*Clang*
*Clang*
The chains of the countless slaves' jingle as they were ushered inside the Six Carnal Sins Goddess Temple like they were livestock.
All of them looked malnourished and weak, with some of them even seeming to be on the verge of death.
The guards on the side with whips in their hands would pick out those slaves and carry them off to the side.
One slave that was taken out of the line had his face go paled and his frail-looking body suddenly found the strength to shove away a guard and sprint away.
However, he was quickly captured before he could get far.
“NO!!”
“You can’t do this!! I have a wife and two children, I shouldn’t be here, I’m not a criminal!!”
“Shut up slave!!”
A guard barked as he forcefully dragged the man by his disheveled and unkempt hair.
“No please, you can’t put me inside that puppet, I’d rather die!!”
That slave begged and pleaded but the guards' faces were expressionless as they completely ignored him.
Avarice who now looked like an old man in his early sixties watched this scene with a blank look on his face.
He reached up to feel the cold metal collar around his neck. He was at the edge of the large entrance but he made sure he didn’t accidentally step across it.
“Old man Avarice, are you here watching the new slaves again? How can you be so close to the entrance, everyone is afraid to even come a hundred meters from it in fear of getting killed by our collars.”
Another slave that was in the same ragged and gray clothes as him said from a distance away.
“Come on, our cabin’s shift to clean the Archives floors is starting.”
The slave said again while pointing at the several dozen slaves like them behind him walking away.
Avarice took a final glance at the long line of slaves that seemed to stretch to the horizon before he turned and followed the group.
The hall they were walking through was enormous and grand with excellent carvings of plum blossoms on the walls.
Compared to them walking, the hall looked too big, as if it was designed to hold huge giants instead.
As Avarice walked along this huge hall with the group, two people in fancy attire walked past him.
One of them who was completely ignoring the group’s existence accidentally bumped into him.
“Ugh! Filth watch where you're going!”
The man yelled angrily before he hurriedly brushed off his robes as if Avarice was caring a deadly disease.
Avarice didn’t respond and only blankly looked at the collar around the man’s neck.
He was a slave as well.
The slave from before pulled Avarice back and he bowed hurriedly to the two men before he said.
“Two respected sirs, my friend didn’t mean to offend you!”
The man who bumped into Avarice snorted before he swung his sleeve and walk away with the other man.
After they left, the slave who stood up for Avarice figuratively spat to the side before saying.
“A bunch of silpfers. Just because they get to wear fancy-looking clothes and help out the Apostles with rune creation they think they can treat us worker-slaves like we're below them. No matter their attire or position, if that collar is still around their neck then they're slaves.”
The slave pulled Avarice to get him going as he said.
“Don’t mind them Old man Avarice. Well, you came here before most of us so I guess you're used to dealing with these kinds of people.”
Avarice kept silent with his usual blank look on his face, but he nodded at the man’s words.
Soon the group reached the Archive which was several acres large containing shelves upon shelves.
They along with numerous other groups of slaves got down on their knees and began scrubbing the jade-like floor.
After several hours of just cleaning, Avarice felt his arms and back ache but he didn’t stop.
Suddenly, a group of fancy clothes people began walking in his direction.
His friend slave beside him saw these people approaching them and his face paled.
Stopping in front of Avarice, the leader of this group who wore a fancier attire coldly looked down at Avarice before saying.
“Worker slave, are you the one slave who was caught near the Six Demon Six Emotions Formation?”
Avarice's friend’s face paled and he looked at Avarice to see him nodding. He immediately move away from him and acted like he had no relation with him.
A light flickered in the man’s eyes when he saw Avarice nod.
“Take him with us.”
He ordered before he turned and left.
Two men behind him step forwards and took up Avarice.
His friend gave a sad look in his direction, but he only went back to continue scrubbing a second later.
Avarice was taken threw several hallways and turned a few corners, before reaching a large door.
The man in the lead pushed open the double doors and they entered.
A spacious room was seen inside that had several people separated into stations of their own.
They held pen-like tools in their hands as they carved complicated symbols on handheld weapons and shields.
They all looked up when they heard the door opening.
All their attention was focused on Avarice as he was brought to the back of the room.
He was then pushed to stand in front of a monolith that was around ten meters in height.
The leader of the group who was standing next to him spoke while his gaze never lift from the monolith.
“For several decades this formation stayed unfinished in this room. Several Head Rune-makers like myself had spent their entire lives trying to complete it, but all of them failed. I am no different and I spent several years trying to complete it, but like my predecessors, I failed miserably.”
The man’s face showed a feeling of forlorn as he spoke.
“There are three major problems that prevent this Formation from working. The linkage with the multiple runes used to create it, its rigid nature and lack of flexibility when activated, and its aesthetics is just horrible to present to the Goddess.”
The man then turned to look at Avarice before saying.
“Yesterday you were found standing in front of this Formation when you were supposed to be cleaning. After I was told that I went to check if anything had happened to it and I was planning on having you executed. But to my surprise, I discovered that the runes' chain link had been fixed in several places.”
The man narrowed his eyes before he held out his palm. One of his attendants handed him an inscribing tool.
Taking it the man then presented it to Avarice and said.
“Continue where you left off.”
It wasn’t a request but a demand.
Avarice silently took the pen-like tool from the and walked closer to the monolith.
Everyone's eyes were focused on Avarice. They all thought this was ridiculous to have a worker slave try and fix this Formation, but at the back of their minds, a question of what if was prominent.
The man’s heart tensed when he saw Avarice raising the tool to the monolith.
If he didn’t know what he was doing and had wasted his time, the man was going to have him executed right here.
However, his and everyone else’s eyes all bulged out of their heads when Avarice started inscribing on the monolith.
His frail old man’s hand blurred as his hands dance across the monolith.
A ruckus was kicked up in the room as everyone couldn’t contain their shock. They have never seen such fast inscriptions being done before. It was usually a slow and arduous process that took a long time.
This old man was breaking all of the rules of rune inscription.
And what was even more shocking was that they could actually see the Formation being pushed to completion in real time.
The man’s heart shook uncontrollably when he saw Avarice’s hands suddenly stop.
Dropping his hands to his side, Avarice took a step back.
The man’s eyes roamed over the monolith for a moment before he mumbled.
“Three minutes. You took three minutes to fix this Formation that no one could fix even after numerous decades.”
“You even fix the aesthetics.”
The man looked at the plum blossom shape that the runes in the Formation created.
He was impressed.
Turning to Avarice he said.
“I won’t ask why a worker slave responsible for cleaning the Archives knows how to inscribe runes, but you're now a part of the Rune Creation Department.”
The man then turned to one of his attendants and said.
“Take him to an empty chamber and complete his transfer to our branch.”
After he looked at Avarice's head which was full of gray hair and his wrinkled face, he said.
“Your old, but we can use you for a few more years before we put your consciousness into a puppet. You can serve the Goddess for as long as possible.”
Avarice was then dragged away.
A few minutes later he was pushed into a stone chamber that had a desk and chair along with a simple bed.
Avarice stood in the middle of the room for what seemed like forever before he took out the inscribing pen he had hidden away.
He then shifted all the furniture to the corner of the room.
Getting on all fours he used the pen and started inscribing on the cobble stone floor.
The room was around twenty square meters but when he was done the entire floor was completely covered in incomprehensible symbols that would leave anyone dizzy when they looked at it.
Avarice then sat cross-legged inside the center of this and using himself as the center node of the Formation, he began forming several hundred complicated hands seals.
With the final hand seal, the rune formation rose from the ground while glowing purple. The complex symbols then started to circle around him in linked chains.
The slave workers weren’t given separate chambers, so up to fifty of them shared one room. Each slave had their own bed that had a personal nightstand next to it.
In one of these chambers, an unnoticeable purple light emanated from a nightstand draw.
A drop of blood along with a small jade vile and a journal could be seen on top of a miniature rune inside the draw.
The light emanating from the draw was due to the drop of blood suddenly seeping into the rune and activating it.
The small jade vile and journal then disappeared from the draw to reappear in front of Avarice.
The complicated runes around him immediately shattered when the vile and journal appeared, and Avarice coughed out a mouth full of blood. His already gray hair became even gray and the fatigue he felt in his body increased.
However, his expression didn’t change and he only wiped away the blood at the corner of his lips.
Seeing that the rune was actually successful and the jade vile and journal were in front of him, Avarice was supposed to jump in joy at this accomplishment.
This type of personal teleportation rune formation had never been done in the God Domain, but his heart was completely void of emotions.
Taking up the journal, Avarice opened it and then wrote a few words inside of it with the small pencil-like object he took out from under his collar.
“Day 13,465 of Chaos Qi Study: I have managed to secure a secluded environment without distractions. This will be my first attempt at becoming a cultivator by absorbing this strange energy. But I have two regrets. My first is not being able to reach this stage earlier. Since I am old now and I had been using my lifespan as a sacrifice to activate these law-powered formations, it has devastated my body. I don’t know how long I have left before my life gives out. My second regret is being condemned to live this life I consider hell. If I could choose I would have like to be born into one of those many other places I saw in my dreams every night.”
Despite not being able to feel anything, Avarice’s written words were filled with extreme emotions.
Placing his journal next to him and putting back the pencil under his collar, he took up the jade vile.
He popped the cork and a sliver of a black snake-like energy slowly started to float out of it. But before it could fully come out, Avarice placed the mouth of the vile under his nose and breathe in the sliver of Chaos Qi.
Immediately upon absorbing the Chaos Qi, he felt the dangerous build of chaotic energy in his body.
“Fuck.”
This was the first time he spoke after what happened that day.
He quickly grabbed his journal and then toss it across the room.
The chaotic energy immediately rush to his head and with a loud bang, his head along with his body exploded into a gory mess onto the walls but they too were quickly destroyed along with the entire chamber he was in.
And that was also the last words he would utter before going out with a bang.
Follow current nov𝒆ls on freew(𝒆)bnov𝒆l.(c)om