Chapter 330: Into the Forest (10)
The appearance of the priestess triggered another wave of commotion.
Her attire was extraordinarily bizarre.
On her head she wore an enormous headdress fashioned from human scalps, feathers, and animal fangs. Around her neck hung more than a dozen necklaces strung with human teeth. The extravagant ornaments were so ostentatious that they made her emaciated body resemble little more than a thin mahogany rack supporting them.
Yet those decorations were not the strangest part.
Her red-painted skin, covered in intricate patterns, had been pierced with countless holes. Some of the piercings held polished crescent-shaped bones, while others were threaded with metal rings of unknown origin.
Age had robbed her skin of its elasticity. The heavy ornaments had stretched the flesh around the piercings until it sagged limply like overcooked noodles, exposing the dark, grimy buildup inside the holes. The countless black openings scattered irregularly across her body resembled the pitted surface of a lotus seed pod, enough to make anyone with trypophobia break out in goosebumps.
“Ula-wa!”
At the sight of the priestess, the crowd carrying the bodies became even more frenzied, their mournful cries growing louder and louder.
The cries spread in every direction like the blast of a gathering horn.
Before long, it wasn’t just the people in the settlement. Even the Caribs still out in the forest seemed drawn to the altar like iron filings to a magnet, crossing every obstacle in their path to converge on the ceremony.
Several of them entered the settlement by passing right beside the bushes where Everly and the others were hiding.
As the undergrowth rustled, all four of them felt their hearts leap into their throats. They held their breath and pressed themselves flat against the ground, not daring to move so much as a finger.
Fortunately, every primitive’s attention was fixed on the gathering at the altar. Eager to join the assembly, none of them noticed the four people concealed in the bushes.
The lengthy and grand assembly lasted for more than ten minutes before finally coming to an end.
By then, the forest had grown noticeably dim.
One after another, more than a dozen torches were lit, bathing the area around the altar in bright, flickering firelight.
Once everyone had gathered, the priestess raised both hands beneath the warm torchlight and made a gesture for silence.
No words were needed.
The instant her hands came down, the noisy crowd fell completely silent. The forest grew so still that only the faint rustling of leaves in the breeze could be heard.
Every Carib stared intently at the elderly priestess.
Under the watchful gaze of the entire tribe, the aged priestess gripped a dagger, swayed her limbs, and began performing a strange dance with an eerie, rhythmic cadence around the three corpses.
Seeing this, Everly’s heart skipped a beat. She briefly shifted her gaze away from the altar and looked toward the rocky beach to her right.
There, on the otherwise deserted shore, a shadowy figure was hurrying in a crouch toward the dozens of folding pots lined up in the distance.
The figure moved with remarkable speed and skillfully used the campfires, corpses, and other objects as cover. Anyone not paying close attention would have missed him entirely.
Who else could it be but Anthony?
Excellent.
Just as expected of the protagonist—his ability to adapt was exceptional.
The priestess’s sudden appearance had inadvertently produced the exact effect their decoy plan was meant to achieve, drawing every primitive in the area to the altar.
An opportunity like this came once in a lifetime.
Taking advantage of the now-deserted rocky beach, Anthony immediately adjusted the plan, slipped over to the pots, and began emptying the powdered dr*g into them.
Good. That spared Everly from having to risk herself as the decoy.
Everly couldn’t help suspecting that this ceremony was a stroke of “protagonist’s luck” arranged by the story itself. Otherwise, in the original film, where there had been only the male lead, the female lead, and the Black coach, she couldn’t imagine how they could ever have drawn everyone away from the food preparation area long enough to poison the pots.
As for charging in without poisoning the food first… that didn’t seem feasible either. There was no way the three of them could have fought off the entire tribe.
With no need to carry out the decoy plan anymore, Everly quietly got to her feet, crawled back to the bushes where her companions were hiding, and joined the other two in observing the altar from a distance.
Sophia told Everly that the Caribs were holding a funeral.
“They believe that dancing possesses a special power—one that allows them to communicate with the divine realm where Oseiwa resides. The songs chanted during the funeral are summaries of the fallen warriors’ deeds in life…”
As if to confirm Sophia’s explanation, the priestess began chanting an incomprehensible hymn as she danced beneath the firelight.
Her aged voice was hoarse and grating, like the screech of an owl or the heart-rending wail of a wildcat mourning its lost cubs.
“Ulu! Guwasa!”
Each time the priestess recited a line, the crowd responded with a unified shout. At first, their voices were disorganized, but before long they fell into perfect rhythm.
The priestess’s dance accelerated as well. What had begun as slow and ponderous movements gradually became sharp, frenzied, and almost manic.
“Uluwa… Nipasawa!”
After circling the three corpses once, the priestess walked over to the wooden cage holding the survivors and casually pointed inside.
An assistant stepped forward, opened the cage, and hauled out the chosen captive as effortlessly as if dragging out a piglet.
Even from where she was hiding, Everly could vaguely recognize the victim.
It was the young woman from the couple.
The moment she was dragged from the cage, terror overtook her. She screamed and sobbed, reaching desperately back toward the cage, pleading for her boyfriend to save her.
But confronted with the savage, terrifying primitives, the young man couldn’t summon even the slightest courage to resist.
He shrank behind the other captives, too frightened even to take his girlfriend’s hand, and could do nothing but watch as she was taken to the top of the altar.
Like a chicken or a sheep being slaughtered, she was forced to her knees. The priestess gripped her by the neck and, with a single stroke of the dagger, cut off her head.
Everly clenched her fists.
Beside her, Sophia and the Black coach both let out quiet curses at the same time.
Reason told all three of them that rushing out now wouldn’t save anyone.
But emotionally, watching one of their own kind butchered like livestock inevitably filled them with grief and fury.
“Ola! Muchika!”
After killing the girl, the priestess raised the severed head high into the air and flung the girl’s blood over the crowd gathered below.
Below the altar, everyone who had been splashed with blood stuck out their tongues to lick up the crimson shower falling from above, their faces glowing with delight.
When the blood had finally run dry, the priestess placed the severed head on the altar as an offering. Gripping her dagger once more, she began a new dance.
This one was even faster than the last.
Its movements were far wilder, evoking images of stampeding bison, coiling pythons, roaring leopards—everything untamed and primal.
Below the altar, the chanting continued.
Led by the priestess, the crowd’s responses grew louder and more impassioned. The ritual built layer upon layer, the chanting swelling into a collective roar of religious fervor. The thunderous cries seemed almost to make the entire forest vibrate.
“Oh, Haruseiga!! Oseiwa!”
“Oh, Haruseiga!! Oseiwa!!”
“Oh, Haruseiga!! Oseiwa!!!”
As the final roar echoed through the forest, the priestess’s dance came to an abrupt halt.
For a fleeting instant, Everly wasn’t sure whether it was merely a trick of the dim light, but she thought she saw a shadow wreathed in surging waves of blood leap from the priestess’s body, split into three, and disappear into the three corpses being held aloft.
The violent dance had clearly drained the priestess’s strength.
When it ended, she remained standing in place with her eyes closed for a long while, steadying her breathing. Only then did she slowly descend from the altar on trembling legs and stop before one of the corpses.
“The Caribs believe that, through a special ritual, they can offer a warrior’s soul to Oseiwa in exchange for the god’s blessing,” Sophia whispered. “After the ceremony, the entire tribe consumes the dead warrior’s body, believing it allows them to inherit the divine courage and strength bestowed by Oseiwa.”
As Sophia explained, the people supporting the corpse gently lowered it to the ground and respectfully stepped aside.
The priestess strode forward, slit open the dead man’s chest with a single stroke of her dagger, dug out the still-bloody heart, and bit down on its pointed end.
The warriors had been dead for several hours. Their heart muscle had already begun to decompose, turning a ghastly dark purple.
The priestess sank her teeth into the heart and tore off a large chunk from its tip. Thick, dark blood oozed from the ragged wound, staining her teeth and running down her chin, making the deep furrows on her weathered face appear even more grotesque.
“Ulu!”
At the sight, every Carib simultaneously threw up both hands and let out an excited roar.
The priestess’s first bite was the signal to begin the feast.
The moment she swallowed the first mouthful of flesh, the rest of the Caribs surged forward without hesitation. They threw themselves at the three corpses, hacking with daggers and stone knives—or simply using their fingernails and teeth—to tear away strips of human flesh, skin and all.
They devoured the meat in huge mouthfuls as though feasting on the finest delicacy.
The frenzy was so intense that even three bodies weren’t enough to satisfy the crowd. By the time the feeding ended and the Caribs finally dispersed, the corpses had been stripped down to little more than their heads, entrails, and skeletons with a few shreds of meat still clinging to the bones.
By then, Anthony had also completed his mission and returned safely, his bottles of powdered dr*g completely emptied.
The four of them remained curled up in the bushes, suppressing their nausea as they watched the events unfolding around the altar.
After the feast, several Caribs brought over machetes and chopped off the heads of the three dead warriors, placing them carefully onto a tray.
The priestess accepted the tray, then slowly climbed the altar, pausing every few steps. She reverently arranged the three severed heads on the sacrificial table, setting them beside the head of the murdered young woman.
She then knelt before the altar in silent prayer for some time.
Throughout the ritual, every Carib below remained utterly silent. Their heads were bowed and their expressions solemn, making them seem like entirely different people from the blood-crazed mob that had been tearing apart human flesh only moments earlier.
A short while later, the priestess descended from the altar and stood surrounded by the Caribs. Tears glistened at the corners of her eyes as she spoke in her aged voice.
The moment she finished, the grief-stricken Caribs erupted like oil hitting a blazing fire.
Some clenched their fists.
Some roared in fury.
Others reached straight for the weapons slung across their backs.
The entire tribe was inflamed with righteous anger, as though they wanted nothing more than to charge into battle that very instant.
“Do you think they’re planning to hunt us down and avenge their companions?” the Black coach whispered, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead.
“Very likely,” Anthony replied.
The coach’s expression immediately darkened.
“Then what do we do? We barely covered our tracks on the way here. Will they find us?… And it’s already so late. Why aren’t they eating dinner yet? They can’t seriously be planning to skip the meal just to chase us down, can they?”
“Shh!” Everly hissed. “Quiet—they’re coming this way!”
She bent her arm and jabbed the incessantly muttering coach in the ribs with her elbow.
He immediately clamped his mouth shut and lay flat in the bushes again, nervously peeking through the leaves.
Fortunately, the scenario he feared never came to pass.
After finishing her rousing call to arms, the priestess led the Caribs toward the food preparation area. She instructed the women to bring out wooden bowls and spoons, then they began ladling out the finished human-meat stew along with the strips of roasted meat from the campfires.
Every single one of them—including the priestess herself—drank the doctored stew.
Fentanyl acted quickly.
It wasn’t long before people began losing their balance and collapsing to the ground.
After a rapid succession of heavy thuds, not a single person remained standing anywhere in the vast settlement.