Accompanied by the subtitle prompts, some knowledge about blood sacrifices was despicably drilling into Feng Mu's mind.
Weird, bloody, insane!
Feng Mu shivered, smacking his lips: "The fearless and insane person draws the altar with his own blood; the cowardly yet vicious beast drains others' blood to draw the altar."
"These two choices would generate different rewards. Unfortunately, the result of the reward is a question mark now, so I can only make a blind bet."
Feng Mu's grades in liberal arts were mediocre, and he wasn't sure if his reading comprehension was correct, but it shouldn't be too far off.
"So, should I choose a person or a beast?"
"Honestly, using someone else's blood for the sacrifice should feel a bit more comfortable~"
"But I don't particularly want to kill anyone; I can't just randomly pick a target, can I? No reason to be so deranged, right?"
Having resolved to carry out a [death sacrifice], Feng Mu's moral compass uncontrollably slipped toward the brink of evil.
As Feng Mu walked, he fought an internal battle, to be a human or a beast, that was the question.
10 minutes later.
Feng Mu walked into the bike shed, staring dazedly at the beloved bike he'd ridden for three years.
"Let's not worry about being human or beast for now, need to swallow a pound of iron first. Hmm, isn't the bike ready-made ingredients? So, which part will have a texture that's easier to swallow?"
Feng Mu scrutinized the bike more closely than ever, his gaze turning increasingly perverse.
The bearing chain is too greasy, the bike frame too hard to chew, the brake handle a bit rusty and spoiled, the bike wheel spikes too sharp and easy to get stuck in the throat...
Bicycle: "???"
30 minutes later.
The ever-dutiful bicycle carried Feng Mu to the entrance of the hardware store, huffing and puffing.
Feng Mu stepped inside the hardware store, the bike parked at the entrance was blown by the wind, trembling with a shivering buzz.
Feng Mu felt like he wasn't entering a hardware store, but a gourmet restaurant, with various metal items on the shelves appearing as delicacies.
Feng Mu excitedly blurted out: "Boss, which kind has the best texture?"
The middle-aged bald boss doubted his ears were hallucinating: "What?"
Feng Mu quickly corrected, "The smallest size, round and smooth, without angular ironware, do you have any?"
The bald boss hesitantly pulled out a handful of iron beads from the cabinet, asking uncertainly: "These ones?"
Feng Mu's eyes lit up instantly, overjoyed: "Yes, these, they won't hurt the teeth... ahem, hands."
The bald boss hesitated: "How many do you want?"
Feng Mu: "Please weigh me a pound."
The bald boss was bewildered, it was the first time he'd seen a customer buy items by the pound in the store.
While the boss was weighing, Feng Mu, driven by some inexplicable urge, drew a claw hammer from the shelf, it was short and just fit to hide in the sleeve.
The bald boss only felt this customer was odd, but couldn't be bothered to think more, took the money, and wrapped everything in a black plastic bag to hand over.
Feng Mu contentedly grabbed the bag, placed it in his backpack, mounted the bike that had just been saved, and disappeared swiftly.
Although it took half an hour to get there, it only took 20 minutes to return, the wind roared, as his beloved bike roared beneath him.
Feng Mu parked the bike back in the shed and didn't return to the classroom; instead, he wandered alone around the school.
"The iron is ready, still missing the blood!" Feng Mu muttered to himself.
He still hadn't decided whether to use his own blood or someone else's, but that didn't stop him from preemptively hiding the murder weapon in his sleeve, and inexplicably finding himself slipping into some hidden corners of the campus.
When he found no solitary students in the corners, Feng Mu felt both disappointed and relieved.
This repeated several times until school was over, the campus was completely deserted, and Feng Mu dragged his exhausted body out of a bush.
Actually, he did encounter two opportunities.
One was a girl as skinny as a stick, crying in a corner, looking utterly crushed by destiny, so pitiful that Feng Mu couldn't bring himself to do it;
The other was a face full of brute force, unlike a good person, deserving to be killed for justice, with muscles like iron lumps clearly indicating his exceptional martial arts grade; Feng Mu found nowhere to start.
"Damn it, I didn't know killing someone was so hard until I tried it!"
Feng Mu's arm, wrapped around the ram's horn hammer, was numb, and his dry lips were bitten and bleeding.
"Forget it, relying on others is worse than relying on myself. Since I have to swallow iron, might as well bleed. Anyway, if the ritual fails, I can't save it anymore!"
Feng Mu licked the blood in his mouth, his eyes filled with determination and madness. He turned and walked towards the abandoned warehouse behind the teaching building.
The abandoned warehouse used to be a martial arts hall. A few years ago, it caught fire, and it's said that several students were burned to death.
After the school built a new martial arts hall, it was converted into a storage warehouse, and later it was completely abandoned, rarely visited by anyone.
It's a perfect place to hold an evil sacrificial ritual.
The warehouse was locked, but that didn't bother Feng Mu. He skillfully went around to the back, climbed a tree to the second floor, found a grey ventilator window, and used a trick to pry open the edge, loosening the window latch.
Feng Mu pushed open the window, squeezed inside, and carefully re-latched the window.
The warehouse was dark, with piles of various clutter in the corners, carrying a damp, moldy smell. The walls had been repainted with white paint, but the cracked wall bases and tiles still faintly showed traces of the fire.
Some marks can be hidden, but they can never be erased.
Just like the fire, just like the scars on his wrist.
Feng Mu shone his phone's light, looking at the clogged, irregularly arranged clutter, which seemed to form a maze. Some paths were interconnected, while others were dead ends.
Feng Mu followed the remnants of images in his memory, zigzagging through to the deepest part, squeezing behind a wooden shelf against the wall, and then pushed inward another five meters.
Suddenly it was spacious — a compartment hidden by the wooden shelves.
It was still a storage room with some clutter piled around, but because the doorframe was too narrow, large items couldn't be moved inside, leaving a piece of open space.
About five or six square meters, enough to hold a simple ritual or for a neglected corpse to lie.
"I thought I'd never come back here, but unexpectedly, destiny brought me back."
Feng Mu remarked with emotion. He took two steps forward, slowly sat down, and naturally leaned against the cold base of the wall, according to the posture in his memory.
He fumbled on the ground with his right hand for a moment, and sure enough, he found a blade with dried blood congealed on it.
That was his blood!
More accurately, it was the original owner's blood.
Three years ago, the original owner slit his wrist and died here; he opened his eyes. Three years later, he chose to slit his wrist here again.
Feng Mu wasn't seeking death; he was seeking life, seeking a new birth of blood and iron.
[Blood and Iron: You need to bathe in blood and iron, completing a death sacrifice to demonstrate your determination and rebirth.
Completion rewards: 1, Activation
2, Inherit the Iron Eater
3, ??
The sacrificial ritual is as follows: consume one pound of raw iron and use fresh blood to draw the pattern of destiny.]
(PS: The fearless and mad bathe in their own blood to be reborn; the cowardly yet vicious beasts devour the blood of their kind to resurrect. Different choices forge different destinies!)
Feng Mu took a deep breath, grasping the blade with whitened fingers, then aligned it with the scar on his wrist and cut along the same spot.
The old scar was split open, blood gushed out, staining the blackened blade with fresh color.
Tossing the blade aside, Feng Mu swiftly grabbed the small iron beads and stuffed them into his mouth, swallowing them without chewing while murmuring the bizarre sacrificial incantation intermittently.
The incantation was deeply imprinted in his mind, and as he chanted, it seemed as if an indescribable power descended upon this cramped space, guiding the blood to sketch out wicked patterns on the ground.
Feng Mu felt his eyelids growing heavy. He forced his eyes open, his heart devoid of fear or anxiety, leaving only a cold calmness.
He could even humorously joke to himself: "When I open my eyes again, it better still be me. It'd be hilarious if another transmigrator had borrowed my body again~"
[Detected, activation mission has started!]
[Blood and Iron in progress...]
[1%, 2%, 3%....17%, 18%, 19…32%, 33%, 34%....]