Chapter 711: Purification Light
In Busairite, under the cover of night, the black wind howled and sand swirled in the sky. Only a few stars and the moon shed light on the earth.
On top of a barren giant rock in the middle of a vast desert, Jawadin, dressed in a flamboyant robe, knelt respectfully. Before him stood his superior from the Eternal Life Cult, the old woman Adua, who had come to report on the latest situation in Bastis.
“What? You mean… suddenly, there were grain merchants selling grain to them?”
“Yes, a merchant claiming to be from Adus, leading a large caravan, sold a lot of grain to that young nun. I roughly calculated, the grain would last her and her people for at least another month. It’s impossible to force them with a lack of food now!” Jawadin reported to Adua. Upon hearing this, Adua frowned slightly.
“In Busairite at this time… there are still normal caravans appearing? Or even one that can find that young nun at such a critical moment? This sounds unusual… Have you investigated the background of that caravan?” Adua asked Jawadin, to which Jawadin immediately responded.
“I used worms to monitor the movements of that so-called caravan, but unfortunately, the young nun seemed to have done a thorough job of keeping secrets within the caravan. The worms I sent out were discovered and eliminated shortly after. I regret to say I cannot gather more information about them…”
Jawadin said, lowering his head. Listening to his words, Adua fell into deep thought. Meanwhile, Jawadin looked up at her with a subtle angle.
“Chief… we can’t force that young nun in the short term. What should we do next?” Jawadin asked Adua. After a pause, Adua slowly spoke.
“Now, first…”
Just as Adua began to speak, before she could finish, Jawadin suddenly stiffened and quickly raised his hand, reaching out towards Adua with great speed.
Seeing Jawadin’s sudden move, Adua reacted swiftly. Her withered hand, moving at an unnatural speed for her appearance, shot out and grabbed Jawadin’s arm tightly, snapping his wrist bone in the process.
Jawadin did not cry out in pain. From his palm, a fine red thread of spiritual energy emerged, striking Adua again. Due to the close distance, Adua, just as she reacted, was hit by the red thread, which then quickly vanished.
At this moment, Jawadin had become a zombie puppet controlled by Doro. Doro extended her spiritual thread through Jawadin to successfully connect with Adua at close range.
Before becoming Doro’s zombie puppet, Jawadin had already been written as a puppet by Doro. Doro gradually turned his attendants into flesh puppets, constantly interacting with him, accumulating progress until she finally completed the writing process.
After successfully writing Jawadin, Doro knew all the intelligence he held, including the existence of Adua. Through Jawadin, Doro learned that Adua was particularly cautious due to her dealings with the Radiant Church, rarely allowing discussions about her in Bastis and never permitting remote contact. She only met with Adua in specific locations at specific times.
According to Jawadin, Adua used a method called “floating fungi” to sense her surroundings, making her believe that communication within her immediate vicinity was safe. This was why Doro, despite monitoring Jawadin, couldn’t obtain useful information.
Knowing about Adua’s extensive detection methods, Doro didn’t use a zombie puppet with a spiritual thread connection to meet her directly. Instead, she left a puppet mark on Jawadin, had him pray to Akasha to establish a communication channel, and then met Adua.
When Doro’s spiritual thread connected with Adua, Adua felt an immense, invisible control force spreading from the red thread to her entire body, as if trying to control her completely. Seeing this, Adua reacted immediately.
Instantly, the hand that had grabbed Jawadin and was linked by the spiritual thread began to automatically sever. The hand broke off at the wrist, swelling and exploding into several large flying insects. As these insects burst, the strong control force dissipated.
Adua’s body, composed of countless insects, although sharing a single soul, could separate parts of herself into individual entities. By severing the insect-infested part of her hand, she prevented the control force from spreading throughout her body.
Opening her mouth, Adua spat out a swarm of tiny insects, which rushed toward Jawadin, forcefully entering his eyes, nose, and mouth. Jawadin screamed in agony, bl**d flowing from his face, and his skin started to undulate violently. His skin eventually burst open, releasing countless dense flying insects.
Most of these insects were rapidly bred by Adua, consuming Jawadin’s flesh and spirituality. However, some were insects cultivated by Jawadin himself. These insects also bore Doro’s puppet marks, immediately connecting with her spiritual threads.
Under Doro’s control, the insects detached from the dying Jawadin and flew toward the newly severed Adua. Adua’s insects immediately attacked and consumed Doro’s insects. Despite being torn apart, many insects still approached Adua, extending new spiritual threads from their bodies to link to various parts of her.
This time, Doro established seven spiritual threads linking to Adua. Due to the sudden connection of multiple areas, including her head, a powerful current began to flow through her body.
“Aaaaah…”
Amidst the crackling electricity, smoke billowed from Adua’s body. Her mouth opened wide, and countless insects poured out.
Before the insects could disperse, several figures rapidly approached from afar on the giant rock. They were Doro’s other zombie puppets, previously waiting outside the “floating fungi” coverage area. Upon the start of the battle, they quickly flew toward the center.
Facing Adua spraying a dense swarm of insects from atop the rock, the zombie puppets threw several iron “grenades.” Guided by magnetism, these grenades flew toward Adua and exploded around her, engulfing both her and the rock in scorching golden flames.
These grenades were specially designed by the Church’s forces, equipped with stored spirituality and sigils. Their explosive power far exceeded ordinary explosives, creating intense heat beyond normal capabilities.
After the flames subsided, the desert and rock fell silent. The night wind swept through, dispersing the dust and revealing what lay hidden.
Where Adua once stood, a charred, twisted corpse knelt, its hands covering its face in a final, agonizing pose.
Doro’s zombie puppets slowly landed on the rock platform, cautiously approaching the charred corpse. Just moments ago, the life connected to Doro’s spiritual thread had died. Under normal circumstances, Adua should be declared dead. However, Doro remained vigilant, letting her puppets approach Adua’s remains.
During this process, Doro’s puppets, slowly advancing toward Adua’s corpse, suddenly exhibited abnormal reactions. They began to experience severe physiological symptoms—nausea, vomiting, convulsions—falling uncontrollably. Their skin started to undulate, as if something was moving beneath the surface.
‘Infected… when?’
Observing these puppets, Doro furrowed her brows in thought. She was unaware that the many visible insects Adua released contained countless microscopic eggs. When facing the fire, these insects quickly formed clusters, protecting those at the center.
Apart from forming clusters, the insects’ eggs could quickly spore, adapting to harsh environments. After the fire, the spores rapidly returned to egg form, hatching into numerous tiny larvae. Although these larvae were too small to see, they retained flight abilities, invading the puppets’ bodies and rapidly reproducing, causing illness.
As Doro’s puppets succumbed to extreme pain, the charred remains of Adua began to crack, splitting into large fissures. From these cracks emerged a dense buzzing sound, and a massive swarm of dark insects poured out, spreading in all directions.
“Zzzzz…”
The number of insects pouring out of Adua was staggering, circling the sky and blocking the moonlight. Their collective mass far exceeded Adua’s own weight, yet the insect swarm continued to pour out of her shell.
At this moment, the skins of the fallen puppets burst open, releasing countless insects. Adua’s swarm had completely devoured Doro’s puppets and discovered Doro’s spiritual threads.
Capturing the spiritual threads within the puppets, Adua immediately infected them. Instantly, pathogens spread along the threads back to their source. Several figures collapsed nearby, covered in blisters and rashes.
These fallen figures were also Doro’s puppets. Doro no longer directly controlled frontline puppets, instead using them as gateways to layer-by-layer transfer control. Thus, when Adua followed the threads to infect, she initially encountered the lowest-level relayers.
After infecting several lower-level puppets, Adua realized they weren’t the true controllers. The real operators were elsewhere. She continued to infect upward through the network, spreading her pathogens.
Suddenly, puppets across the desert, under spiritual thread control, began to collapse, infected and falling ill. Doro immediately severed higher-level connections. She could not disconnect infected threads but could cut those unaffected.
With Doro’s spiritual threads severed, Adua continued to infect the network. Sensing the complex manipulation network merging, Adua discovered that all threads ultimately led to the same place. Just as she began to infect, the connection broke, yet she knew the location.
Adua confirmed that the entity controlling all spiritual threads was likely the mastermind behind the sinister plot. Though she couldn’t infect it, she located it nearby. In this situation, Adua wouldn’t let it escape!
Amidst the incessant buzzing, the massive insect swarm hovering over the rock suddenly moved, heading toward Adua’s target. Like a moving black wall, it resembled a colossal sandstorm, composed entirely of repulsive insects. It would consume any life in its path, growing ever larger.
With this massive swarm, Adua could devour every living thing in a city.
Adua’s insect swarm, like a plague, flew toward its destination. After some time, they spotted a fleeing figure in the endless sandstorm. The swarm descended en masse, enveloping the helpless figure in a torrent of insects. Countless bugs converged, drilling into his body to reproduce and consume his flesh.
While the ground below was being ravaged by the insect tide, high above in the clouds, a massive object floated silently.
It was a steel behemoth larger than contemporary airships, over four hundred meters long, with a slender shape resembling a noble’s coffin. Numerous complex steel appendages hung or clustered around the coffin-like main body. Sharp edges and thick spikes adorned the beast, making it appear terrifying in the darkness.
Under the cold moonlight, arcane religious symbols adorned the floating steel colossus. If viewed as a ship, it had dozens of differently sized g*n turrets lining its sides. On the coffin-shaped deck, two quadruple-barreled cannons were stacked haphazardly. Behind the cannons, a Gothic church-like bridge towered. Flags hanging from the bridge fluttered in the night breeze, adorned with countless scriptures.
At the front of the massive steel vessel, the armor-clad ram had opened, revealing a monstrous maw. Within the maw, a golden-yellow energy ball floated, its spiritual essence growing stronger with each passing moment.
Atop the steel warship, at the pinnacle of the church tower, a spectral white figure stood silently, gazing down indifferently.
“Holy Steel Ship – Extermination Nun, Purification Light ready, mode set to Roast, launch.”
In a cold tone, Sister Evi whispered. Immediately, the golden energy ball floating above the steel ship erupted with brilliant light.
The intensity of the light instantly illuminated the entire desert, turning the ship into a sun in the night. Large expanses of land turned bright as day.
Under this sudden blaze, the temperature of the cold desert sand rose sharply. Within seconds, it soared far beyond the daytime temperatures, breaking all local records.
Any organism exposed to this intense light, regardless of size, was instantly incinerated, turning to ashes. The flying insect swarm, akin to a tsunami, instantly transformed into a cloud of black smoke, disappearing in the blinding light. The exposed skin of the fallen puppets was instantly burned, bones cracking in the intense heat. The surface sand began to melt, forming pools of liquid.
In the intense, blinding light, all signs of life were easily destroyed and eradicated.
