Chapter 78: Su Mu, Bronze Stage 3

The three of them slipped through massive gaps in the stone walls, heading straight for the center. Along the way, they spotted numerous bronze vessels once used for ancient sacrifices scattered haphazardly across the ground.

These bronze items were battered and heavily rusted, yet Su Mu did not just walk past them. He inspected each one carefully. Though he had never seen an Artifact before, bronze relics appearing in such an eerie place might just be exactly that.

Unfortunately, Artifacts were not so easy to stumble upon. At best, these bronze pieces were mere antiques, completely unrelated to Artifacts. They contained none of the power of Law, crumbling to dust at the slightest touch.

"There's a corpse!" Yang Dongqing stopped dead at the front of the group, his eyes locked on a blackened, humanoid lump slumped in the corner.

Su Mu stepped up and prodded it with his Snakewood Cane. It was indeed a human corpse. The body was charred entirely black, scorched by fire.

They pressed on. The closer they drew to the center, the more corpses they found. Oddly, the dead seemed divided into two distinct causes of death. Some were charred black from fire, while the others were completely stripped of flesh, reduced to bare white bones. Even those bones bore signs of severe rot.

"Is this some kind of Land of Sacrifice?" Yang Dongqing asked, his face grim and wary. The gruesome, contrasting deaths gave him a terrible premonition.

"I've heard that cultists who worship evil gods like to burn themselves alive to prove their devotion," the bald man said, his voice trembling. "Did those skeletons sacrifice their own flesh and blood to the evil god too?"

"Stop. There are people in the center of the square," Su Mu said, suddenly halting behind a stone wall. Just beyond it lay the central plaza. He had caught the faint murmur of human voices, and there was definitely more than one.

The other two instantly tensed up. They crept toward the edge of the wall, planning to peek at the situation in the square first.

"Another three unlucky bastards."

"No need to hide. Come on out, you three."

Several voices drifted over from the other side of the wall.

Seeing that they had been spotted, Su Mu did not bother hiding anymore. He openly led the other two out from behind the stone wall.

A sprawling, empty square opened up before them. A ring of massive stone pillars bordered the plaza. Their surfaces were heavily weathered, yet the faint traces of intricate carvings could still be seen.

In the very center of this ring of pillars sat an altar as pure white as jade. Resting atop it was a Statue half the height of a man.

The people who had spoken were leaning against the stone pillars. There were eight in total—seven men and one woman. Everyone wore a faint, lingering aura of murderous intent. They were heavily geared; some had cold steel strapped to their backs, while others gripped firearms.

But the most striking detail was that all eight were wounded. Three suffered from extensive burns, while the limbs of the other five were rotting away. In the worst cases, stark white bones poked through the decaying flesh.

"Which company are you three from?" a burly, fierce-looking man in a tight black tank top and camouflage pants demanded, locking his eyes on Su Mu's group.

Most of the man's left hand had already rotted away, the ghastly white bone clearly visible beneath.

"Bronze Coffin," Su Mu replied evenly.

The burly man frowned slightly. "Bronze Coffin again? I wouldn't have guessed a newly established little company could recruit so many Transcendents."

'Again?'

Yang Dongqing paused in surprise. "You've seen other Transcendents from Bronze Coffin?"

Before the burly man could answer, a young Daoist priest shivering in the corner frantically raised his hand. "Me, me, me! I'm from Bronze Coffin too."

Yang Dongqing looked over, realizing he didn't recognize the priest at all.

Su Mu's eyes flickered slightly as he carefully sized the young Daoist up. The man had handsome, delicate features. He wore a cyan Daoist robe, his hair tied up in a traditional topknot, and carried an archaic longsword on his back.

The moment Su Mu saw that longsword, he was certain of the man's identity.

"That's right. He's with Bronze Coffin," Su Mu suddenly spoke up, making the priest's face light up with joy.

"Fellow Daoist, did we know each other before?" the priest asked eagerly. "To think you came past The Unrememberable and can still recognize me. It's a shame, but I don't remember you at all right now."

'The Unrememberable? Is that the name of that little monster?'

Su Mu shook his head. "I don't know you."

"Ah?" The priest's face froze. "Then how are you so sure I'm from Bronze Coffin?"

"Because you are the only person here carrying a longsword. I saw sword marks on the training dummies in the Bronze Coffin training room, but Murong Mengli had no memory of how they got there. That led me to guess that someone else from Bronze Coffin must have entered the Abandoned District before us, and Murong Mengli simply forgot about you because of The Unrememberable."

"What!?" The priest turned pale with shock. "The boss actually forgot about me? After I joined the company, I sent her flowers every single day! Even if she never accepted them, she can't just forget me! Doesn't that mean I gave her all those flowers for nothing?"

The priest looked as if he had suffered a heavy blow. He slumped in dejection, wearing the exact same heartbroken expression Yang Dongqing had shown earlier.

"Shut up!" the burly man roared. "Nobody wants to hear about your failed love life. If we don't figure out a way to break this curse, we're all going to die!"

The priest's face went white. He did not dare make another sound, clearly terrified of the burly man.

The burly man then turned back to Su Mu's trio. "My name is Tie Feng, a Bronze Stage 3 Transcendent. I work for the Spiritual Pivot Company founded by the Second Young Master of the Murong Family. Out of everyone here, I'm the strongest, so I'm temporarily leading this patched-together squad. What's your strength?

"Don't even think about hiding it. We are all grasshoppers tied to the same rope now. The moment you stepped into this Land of Sacrifice, you were already targeted by the Statue. The only way we survive this is if we all put our heads together."

'The Statue?'

Su Mu quietly glanced at the humanoid Statue resting on the altar. The figure was incredibly bizarre. It was half black and half white, as if pieced together from two entirely different materials.

The black half was as hideous as a demon, while the white half was as holy as a God. Both halves bore four wings on their backs, perfectly color-matched to their respective sides, making eight wings in total. It was a flawless fusion of a God and a demon, much like a mythical angel spliced with a fallen angel.

"Yang Dongqing, Bronze Tier 1," Yang Dongqing said, stepping up to declare his name and rank first.

Hearing "Bronze 1," the crowd immediately looked disappointed. It was obvious they had been hoping for more powerful allies.

"I... I'm Zhao Yongqiang," the bald man stammered, shivering. "I'm just an ordinary person."

"An ordinary person actually survived an encounter with The Unrememberable? Do you have an Artifact?" Tie Feng glared at Zhao Yongqiang. The sheer, physical weight of the man's presence made Zhao Yongqiang tremble even harder. He frantically waved his hands. "No... no, I don't. He saved me."

Tie Feng followed Zhao Yongqiang's gaze to Su Mu, his eyes narrowing in scrutiny.

Su Mu smiled faintly. "Su Mu, Bronze Stage 3."