Chapter 311: The Fanatic's Dead End

Darkness shattered in silence, the dead's final memories returning to eternal peace; the scene before his eyes wavered a few times, gradually restoring itself to the appearance of the Holy Coffin Chamber—that long life's memories had in reality passed in an instant; when Yu Sheng saw his surroundings clearly again, a drop of "blood" falling from the side of the Artificial Saintess's cheek had just hit the ground.

Yu Sheng blinked, took a few seconds to clear his mind and return from those too-real memories to the present reality, then lowered his gaze, looking at the iron puppet still pressing down on him.

This cold killing machine remained motionless; now even the faint static within its body had vanished.

Weakness brought by excessive blood loss and severe damage to vital internal organs was surging up; Yu Sheng felt his brief life was about to reach its end again; next, he could lie quietly here waiting for death, then as planned, send the remaining members of the Hidden Cult on this ship over to the Special Operations Bureau.

But he sat leaning against the pillar in place for half a minute, suddenly tugged at the corner of his mouth, then spat a mouthful of bloody saliva to the side.

"Damn it, what the hell is this thing."

Still some strength left.

Yu Sheng exerted himself again, finally managing to push the Artificial Saintess's shell to the ground; then he slowly stood up, bent down, supported the iron puppet's heavy body under its armpits, tried two or three times, and finally pulled her up in one go.

Dragging this block of cold steel slowly toward the center of the room, he faltered several times from exhaustion but never stopped to rest; symptoms of death gradually manifested on his body, only to be forcibly suppressed by him; with great effort, he finally brought the iron puppet to the device connected to numerous pipes and cables, and using his shoulder to push, shoved her into that "iron coffin."

"I don't know if this thing can still be put to use, nor if my upcoming actions will have any effect on you," Yu Sheng said, leaning against the iron coffin's shell, looking at the beautiful yet cold and empty face before him, "I've always done things based on what I think makes sense—just now when you reached out to me, although I didn't catch exactly what you were saying, it felt like you were asking for help."

He took a breath, raised his hand to adjust the Artificial Saintess's arm position, then forcefully pulled down the heavy "coffin lid" beside him, slowly closing it.

"You killed me twice, I 'killed' those friends of yours who left home with you; we have some deep grudge, but from another angle, I personally don't care much about life or death, and those 'friends' of yours... haven't been themselves for many years, so I think we can let this go," Yu Sheng muttered, keeping himself awake this way, while dipping his finger in the blood flowing from his chest, already scarce, and carefully smearing it onto the Holy Coffin, "Compared to this... that bunch from the Hidden Cult are even less than scum—I guess you agree."

He stepped back two paces, walked down from the device platform, and observed the environment in the Holy Coffin Chamber, as well as the tightly closed iron coffin before him.

"Alright, that's it; next I'll set up an Alchemy Array for you, the rest is doing one's best and leaving the rest to fate—I'm logging off first."

Having spoken, he fell backward toward the sky.

Before hitting the ground, his body began rapidly turning to dust, finally falling silently to the floor like a handful of loose ash, then vanishing into the air in an instant.

Silence filled the Holy Coffin Chamber, with only the low hum of certain equipment running echoing in the air.

The corpses of those Hidden Cult members lay quietly around the Holy Coffin, gradually cooling.

Then two seconds later, the ground around the Holy Coffin suddenly emitted a faint sound of friction and writhing.

Like an invisible chisel carving across the floor, ring-shaped indentations appeared instantly in various parts of the room, expanding rapidly and connecting with each other, constructing the most basic Spirit-Inscription Ritual; at the center of this Alchemy Array lay that dark iron coffin.

Beside the Holy Coffin device, the pipes and controllers severed by the cultists began to self-repair; the "iron coffin," which had been silent for a long time, suddenly emitted a low hum once more.

Silence fell within the spaceship.

But this was not "peace"—it was an eerie, unsettling silence filling all the corridors.

Now, the Control Hall had lost contact with all areas; communications were cut off minutes ago, followed immediately by surveillance everywhere—in fact, everyone knew those surveillance feeds were no longer reliable, but the intruder obviously didn't even want to pretend anymore; the surveillance screens, which originally displayed "All Normal," were all cut off at a certain instant, and on the blacked-out screens only a line of text flashed: "I'm coming to find you."

Finally, the ship's hull perception system went offline.

Mechanical Bay, Power Bay, Storage Room, Living Quarters, Life Support System, Reactor... the signal from the most basic equipment in all areas disappeared from the control interface; the entire Control Hall became a sealed cage; outside the cage, the massive "Pillar of Order" spaceship seemed to have vanished from this world into thin air.

The Hidden Cult members trapped in the Control Hall felt as though they and this hall were drifting alone in the deep void of space; there had never been any Pillar of Order, no sturdy starship armor or layers upon layers of defense systems, only this one hall, and a group of rats within it—the lethal, cold void of space separated from them only by a thin metal shell; death whispered to them from outside this shell, slowly seeping into the hall through every ventilation duct.

Perhaps "it" had already seeped in.

The Sage still sat high in his chair, his face as gloomy as a dark cloud; he said nothing, but everyone in the hall already knew the fate awaiting them.

The Hidden Cult members began checking their weapons; even those who were not combatants prepared for battle.

Support staff began distributing the final combat cocktails to everyone—basic drugs to enhance sensitivity, strength, and neural reaction speed, as well as alchemical potions to block negative emotions and resist mental pollution.

The only three sets of spare power armor in the Control Hall were distributed to the three cultivators with combat experience.

"The time for martyrdom has come, compatriots," the Sage finally rose, his deep voice breaking the death-like oppression in the hall, "We all know our fate."

"A ghost has penetrated this ship—it pursued us from the Borderlands, defiled this sacred Pillar of Order with blasphemous means, and consumed many of our compatriots using unknown methods; now we have lost contact with all compartments; although we cannot determine the specific situation in those disconnected areas... there is no doubt they are in grave peril."

"The people in this hall may already be the last survivors on the entire ship."

"Now, all facilities outside the hall have lost control, including the ship's self-destruct function; we cannot stop the ghost's penetration of this ship, but the good news is, at least before the core system was breached, we completely deleted the star charts from the navigation system."

"Let us go all out, compatriots; our bodies will die today, but our souls will ascend the Path of Sacred Order; upon those lofty steps leading to order and perfection, the souls of martyrs will continue to climb alongside the sages, and finally welcome the glorious sunrise on the terrace of the Supreme Sanctuary."

"For the Path of Sacred Order, for the Way of Order and Perfection!"

"For the Path of Sacred Order, for the Way of Order and Perfection!"

The Hidden Cult members raised their arms and shouted, their blood boiling from the Sage's encouragement; the loyalty and fanaticism engraved deep in their genes were ignited at this moment; aided by the potions, they even momentarily forgot the pressure and terror they had just felt, forgot the strange changes that had occurred on this ship, those chilling gazes, and the whispers that had once come through the monitoring channel—a fanatical illusion as if capable of overcoming everything urged the believers, making them firmly believe that even if that ghost appeared in the hall right now, they could defeat it through their loyalty and faith in the Path of Sacred Order.

But after the ghost arrived, they discovered this was not a "battle" at all.

A Hidden Cult member's startled cry was the first to break the fanatical atmosphere in the hall, waking those compatriots lost in ecstasy and confidence—

"It's alive... Ah! Save me!!"

The cultivator who cried out struggled in his seat, emitting a chilling scream; while desperately stabbing at something beside him with a protective short sword in his hand, he was gradually wrapped in a layer of metal shell before everyone's eyes.

The seat beneath him melted; countless restraining branches extended from beneath the nearby console; the ground under his feet seemed to come alive, writhing upward; metallic substances piled up in an instant into a thick shell, firmly imprisoning him.

Immediately, similar cries of alarm rang out all over the hall—

"The ground is melting!"

"I'm locked! I'm locked!"

"The wall... something is flowing on the wall!"

"This ship is alive! It's screaming in my head!"

The Sage rose from his position; his face showed no fear, only staring fixedly at a certain direction in the hall.

He saw that alloy wall flowing like molten metal; several Hidden Cult members near the hall's edges were now stuck inside the wall; they were not dead, merely firmly locked within the wall, still struggling and writhing desperately.

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

That face occupied nearly one-third of the entire wall's area, silently overlooking the chaotic hall from above.

"Your speech just now was truly impassioned," that face spoke, its voice like two pieces of steel grinding and colliding, "but what about those people whose brains you dug out and memories you extracted?"

The Sage was somewhat surprised, but immediately seemed to understand something, and instead walked calmly toward that face, his tone entirely matter-of-fact: "That was a noble sacrifice—"

Before he finished speaking, a metal pipe as thick as a roof beam crashed down directly from the ceiling, striking him head-on.

"Noble sacrifice your ass!"

(End of Chapter)