Chapter 311

Chapter 311: Fanaticism’s End

The darkness broke apart in silence. The dead woman’s last memories returned to eternal peace, and the scene before him wobbled a few times, slowly restoring itself to the holy sarcophagus chamber. That long life of memories had lasted only an instant in reality. When Yu Sheng could see clearly again, the drop of “blood” sliding down the artificial saintess’s cheek had only just hit the ground.

Yu Sheng blinked and took a few seconds to clear his head, dragging himself back from those too-real memories to the world in front of him. Then he lowered his gaze to the iron doll still pressing on him.

The cold killing machine didn’t move at all. Even the faint noises inside her were gone.

Weakness surged as blood loss and crushed organs caught up with him. He could feel this short life reaching the end. Next, he could lie here and wait for death, then—as planned—send the remaining Hermitage Order members on this ship over to the Special Operations Bureau.

But after leaning against the pillar for half a minute, he suddenly curled his lip and spat a mouthful of bloody saliva to the side.

“Damn it. What the hell is this.”

He still had some strength left.

Yu Sheng pushed again and finally managed to shove the artificial saintess’s body onto the floor. Then he slowly stood, bent down, hooked his arms under the iron doll’s armpits, and after two or three tries, dragged her upright with a grunt.

He hauled that icy steel toward the center of the room. He nearly collapsed several times but never stopped. Death crept up over his body in cold waves, and he forced it back down with sheer stubbornness. After a long struggle, he finally got the iron doll to the device laced with pipes and cables. Bracing her with his shoulder, he shoved her into the iron coffin.

“I don’t know if this thing can still be useful, and I don’t know if what I do next will work on you,” Yu Sheng said, gripping the coffin’s shell and staring at that beautiful yet cold, hollow face. “I’ve always done things by thinking them through. Back there, you reached your hand toward me. I didn’t catch what you were saying, but it felt like you were asking for help.”

He panted, adjusted the artificial saintess’s arm, then grabbed the heavy lid beside him and slowly pulled it closed.

“You killed me twice. I ‘killed’ the friend who left home with you. We’ve got some serious bad blood,” Yu Sheng muttered, talking just to keep himself awake. He dipped a finger into the blood still leaking from his chest and carefully smeared it across the coffin. “But from another angle, I don’t personally care much about life and death, and your ‘friend’… stopped being them a long time ago. So I think we can let that go.

“Compared to that… those Hermitage Order guys are the worst. And I’m guessing you’d agree.”

He stepped back, climbed down from the platform, and studied the holy sarcophagus chamber and the tightly sealed iron coffin.

“All right. That’s it. Next I’ll set up an alchemy array for you. After that, we’ll do what we can and leave the rest to fate. I’m done.”

After saying that, he fell backward.

Before his body hit the floor, it rapidly turned to dust, then collapsed like a loose pile of ash and vanished into the air.

The holy sarcophagus chamber fell silent, with only the low hum of certain machines still running.

The corpses of the Hermitage Order members lay around the holy coffin, slowly cooling.

Then, two seconds later, the ground around the coffin gave a faint scrape and squirm.

As if an invisible engraving knife had carved the floor, ring-shaped grooves appeared across the room in the blink of an eye. They rapidly expanded and linked together into the most basic soul-imbuement rite, with the black iron coffin at the center of the alchemy formation.

Beside the device, the severed pipes and controls hacked apart by the cultists began to repair themselves. The iron coffin, silent for so long, let out a deep hum again.

…

The ship had gone quiet.

But it wasn’t peace. It was an eerie, unsettling silence that flooded every channel.

The control hall had lost contact with every area. Communications had been cut off minutes ago, followed by the cameras. Everyone knew the feeds were no longer reliable, but the intruder clearly didn’t even want to pretend anymore. The monitors that had shown All Normal cut to black in an instant, and on the dark screens a single line flashed:

“I’m coming for you.”

Then the ship’s sensing system went offline.

Engineering, engines, storage, living quarters, life support, reactor… even the most basic signals from every area vanished from the control interface. The entire control hall became a sealed cage. Outside that cage, the enormous Pillar of Order felt as if it had vanished from the world.

The Hermitage Order members trapped inside felt as though the hall was drifting alone in deep space. No ship. No armor. No layered defense system—only this one room, and a pack of rats inside it. Lethal, icy vacuum seemed separated from them by only a thin shell of metal. Death whispered beyond that shell, then slowly began to seep in through every vent.

Maybe it was already inside.

The Sage still sat high on his chair, his face dark as storm clouds. He said nothing, but everyone in the hall already knew what fate awaited them.

The Hermitage Order members checked their weapons. Even those who weren’t combatants prepared to fight.

Attendants began handing out the last battle mixture—basic drugs to sharpen senses and boost strength, along with alchemical potions meant to block negative emotions and resist mental corruption.

The control hall’s only three spare sets of powered armor were issued to three cultivators with combat experience.

“The time for martyrdom is here, compatriots,” the Sage finally said as he rose. His low voice shattered the dead pressure in the hall. “We all know our fate.

“A ghost has infiltrated this ship. It chased us from the borderland, defiled this sacred Pillar of Order with blasphemous means, and swallowed many of our compatriots by unknown methods. Now we have lost contact with every compartment. Though we cannot confirm what happened in those silent areas… there is no doubt they are in grave danger.

“The people in this hall may be the last survivors of the entire ship.

“Now, every facility outside the hall is out of control, including the ship’s self-destruct. We can no longer stop the ghost’s infiltration. But the good news is that before the core system was breached, we completely erased the navigation system’s star chart.

“Let us gamble everything, compatriots. Our bodies will die today, but our souls will ascend the Path of Saint Veneration. On those sacred steps toward order and perfection, the soul of a martyr will climb with our forebears and, at last, greet a glorious sunrise on the terrace of the supreme holy temple.

“For the Path of Saint Veneration—for order, and the way of perfect good!”

“For the Path of Saint Veneration—for order, and the way of perfect good!”

The Hermitage Order members raised their arms and roared. Inspired by the Sage, their blood boiled. Loyalty and fanaticism carved into their bones flared to life. With the potions’ help, they even forgot the pressure and terror they’d felt moments ago, forgot the ship’s eerie changes, the skin-crawling stares, and the whispers they’d heard over the channels. A frenzy like a victory dream swept through the cultists, making them believe that even if the ghost appeared in the hall right now, they could defeat it with loyalty and faith.

But once the ghost arrived, they realized this was never a battle.

A scream shattered the frenzy first, jolting them out of their ecstasy and confidence.

“It’s alive… ah! Help me!!”

The cultivator who screamed thrashed in his seat, terror twisting his face. He stabbed wildly at something beside him with his short sword, but before everyone’s eyes, a layer of metal shell began to wrap around him.

The chair beneath him melted. From under the console next to him, countless binding branches extended. The floor under his feet writhed like it had come alive, and a metal-sheened substance piled up in an instant into a thick shell that locked him in place.

Then similar screams erupted across the hall.

“The floor is melting!”

“I’m trapped—I’m trapped!”

“The wall… something’s moving on the wall!”

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

The Sage rose from his seat. There was no fear on his face. He simply stared toward a certain direction.

The alloy wall flowed like molten metal. Several Hermitage Order members near the hall’s edge were stuck in it—not dead, only pinned, still struggling.

And in the center of that flowing wall, a face slowly emerged.

It covered almost a third of the wall, looking down from high above at the chaos below.

“Your speech was pretty passionate,” the face said, its voice like steel grinding on steel. “But what about the people you dug brains out of and ripped memories from? What should they say?”

The Sage looked surprised. Then, as if he understood something, he stepped forward with calm certainty. “That was a noble sacrifice—”

He didn’t finish.

A metal pipe as thick as a beam slammed down from the ceiling, smashing straight toward his head.

“Sacrifice my ass!”