Chapter 60: The Ritual

Chapter 60: The Ritual

Chen Shouyi continued experimenting with his Atmospheric Control ability for a while longer before finally abandoning any delusions of further developing it.

Its pitiful offensive power couldn’t even knock over the tiny Shell Woman—it was only useful against ants.

At first, he thought this ability was nothing more than a gimmick, something to show off with.

But before long, Chen Shouyi realized it wasn’t entirely useless.

He discovered this during his subsequent sword practice.

……

His sword thrusts were now incredibly fast. After his Agility increased by another 0.1 point, a simple thrust on Earth could consistently break the sound barrier. Even in the Otherworld, where gravity was threefold, his speed approached 300 meters per second.

At such speeds, the air had practically become as viscous as a liquid.

When thrusting his sword, he could clearly feel the immense air resistance, severely hindering any further increase in speed.

But today, he noticed that several times during his thrusts, the resistance had weakened significantly.

As the sword pierced forward, the air seemed to part slightly in advance, as if an invisible force was clearing the way. And this didn’t require any conscious effort—it was as instinctive as breathing, executed by his subconsciousness.

……

Hiss! Hiss! Hiss!

He thrust a few more times before stopping, frowning in deep thought.

"Why does the resistance sometimes decrease a lot and other times only a little? There must be a key factor here!"

After a long pause, he thrust again.

This time, his speed was even faster, yet the sound of the sword breaking through the air remained nearly the same.

He continued with a few more thrusts—some casual, where the resistance was strong, and others with full concentration, where the resistance was much weaker.

"It seems the more focused I am, the more the resistance weakens, allowing my sword to move even faster."

He keenly noted the difference.

Once he realized this, Chen Shouyi immediately began deliberately concentrating his mind.

In this regard, he had always possessed a tremendous advantage. Whether it was Meditative Self-Refinement or the optimized Thirty-Six Body Refining Techniques, both required deep mental focus.

This made it easy for him to enter a state of intense concentration when performing any task.

He continued thrusting, his mind growing sharper, his thoughts undisturbed.

After an unknown amount of practice, his entire being suddenly became hyper-focused. With a single thrust, he felt an unprecedented fluidity—both in speed and technique, it surpassed anything he had achieved before.

Faintly, a cone-shaped energy, pale and translucent, shot from the tip of his sword, flying three to four meters before dissipating into the air.

"What was that just now?" Startled by the anomaly, his concentration shattered, and he quickly stopped.

Only then did he feel mentally drained, his head throbbing faintly, as if something had been expended with that thrust.

He turned to seek confirmation from Shell Woman, only to find her completely uninterested.

Ever since obtaining the large glass bead, she had been frantically searching for gold, as if possessed.

"Never mind. If it happened once, it’ll happen again," he thought to himself.

He continued practicing his swordplay, but unfortunately, such a state seemed elusive and not something he could summon at will. By the time the sun dipped westward in the Otherworld, he hadn’t managed to unleash another sword strike.

...

Chen Shouyi changed back into his original clothes, stuffed his weapons and backpack into the rock cave, and placed Shell Woman back into the briefcase before stepping out through the passage.

Back on Earth, it was only 2:30 in the afternoon.

The streets were sparsely populated.

With the ongoing power outage, Dongning City had inevitably declined, losing its former bustle.

Chen Shouyi glanced at the shops on either side, still without electricity.

It wasn’t much of a surprise.

This blackout wasn’t just an ordinary power failure.

It wasn’t an issue with a single line or a specific area—most of the power grid across the entire nation was affected.

Leaving aside other factors, even the wires needed to replace the aging infrastructure had likely become scarce commodities in the market.

Chen Shouyi couldn’t help but wonder if Dongning City could even procure enough wiring.

Even if they could, simply replacing everything wouldn’t be a matter of a few days.

On top of that, the invasion of the mysterious force field had drastically increased power loss during transmission. Even if the grid were fully restored, the electricity that once supplied the entire nation would now likely only meet 50 to 60 percent of demand.

The entire country would face widespread power shortages.

And Dongning City, as a small fifth- or sixth-tier town—neither an important industrial base nor a strategic location—would probably be the last to be reconnected, even after repairs were completed.

...

By mid-October, the air carried a biting chill.

Chen Shouyi hurried home, briefcase in hand.

After crossing an intersection, he suddenly noticed a crowd gathered outside an office building. Through the gaps between people, he could see several police officers.

"What happened?" he muttered to himself.

He quickened his pace and soon caught a faint whiff of blood in the air.

His expression darkened. This was only a short distance from his home—had something happened?

"Stop shoving! Trying to cop a feel, huh?"

"Ah, sorry, sorry! Just need to get through!"

The young woman who had complained swallowed her next words when she saw Chen Shouyi’s handsome, youthful face.

Apologizing, he gently pushed through the crowd with surprising ease.

His strength was now extraordinary—lifting a hundred-kilogram person with one hand and tossing them several meters away would be effortless, let alone simply moving through a crowd.

Before long, he reached the front.

A police cordon had been set up at the office building’s entrance. Several grim-faced officers carried stretchers out, each bearing a body bag.

There were many corpses—just in the short time he watched, five or six were loaded into a police van.

"So tragic. All the victims were girls around fifteen or sixteen. Over twenty bodies."

"Things are getting worse these days. Nothing like this happened before."

"Seems like some kind of cult ritual. By the time they were found, they were already dead. Utterly inhuman."

At the mention of the word "cult," Chen Shouyi’s heart turned cold.

For the past two decades, cults have been the target of severe crackdowns by nations worldwide, especially those worshipping Deities from the Otherworld. Such groups were strictly banned, and any discovery immediately became a major case.

With the widespread implementation of surveillance over the years, monitoring grew even tighter, and these cults gradually faded into obscurity, rarely heard of again.

Yet now, they have resurfaced.

And in Dongning City, no less—with such a brutal and bloody ritual.