Starting Off Survival With A Small Treehouse

Chapter 60: Chapter 60: The Altar with Blood-Red Patterns

Previously on the hill, Xu Xin had seen these statues on the stone pillars undergo changes.

Could it be because the demands of the ”gods” are changing?

Xu Xin withdrew his hand from the stone pillar.

He felt the stone pillar was hot, which did not seem to be due to sunlight, as Xu Xin’s hand was touching the shaded side of the pillar, not the side exposed to the sun.

He took a few steps back, warily eyeing the stone pillar in front of him.

”Ying?” Keke on his shoulder was a bit puzzled, it didn’t sense any danger.

Xu Xin looked at Silver King beside him and found that Silver King’s body was trembling slightly.

”What’s wrong, Silver King, are you very scared?”

”Aowu...” Silver King let out a weak whimper, its voice trembling slightly.

Xu Xin patted Silver King on the head: ”You’d better go outside the altar for now.”

”Awoo!” Receiving the order, Silver King howled once and leaped three or four meters directly outside the altar.

Silver King’s intense reaction even made Xu Xin a bit apprehensive.

Xu Xin glanced at Keke on his shoulder: ”Aren’t you scared, Keke?”

”Ying.” Keke shook its head.

Xu Xin lowered his head in thought.

This was an altar for sacrificing beasts, and one of the stone pillars had a wolf statue, it seemed that Silver King was indeed a type of sacrificial offering, no wonder it was so afraid.

Turning to look at the stone table in the center of the altar, Xu Xin decided to go over and take a look.

Xu Xin quickly walked to the edge of the stone table, always keeping an eye on the map for any changes, but nothing dangerous happened along the way, nor did any monsters suddenly emerge from the ground, he arrived safely.

This stone table was about half a meter high and very large, as big as a bed, enough to hold several wild boars.

Xu Xin reached out and touched the stone table, unlike the pillar, the stone table remained incredibly cold under the blazing sun, like a block of ice, causing Xu Xin’s hand to shrink back from the cold.

[Altar Sacrificial Table (Blue): Offering sufficient sacrifices will gain the ”gods’” attention.]

Again with these quoted ”gods.” What does this attention mean?

Xu Xin looked at the statues on the surrounding stone pillars, weighed the pros and cons, and finally decided to offer sacrifices according to the ”gods’” demands.

He didn’t know what this so-called ”god” was, but since it was a sacrifice, naturally one would gain something in return. Throughout history, the purpose of sacrifices was to gain something from the gods, so presumably, this altar was the same.

Moreover, the current task was hunting, and it was an excellent opportunity to complete the hunting activity while offering sacrifices at the altar.

The four statues were a wild boar, a wolf, a wild cat, and a rabbit. Xu Xin had hunted a wild boar and many wild rabbits on the way here, but unfortunately, they had already been disassembled by him.

After thinking for a bit, Xu Xin took out the ten or so kilograms of rabbit meat from his backpack, obtained from dissecting those wild rabbits, and placed it on the altar.

He wondered if just rabbit meat would suffice.

Suddenly, Xu Xin felt the temperature in front of him drop. The stone table emitted a faint coolness, causing him to instinctively take a step back, grasping his stone spear tightly.

The stone table began to change, making Xu Xin’s eyelids twitch as he stared unblinkingly at what was happening before him.

Under Xu Xin’s watchful gaze, the blood-red pattern on the side of the stone table suddenly became more vivid. The originally side-only blood-red pattern seemed to come to life, spreading towards the top of the table.

”Ying!” Keke was startled, clutching Xu Xin’s shoulder and hiding behind him, peeking out with just a little head to watch the altar’s sacrificial table.

The speed at which the blood-red patterns spread was not fast, but there were many patterns, like countless blood-like worms crawling from all sides of the table towards the pile of rabbit meat in the center, and then, a surprising scene occurred.

The blood-red patterns on the table climbed directly onto the rabbit meat!

These blood-like strings were alive!

The rabbit meat slowly became covered with blood-red patterns under Xu Xin’s watchful eyes, getting dyed completely blood-red by the patterns with more than ten kilograms of rabbit meat, which then began to shrivel at a visibly rapid pace.

Finally, the rabbit meat disappeared entirely, and the patterns on the rabbit meat fell back onto the table, scattering towards the sides and returning to the patterns carved on the side, dimming once more.

Throughout this process, Xu Xin didn’t dare to make any noise, just holding tightly onto his stone spear, thinking more than once about stabbing the blood-red patterns on the table, but ultimately reason overpowered impulse.

The anomaly on the stone table had ceased, and the temperature around Xu Xin gradually rose under the sunlight.

”What the hell is this thing!” Xu Xin felt this was incredibly eerie.

He waited for a long time, but the sacrificial table had merely devoured his rabbit meat, and nothing else had happened.

”What’s going on? Could it be that the sacrifices were not enough?” Xu Xin recalled that the introduction mentioned ”sufficient sacrifices”.

”Ying!” Keke tugged at the leather armor on Xu Xin.

Following the direction Keke pointed, Xu Xin looked towards the base of the stone pillar carved with a rabbit.

To his astonishment, among the total of ten-meter high, flower-patterned pillars, a few centimeters near the base were already dyed blood-red!

”What does this mean, the progress of the sacrifice?” Xu Xin looked around at the surrounding stone pillars and found that only the stone pillar below the rabbit statue had been colored blood-red for a few centimeters.

”Does this mean it wants me to dye all four of these pillars red?” Xu Xin’s eyelid twitched; this would be a massive undertaking. The rabbit meat just now was all from hunting five rabbits, and it only turned a few centimeters red.

If he needed to dye the entire ten-meter-high pillar red, that would require a ton of rabbit meat!

And that’s just one pillar.

Wait, it shouldn’t be that much. He only put rabbit meat on it, not a whole rabbit. But if it were a whole rabbit...

Hold on!

Xu Xin suddenly realized these statues had another significance.

From the first glance, he felt these statues were overly exaggerated because certain parts of the beast statues were absurdly magnified to ridiculous proportions.

The wild boar statue’s tusks were immensely huge and curved, longer than the entire body of the boar itself; does this mean the tusks were the most suitable offering from the wild boar?

Xu Xin walked to the stone pillar with the rabbit statue; a wave of heat hit him.

This pillar, unlike the sacrificial table, emitted heat.

This statue was also quite exaggerated; an originally cute rabbit appeared fierce in the statue, eyes bulging, teeth bared, as if howling to the sky, and the rabbit ears, which should have been the rabbit’s cutest parts, now resembled two sharp swords, straight on the rabbit’s back, longer than the body itself.

”Rabbit ears? The special part of the rabbit statue is its ears?”

Xu Xin then looked at the wolf and cat statues, the exaggerated part of the wolf was its fangs, more extreme than those of a saber-toothed tiger, almost piercing its paws; for the cat, it was the claws of the front paws, with the long claws draping over one side of the stone pillar, even piercing directly into the pillar itself.

”Boar tusks, rabbit ears, wolf’s sharp teeth, and cat’s claws. These parts appear exaggerated on the statues. Could it be these parts are the true offerings?” Xu Xin muttered to himself.

But he had dissected these four types of animals and never acquired these parts as materials.

”Am I supposed to cut it with ordinary tools or should I offer the whole entity?”

Xu Xin felt something was not right; he believed there must be something he hadn’t discovered yet, so he started searching around the sacrificial table.

Sure enough, beneath the middle section of the sacrificial table’s edge, there was a pattern that seemed out of place. Xu Xin jabbed at it with his stone spear, pressing it down. Retrieving the spear, the recessed piece immediately popped back out, like a stone drawer.

Inside the drawer lay a small knife with a black blade and a blood-red edge.

Xu Xin hesitated for a moment but eventually reached out to pick up the small knife.

[Sacrificial Knife (Blue): A small knife needed for extracting sacrificial materials. Remember to return it to the altar once done, or the ”gods” will be angry!]

This is it! His hypothesis was indeed correct!