Chapter 641
640 It's better to believe Puji
Chapter 641, 640. Better to believe Puji.
It was remote, dilapidated, and rarely visited.
Even Will, who rarely ventured into the city, felt uneasy, but he was eager to complete this final task before leaving, so he barely suppressed his anxiety.
Seemingly sensing Will's nervousness, the man who brought him took out a bottle of wine from under a drawer in the room and poured two glasses.
"I asked the boss to get the things, it should be in about ten minutes. They are materials that were stolen and resold by employees or apprentices from other stores. Their origins are not exactly honorable, so they can't be displayed directly outside. I hope you don't mind."
As he spoke, he raised the wooden cup and drank the wine in one gulp.
Will nodded and took a small sip as well.
After drinking some alcohol, the other person seemed to open up and started talking about everything from the weather to the current situation, and others talking about themselves.
He expressed his helplessness, saying that without a bright mind, he could not become a scholar or a pharmacist.
They also lacked exceptional talent, couldn't level up, and couldn't become adventurers or join the army.
They could only do some shady business in the city. The profits seemed high, but there were few customers. The money was split among the various cuts, and not much ended up in their own hands.
Listening to his story, Will nodded, feeling a sense of empathy.
As a child, he also dreamed of becoming a powerful mage or a great warrior. If he hadn't lacked talent, how could he have spent half his life as a farmer?
Seeing that Will agreed with him, the man suddenly asked, "Do you...believe in reincarnation?"
Slightly tipsy, Will pouted and asked, "You mean the soul is reincarnated after death and reborn?"
"Yes, some churches can control the afterlife. Don't you want to be a genius in your next life?"
Will, however, reacted indifferently, shaking his head: "I don't know about those things, but even if there is a soul and rebirth, there must be no memory of this life, otherwise those past heroes and nobles would all jump out and claim to be 'so-and-so.' Since there is no memory, then there is no way to retain memories. Without memories, is that person still themselves?"
"How can it not be? Your soul is still the same soul!" The man said, becoming somewhat agitated, and unconsciously clenched his fist.
Drunk Will, oblivious to his unease, continued, "I don't think so. Believing in those things is less appealing than believing in Puji. They can make us happy in this life! As for the afterlife, although the teachings of the Puji Cult do say that believing in Puji grants eternal life, I only care about this life... hiccup..."
After he finished speaking, the other end of the line suddenly fell silent, which made Will finally realize that something was wrong.
He instantly sobered up a bit and looked at the person opposite him with some guilt: "This...it's been more than ten minutes, hasn't the boss come yet?"
The man stood up, his voice filled with venomous rage: "Incurable heretic!"
"What...what are you going to do?" Will stepped back, but tripped over the debris at his feet.
The person in front of him drew a long sword from his sleeve.
Will had no idea how such a long sword had been hidden there; there hadn't been a single trace beforehand.
Of course, this might also be because he didn't notice it himself; after all, he was just a former farmer with limited experience.
"Help...help me!" he cried out as he backed away.
“Shouting won’t do any good.” The cultists on the other side were not worried at all; the room had long been surrounded by soundproof magic arrays.
Simple and effective, it's enough to deal with an ordinary person like Will.
He had his reasons for targeting Will; a stranger with a missing arm was most likely a migrant.
Such people are most likely to be recruited into the church. If that fails, they will be used as sacrifices and their disappearance will probably not attract much attention.
Cornered, Will, driven by his will to survive, suddenly mustered the courage to fight back.
However, although this cultist was not a master, he was not someone that the one-armed Will could defeat. In the ensuing struggle, the longsword accidentally pierced Will's heart.
Upon seeing this, the cultist roared angrily, "Damn it! What are you resisting for? I was going to send you into the arms of the goddess, and you insisted on resisting. Now you're going to die like this, and all our efforts will have been in vain!"
He was indeed furious; the sacrificial ritual required a living sacrifice, and without a dead one, the ritual could not be performed. However, Will could no longer feel his anger; he stared blankly at the sword piercing his chest, his thoughts wandering.
I finally experienced happiness and finally had something I wanted to do, but I never expected that the end of my journey would come so suddenly.
Pity.
With regret and resentment, Will closed his eyes forever.
……
The cult members were still cursing and swearing, unaware that the mycelium that had been growing in the cracks in the wall was spreading at an extremely fast speed, even making a rustling, wriggling sound.
As Lin Jun's experimental project on faith, the Mushroom Cult naturally attracted her attention.
The initiation ceremony did not contain any magical elements, but Lin Jun would add all officially initiating members to the Level 3 observation list within the fungal network.
The disappearance of an object of observation naturally caught Lin Jun's attention.
Cultists who guide the dead...
They're like cockroaches; even though I've tried my best to get rid of them, you really can't see them gathering and moving around on the fungal carpet anymore.
But in the corners of the city, there will always be one or two who slip through the net and occasionally cause trouble.
Feeling something was slippery underfoot, the cultist finally noticed something was wrong and looked down to see a floor covered in fungal filaments.
To his horror, the fungal carpet continued to spread.
It quickly clung to Will's corpse and disintegrated it at a speed visible to the naked eye. In just over ten seconds, only a skeleton and clothes remained.
He tried to leave, but found that the doors and windows had been sealed off by mycelium.
Even more alarming, small, puffy shapes began to appear on the fungal carpet.
"What...what exactly is going on?"
pat-
On the wall, a tattered voice clipped off first, its eerie, sticky sound echoing in the small, enclosed room:
“Lovely heretic, you can’t go to the God of Death’s kingdom, but I have another place that suits you.”
"The packing process might be a little painful, so feel free to struggle and scream!"
"Anyway, you set up a soundproof magic circle, didn't you?"
Puff—Puff—
One by one they landed with a thud, and even as the cultists wielded their longswords and began to slash at them, they remained calm and slowly surrounded them.
"What are you? Wait, no, no! Aaaaaaahhhhhh—"
It was quiet outside; the soundproofing magic array was indeed very effective.
……
The two companions who were shopping together found Will's remains by following the last senses within the cultist's microbial network.
They found no clues in the remote and empty house.
Overwhelmed with grief and anger, the two could only return to seek help from Julia and the Mushroom Master.
Meanwhile, in the mushroom garden, a new mycelial cocoon is gradually taking shape.
(End of this chapter)