34: Chapter 30 Sacrifices

Holding the remaining half of her rice ball, Kaiwen walked sluggishly toward the depths of the shrine.

The deeper she went, the quieter her surroundings grew.

Kaiwen paused and looked up. A withered leaf drifting downward froze weirdly midair for a brief moment before continuing its wobbly descent onto the bluestone paving.

...A marionette show where even the backdrop was made so crudely.

Kaiwen swallowed the bite of rice ball in her mouth and kept walking forward.

At the end of the path stood a large, quaint house made of dark wood.

At the end of the path stood a large, quaint house with its door slid half-open, from which a distinctly mechanical argument faintly echoed.

"Before that white-haired outsider girl showed up, the village never had any trouble with monsters!" a young villager's sharp voice rang out. "She's definitely the one who brought this calamity!"

Immediately following was a woman's tearful shriek, "My husband was killed by a monster! That white-haired witch must pay for this!"

"There is currently no evidence showing that the recent monsters are related to her." Yae Sakura's voice carried a trace of exhaustion. "Please give me a little time, everyone. I will investigate this thoroughly."

"Lady Shrine Maiden."

A deep, heavy voice slowly chimed in, "Even if that little girl has nothing to do with the monsters, please do not forget that the day of the sacrifice is nearly upon us."

Yae Sakura's tone turned urgent. "Fa... Chief Priest, could you possibly be planning to use her as the sacrifice?"

"Even if she is unrelated to the monsters, the day of sacrifice has arrived. Harvests have been hard this year. At such a critical juncture, the deity happens to send a white-haired stranger to our village—is this not divine will?"

"That girl's origins are unknown, and her body hasn't fully recovered yet," Yae Sakura's voice sounded again. "Besides, she is not from this village, so she has no connection to the sacrifice."

"For the sake of the village, someone must be sacrificed. If we do not sacrifice this outsider, we will have to use a young girl from our village." The Chief Priest's voice showed no emotion, cold and unhuman.

"Do you really want Rin to die in vain?"

Hearing this, Kaiwen raised her right hand and knocked heavily three times on the half-open wooden door.

Knock, knock, knock.

The argument inside the room came to an abrupt halt.

Kaiwen shoved open the wooden door and stepped straight inside.

Rather than sitting in her room awaiting death, it was better to walk right in.

The villagers kneeling inside the room all turned their heads to look at her in unison.

Yae Sakura also turned her head, her face turning pale the moment she saw her.

"Kaiwen? How did you—"

"I heard everything outside," Kaiwen interrupted her, slipping her hands into the pockets of her shrine maiden outfit as she looked toward the Chief Priest seated furthest inside. "Sacrifice me, or sacrifice a child from the village. Right?"

The Chief Priest stared at her expressionlessly without speaking.

The room fell silent for a few seconds.

"Then sacrifice me," Kaiwen said.

Yae Sakura stood up abruptly. "Lin Bei!"

"Don't rush, let me finish." Kaiwen raised a hand to stop her, then kept her eyes on the Chief Priest. "But before that, I have a question to ask you."

"Did I bring the monsters to this village?"

"Of course you did!" a villager barked sternly. "Before you arrived—"

"I wasn't asking you." Kaiwen didn't even turn her head. "I was asking the Chief Priest."

She stared into the Chief Priest's eyes.

"Did I bring them?"

"...So what if you did?"

"Then I have another question," Kaiwen said. "How many times has this village held this sacrifice?"

The Chief Priest did not answer.

"Ten times? Fifty times?" Kaiwen's voice wasn't loud, but it rang out with exceptional clarity in the room. "Or... have you lost count yourself?"

The air seemed to freeze.

Yae Sakura looked at Kaiwen in confusion, unable to understand what she was talking about.

But Kaiwen noticed something: the surrounding villagers who had been clamoring just moments ago fell dead silent after she asked this question, as if someone had pressed a pause button on them.

"Sakura." Kaiwen didn't turn around, her voice tightening slightly. "Look at the people around you."

Yae Sakura looked around at the stiff, motionless crowd in shocked bewilderment. "W-What is going on?"

"Because they're all fake, Sakura."

Kaiwen stopped in front of the Chief Priest, her gaze piercing through that aged skin as she spoke coldly:

"Fabricating a never-ending nightmare village, acting out this play of sacrifice over and over again... Hiding inside this seal, aren't you tired of playing this part?"

"Nonsense!" The Chief Priest finally spoke, his voice heavy and authoritative. "A stranger of unknown origins like you dares to spread malicious fallacies in the shrine—"

"Rin."

Kaiwen simply called out softly.

The Chief Priest's voice choked in his throat.

Silence enveloped the room once more.

Yae Sakura looked at Kaiwen in confusion. "Rin? Are you calling Rin?"

"Not your sister." Kaiwen shook her head, her gaze remained pinned on the Chief Priest. "I'm calling the person who is trapped inside this seal."

The Chief Priest showed no reaction.

But Kaiwen noticed that the hand resting on his knee gave an imperceptible twitch at the fingertips.

"You've been trapped for a long time," Kaiwen said, her voice even softer than before, as if afraid of scaring something away. "A very long time. So long that you've acted out this village's story more times than you can count."

"Every time it's the same: monsters trouble the village, the villagers demand a sacrifice, Sakura desperately tries to protect her sister, and fails in the end. Then everything resets and starts over."

"You want her mind to break, because as soon as her mind collapses and can no longer suppress you... you'll be able to escape."

Yae Sakura's eyes widened as she stared at Kaiwen in disbelief, before turning to look at the Chief Priest.

Her lips parted as if she wanted to say something, but no sound came out.

The Chief Priest still didn't move, but something abnormal began to appear on his face.

On the surface of the skin below his right eye, a tiny crack appeared, flaking like old wall paint.

"You..."

The voice emerged from inside the Chief Priest's body, but it was no longer that old, authoritative voice.

"Just who are you?"

It was the voice of a little girl.

Kaiwen looked at the eerie Chief Priest before her—or rather, Rin.

She knew that every word she was about to say could trigger this creature to go berserk, but she couldn't stop now.

"I'm just someone... who happens to know your story," Kaiwen said. "I know your name is Rin. I know you were locked by humans in a tiny, tiny room, staring at the outside world through glass. You did nothing wrong, but they were afraid of you, so they killed you."

The crack spread from the Chief Priest's right eye to his cheekbone, then down to his jawline.

"But Rin... it's been five hundred years."

"You've tried for five hundred years, and Yae Sakura is still holding on."

"This method isn't going to work."

"Shut up."

The child's voice suddenly turned sharp, accompanied by harsh static, like fingernails dragging across a chalkboard.

"You know nothing."

"I just want to get out."

"I just want to get out."

The Chief Priest's face cracked apart completely.

Peeling away piece by piece like porcelain, it revealed a pitch-black void underneath.

The voice sounded from within the void, laced with weeping and hatred, two entirely contradictory emotions intertwined together.

"I've been trapped for fifty thousand years! Fifty thousand years! Do you have any idea what fifty thousand years feels like?"

"I don't want to destroy anything! I don't want to corrupt anything! I just want to get out of this place!"

"But no one ever came."

"No one ever came."

Kaiwen opened her mouth, wanting to say something, but the floor beneath her feet suddenly shook violently.

The surrounding motionless villager puppets began crumbling away like sand from their edges, while dense cracks spread across the wooden house's beams and pillars, sending fragments showering down.

"You say it won't work?" The child's voice grew louder and more grating. "Even if it won't work, I'm still going to try! I don't care! I refuse to be locked up any longer!!"

In that moment, the entire world shattered like a mirror.

Countless shards scattered outward, exposing the bottomless, dark-red void behind the dream world.

Dark-red chains burst forth from the void, wrapping tightly around Kaiwen's limbs.

The force was astonishing, instantly yanking her off the ground.

"Kaiwen!!"

Yae Sakura lunged forward, desperately reaching for her hand, but in the next second, Kaiwen's body suddenly became translucent, and Yae Sakura's hand passed right through her palm, grabbing nothing.

She turned her head, her white hair fluttering wildly in the gale. Her azure eyes took a deep look at the dumbfounded Yae Sakura, and her lips curled into a wild, confident grin:

"Wait for me here for a bit, Yae Sakura. I'll get you out of this nightmare real soon!"

Then, the dark-red tide engulfed her completely.