My Beasts Grind Proficiency For Me-Chapter 164 - 69: Prayercraft

Yi Kingdom, Quzhou, Da Hua Village.

Da Hua Village was nestled deep in the mountains, with only a single winding mountain path for entry and exit. The village was entirely populated by kinsfolk and had once produced an Independent Cultivator with a Spirit Root.

At that time, the Royal Family of Yi Kingdom had been conscripting Cultivators to eliminate Demons. Unwilling to throw his life away for nothing, that Independent Cultivator had simply moved his entire clan into the mountains.

The village was named after the Big Locust Tree at its entrance, which was a full thousand years old. The tree was nearly a hundred meters tall, with a canopy spanning almost seventy meters.

Its massive trunk required more than twenty people to encircle with linked arms.

Thousand-year-old trees were not unusual on the Western Continent; they were a common sight in the untamed wilds. In the Five Elements True Spirit Sect, for example, ten-thousand-year-old Spirit Woods were not particularly rare.

The villagers of Da Hua Village were farmers by trade. With the wealth and Magic Arrays left behind by their Cultivator ancestor, they had no fear of the common Demons in the mountains, and their lives were relatively prosperous.

This changed over ninety years ago. An eighty-year-old crone from the village, after recovering from a serious illness, suddenly began raving as if she had gone mad. She claimed the Big Locust Tree had long since awakened its True Spirit and transformed into the Locust Immortal. As long as the villagers worshipped it, they would be blessed with health, prosperity, many children, and good fortune.

Had a Cultivator heard this, they would have simply assumed the old crone was insane.

For plants, stones, and minerals to undergo Demon Transformation was a hundred times more difficult than for creatures with shells, scales, fur, feathers, or exoskeletons. Even among ten-thousand-year-old Spirit Woods, it was rare for one to awaken its intelligence and transform.

As for a "Locust Immortal," that was pure nonsense.

In the Nine Heavens World, only those whose Cultivation had reached the Refining Void Realm could achieve Breaking the Boundary and ascend. Yet, even a great power at the Void Refining Stage would not dare call themselves an immortal.

The Six Sects governed the Western Continent, and even mortals had a superficial understanding of matters like Qi Cultivation. Moreover, Da Hua Village had produced a Cultivator before. The villagers just thought the old crone had lost her mind. A few able-bodied young men tied her up and forced half a dou of fecal water down her throat.

That very night, bloodcurdling screams echoed from the homes of those young men. The next day, villagers who worked up the courage to investigate found that the young men and their entire families had been turned into desiccated corpses.

The old crone said they had blasphemed against the Locust Immortal and received their retribution.

The simple-minded men and women of the village were immediately scared to the point of Soul Scattering and began to worship the Big Locust Tree. A few of the more astute villagers, however, were alarmed. ’This is clearly the work of an Evil Cultivator operating from the shadows.’

But anyone who dared to leave the village to report the matter would disappear without a trace.

And so, the custom of worshipping the Locust Immortal continued in Da Hua Village for nearly a century.

The Big Locust Tree at the village entrance grew ever more lush, its leaves a vibrant, jade-like green. Yet, Da Hua Village, nestled beneath it, gave off a sense of unnatural dissonance.

A light rain had just fallen, yet the weeds in the village had a withered, decaying, and lifeless appearance.

Villagers carrying hoes headed to the fields. They were extremely thin, their flesh shrunken and their wrinkled skin stretched tight over their skeletons, making their joints appear exceptionally large.

Their eyes were fixed in a blank stare, their eyeballs barely moving. The muscles in their faces seemed to have hardened into a single block, rendering them almost expressionless.

They looked less like people and more like Puppets carved from wood.

At this moment, beneath the Big Locust Tree at the village entrance, a group of Cultivators—men and women, old and young, all in different attire—had gathered, encircling the tree.

An old crone with a gaunt frame, wearing a bronze mask of a two-horned Divine Being, was sitting cross-legged before the locust tree.

Stuck in the ground before her were four locust branches, each impaling a person: a man, a woman, an old person, and a youth. These sacrificial victims had been disemboweled, their internal organs hanging from the branches like fruit.

Suddenly, the old crone let out a horrifying shriek, like the sharp cry of an old crow.

Another shriek followed, each one more frantic than the last.

Then, mysterious, bizarre sounds arose from above, below, in front of, and behind the old crone. The sounds were strange and inexplicable, impossible to describe with words.

Some of the Demon Cultivators with keen Spiritual Sense could even feel an imperceptible, invisible, illusory *something* weaving and winding around them.

The old crone began to beat a leather drum. The rhythm was dense and fierce. She stood up and, mumbling a song, began to dance, her grotesque body twisting bizarrely.

Her tone of voice became extremely strange. She no longer sounded like an old crone, but like a dignified middle-aged man, her voice low and solemn.

The branches of the Big Locust Tree swayed gently with the dance, writhing like a nest of snakes.

The dance went on for more than a full hour before it gradually came to a stop.

The old crone slowly came to a halt. She took the four hearts from the locust branches, sliced them open with a strange stone dagger, and squeezed out the Essence Blood, spraying it onto the Big Locust Tree.

The crimson blood sprayed onto the tree’s python-scale-like bark and was quickly absorbed.

The old crone tossed the four shriveled hearts into the sky, then smeared the remaining blood on her hands and clothes.

One of the Demon Cultivators, knowing this signaled the end of the ritual, asked impatiently:

"Old hag, is the Curse complete?"

The old crone took off her Bronze Mask. Her face was covered in sweat, and she sat down, looking somewhat weakened.

"I have channeled the Locust God to place a Divine Descent Spell on that Yang Jing. For the next seven days, he will surely be restless, suffer splitting headaches, and be plagued by nightmares."

Upon hearing Yang Jing’s name, one of the Demon Cultivators shivered.

For Demon Cultivators like them, who used to operate in the Liao Kingdom, that name was like a nightmare.

"We spent so many Spirit Stones to hire you, Witch, to cast this Curse, and this is all it does?!"

A Demon Cultivator grew disgruntled. He and the others had fled the Liao Kingdom in a hurry, bringing only their most portable wealth, so they were already short on funds. If not for their profound hatred of Yang Jing, they wouldn’t have pooled their money to hire the Witch to curse him.

"Hmph!"

The Witch snorted in displeasure, and the Big Locust Tree before her began to sway.

"You didn’t bring me that Yang Jing’s aura, nor his birth date and time. All I had was a name. With that alone, this is the most the Curse can do."

Weng Ting’an stepped forward. It was he who, by a stroke of luck, had befriended this old Witch who kept a Fur God. He was also the one who had proposed that the fugitive Demon Cultivators pool their money to hire her to cast the Curse.

"Fellow Daoists, that Yang Jing has slaughtered so many of our kind. The masters of the Four Sects will not sit by and watch. Perhaps a True Disciple has already arrived in the Northern Domain to eliminate Yang Jing. This Curse we’ve cast will surely aid them!"

As they spoke, none of them noticed the dark clouds gathering in the sky. Layers of vapor massed above the Big Locust Tree with astonishing speed.

The branches of the Big Locust Tree began to move on their own, despite the lack of wind, making a grating, twisting sound.

The next moment, a dazzling bolt of lightning shot down from the sky, striking the crown of the locust tree. Arcs of electricity surged, instantly carving a hideous, charred scar into its trunk.

Before the first strike had even faded, another bolt crashed down. The scorching lightning-fire immediately set the tree’s crown ablaze.

Its thick branches writhed madly within the raging, electric flames.

Amidst a CRACKLE and SNAP of breaking branches, the old crone let out a piercing scream, vomited blood, and fainted.

The Demon Cultivators present were already as frightened as birds startled by a bowstring. Thinking Yang Jing had caught up to them, they scattered in all directions like startled animals.