CHAPTER 71: BLOOD WORSHIP

Bo was a water ghost bound to the River Thames, including the tributaries upstream. Strictly speaking, his territory was much larger than Do’s. And since his territory included the tributaries, too, it expanded further during rainy seasons.

Londan’s drainage outlets connected to the Thames. Even without rain, Bo could move freely through the sewers. Apart from the pungent smell of domestic wastewater and the excessive heavy metal content in the industrial discharge, it was a perfect way to get around.

“Disgusting,” Wayne said with a grimace. “You stepped through shit to get here, didn’t you?”

Bo immediately defended himself. Although he was dead, he retained his good hygienic habits and had come through the flood drainage channels rather than the foul-smelling waste sewers. That reminded Wayne of something; Bo was a living map of the city’s sewage system and knew the layout better than anyone.

Of course, Veryl was just as knowledgeable.

As the best and only butler in Wayne’s heart, Veryl knew many tunnels not connected to the Thames. The private air raid shelters and underground passages for the wealthy were all of great strategic value.

With Bo serving as a living map, Wayne felt more confident about navigating the sewers, so he decisively changed his schedule. He would sleep and write his diary during the day and spend the nights in the sewers, familiarizing himself with the layout while looking for elemental particles seeking shelter.

Don’t be afraid, old friends. I’m Wayne. I’ve come to save you.

Speaking of life essence, he had to complain about the losses that occurred during the accumulation process. It wasn’t a linear increase that only went up.

The most straightforward loss came from basic magic related to the four elements. For example, every time Wayne used Earth Wall, he consumed the earth elements in his reserve.

According to the theories in the textbook, that happened to all apprentices. Since their hexagram hadn’t been lit up and connected, and their thought hadn’t undergone an evolution, they couldn’t directly manipulate the elemental particles in the outside world. It was a process every mage went through.

Thus, Wayne stopped using elemental magic.

When others depleted their reserves, they could replenish them by meditating for a short time, but not him. There were too few suppliers to quickly fill up his life essence. He couldn’t just find another Lord of the Void!

It wasn’t that he couldn’t use elemental magic. With thought controlling the use of mana precisely and reducing the cost, basic magic wouldn’t consume much of his reserve, but he didn’t want to.

Such was a hoarder’s mentality.

Wayne suffered from a compulsion to hoard supplies even before transmigrating. He’d stocked many things he thought were useful, and even when time proved them useless, he couldn’t bear to throw them away, firmly believing that they would be of use someday.

The tendency wasn’t limited to tangible things, but also the digital world. He unconsciously kept things he thought would be useful in his bookmarks, shopping carts, hard drives, and cloud storage. He also went through a phase of obsessive categorization and organization, putting files into neat folders for the Japanese, Korean, European, American, period, xianxia, anime

, and more. The meaningless action sparked joy for him.

Better safe than sorry, right?

To conclude, his hoarding disorder was terminal and incurable. Without the internet in this world, he turned to collecting all sorts of magical items—be it handguns, crowbars, brass knuckles, elemental particles, or magic books. One could only imagine how ridiculously big his storage would be in the future.

Bo led him through the sewers while pointing out the metal ladders and exits, explaining where they led above ground, as well as the landmark buildings that would help with orientation. Wayne, despite his remarkable memory, had an average sense of direction. He was getting confused after a few turns.

He reorganized and processed the newly gained information, summarizing and converting the words into images to deepen his memory. Gradually, a map for the city’s upper level and lower level took shape in his mind.

“Up there is a bar run by the Black Snake Gang. Following the councilor’s order, Johnny, the leader of the Black Snake Gang, restrained his subordinates and had them refrain from expanding territory. They have been keeping a low profile.” Bo pointed at the manhole cover above.

“I’m not interested in small fry. Take me to the councilor,” Wayne said from horseback. “The gang consists of lapdogs kept by the councilor. Without her support, they’re nothing. Rather than working up one thug at a time, it’s more efficient to take out the head directly.”

That’s not what you said. You told me to make a list!

Bo swallowed his complaints in resignation. He didn’t know that Wayne had made that order just to take a few more turns in the sewers. He thought his undead master was just tormenting him to punish his disobedience.

Wordlessly, he took a turn and continued leading the way.

It was better this way. The Black Snake Gang had been doing the councilor’s dirty work. If she deserved to be shot a hundred times over, the members of the gang would deserve at least fifty executions. However, Bo wanted the social scums to die by legal punishments. Compared to mysterious deaths, having criminals punished by law was more cathartic and would make the public believe that justice and righteousness still existed.

It wasn’t a poetic justice linked to the unknown, but a justice rooted in the real world. The public didn’t need to pray for divine grace. They just needed to make a call to the authority.

Moreover, gods were distant and an empty deterrence that wasn’t as effective on criminals as an immediate legal sentence. Being judged by gods and being judged by law differed despite both being judgments. The former was more of a moral suggestion for good behavior, while the latter was a real threat.

Bo hoped that after the councilor died, his master would let him handle her lackeys. Without her protection, those scums couldn’t put up a resistance.

He wanted to punish them with the law’s iron fist and send a warning to other criminals so that they would think twice before committing crimes. Make them consider whether their heads were stronger than bullets.

While leading the way, Bo voiced his thoughts tentatively. To his surprise, Wayne agreed readily.

Oh? Does Master have a heart of gold under his evil appearance?

Wayne noticed his reaction and broke into an insidious sneer. “Well said, but why choose one over the other instead of having both?”

“I don’t understand, Master.”

“You’re right. Gods are too distant, and faith is a code that only works on the good. We can’t expect bad people to have a moral compass. Rather than wasting time reasoning with them, it’s better to take them to the execution ground for a tour.”

“But some bad people don’t fear execution. Councilor Doreen, for example, can silence the law. She knows she won’t be executed, and many important figures will pardon her crimes. At such a time, we should be flexible and fight violence with violence.”

“Law is designed to be fair, but some people believe themselves to be above the law and outside that system of fairness. So let’s play their game and show them what real unfairness looks like.”

“Muhahaha—”

Bo felt silent. His master had enlightened him to a new possibility. But then he frowned and said, “What if Master... No, I mean, what if I follow the philosophy, but my original belief gradually changes as I wield the power to do anything I want? Won’t I eventually think I’m special, too, and become worse than them? The dragon slayer will one day become the evil dragon. I’ll fancy myself a god entitled to dominate over everyone and everything. What should I do then?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Bo fell silent.

***

Councilor Doreen had a flat she rented in Inner Londan. It wasn’t very large, emphasizing her image of integrity, when in truth, she only lived in the rental during campaigns. Most of the time, she resided in her grand mansion in the Western District, where her neighbors were also councilors.

A typical case of a politician with as many faces as she had real estate.

Bo pushed open the manhole cover and crawled out, pants dripping water as he made it to the councilor’s house. Wayne looked at the manhole with concern. He could get out fine, but Julia...

The horse snorted and leaped toward the wall, which rippled with purple arcs of light as a portal opened, taking her and Wayne to the surface. Do jumped out after them.

Wayne looked at the ground behind and saw his skeletal owl flying out. He raised his arm to catch it. “Julia, I didn’t know you could do that.”

“You never asked, Master.”

“Told you not to talk back to me.”

He dismounted and let go of the owl, walking to the mansion’s front door. He commented scornfully, “Run out of money, and more can still be earned. Losing conscience, and you never have to worry about money in your life. She used to be a reporter for a newspaper, but she became a politician and earned so much in only a few years. How enviable!”

Bo shuddered and hurriedly said, “She’s lost herself to corruption, Master, but you won’t.”

“Corruption alone wouldn’t earn her this much money—abortion would be more like it.” Wayne paused after the unthinking remark, realizing that he might have hit the nail on the head.

Bo fell silent. It was a possibility.

Wayne reached for the door handle. Death’s corrosive power surged out, allowing him to easily open the door.

He didn’t have to pick the lock or break down the door, risking making noises or leaving fingerprints. He’d vanished the entire door handle, which meant there would be no evidence for an arrest. He was growing fonder and fonder of the Death Knight skin.

It was just that the name bothered him a little. It would be perfect if his title were the Dark Knight.

The mansion was pitch black. Councilor Doreen wasn’t home. He found the safe containing cash and a ledger. Wayne opened it and split the spoils, with Bo getting the ledgers and Wayne getting the bills with the Queen’s portrait, plus the jewelry and gold.

Bo was stunned. He had believed his master to be a knight walking the darkness with a rotten body but adhering to the codes of chivalry of the bygone era, viewing money as dirt and women as air. Yet...

Was it a trick of the light? He thought he saw a smile on the skull.

Bo didn’t say anything. When turning in confiscated goods at the police station, it was a common occurrence for the amount to shrink considerably after going through several departments. As long as the key evidence remained, these things were... tolerable.

He took a deep breath and sat on the sofa, concealing his form in the dark shadows and waiting for Doreen to return.

Click!

Wayne turned on the light, examining the artworks on the walls with his hands clasped behind his back. He didn’t understand art much, but he knew that artworks were often linked to price speculation and money laundering.

“Would you turn off the lights, Master? This may scare the councilor away. We should...”

“You should check downstairs. The councilor’s home. She has quite the spacious basement,” Wayne said without turning around.

Startled, Bo hurried to the door in the center of the corridor behind the living room, opening it and going down the stairs that disappeared into darkness. He could see clearly even in the dark, and he found the hidden door in the basement that led to a hidden space.

A long corridor covered in a vibrant red carpet stretched far into the distance. The walls were decorated with murals and lamps. There was an exit every seventy to eighty meters—or rather, an entrance.

Recalling the cluster of villas above ground, Bo felt a chill in his heart, but then the thought of the missing girls kidnapped by the Black Snake Gang drove away the chill and filled his heart with burning fury.

He stepped onto the carpet and followed the scent of perfume in the air to what looked like the entrance to a conference room. Beside the double doors was a coat rack, holding around eight coats and top hats.

He picked up a hat and put it on, lowering the brim before pushing the double doors open with both hands. The interiors were even more extravagant, with a massive crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling, composed of hundreds of exquisite crystals illuminating the entire room.

Below was a carefully arranged circular dining table about five meters in diameter, set with white napkins and finely crafted tableware. In a corner of the room was an antique gramophone playing soft music.

Every part of the room was a perfect mix of elegance and extravagance. Add a glass of champagne, and it would be an excellent banquet.

But one thing was completely out of place in the dining room: the bizarre pattern covering the wall directly facing the entrance. Curves outlined a figure that looked like a person covered in tentacles or an octopus spreading its appendages. It was so abstract that it looked like graffiti done with blood at first glance. Bo couldn’t identify what it represented.

He ignored the scene and shifted his attention to the guests. Including Doreen Johni, who Bo had been investigating, there were eight councilors in total. They leaned back in soft armchairs with their eyes closed, humming softly to the music. They even had a serene, easy smile on their faces.

It seemed that they had failed to notice Bo’s entrance due to being absorbed in the music.

Bo examined the table and slowly breathed out a sigh of relief. They weren’t the kind of macabre dishes he had imagined. The ingredients used were expensive but normal, all made into Franc cuisine.

“Doreen Johni, you’re under arrest!” Bo said icily, about to demand where the missing girls were being held, but Doreen didn’t respond at all, still lost in the meandering melody with a contented smile on her face.

Bo frowned. The scene struck him as familiar. The eight councilors’ minds were elsewhere, as if they had used prohibited substances after the meal.

“They are mentally elsewhere. You can’t wake them.”

Wayne walked into the dining room and looked up at the bizarre pattern on the wall. He’d seen something similar in magical texts about the worship of an evil god.

His master had provided him with those books to prevent him from keeping the wrong kind of company and getting involved with dangerous people, but, worried that too much detail would pique his curiosity, she made sure there wasn’t any detailed description about the evil gods in the books—only a few lines mentioning “Blood Worship”.

The evil god resided in hell. Unlike the Goddess of Darkness and the Goddess of Death, the evil god was one of the Church of Heavenly Father’s archenemies.

The evil gods in hell were primitive and savage. To some extent, they were even more frightening than Darkness and Death.