Chapter Eight: The Fire Offering Ritual
Li Wen opened her eyes and found herself back in the game.
[Fire Offering Ritual]
[Knowledge – Ritual – Promotion (Stage One)]
[Requirement: None]
[Moths are obsessed with fire, and the lost are obsessed with Glor. In times of confusion, the black sheep often offers insight—offering oneself to the fire is the only outcome.]
[A ritual that must be performed under the witness of Glor. Sincere prayers before the fire will grant blessings.]
[Step 1: Prepare an empty church belonging to a denomination that worships Glor. Otherwise, remove all totems and symbols of outer gods. Then, set up a cruciform pyre in the center of the church and light an indeterminate number of candles on it until the entire church is bright and clear.]
[Step 2: Expel all individuals from the [6×6] range at the center of the church. During the ritual, ensure that only the ritual performer is within the range.]
[Step 3: Refine Saint’s Grease using stibnite, lime, sunflower pollen, animal fat in the ratio of 1:2:1:6. Then, use the Saint’s Grease to draw the ritual magic circle [Abel’s Blessing – Part One] embedding [Star of Brilliant Gold].]
[Step 4: Light candles around the outer circle of the ritual magic circle, seven in number, symbolizing the seven boons of Glor. Set up a bonfire in the center of the ritual magic circle, offering a living sacrifice within the flames. Mistletoe growing on oak branches can be used as a substitute.]
[Step 5: Pray and chant “The Grace of Glorious – Chapter Seven: The Path of Divine Reversal” three times to complete the ritual.]
The Fire Offering Ritual is the promotion ritual required for supplicants of the Path of Light Chasing.
From Li Wen’s perspective, this was indeed a very simple and basic ritual, with almost no room for error. It could be completed by simply following the steps.
After all, this was a Stage One promotion ritual, so it naturally wouldn’t be too difficult.
“Step one can be ignored. The church has plenty of Saint’s Grease, so there’s no need to refine it separately. As for the sacrifice, I have the ‘Necessary Sacrifice’ trait, so I can use my blood as a substitute and don’t need to prepare anything. The blueprints for the required magic circle can be viewed directly on the game panel…”
“The Grace of Glorious” was one of the holy scriptures of the Glorious cult, very common in the Kingdom of Arthur. Li Wen had a copy in her room.
“In other words, as long as I find an excuse to get people out of the church, I can proceed with the ritual.”
Before Mog returned, Li Wen immediately took action.
She pushed open the door and ran into a young nun in a nun’s habit who was preparing to leave. The Candle Sun Church’s clerical attire was black with red trim, symbolizing the candle light that illuminates the world by sacrificing in darkness. The nun’s habit, however, was uniformly white with gold trim, symbolizing the purity and sanctity of these girls who served Glor.
“Wait a moment!”
Li Wen quickly called out to her.
The other party stopped, turned around, and seeing Li Wen’s unfamiliar face, became very nervous. Only after she roughly assessed their height and confirmed that Li Wen was slightly shorter than her did she breathe a sigh of relief.
“Little sister, this is the nuns’ dormitory. You can’t just barge in. Or are you a new nun recruited by Priest Mog?”
Little sister?
Li Wen’s expression stiffened. She said indifferently,
“That’s none of your business. I’m asking you, do you have anything important to do next?”
“Huh?” The nun was taken aback and instinctively responded to Li Wen’s forceful tone, “No, no!”
“That’s right, you don’t. Now go and see that all outsiders are driven away from the main cathedral, and then prepare some Saint’s Grease and candles to take there.”
Saint’s Grease and candles were necessities for church services and rituals. Although the nun was puzzled that it wasn’t a day for worship, she nodded and agreed under Li Wen’s forceful gaze, and immediately put it into action.
Meanwhile, Li Wen took advantage of this time to memorize the entirety of Chapter Seven of “The Grace of Glorious.” The scriptures of various religions were always obscure and difficult to understand, but fortunately, Li Wen’s memory was quite reliable. She managed to memorize it after reading it a few times.
After confirming that she could recite it fluently, Li Wen put down the book and walked towards the church.
When she entered the church, there was indeed no one else inside. The reliable young nun, somehow, had persuaded the believers to leave. She was now standing in front of the altar, holding a pile of candles and oil bottles containing Saint’s Grease, waiting expectantly.
“Put down the things, and you can go about your business,” Li Wen said.
The bewildered young nun obediently did as she was told, then looked around for a moment:
“Um… where is Priest Mog?”
“Why do you care about that? Hurry up and go,” Li Wen said with a hint of impatience. If she didn’t perform the ritual soon, she was afraid she would forget the lines. “By the way, after you leave, don’t let anyone approach the main church hall, understand?”
“Understood.” The clueless young nun nodded. “Um, I still don’t know your name!”
Li Wen was silent for a moment, her face flushing slightly.
“Mephistopheles.”
“Okay!”
This time, the young nun left completely satisfied.
Li Wen didn’t dare to delay. She summoned her spellbook, opened the page with the magic circle, and let it float beside her. Then, she opened the oil bottle containing Saint’s Grease and began the preparation for drawing.
Drawing the ritual magic circle was a very difficult task. After all, reality wasn’t a drawing software where you could create perfect geometric shapes with a flick of a mouse. Moreover, Li Wen had lost one eye, and any slight visual error might affect the drawing.
Fortunately, [Abel’s Blessing – Part One] and [Star of Brilliant Gold] were small and simple magic circles, allowing for a relatively large margin of error, so drawing them wasn’t difficult.
With her experience from her previous life, Li Wen didn’t make any mistakes while drawing these magic circles. In a short while, an almost perfect magic circle of [Abel’s Blessing – Part One] embedding [Star of Brilliant Gold] appeared in the center of the main church hall.
Then, Li Wen lit candles around the outer circle of the magic circle, trying to maintain a consistent distance between each candle. The remaining candles were used to form the bonfire, stacked together and lit all at once.
Finally, there was the sacrifice.
The Fire Offering Ritual was a basic ritual, originating from the cult that served Glor. The best sacrifice was a lamb. Li Wen’s blood could substitute for flesh and blood sacrifices, and a living creature was a form of blood sacrifice.
Li Wen picked up the ritual dagger offered before the altar, walked to the bonfire, and cut her palm with the dagger.
Amidst the sting, blood dripped down, falling precisely onto the bonfire. The blood, like oil, made the flames unprecedentedly active and boisterous.
Li Wen held the dagger in a praying posture and recited the content of Chapter Seven of “The Grace of Glorious.” After repeating it three times, everything fell silent.
The candlelight stopped flickering, and the light disappeared.
Li Wen stopped praying and opened her eyes, but she saw nothing. All around her was profound and void darkness.
In this absolute darkness, a light broke through everything.
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I feel like the morning updates get more views, so I’ll stick to morning updates from now on.
