pillar bodies ran straight out from the bottom of the pool, with their tops about three meters higher than the black mist.

In Lin Yan's perception, these four pillars echoed each other, faintly forming a wondrous resonance, continuously extracting and condensing something from the blood pool.

And this condensed thing finally passed through the pillar bodies, all converging at the center of the four Soul guide pillars.

There, a small cluster of pitch-black blood emitting an eerie red light was floating.

It slowly squirmed and throbbed in the air, resembling a deformed and filthy heart.

The interweaving halo of black and red diffused from the blood cluster, dyeing the entire stone chamber with a layer of suffocating dark red.

Standing at the entrance of the stone chamber, Lin Yan took in the entirety of this stone chamber that resembled an evil Hell.

Although he had long known about the existence of this blood pool from the memories of those two evil Spirit Saints, upon witnessing it with his own eyes, a wave of anger still inevitably welled up deep inside Lin Yan's heart.

Because this blood pool represented more than twenty thousand human lives!

In the memories of that Withered Soul Saint, this blood pool was divided into three layers from top to bottom.

Sinking at the very bottom was a mud of crushed and minced flesh, bones, and tendons, while churning in the middle layer was thick human blood.

Above these two layers, within that black mist, there was still a layer invisible to the naked eye—the Soul-Shattering Layer!

As the name implies, this layer was brewed together from countless human Souls torn apart alive, mixed with the ultimate resentment, obsession, and despair before their deaths...

And the function of those four Soul guide pillars was to continuously extract and condense from these three layers of the blood pool, ultimately refining those pitch-black blood droplets endlessly at the center of the four pillars.

As for this black blood, it was called Tainted Blood by the Holy Spirit Cult headquarters!

And what was the function of this Tainted Blood?

There was no relevant information in the memories of those two evil Spirit Saints.

Because three years ago, when the Holy Spirit Cult headquarters issued them the task of refining Tainted Blood, they only gave the construction method of the blood pool and the Soul guide pillars, and nothing else was explained.

Furthermore, this task was originally issued by the Holy Spirit Cult to all branches, with the only difference being the size of the branches and the varying quotas of Tainted Blood that needed to be handed over each month.

As for the branch where the Withered Soul Saint was located, because it was located at the border of the two countries and could capture population from within both countries, its monthly task volume was undoubtedly more than other branches of the same level—fifty drops of Tainted Blood per month.

Fifty drops seemed to sound like not much.

But according to the information Lin Yan obtained from Soul-searching, wanting to condense a single drop of Tainted Blood required throwing a full ten adults into the blood pool.

This also meant that for this item alone, this branch had to brutally harm nearly five hundred human lives every month.

And this was only the minimum standard.

Aside from the mandatory task volume to be handed over—

if they could exceed the quota, the Holy Spirit Cult headquarters would also bestow additional rewards.

The over-limit spirit ring of the Blood Fiend Withered Bone Vine Spirit Saint, and the left leg bone of the Corpse Poison Toad Spirit Saint, were both exchanged by exceeding the quota of Tainted Blood.

As this information surged in Lin Yan's mind once again, his gaze grew increasingly icy.

Holy Spirit Cult!

What a Holy Spirit Cult!

Gazing at that cluster of pitch-black Tainted Blood that was still slowly squirming, Lin Yan hesitated slightly and cautiously probed a wisp of Mental Energy toward it.

The instant his Mental Energy touched the Tainted Blood—countless painful wails, extreme malice, endless obsessions, and broken memories surged along the mental connection like a flood, crazily eroding his consciousness!

Sensing this scene, Lin Yan, who had long been prepared, endured the fierce impact on his consciousness and instantly severed the mental connection.

Just at this moment, Electrolux came out from his Spirit Sea and slowly manifested his form in the stone chamber.

"What a filthy power!"

Electrolux's voice rippled outward, carrying undisguised disgust in his tone.

Calming the subconscious shock, Lin Yan looked back with lingering fear at that cluster of Tainted Blood, which was at most little more than forty drops.

Just that single instant ago, that endless wailing and malice felt as if they were going to tear his consciousness apart alive and drag him into the filthiest Hell.

"Elder Yi, can you see anything?"

Hearing this, Electrolux slowly nodded and said in a deep voice: "According to my perception just now, this so-called Tainted Blood is actually blended from two kinds of filthy Qi."

"One is a kind of fiendish tainted Qi condensed by those four Soul guide pillars from the flesh, bone, and tendon mud and filthy human blood below, which can be called Blood Fiend Tainted Qi."

"Another kind is the Soul Fiend Tainted Qi bred from the remnant Souls, broken spirits, obsessions, and hatred of the Soul-Shattering Layer."

"These condensed Blood Fiend Tainted Qi and Soul Fiend Tainted Qi are already extremely filthy to begin with, and the Tainted Blood formed from their Fusion is naturally filthiness to the absolute extreme."

"And in my perception, if this Tainted Blood is in a large enough quantity, it can even erode Divine Sense and pollute the Divine Soul!"

Hearing these words, Lin Yan's gaze darkened slightly.

Holy Spirit Cult... and Luo Ye, what on earth are you guys trying to do!

Indeed.

In Lin Yan's view, this abruptly appearing Tainted Blood was nine times out of ten related to Luo Ye.

Aside from him, this variable, there was probably no one else in this world capable of concocting this kind of thing.

It's just unclear what he actually wanted to do by concocting this kind of thing.

Or rather, who did he want to deal with?

Divine Sense, Divine Soul...

Lin Yan instinctively glanced at Electrolux beside him, then slowly shook his head.

According to the information he previously obtained from the Prajna Heart Lamp, the mirror in Luo Ye's hand could not possibly give answers to any people or things strongly correlated with him.

Since that was the case, how could Luo Ye, who didn't even know of Electrolux's existence as a person, possibly have prepared it for him?