After listening to Shirong's words, the two followers Ye Dai and Bei Wen understood the reasoning behind what they were doing. But just as they did this, they felt a wave of qi emanating from a place that was away from their current location.

"Young master, it has started!" Bei Wen said.

"But this… isn't it too strong. I don't remember any other ceremony having an effect like this. Even the blessing ceremonies were much more low key than this." Ye Dai said with concern.

"That's exactly what I was worried about. The clans were able to find out one of the rituals that had long since disappeared. The rituals that most people now know aren't that powerful and thus don't have the same effect.

The one they are using is certainly quite different, and we have to stop it." Shirong said with a serious expression on his face.

He then walked out of the temple and gazed outside in the direction of the qi fluctuations. The two men also followed him and soon saw the glow in the distance. They could see a three colored light from the direction of the main temple of the three guardians.

The light was in the form of a triangle with the top vertex being black in color, the left one being white in color and the right one being blue in color. The three colors represented the three guardian beasts, with the black representing the turtle beast, white representing the tiger beast and the blue representing the dragon beast.

Seeing the Tri colored light presented a few questions to Lin Wu. From all the novels he had learned, there were usually four guardian beasts pertaining to the four cardinal directions. While the three guardians here represented three out of the four directions, the final beast which should have been the vermilion bird was missing.

Another thing was that the names of the beast weren't exactly the same from what he knew and even looking at the statues of the beasts he could tell that they were exactly not the same beasts as those from the myths.

'Perhaps I'm wrong and they are some other beasts. Could it just be a coincidence?' Lin Wu wondered.

Ye Dai and Bei Wen were looking at the light with complex expressions. Bei Wen received a message from his communication jade and looked towards his young master.

"It has been done, young master." Bei Wen stated.

"Good, let's go back in. I want to see if we were successful or not." Shirong replied.

The two followers nodded and they entered the old temple only to see that the three colored light was emitting from the three statues as well. But it seemed to be restricted by the blood that covered the three statues.

The circular formation array that was in the center of the statues glowed with strange characters and the Tri colored light coming from the main temple increased as well.

"Now!" Shirong shouted.

Ye Dai and Bei Wen gestured with their hands, forming seals, while Shirong did the same. Tens of seals were formed and new runes started appearing in the air. The runes kept on increasing in number until the entirety of the temple was filled with them.

"SEAL!" Shirong commanded with bloodshot eyes.

Bei Wen and Ye Dai flicked their hands and the runes sticked onto the statues of the three beasts. This seemed to have created a chain reaction which could be felt by Shirong. It was being transmitted from the circular formation array in the center of the three statues and transferred over to the main temple as well.

***

Back at the main temple, there were many people standing around in the hall. They had a myriad of expressions on their faces. Some were angry, some were sad, and some were scared. In the side, three people could be seen lying dead.

The ceremony for which they had been planning for the past week seemed to have taken a wrong turn. All was progressing well until something strange happened and the formations in the Temple became unstable. Even the statues started shaking and the light emitting from them dimmed down.

Then a wave of spirit qi came from the formation array that was located in the center of the three guardian beast statues and knocked over most of the people. Some of them even sustained injuries, but the most serious ones were none other than the three men that had died.

Their condition was gruesome, and they had died by bleeding out of their seven apertures. They had all seen something like this before and knew that the bleeding of seven apertures was a classic sign of extreme qi deviation.

But qi deviation did not always cause death, besides in this case these men were not cultivating at all but were rather participating in the ceremony.

"Who were these men?" Clan Head Lu questioned the people.

"Senior, they were some of the wandering cultivators of our city and applied to the notice that we had sent out." One of the men there spoke.

"What do we do now, clan head Lu?" Asked Clan Head Meng with concern.

A troubled expression appeared on Clan head Lu's face as he scratched his beard.

"What can we even do at this point? What's done is done, the lives have been lost." Clan Head Lu spoke.

"But the ceremony…" Clan Head Xiong interrupted.

"The ceremony was defective, that's all. We all knew that we were only trying our luck at performing what clan Head Mu Had discovered. Nothing was mentioned in the scriptures that he found about there being a chance of people dying. It's obvious that either the ceremony was incorrect or we missed some instructions." Clan head Lu stated with a little anger in his voice.

~Gulp~

Clan head Xiong swallowed his saliva after hearing his words and knew that this would be bad for the reputation of their city. The men who had died were core condensation realm cultivators, and in most of the kingdoms, they would have high enough position.

If they had any backers they would definitely be coming to question them and they would be needing to give them sufficient compensation.

~Sigh~

All of the clan heads shared A collective sigh in the hall.