Without even considering the option of cleaning up the bodies and the scene, the woman pushed her Qi to course through her meridians at the maximum capacity, and at the same time activated all of the blessed artifacts she carried, hoping to suppress the curse.

Countless little claws scratching and cutting her skin; thousands and tens of thousands of tiny needles poking into her veins, meridians and even into her bones, sucking out her blood, Qi and even bone marrow. Snakes were squirming in her stomach. Worms and ants were crawling in her muscles and internal organs.

All of this was but illusions, brought to her by the curse. She knew, and she forced herself to calm down and keep up her speed on her way back. When she made it back to her base, she could perform a ritual to temporarily seal this curse, or even have her cohorts help her lift it completely. To her horror, all her artifacts kept cracking up and completely breaking one by one, none of them could halt the curse even by more than half a minute.

“Shit! SHIT!” The woman swore as she glided through the chill night air. After a short while, the only thing between her and the creeping yet unintelligibly heavy dark aura, was a simple jade Buddha pendant on her waist. Right now, a shade of dark yellow was gradually corroding from the outer rims of the pendant, leaving small cracks in its path. When all the green was gone, its protection over the woman would also be fully expended.

Strangely, her other much more expensive artifacts were destroyed and turned into crumbs and ashes in the wind already. Yet, this cheap looking pendant gifted to her by an old monk at a nameless temple seemed to have endured the curse much longer than the others. Lucky for her, with her full speed, she got her base in sight already.

“Help! Help me!” She stumbled through the outer wall and into the front yard of her base: “Artifacts! Bring me some artifacts!”

“What’s happening?” A man in a full body dark cloak came out from the inner room: “Mei? What happened?”

“Curse! That clergyman - ” The wolf mask cracked and fell onto the ground, turning into dried up barks and ashes. The woman’s face was that of a model-like beauty, with a thin scar on her left forehead. But this did not last, the scar grew wider and burst open, releasing dark green and foul goo instead of blood.

She could not finish her sentence, for a simple reason - the jade Buddha pendant completely turned yellow, crumbling into dust and grains of sand. For a moment, she thought she could hear a light sigh coming from the dust.

“BITCH!” Seeing the woman turning into a pile of mush and crisp in the yard, and feeling a dark and chilling aura looming over himself, the man in a full body dark cloak cursed and tried to rush into the inner room and get to the altar at the center.

In the inner room, there was another man in a full cloak standing beside the altar, and four other monk-looking individuals, wearing almost nothing sitting with their legs crossed in meditation poses in the corners with cloth bags over their heads.

“Curse! Curse!” The man struggled, scratching his back and his inner thigh. Before long, he even took off almost all of his clothes just so he could scratch the uncontrollable itch: “Help me!”

Inside this inner room and near the altar, the effects of the curse seemed to have slowed down. But this made the man’s suffering even more grueling - the skins on his arms were swollen and blistering, dark marks crawled up his chest and his neck. He scratched harder and harder, at the same time his skin and muscles decayed and rotted. In just mere moments, he tore pieces of his own flesh and skin off, and continued without even stopping.

The other man in a full body dark cloak took a step back in panic, for he had never seen something like this before. But horrified as he was, he was in no mood to catch it and instead instinctively avoided it like the plague.

The four monk-like individuals were surprised as well, and all of whom chanted a quick spell before pointing their fingers at the almost completely bare man who was scratching his own flesh off his bones. Four bright yellow streams of condensed energy shot at the bloody man rolling on the ground. Like thin spears or pikes, the streams of energy penetrated the man’s body, stopping his movement and leaving four steaming holes behind.

Flames arose from the man’s body. Bright yellow and orange flame scorched the body from inside, turning it into ashes before long.

“What - what is this?” The only man in a cloak asked the four individuals sitting in the corners: “WHAT IS THIS!?”

“Curse, a curse of the foul, fell soul.” One of the individuals sighed through the bag on his head: “Too bad, too bad. This humble monk expected so, just never thought it would dawn on all of us so early.”

“What?!” The man in a cloak rushed to this individual and clutched his fingers over the individual’s neck: “Answer me! What the fuck happened!?”

“Yours is a path of defilement and corrosion. Yours is a path of desecration and sin.” Another individual sighed, and gently yanked the metal chains embedded in his ribs and restraining him to the corner: “Namo Amitabha. Our time, is nigh.”

“It is right. It is right.” The other two individuals nodded, then started chanting in unison.

The man in a cloak tried to say something else, but his words were cut short, as the individual whose throat was grabbed by him started chanting as well. And within just mere moments, his skin was engulfed in flames.

In less than a minute, the bodies of all four individuals turned into ashes and dirt.

The altar cracked and crumbled. And the man in a cloak started sensing a sense of itchiness crawling through his entire body from his back and his legs.