Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
Tang Ka wanted to say something, but Li Yao had already crawled to the deepest part of his soul and seemed to have melded with his brain. There was no sound coming from him anymore.
Tang Ka raised his head and found that more than ten soldiers of the sanitation unit had surrounded them. The black barrels of their guns were right in front of them and aimed at their heads.
Tang Ka could feel that his fingertips were cramping, All his cells were being burnt to the point that they were about to explode. His skin could even sense the flow of a breeze hundreds of meters away. Dozens of battle plans were popping up in his brain at any moment. It was not until then that he
realized that ‘Old Yao’ had not abandoned him but was fully prepared for the battle. He was somewhat relieved.
Dozens of armed shuttles flew above his head. The interweaving mystic rays illuminated both him and the squad leader. He felt that his every vein and every nerve was being scanned by the enemy.
But ‘Old Yao’ was like a vague mist that flowed to the deepest part of his body where he did not know what was going on. He was not detected at all.
Beeps were echoing inside their helmets, indicating that everything was normal. Very soon, more than ten cold ‘coffins’ continued moving toward them.
Chu Zhiyun roared and rushed toward the ‘coffin’ without bothering about anything else.
She was truly the most distinguished student of the Holy Light Institute in recent years. Without a crystal suit, she had knocked over three purifiers in crystal suits and snatched their weapons with barely any weapons.
However, the weapon of the purifier had an exclusive fingerprint and blood identification system that could only be activated by the real owner. The moment it fell into somebody else’s hands, intense electric arcs were immediately released, which made Chu Zhiyun twitch violently. His hair was all
standing up, and black blood was flowing out of his eyes, ears, and nostrils!
Chu Zhiyun seemed to be locked in a cage of electric arcs, but she did not give up her hope for freedom. Gritting her teeth, she staggered forward three steps. At this moment, her body seemed to have overlapped with Liao Meng’s in the morning, and the outcome was the same. She fell to the ground, her
limbs still cramping.
“Class monitor…”
Tang Ka felt a lump in his throat and could not help but shed hot tears.
He felt that every muscle on his body had been tightened, as if he were a screw that had been twisted all the way to the end. He had an urge to fight a random cleaner.
“Don’t be hasty. Let’s see how it goes.”
Li Yao’s high-pitched voice came from the depths of the young man’s soul. “It seems that their target is your class monitor. They won’t keep a close eye on a nobody like you. This is our chance—our chance to figure everything out!”
As it tumed out, the purifiers had tied up Chu Zhiyun and installed shackles made of super alloys on almost every part of his body that could be shackled. The shackles were also carved with lightning streaks. The electromagnetic attraction between the shackles ensured that Chu Zhiyun’s hands and feet
were locked together.
As for Tang Ka, they simply put a pair of handcuffs on his back and did not restrict him from walking.
It seemed that the purifiers did not care about the thirteen-year-old boy at all. He was just a ‘bonus’ for their hunt for Chu Zhiyun.
Tang Ka’s behavior was in line with his timidness and obedience. He was so scared that he forgot to resist and simply shed tears. “What is going on? What is going on? I don’t know anything, Let me go. II don’t know anything!”
The purifiers whose faces were hidden behind the iron masks naturally turned a deaf ear to his struggles and screams. They escorted him and the squad leader to a flying shuttle.
But Little Tian Tian had been taken away by them on a different shuttle.
Tang Ka’s eyes were about to explode, but Li Yao told him to calm down. Little Tian Tian was just a prop for the enemy. She should be fine for now. By then, Li Yao would have a way to rescue her.
Just like that, the two ‘traitors’ were captured and brought to the floating fortress by the shuttle.
While he was still in midair, Tang Ka craned his head to the window and looked down, only to discover that intense fire and smoke were popping up everywhere in the downtown area. There were also signs of escape and resistance. Very soon, hundreds of flying shuttles took off and flew to the floating
fortress like them.
It seemed that ‘Master Yao’ was right. The ultimate test was over. All the Children of Holy Light would be tied up and taken to the floating fortress without exception.
“What… are we exactly?”
Tang Ka thought silently.
The closer he got to the floating fortress, the more he could see the magnificence and vastness of the iron city. It was like a man-made celestial body that had swallowed the sky. Even the entrance of the hangar was like the bloody mouth of a prehistoric beast that had swallowed dozens of shuttles.
Like two dusts that were blown away by the wind, Tang Ka and Chu Zhiyun, together with dozens of other ignorant students, passed through the narrow and deep pathway escorted by a team of cleaners.
Very soon, the cabin door in front of them was opened, revealing a space as spacious as a palace or a valley. They were walking in the transparent tubes in the air, as if they were walking on a bridge between two valleys. The ‘crags’ on the two sides of the bridge were embedded with transparent cells that
looked like honeycombs!
Inside every transparent prison cell was a prisoner, or rather, a lunatic. When they observed carefully, they discovered that these people were all their classmates.
Not just the students who had been eliminated in the “Ultimate Test’, even the students who had been unable to keep up with the progress or had lost control of their emotions during the past few years of cultivation in the Holy Light Academy had been locked up in this place!
Some of the students had wooden expressions as they sat upright on their metal beds. Their eyes were hollow and unfocused as they stared in confusion at the nonexistent light spots in the air. They were like fossils that had been dried for millions of years.
Some of the students were pacing back and forth anxiously. Now and then, they would raise their fists and ruthlessly smash the transparent wall in front of them, leaving streaks of blood on the wall. Only after smashing their hands into a bloody mess did they sit down in satisfaction. Their mouths were
still muttering non-stop, making them look like animals wearing human skin.
Some of the students were wearing an enormous helmet on their head. The helmet was covered in colorful indicator lights and crystal wires that led to the walls. The helmet seemed to be connected to extremely powerful electric currents and spiritual waves, bringing them indescribable pain and making
them scream in pain that was worse than death. However, their hands and feet were locked, and some of their joints were even broken. They lost the ability to move and even lost the ability to end their lives.
Some of the students were locked in narrow and stuffy sleep capsules. Their bodies were soaked in bright green or pink thick liquids. They seemed to be caught in some kind of nightmare or illusion. Sometimes they were twitching, sometimes they were struggling, and sometimes they were chuckling.
There was no telling what they had seen or experienced in the dream.
‘What was most creepy was the dozens of cells at the bottom of the cliff.
There was no one inside the cells, but they were full of precise equipment and tubes that were as complicated as a maze. All kinds of suspicious liquids were flowing inside the tubes and eventually congregated into cylindrical glass tanks.
They had thought that there was nothing inside the glass tanks. But when they squinted and observed carefully, they discovered that a brain was bobbing up and down inside every glass tank.
Some of the brains even had spinal cord trailing behind them. They looked quite intact and fresh.
The other brains, on the other hand, had been stripped of a lot of parts, except for the central part, which looked like a rotten, deformed apple and seemed to have been there for many years.
All the brains, without exception, had been inserted into thousands of crystal wires, which gave them different stimuli. Under the stimuli, their brains would twitch slightly in response.
These brains were all alive!
Or rather, the owners of the brains were still alive on a certain level!
“What—what is the meaning of this?”
“Will we one day be like these students who, after going through all kinds of cruel experiments, are deprived of their bodies and only have their brains left, only to be thrown into the apparatus for research? And at this time… will we still be alive?”
“We are the Children of Holy Light, the most loyal believers of the gods and the greatest master. Glory and holiness flow in our veins. Why are you treating us like this?”
Right now, all the indifferent disguises of the Children of Holy Light had collapsed. They were venting their fear and desperation unscrupulously. Some of them were even sobbing.
Tang Ka and Chu Zhiyun, on the other hand, were observing the scenes inside the cells on the two sides with their big, black eyes, hoping to gather more useful information.
They finally passed through the terrifying transparent tube and entered a room whose floor, walls, and ceiling were ivory and emitting sacred brilliance.
The seemingly gentle pure white brightness was actually like a poison that could corrupt the heart of every ‘Child of Holy Light. It penetrated into the skin and pores of every ‘Child of Holy Light’, corrupting their soul and nerves, and gave them a weird feeling that their brain had been penetrated through
and they could see everything clearly.
The Children of Holy Light looked at each other in bewilderment, shivering, and crying.
Some of them were gritting their teeth, with grunts echoing deep inside their nose and throat. They were trying to fight back, but there was nothing they could do.
shua! Shua! Shua!
In front of the panicked teenagers, the ivory brilliance condensed into three hazy figures.
Although the three of them were of different genders, there was a fake smile that seemed to be carved out of the same mold on their faces, making it impossible to distinguish them. One could only tell their identity by the color of their uniform.
The one wearing the white uniform was the dean of the Holy Light Academy, Xia Yuren.
The one wearing a black uniform with a blood-stained battle emblem on his chest was ‘Qiu Yuanjia’, the commander of the purification troop.
The middle-aged woman standing in the middle of the two, who seemed to be in the highest position and was wearing a gray uniform with an unknown identity, was surprisingly Little Tian Tian’s mother, Zhou Xiuyun!