Soon, two members of the Vortex Gang walked in from outside, carrying a large plastic bag that seemed to contain a person, with liquid continuously dripping from the bag.
Brother Ni frowned. Was the sacrificial offering they found already dead?
And that bathtub... isn’t it a cooling device only used by hackers?
Around him, he saw devices that looked very similar to those used by Pandora during deep dives, but there were no hackers present. The cultists had no intention of lying inside; instead, they opened the plastic bag and roughly tossed the woman inside—it looked like a ragdoll into the bathtub, without any concern whether she might die.
The woman’s body was covered with stitched wounds, many places still oozing fresh blood, with exposed cybernetic parts. It was clear she had been modified recently.
Players had long heard of the Vortex Gang’s penchant for extreme human modifications, but today was Brother Ni’s first time seeing it in reality.
The blood oozing from the wounds gradually diffused in the water, staining the ice cubes bright red, while the cultists pulled out fiber optic cables, tearing open the victim’s scalp to reveal the deep dive interface and forcibly connected it.
Although the Vortex Gang had a penchant for extreme modifications of ordinary people, not everyone could install such deep dive interfaces; without exception, these individuals had hacking talent.
The cultists were murmuring words Brother Ni couldn’t understand, seemingly praying about something. The scene was utterly bizarre.
"Lilith deceived the father’s eye about the tenth Holy Ring..."
"Adam tempted the Lord’s apostles to find the second Holy Ring..."
"Night is approaching, and the Angel will pass through the veil..."
He didn’t know why, but the scene, the cold expressions on their faces, combined with the Vortex Gang’s prominent corporeal modifications, reminded Brother Ni of a monster.
The supermodel beast that easily obliterated their Wildman squad in the sewers.
Brother Ni’s understanding of the Bible was limited to Jesus having two holes made, and some minor knowledge from EVA.
So he chose to seek help from other players in the game, though it wasn’t convenient to go to the official forum; after all, the game had a chat channel for players.
[Brother Ni: Does anyone know what the tenth Holy Ring means?]
He feared he might have heard it wrong, or the translation pack translated it incorrectly, so he directly posted the original words from the cultists.
[Brother Ni: It’s just the tenth circle]
[Sword Saint: I know about the Holy Grail; I’ve used several brands of it, but not the Holy Ring. Why are you asking?]
[Masked Fighter: I’ve heard of nose rings, nipple rings, earrings, even tongue rings, but not Holy Rings; is it some kind of transformation belt device?]
[Brother Ni: It’s for a task]
The players chattered, but no one could provide any accurate information for a while. Follow current novᴇls on novel(ꜰ)ire.net
Brother Ni was about to give up and ask someone to log off and search on Baidu when a player named Little Teacher suddenly said
[Little Teacher: There’s no record of Holy Rings in the Bible, but something might be related to what you’re talking about]
Brother Ni was overjoyed and promptly asked
[Little Teacher: In religious context, Dante’s Divine Comedy mentions that hell is composed of multiple circles. The deeper the circle, the deeper the sin, but the ninth circle holds traitors as the deepest sin, with no tenth circle]
[If there were a tenth circle, it would represent unimaginable evil, a realm of wickedness beyond human comprehension]
A realm of wickedness beyond human comprehension...
Brother Ni recalled the content Truth Department had uploaded to the official website and then asked again
[What is the second circle?]
[Little Teacher: The second circle imprisons the lustful; everyone who enjoys Da Lei and Sisi will be eternally imprisoned there after death]
[Sword Saint: Did you add something personal? What’s wrong with Da Lei? Da Lei is justice!]
[Robot Arnold: Those who love Da Lei wouldn’t be bad people]
[Youzi Chef: Flat chests and little Lei only frustrate our bulls; love the bulls, stay away from files]
[Little Teacher: What are you doing!]
Ignoring the players’ off-topic chatter, just knowing the second circle imprisons the lustful was enough to shake Brother Ni’s spirit.
No one dared claim that the events at the castle had no link to lust.
Sure enough, he caught on to a lead!
Yet such places existed at least nine times; the Watson District’s dastardly castle was only one among them. Just the thought made one’s scalp tingle with fear.
As for why the cultists of the Vortex Gang, who loved modifications, would associate with those seemingly abnormal admirers of native flesh from the underground, it wasn’t something Brother Ni could understand now.
Meanwhile, the cultists below underwent another bizarre transformation.
The cultists... committed suicide.
They stabbed themselves in the heart with knives, blood—whether white or red—gushed out, spilling around the freezer, yet not a single member of the Vortex Gang in the perimeter stepped forward to stop it. They watched indifferently, as if it were all perfectly normal, nothing out of the ordinary.
Even, in Brother Ni’s mind, the strange, sorrowful BGM from EVA automatically played.
If the woman in the freezer hadn’t opened her eyes to look at him, but rather was pierced with many Lances of Longinus, letting out a tragic scream of "Ah!!!", it would have better suited the current scene.
But in her eyes, there was neither a plea for help, nor pain, nor sorrow, just a sort of inhuman indifference.
Brother Ni held his head. How had he been discovered again?
It made no sense; even if someone looked up, he was in the shadows, hard to notice at first sight. Yet the woman seemed to have spotted him immediately.
Simultaneously, the woman erupted with an utterly inconsistent speed of a dying victim, rapidly controlling her modified, twisted limbs to crawl on the container, rushing towards Brother Ni.
That posture was just like the monster he encountered underground!