Chapter 1048 Witchcraft Experiment

It was midsummer, but the nights in the northern suburbs were still quite cool. A group of people had gathered in the open space behind the house, lighting candles and setting up a magic circle with offerings—a scene that looked like a gathering of some evil cult. Hao Ren couldn't help but sigh as he watched Lily busying about, "If outsiders saw us messing around with this stuff, who do you think would come first, the mental hospital or the police?"

"The mental hospital, probably," Nangong Wuyue said, tiptoeing and swaying her upper body slightly, as if she couldn't shake off her snake habits even in human form. "Anyway, if I were a normal person and saw a group of adults solemnly trying to summon a vampire, I'd definitely call the mental hospital first..."

Nangong Wudi suddenly sighed, "I never thought that I, a dignified demon hunter, would follow along and participate in such a thing. In the past, this would have been a demonic evil."

"Why bring that up?" Lily retorted without hesitation. "You've already married a demonic evil, so don't keep acting noble."

As she spoke, Lily continued fiddling with the summoning circle. She had somehow gotten some quicklime and drawn a crooked pentagram on the ground. The more Hao Ren looked at it, the more unreliable it seemed. "Do you think this thing will work? Four of the five points you drew are crooked...and the last one is rounded?"

"As long as the intention is there," Lily said cheerfully. "The offerings are already in place, and then we just need two people to shed some blood!"

Hao Ren looked suspiciously at the offerings Lily had placed at the points of the pentagram. "Where did you get these things? Are they reliable?"

"Of course, they're reliable. I collected them myself," Lily said, pointing to the items around the summoning circle. "The mistletoe leaves are specimens I made when I went traveling before, the bat teeth I caught in the wild, the limestone is easy to get, and the woman's hair ash is my own—it was so painful."

Hao Ren listened in a daze, suddenly remembering that the summoning required a black goat's fleece, but he looked around the circle and only saw a small leather boot. "...Where's the promised black goat's fleece? Where did this shoe come from?"

Lily: "This is my shoe. Anyway, the shoe seller told me it was made of goat skin...I figured there shouldn't be much difference between goat skin and black goat skin."

Elizabeth, who had come to join in the fun, was stunned. The little girl covered her face. "If she can summon something, that'll be a real miracle."

Nangong Wudi sighed again, "If all the wizards in the world were like her, demon hunters would save so much effort..."

Hao Ren was also a little worried about this magic book experiment. He was afraid that this mystical book would actually summon something strange—though not a threat, it would still be a trouble. But after seeing Lily's meticulousness, he immediately felt relieved. With this husky's attitude towards the experiment, even if she set up this stuff in the city center, she'd only summon the sanitation workers at most...

"Let me see," Lily said, grabbing Hao Ren's arm and taking another look at the illustration in the magic book. "Well, the placement is all right, the magic circle...looks pretty good, the moon is full...okay, the conditions are all met. Landlord, let's try the ritual?"

Hao Ren was about to step forward when Nangong Sanba couldn't help but say, "Are you sure you want to do this summoning ritual from an unknown source?"

The magic book might seem like a joke to others, but to demon hunters, it was not to be taken lightly. These heretical codices, passed down from the dark ages of the Middle Ages, recorded truly forbidden knowledge. The name of every devil and god on them corresponded to a living alien or their remaining power in the world, and those seemingly absurd rituals often had very troublesome effects. In Europe hundreds of years ago, there were many kingdoms and castles that were destroyed by the abuse of magic books, and even several large-scale "natural disasters" were related to such magic books. There were also some nobles or heretical scholars who were obsessed with secret knowledge who had their souls invaded by the evil spirits dwelling in the books when they opened them. These things were hard to guard against.

Hao Ren shrugged. "With Lily's ridiculous summoning ritual, what do you think she can summon? Not to mention this thing was originally for summoning Vivian..."

Nangong Sanba thought it made sense and stopped talking.

Hao Ren and Lily stood on either side of the magic circle as the book instructed. Lily bared her teeth and looked at her finger. "Do we really have to draw blood...suddenly feeling like I'm losing out."

"I don't care," Hao Ren said, having already deactivated part of his shield and reduced the tissue strength of some of his limbs in preparation for drawing blood. "It's only three drops of blood anyway."

Lily said "oh" and bit down on her finger, while at the same time, Hao Ren bit his fingertip.

Blood dripped to the ground. Hao Ren turned to look at the summoning circle next to him. The crooked pentagram was completely still. "Looks like it didn't work after all. I told you the things you prepared were nonsense."

Lily held up her finger and shouted, "That's because my blood healed before it even dripped down!"

The onlookers were immediately stunned, and Hao Ren's mouth twitched. The werewolf's regenerative ability had actually kicked in at this moment!

"Try again?" Lily wagged her tail excitedly. "I'll bite harder this time!"

Hao Ren tried again with her, but the results proved that this husky couldn't control her regenerative power at all. She bit a hole, but it healed before her teeth even came up. The situation was simply ridiculous, and Nangong Wuyue couldn't help but mutter, "You'd have trouble even swearing an oath of blood brotherhood."

Lily stared blankly at her hand, suddenly gritted her teeth, turned around, ran back into the house, and came out with a straw. "Landlord, try again! This time, I'll bite and then stick a straw in, I don't believe it can still heal!"

Hao Ren immediately broke out in a cold sweat, quickly pushed the crazy husky aside, and turned to the others, "Who wants to try for her? Otherwise, this husky will really stick a tube in herself."

Nangong Sanba looked around and stepped forward quite consciously. "Then it looks like it can only be me."

The half-baked demon hunter's regenerative ability wasn't as monstrous as a "werewolf's," and the last step of the summoning ritual was finally completed successfully. However, after the third drop of blood fell, the summoning circle was still quiet. No magic appeared, nor did any other visible supernatural phenomena occur. Of course—Vivian was still staying in the house.

"Doesn't work?" Lily flipped through the magic book. "There's magic on it, it shouldn't be fake. I heard from the bats that those wizards of the past might have been unreliable in other things, but they would never record ineffective spells in magic books, because they relied on this to maintain their reputation."

Izhaks shook his head with his arms crossed. "It would probably be more effective if you drew the four points of the circle straight...they're all crooked into wavy lines. Did you think you could draw the magic circle freely?"

"Could it be because the ritual requires human blood to summon?" Lily was still pondering over the magic book, determined not to admit that it was her abstract drawing of the magic circle that caused it to fail. "Should we try with two humans?"

Hao Ren looked around and was suddenly stunned. He found that he couldn't find a single human around him!

His house was full of monsters and a zoo of animals...

"This..." Hao Ren said, cold sweat dripping from his forehead, "We have all kinds of weirdos here, but no humans."

"Oh well," Lily lowered her head regretfully and handed the magic book to Hao Ren. "Let's wait until we get two bags of blood plasma from the hospital."

Hao Ren felt that none of the ideas this husky had come up with tonight were any good, but considering it was the night of the full moon, he didn't force Lily to maintain her intelligence and logic. He reached out to take the magic book and flipped through it casually. "Tsk tsk...the book is real, though."

He didn't notice that he was standing in the center of the summoning circle, and when the magic book was opened, the brightest ray of moonlight on the night of the full moon shone on the illustration depicting the "Summoning of the Blood King."

A thin stream of cold air suddenly rose from the pages of the book, followed by a strange red color appearing in the crevices of the pages and rapidly spreading outward.

The summoning ritual had not failed, it simply lacked a necessary condition: placing the book on the energy focus!

Now, it had been activated.

(Still an early update...I've been busy as a dog these days.)