The cultivators came closer, but the man who carved the God of Flesh and Blood wanted to dominate Gao Ming’s secret.
“Look behind him! That’s… the divine glow!” A cultivator with sharp eyes noticed Gao Ming. He shouted with disbelief.
Gao Ming smiled brighter after he was discovered, “I told you how to ascend earlier, but you refused to listen to me! Look at things now. It looks like this destiny of ascension doesn’t belong to you but someone else.” Gao Ming didn’t lower his voice. He purposely wanted the others to hear him.
“What does he mean? Was he the one who grabbed the attention of the divine temple? What is his origin to be surrounded by divine light?”
The commotion grew louder. The cultivator knew that the cat was out of the bag. Murderous intentions appeared in his eyes. However, just as he planned to make his move, he was held back by the others.
“Haha! Becoming immortal?” Gao Ming looked at the giant statue in the middle. “Let me tell you how to do that!”
At first, no one believed Gao Ming. He sounded crazy. However, as they forced more information out of the captured cultivator, the others started to believe in Gao Ming more and more. After all, ascension was their goal in life.
Divine glow coursed through his veins, and his advice almost aided a man in rising to the divine place. If they didn’t listen to him, who should they listen to?
Murky water dripped from his clothes. Gao Ming was moved to a simple tourniquet. A few cultivators moved him to the middle.
“Master, what is the ninth floor like? Can you reach out to touch the stars and sky?”“The more you know, the heavier your karma! Do not disturb the master!”
The wooden contraption was placed before the statue of the night-watcher. Gao Ming tried his best to sit up. The statue in the middle looked down at everyone. It was so supernatural and holy.
“He wants to use the God in every mortal’s heart to cultivate himself. In his dream!” Gao Ming looked around silently before announcing, “I’ve seen the real immortal. There are two paths placed before you. One, you will gouge out materials and follow my instructions to carve a divine statue. That will get you the divine temple’s attention, but the chance of ascension is low.”
“It was the Hungry Ghost Festival. You entered a tunnel. You could see it…”
With each word, the blood city tattoo on Gao Ming grew deeper. This power ignored the real and the fake. It was scarier than the nightmare. In a way, the blood city was the source of most nightmares!
The cultivators surrounded the middle statue. They started to carve based on their understanding of Gao Ming’s orders.
“The first step is to find the earth's veins.” Gao Ming was also carving. However, he didn’t work with stone but with his body. He imagined his body as a world. He found his acupoints and injected them with the extreme emotions derived from the abandoned pills. The emotions were his raw materials.
“The second step, open the blade and worship the sky!”
The cultivators used their blood to initiate the carving and feed their blades. As the fresh blood touched the statue, the cloud around the divine temple above their heads parted. When the cultivators saw this, they became inspired. They worked faster because no one wanted to surrender this opportunity.
Gao Ming was not privy to this. His mind was submerged in his heart to find his carving knife. With his body as the world and the abandoned memory as the material, Gao Ming’s knife was bound to be different from the others.
“It has to be sharp enough to sculpt the memory.”
The murderous intents of the butcher that were scattered in Gao Ming’s body were mobilised. With the flesh as the furnace, Gao Ming forged the butcher’s murderous will into a knife. However, that was not enough. Gao Ming turned up the heat of his soul fire. He started to look through the memory that leaked out of his heart. The repeated painful deaths, endless darkness and nightmare, bound around the blade of murder as its hilt.
“Keep looking. I cannot back away. This is my experience. I have to live through them!”
Broken memory fragments gushed forward. The emotions of the nightmare blasted Gao Ming’s soul. He stood in a city overtaken by ghosts. He tried his best to survive. To save the whole city, he sacrificed his biggest secret, and in exchange, he was betrayed!
After he died, he opened his eyes. He returned to the start. He still chose to share his secrets to save more people. However, he was welcomed by abandonment.
He had no idea how many times he had opened his heart to others. The many deaths represented how his kindness was trampled into the ground every time!
Fear, unwillingness and indignation poured into the flames. A blood-coloured flame that only belonged to Gao Ming appeared in the furnace of flesh and blood.