Chapter 310

Chapter 311: The Fanatic’s Last Path

The darkness broke in silence. The dead one’s last memory returned to eternal peace. The scene shook a few times, then slowly became the Holy Sarcophagus Chamber again. That long life’s memory had taken only an instant in the real world. When Yu Sheng saw the room clearly, a single drop of “blood” from the Artificial Saintess’s cheek had just fallen to the floor.

He blinked and took a few seconds to steady his mind and return from that too-real memory to the present. Then he lowered his gaze to the Metal Doll still pressing him down.

The cold killing machine did not move. Even the faint sounds inside her had gone quiet.

Weakness from blood loss and crushed organs rose in waves. Yu Sheng felt his short life nearing The End Web. Next, he could lie here and wait for death, then, as planned, send the remaining Hermitage Members on this ship to the Special Affairs Bureau.

He leaned against the pillar for half a minute, then tugged at the corner of his mouth and spat a bit of bloody saliva to the side.

“Damn it, what a joke,” he said.

He still had some strength.

He heaved again and finally pushed the Artificial Saintess’s shell onto the floor. Then he slowly stood, bent down, and hooked his arms under the Metal Doll’s. Two or three tries later, he finally managed to pull her up in one burst of effort.

Dragging the cold steel weight, he walked toward the center of the room. Several times he nearly collapsed, but he never stopped to rest. Signs of death crept over his body, but he forced them down. After a long struggle, he brought the Metal Doll to the device tangled with pipes and cables. Using his shoulder to brace her, he shoved her into the Iron Coffin.

“I don’t know if this thing still works, or if what I’m going to do will help you,” he said, resting a hand on the coffin and staring at the beautiful but empty face inside, “I usually do things after thinking them through. Just now you reached out to me. I didn’t hear what you were saying, but it felt like you were asking for help.”

He took a breath, lifted her arm to settle it better, then hauled up the heavy lid and closed it bit by bit.

“You killed me twice, and I ‘killed’ those friends who left home with you. We have a deep grudge. But from another angle, I don’t care much about life and death, and those ‘friends’ of yours stopped being themselves many years ago. So I think we can let it go,” Yu Sheng muttered, using the sound of his own voice to stay awake as he dipped a finger into the last of the blood leaking from his chest and carefully smeared it over the Holy Coffin, “Compared to that… the Hermitage Order is garbage. I bet you agree.”

He took two steps back, climbed down from the platform, and looked around the Holy Sarcophagus Chamber and at the tightly sealed Iron Coffin.

“Alright, that’s that. Next I’ll set up an Alchemy Array. After that, do our best and leave the rest to Heaven’s Mandate. I’m going first,” he said.

He let himself fall backward.

Before he hit the floor, his body turned to fine dust. Like a handful of ash, it dropped without a sound and then faded away into the air.

The Holy Sarcophagus Chamber fell silent, broken only by the low hum of certain machines.

The bodies of the Hermitage Members lay around the Holy Coffin, cooling.

Two seconds later, a faint scraping, wriggling sound rose from the floor around the Holy Coffin.

As if an invisible Engraving Knife had traced the ground, rings of shallow grooves appeared across the room, spread quickly, and linked together, forming the basic Soul Imbuement Rite. The center of the Alchemy Formation was the dark Iron Coffin.

Beside the Holy Coffin Apparatus, the pipes and controllers that the cultists had cut began to repair themselves. The long silent Iron Coffin let out a deep hum again.

…

The ship grew quiet.

But it was not peaceful. It was an eerie silence that filled every channel.

Now the Control Hall had lost contact with all sections. Communications had been cut a few minutes earlier, and then the monitors went too. Everyone knew those feeds could no longer be trusted, but the intruder did not even bother to pretend. All the screens that had been showing “all normal” went dark at the same instant. A line flashed on the black displays: “I am coming for you.”

Finally, the shipwide sensing System went offline.

Engine room, power bay, storage, living quarters, life support, Reactor… the signals of all basic systems disappeared from the console. The whole Control Hall became a sealed cage, and outside it the vast Pillar of Order starship seemed to vanish from the world.

Trapped in the Control Hall, the Hermitage Members felt as if the hall were drifting alone in Deep Space. It was as if there had never been a Pillar of Order, no armored hull and layered defense Systems, only this single hall and a pack of rats inside it. The deadly, freezing space lay just beyond a thin metal shell. Death whispered outside that shell and slowly seeped in through every vent.

Maybe it had already seeped in.

The Sage still sat high in his chair, his face dark as a storm cloud. He said nothing, but everyone in the hall already knew what their fate would be.

The Hermitage Members checked their weapons. Even those who were not fighters made ready to fight.

The support crew handed out the last Battle Mixture to each person: basic drugs to boost acuity, strength, and neural response, and Alchemical Potions to block negative emotions and resist mental pollution.

The only three spare sets of Powered Armor were given to three battle tested Cultivators.

“The time for martyrdom has come, compatriots,” the Sage finally rose. His low voice broke the heavy pressure in the hall as he said: “We all know our fate.

“A Ghost has infiltrated this ship. It chased us from the Borderland to here. It defiled this sacred Pillar of Order with profane means, and used unknown methods to devour many of our companions. We have now lost contact with all other compartments. We cannot confirm their exact state… but without a doubt, their chances are poor.

“Those of us in this hall may already be the last survivors on the ship.

“Now everything outside this hall is out of control, including the self destruct. We cannot stop the Ghost’s Infiltration of this ship anymore. The good news is that before the core System was breached, we completely deleted the Navigation System’s Star Chart.

“Fight with everything you have, compatriots. Our bodies will die today, but our souls will climb the holy path. On the noble steps that lead to order and perfection, the souls of martyrs will keep ascending with our Forebears, and will at last greet the glorious sunrise on the terrace of the Supreme Holy Temple.

“For the holy path, for order and perfection!”

“For the holy path, for order and perfection!” the Hermitage Members shouted, their blood boiling with the Sage’s words. Loyalty and zeal carved deep in their genes lit up. With the potions’ help, for a moment they forgot the pressure and fear they had felt, forgot the strange changes on the ship, the creepy gazes, and the whispers that had once come over the listening channels. A fever dream told them they could defeat anything. They believed that even if the Ghost appeared right now in the hall, they could beat it through their loyalty and faith in the holy path.

But when the Ghost came, they learned this was not a “battle.”

One Hermitage Member’s scream shattered the fever in the hall and woke those lost in joy and confidence: “It’s alive… ah! Help me!”

The screaming Cultivator thrashed in his seat, crying in terror as he stabbed at something beside him with his Protective Short Sword. Before everyone’s eyes, a layer of metal wrapped around him.

His chair melted. From under the nearby console, countless branches of restraint reached out. The floor at his feet seemed to come alive, surging and writhing. A metal substance piled up in an instant into a heavy shell that locked him down tight.

At once, similar cries rang out across the hall:

“The floor is melting!”

“I’m locked! I’m locked!”

“The wall… there’s something flowing on the wall!”

“This ship is alive! It’s screaming in my head!”

The Sage rose from his place. There was no fear on his face. He only stared hard in one direction of the hall.

He saw the alloy wall there flowing like melt. Several Hermitage Members near the edge were caught in the wall. They were not dead, only fixed fast, still wriggling and struggling.

In the center of the flowing wall, a face slowly took shape.

The face filled almost a third of the wall and looked down quietly on the chaotic hall.

“Your speech was truly stirring,” the face said. Its voice scraped like steel on steel, “but what about the people you carved open and stripped the memories from?”

The Sage looked surprised, then as if understanding, he walked forward and said in a tone of certainty: “That was a noble sacrifice…”

Before he finished, a metal pipe as thick as a roof beam slammed straight down from the ceiling.

“Sacrifice your grandmaster!”