The sky is as dark as ink.
The yellow candlelight burned.
Dispelling the thick night in the courtyard.
Song Ruyuan and others all gathered around the two black shadow classes.
The expressions on their faces were all extremely solemn, even slightly horrified.
Su Mo also crossed his arms and frowned slightly.
At this moment, his mental power has been pushed to the limit.
In this case, even if these two monsters panic a little, they cannot escape his detection.
However, there was nothing unusual about their stories from beginning to end.
It was obvious that they were all telling the truth.
This makes people feel very terrible.
During Liu Hanyan and Liu Huayu's narration, they came into contact with the unknown dark side of the Liu family.
Unlike the Han family, the Liu family has many experts and strong men.
It is not like the Chen family, which has the inheritance of the high priest, and has many secrets.
He used the saints and sacrificial vessels as offerings to the divine furnace, and had just secured his position among the three major families.
Therefore, the entire Liu family attaches great importance to both.
Not to mention the sacred furnace, there is always a family secret place on weekdays, which is guarded by special guards.
Even if the family head wants to mobilize the sacred furnace, he must go through as many as three procedures and be strictly supervised by the family elders.
Only the Saint can temporarily control the furnace when the festival actually begins.
From this perspective, the status of the saint seems to be higher than that of the family head.
However, this is not the case.
The authority of the family head is far beyond that of a saint.
But apart from the head of the family, saints are already considered the privileged class of the Han family.
Even the candidate saints who are ranked below the saints can enjoy powers that are far beyond ordinary girls of the Han family.
Including but not limited to the right to refuse to marry, enjoy better food, high monthly payments, and even some elixirs and supplies.
Therefore, many girls from the Han family, especially those from poor and separated families, are all eager to do this.
But becoming a saint is not that simple.
The entire Han family, including the main family and branch families, has a population of several thousand.
There are at least 300 to 400 girls of school age ranging from eight to eighteen years old.
But in the end, only one person can become a saint.
Counting the candidate saints under the saint, there are only nine people in total.
The probability doesn't seem low.
But the actual selection process often takes place over many years.
Many girls begin to be trained to be saints from an early age.
In the process of cultivation and screening, people will continue to be eliminated.
It can be said that Liu Hanyan and Liu Huayu have put in considerable efforts to fight their way out of the siege and become candidate saints.
From this, it is completely conceivable why they are still so persistent in the position of saint after death.
And the strange things and secrets they told were related to the selection of the saint.
According to both of them, the Han family's selection of saint girls is extremely strict and harsh.
They will arrange for all girls to undergo assessments at different levels in order of age.
And be graded based on the assessment results.
This kind of scoring is not a one-time thing, but is balanced to every month, every week or even every day.
Finally, the annual results are summarized, and whether they are qualified to enter the next round will be judged.
Because of this extremely harsh test, all the girls participating in the selection of saints were very nervous.
They rarely have the fun and relaxed time that children in the outside world have. They fall into depression or even madness every year, and there are not a few who commit suicide.
But the strange thing is that no matter whether it is crazy or suicidal, it can always be saved in the end.
But after being rescued, their temperaments often change drastically.
Liu Hanyan once had a friend who hanged himself because he was scolded by the instructor and couldn't think about it.
She even untied the other party's cold body from the rope with her own hands.
But the person who was obviously dead long ago came back to life the next day after being taught to take him away.
According to the instructions, they trained day and night, and their bodies and souls had been marked by the God of Agriculture. Even if they died, they could be easily saved.
At that time, Liu Hanyan found it unbelievable and even thought that the God of Agriculture was indeed a god and could even resurrect the dead.
But afterward, her friend's behavior made her feel panicked.
She had always been gentle and quiet, but after she came back to life, she seemed to be a changed person. She had a moody temper and would break bowls and throw glasses at every turn.
Moreover, she used to only eat vegetarian food, but after she came back from the dead, she started eating meat.
If she just ate meat in general, that would be fine. Liu Hanyan once saw her eating a chicken raw.
Later, even the other party looked at her with undisguised appetite.
Just when Liu Hanyan was horrified and wanted to report it, that little friend was eliminated by the Saint Girl Selection.
Later, the contact gradually became less and less. I heard that he was married to a street vendor and seemed to be living a stable life.
Until two days before the festival, she accidentally ran to inquire about it on a whim.
As a result, no one around her had ever heard of that vendor, and even her little friend seemed to have disappeared.
If the evidence Liu Hanyan gave could only show that the Han family was abnormal.
Then what Liu Huayu said next seemed even more terrifying.
Her narrative is also related to the screening of saints.
The difference is that she focused on an institution called a correctional institution.
Those who participate in the selection of saints are all young girls, and there will always be some naughty people.
The Han family has also specially prepared corresponding management organizations for this purpose.
That's the penitentiary.
Some girls who behave badly are often sent to punishment centers for punishment.
When Liu Huayu was young, she was lively and active by nature. One day she accidentally violated the rules and was sent to a punishment center for reprimand.
There she accidentally came into contact with a small corner of the Han family's dark side.
The Correctional Institution has three floors.
The underground level is usually used to punish girls who have committed minor crimes.
On the second underground floor is the felony.
As for the third underground floor, almost no one came out.
Liu Huayu went to the underground level, where she was subjected to unimaginable torture, including waterboarding.
But that alone wasn't enough to scare her.
What really sent shivers down her spine was that she overheard the conversation among the punishers on the third underground floor.
During the conversation, extremely special punishments such as the punishment of spiritual fat and the punishment of mermaid were mentioned.
Among them, the punishment of spiritual fertilizer is to turn people into fertilizer and use it to plant trees.
The mermaid punishment is to turn people into fat fish and stew them.
For a time, she thought it was a hallucination caused by her trance.
It wasn't until later that she ate an unusually delicious fish fillet at a family banquet.
Then she remembered that a certain mark on the fish was very similar to the birthmark on her sister.
But before that, neither herself nor the people around her remembered that she had a sister.
Liu Huayu's conditioned reflex was to run home and ask her parents.
She finally suppressed her panic and waited until the banquet was over.
However, when the banquet was over, she forgot what she was going to do.
He even forgot that he had a sister.
Listening to Liu Huayu finish talking about these things expressionlessly.
Yao Wenkai and others around them felt chills running down their backs.
They thought the current world was dangerous enough.
But ancient societies looked no better.
Such horrific things can happen in just one remote village.
It’s hard to imagine any other unusual state of affairs elsewhere.
But no matter what, that is already a thing of the past.
And now, they are going to solve the mystery here and bring an end to the countless undead wandering here.
There was a moment of silence, and after everyone digested the information provided by the two candidate saints, Su Mo said:
"Well, it's still early in the day anyway. Let's go check out the underground punishment facility first and see if we can get any other useful information. Maybe we can have a deeper understanding of the festival. The Han family cultivates saints. There must be other deep meanings behind women.”
When everyone heard this, it was natural for them to do so.
Before setting off, Su Mo selected Liu Huayu as the saint on the spot.
Facing the strongly dissatisfied Liu Hanyan, he used his mental power to directly knock him out and suppress him.
Of course, Liu Huayu was chosen not because she provided more and more effective information.
It's entirely because of her appearance that it's easier for people to accept her.
At least there won't be those flies flying around anymore.
After the matter here was over, the group of people walked directly towards the location of the punishment facility.
When I came nearby, I saw a ruined pavilion.
Su Mo didn't bother to clean it up slowly, so he used his talent to manipulate the air to form a giant hand.
The ruins, including the entire land, were grabbed open on the spot and the skull was opened on the spot in the basement.
The vast underground space immediately appeared before everyone's eyes.
Although they have different strengths, their night vision is different.
But even Zhuo Ningning, who has the worst vision at night, can still clearly see the cruel scenes in the underground space.
I saw that the huge underground space was divided into small compartments.
Each cubicle contains many ancient torture instruments, or it may even be built as a dedicated torture chamber.
Just looking at this scene, many people felt chills in their hearts and goosebumps on their skin, as if they could personally feel the pain of being punished.
"It seems that this punishment center is a little different from what Liu Huayu said. It is not only the Saint Reserves who are punished in it, but also other people, possibly even people outside the Han family."
Su Mo said while looking at the thin skeleton left in one of the torture chambers.
It was obviously the skeleton of an old man, covered in a layer of patched coarse cloth clothes. It didn't look like the Han family, and it was unclear what kind of mistake he had made and ended up here to be punished.
However, according to Liu Huayu, the punishments at this level are relatively simple.
Although in a clear sense, waterboarding or other punishments of the same level can be said to be torture applicable to serious crimes.
But if punishments like mermaid torture really existed, torture like waterboarding might be acceptable.
Su Mo jumped into the basement and walked straight towards the passage on the side.
When the people behind saw this, they all jumped down.
As soon as they entered the basement, everyone clearly felt a chill.
In addition to being underground, this is obviously also related to the countless resentments condensed here.
Ordinary people may become alienated if they stay here for a long time.
This shows the weight of resentment that once stayed here.
Song Ruyuan frowned and looked around.
He looked around for a while, without saying anything else. He raised his hand and took out a few Zhengqing talisman seals and struck them in all directions.
The talisman burned, emitting a majestic invisible wave, just like the blazing sun burning the snow, and the resentment condensed in the ground was instantly dispersed.
Su Mo didn't pay attention to other people's actions and walked straight towards the staircase below, when he bumped into a mysterious creature with white hair.
He killed it casually.
Seeing several more strange creatures rushing forward, Yao Wenkai and others behind them all eagerly went to kill them.
On the contrary, it made him relax.
Taking this opportunity, Su Mo began to look around.
The second underground floor is different from the one above. It is unusually devoid of any punishment tools.
Although there are still small cubicles, these cubicles look more like special cells.
"Isn't it said that the punishment for serious crimes is more severe? What's going on here? Are serious criminals just imprisoned underground?"
Soon, Su Mo knew that this idea was wrong.
Because he saw an alienated skeleton left in the cell.
There were many bone spurs growing out of the man's bones. At first glance, he looked like a big tree with countless branches.
The further back in time, the more common such alienated skeletons become.
Some have another skull on their neck.
Some foot bones have mutated into hooves.
Some had wings growing on their shoulder blades.
…
The entire second underground floor is designed to look like a large biological laboratory.
The small cubicles are obviously separate laboratories.
Su Mo could even imagine the miserable scenes of prisoners who had committed serious crimes being used for experiments.
And the so-called serious crimes are actually only relative to the Han family.
Maybe it doesn't matter to the outside world at all.
Su Mo's eyes slowly left a skeleton with two horns growing out of its head.
He stood there and couldn't help but think:
"There are so many alienated skeletons here, so are the girls who came back from the dead related to this?"
"Why would the Han family conduct such an experiment?"
"What means do they use to induce alienation in humans?"
The answers to all these questions are shrouded in mystery.
But what we can know is that some of the answers related to it must be hidden in the three underground floors.
Thinking in his mind, Su Mo continued to move forward.
At this moment, a scream suddenly came from the front.
Immediately afterwards, Song Ruyuan raised his hand and slashed away a half-human-sized rotten bat.
"Why are there such ghost things on the second underground floor?"
Looking at the grimace bat that exuded a strong stench and was extremely powerful, Yao Wenkai was filled with shock and anger.
"This bat is not a product of the second floor underground, it came up from deeper!"
Song Ruyuan looked at the deep passage going down in the distance, his brows furrowed tightly.
"A bat? This is no ordinary bat."
Su Mo said, stepping forward.
He looked at the crazy and surly rotten bat, sighed and said:
"This bat was a human in life!"
(End of chapter)
