154: Chapter 154 The overall environment is bad, so just learn whatever you see.

The viewing platform was erected on the north side of the square, where several crude permafrost pillars supported an extremely thick animal-hide canopy, with a few animal-hide-covered low stools placed beneath it.

Xie Feng sat on the far left, his cold crystal blind staff leaning against the armrest of the low stool, his three eyes rolling back and forth.

Tu Ziguan squatted next to him, chewing hard on half a piece of beef jerky brought from Jiuzhou, though not out of nervousness.

The bastard had eaten too fast and gotten something stuck in his teeth, and was thoroughly miserable trying to pick it out right now.

Third Princess sat in the back row, wrapped in a fur cloak, casting glances back and forth at Xie Feng and the others with her face burning red.

Zhou Jinglan sat next to her, holding his folded fan in his hand and resting it on his knee.

Lu Mingyuan leaned against the pillar at the very edge of the back row, his hands tucked inside his sleeves and his eyes closed.

Xu Liujing squatted in the last row of the viewing platform, still using the cover of the animal-hide canopy pillars to stuff things into the permafrost, putting the finishing touches on something that shouldn't be seen.

The middle-aged man from the city lord's manor walked up from the side of the square holding a coarse pottery bowl filled with half a bowl of thick, black medicinal soup, its herbal scent mixed with the rank stench of animal entrails.

He brought the pottery bowl before Third Princess and bowed slightly.

"The city lord heard that the honored guest was feeling unwell and specially had the Shaman brew a bowl of warming medicinal soup, simmering it all night using the finest herbs from the tundra."

Third Princess raised her eyes to look at him, and just as she reached out to take it, Xie Feng had already leaned over from the side and snatched the bowl of medicinal soup away.

"She drank several bowls of ginger soup last night, and taking more medicine might mess with its potency. Let me taste this bowl for saltiness."

Without waiting for the middle-aged man to react, he tilted his head back and gulped down the thick, black medicinal soup in one breath.

The moment the medicinal soup entered his throat, a wisp of Yin Qi seeped out from the liquid, drilling down his esophagus toward his Dantian.

The instant that Yin Qi touched the miniature sun within the hollow of Xie Feng's chest, Cthugha's living flame vaporized it from the inside out into a wisp of white steam.

Xie Feng gave a half-burp as a wisp of white smoke puffed straight out of his mouth. He wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand and placed the empty bowl back on the tray.

"The medicine is decent, but the heat control is a bit lacking."

"Is it really decent?"

Tu Ziguan asked while picking his teeth.

Xie Feng lowered his voice and replied.

"Like shit."

A dull blast of horns rang across the square.

The bone horns, ground from the leg bones of some gargantuan beast deep within the tundra, caused the permafrost across the entire square to tremble slightly when blown.

Six newly carved totem pillars had been erected in the center of the square, the five-toed footprints carved upon them flickering in the leaping firelight.

The city-state residents poured out of the dome houses surrounding the square, clad in heavy fur robes, and silently and neatly formed a massive circle.

An extremely old, hunched Shaman walked out from the crowd.

This was the first native old-timer Xie Feng and the others had seen—wait, was she a female Shaman?

She wore a robe patched together from snow wolf pelt and some thin, aged leather, its hem dragging on the ground. In her hand, she gripped a curved bone staff, its tip bound with several bunches of long-dried tundra herbs.

Xie Feng noticed that her eye sockets were deeply sunken and her pupils grayish-white, identical to those residents who had been pulling ropes in the square during last night's blizzard.

The Shaman walked to the exact center of the six totem pillars, raised her bone staff, and struck the ground heavily three times.

The crowd began to chant.

Interspersed between the syllables of the Northern Wilderness patois were sharp, drawn-out intakes of breath, blending the chanting voices of the entire square together.

Their voices sounded as if something were using human vocal cords to repeatedly practice a non-human way of vocalizing.

Xie Feng felt that the six totem pillars in the center of the square were resonating in unison.

Because the permafrost at the base of those pillars was sinking at a slow, steady pace, the five-toed footprints carved into the shafts began to glow faintly amidst the resonance.

The red glow resembled lanterns in the night.

"We hit the jackpot. I just knew this wasn't any proper sacrifice."

Xie Feng gazed at the red light, immensely grateful that he had taken the right actions.

Tu Ziguan swallowed the beef jerky in his mouth and leaned closer to Xie Feng's side.

"When do we strike?"

"Let's wait and see. We won't attack unless we're attacked."

"And if they do attack us?"

"Make them fly."

"Completely in accordance with the Rites of Zhou."

The Shaman struck the ground with her bone staff once more.

Several young residents dragged out an adult musk ox, bound tightly head-to-toe, from the crowd.

The musk ox's four hooves were bound with tundra vines, its dark brown fur covered in a fine layer of frost.

It was dragged to the very center of the six totem pillars, where two residents pinned its body down. The Shaman drew a short blade ground from an obsidian flake from her waist, aiming it at the musk ox's throat.

Xie Feng stared at the obsidian blade.

Its back was thick and its edge thin, the blade covered in intricate patterns similar to the five-toed footprints on the totem pillars.

He watched the technique the Shaman used to slice open the musk ox's throat.

Using the tip of the blade to pierce a tiny hole with extreme precision just below the larynx, she then laid the short blade aside, grabbed the edges of the two parallel cuts with the thumbs and index fingers of both hands, and forcefully tore them apart to either side.

Xie Feng thought of his own Black Goat Young Summoning Technique.

"That's definitely more complicated than mine."

An extremely long and deep gash was ripped open across the musk ox's throat.

Something sucked the blood directly from within the wound, causing a torrent of thick blood to rise from the musk ox's throat, trace a slender arc through the air, and pour straight into the bone horn held in the Shaman's hand.

The inner wall of the bone horn was engraved with symbols identical to those on the totem pillars; once the blood flooded inside, the entire horn emitted a low, agonized hum.

"This cattle slaughter brings back some terrible memories."

Tu Ziguan squatted next to him, biting down on the last half of his beef jerky.

"Are you thinking of some mysterious little black woods?"

Xie Feng nodded in agreement.

His gaze swept past the still-twitching musk ox and landed behind the largest dome house on the north side of the square.

That trail of massive footprints extended right over here.

Xie Feng wasn't sitting idle either; a Spell like the Ithaqua Summoning Ritual wasn't something you saw every day. Sneakily, he jotted down the Shaman's procedure and incantations, copying them into that Cthulhu encyclopedia he had started compiling back at the Qingyun Sect.

"Are you kidding me? Why are you writing that down?!"

Lu Mingyuan asked in shock, just being careful should be enough—what on earth are you planning to do by writing it down?

"What the hell do you know? This is a once-in-a-century masterclass skill!"

Xie Feng wrote furiously, then pointed to his tongue.

"With a natural gift for casting Spells, do you think a Wind-Walker summoning ritual is that easy to learn? This stuff is damn near impossible to witness. The macro environment isn't great, so you might as well learn whatever you can lay your eyes on!"

Lu Mingyuan glanced at the homemade Necronomicon in Xie Feng's hand.

Something that even the Great Race of Yith would find utterly headache-inducing.

"I'm begging you, please don't ever lose this book."

"Don't jinx it."

The sacrificial ceremony in the plaza was slowly drawing to a close.