Chapter Ninety-Three: Separated by Life and Death

On the lookout tower of the base, three figures emerged from the air.

Qin Le, Aulina, and Emeya stared at the scene in the distance, each of them somewhat stunned.

Qin Le, having received the message, had rushed here at once through Emeya’s miraculous ability to move instantaneously. He had not expected things to be even more shocking than they had imagined.

“Emeya, what is that?” Qin Le asked, pointing at the corpses kneeling far away.

Everything before his eyes had already surpassed his understanding, and even exceeded the limits of what the New Law could explain. A mob of refugees who seemed to have lost their souls, and more than a hundred corpses that could move—this had already entered the realm of the truly supernatural.

At first glance those corpses looked like ghouls, but in truth they were entirely different. According to the New Law’s research, although ghouls had human shape, they were not human; from the inside out, they were made up of countless strange black worms.

After numerous impact tests and repeated dissections of ghouls, the New Law had already gained a preliminary understanding of the creature. When a ghoul was injured, only the worms in that part would be revealed; they would not decay the way these corpses were decaying now.

“Malevolent spirits.” Emeya’s expression returned to calm. “A very low-grade kind of evil spirit, somewhere between a ghoul and a human. They have the power of ghouls, but not their healing ability. At their current state, it won’t be long before they rot away completely. If their fixation is deep enough, they might even become undead skeletons.”

With the keen sight innate to elves, Emeya made out the corpses kneeling on the ground.

Humans were truly strange creatures. Their spirituality was the lowest of all races, and their overall proportion of superhuman practitioners was miserable beyond words, yet they always managed to produce things that defied common sense.

“Fixation?” Qin Le mused over the unfamiliar term. A direct translation would be something like spiritual longing, remembrance, obsession.

By their explanation, it was called fixation.

“Why did they become like this? Could it be cultists?”

Ghouls were usually linked to cultists. As for how cultists produced them, the New Law had conducted extensive research but still had not figured it out. If this was something between a ghoul and a human, then perhaps cultists were involved as well.

“From what I can see, it probably has nothing to do with those maniacs. They would never look twice at such shoddy half-finished trash.” Emeya once again fell back on her old trade, serving as a living repository of impossible knowledge.

“This kind of evil spirit is the lowest grade. Though still dangerous, it can be killed by non-sacred powers—that is, even an ordinary iron sword can hack it to death. As for how it takes shape, that still hasn’t been fully understood. But according to the Mystics’ Society, the core of its formation is fixation. When a thought or longing grows strong enough, it can borrow the power of the other world.”

“The Mystics’ Society has given names to some of these conscious forms. One born of gluttony is called a glutton-spirit; one born of hatred is a grudge-spirit; one born of obsession is an obsession-spirit... Most legends about malevolent spirits refer to these low-level kinds. But these ones are a little off.”

Emeya stroked her chin, a faint light flickering in her eyes. The longer she observed the evil spirits, the more she sensed something strange about them.

First, these people still seemed to retain a basic degree of reason. That was something only high-level ghouls could do. And they had also violated a common rule: after death, spirits forget what they were in life, keeping only one part out of ten.

In other words, whether ghouls, evil spirits, ghosts, or even liches and necromancers, they were no longer the original person in truth, only malevolent beings retaining a certain amount of memory.

Could the Mystics’ Society’s research have been mistaken?

“Fixation...” Qin Le looked thoughtful. Sure enough, this world was thoroughly unreasonable.

Conviction could give rise to great power and interfere with reality; faith could grant power from gods; fixation could turn one into something akin to a ghoul.

Could something imagined become power? And if so, where did that power come from?

“Their fixation is children.” Aulina raised her hand and pointed into the distance.

A flash of realization lit Emeya’s eyes. “Children? Hmm... if that’s the case, then it explains why this happened. They were already dead long ago; there’s no such thing as reason in the ordinary sense. But for so many to share the same fixation—that is truly rare.”

If those evil spirits were fixated on the children in their arms, then it also made sense why they had not harmed them, but had instead carried them all the way here.

Wait, no... with human spirituality so dim and ignorant, even the strongest fixation could not sustain these decaying bodies.

Light blazed in Emeya’s eyes. A nameless sanctity spread over her, like a silver moon of purity in the night.

“These evil spirits have already burned themselves out completely. Their spirits are on the brink of death; there is no great danger. I’ll leave for a moment to verify something.”

With that, Emeya vanished from where she stood.

...

Aircraft circled overhead. Armored fighting vehicles halted a kilometer away. An armored transport came racing in from the distance and stopped within a hundred paces of the corpses.

With a click, the doors opened, and soldiers in protective suits stepped down one by one.

Aulina walked at the front, each step deliberate, her expression solemn. Her eyes shone with spiritual light, and her heart was filled with pity and vigilance.

Upon close inspection, the New Law soldiers discovered that the missing flesh from these corpses had not been bitten away; rather, it looked as if it had been gouged out and torn off by force.

Coming to the first corpse, they could tell from the length of the hair and the shape of the chest that it had been a woman.

“Leave it to me. He’ll grow up healthy and well.”

Aulina gently took the child in both hands. The ruin of a body in front of her released its grip in turn, and a hideous smile spread across the half-rotten face.

“Th-thank you... thank you...”

The corpse let out a voice that was grotesquely unpleasant, as though a lump of thick phlegm had lodged in its throat.

It kept repeating those words, woodenly.

“Mom...”

At that moment, the boy opened his eyes and weakly called for his mother.

At first glance, the one holding him was a strange blonde-haired older sister, not his mother.

The boy looked around, using his scant strength to search for her, and finally fixed his gaze on the terrible monster kneeling on the ground.

That monster was smiling at him now, smiling in a ghastly, familiar way.

It should have been a sight that would make him burst into tears, yet for some reason the boy remained strangely calm, and called out almost as if guided by something beyond him, “Mom...”

The corpse on the ground held that ugly smile and said, “Live... live... well.”

“Mom?” The boy seemed to realize something. He began to struggle, reaching out again and again toward his mother, his calls growing louder and louder.

Yet his frail body had no strength at all; he could barely speak without wheezing, much less break free from the embrace of a superhuman.

“Your mother is dead already.”

Aulina lowered her eyes and, ignoring the boy’s struggle, turned and walked toward the medical transport behind her.

When a person dies, it is like a lamp going out; the living and the dead shall never meet again.

Perhaps it was cruel, but these pitiful children had to face reality. Sometimes a kind lie only brought harm. A long pain was not better than a short one.

“Mom, Mom...”

The farther he was carried from his mother, the louder the boy cried.

By then, the reception workers in protective suits had also taken children from the other corpses. Some were still unconscious; others had awakened and, like the boy, kept calling for their parents.

Weak, shrill cries rose and fell one after another. Broken corpses knelt upon the desert, motionless.

Watching her child be carried farther and farther away, the woman’s ugly smile slowly faded, and a tear that should never have existed slid down her face.

“Don’t leave Mom...”

The scene dimmed further, until the whole world sank into endless darkness.

When the wind blew, the remains fell.

The breath supporting those corpses finally scattered, and in that instant they truly became corpses.

As the bodies collapsed, the other refugees, like wandering puppets, also fell to the ground. Yet they did not become corpses; most were still alive.

The reception personnel responsible for emergency care departed in armored vehicles. Immediately after, another group of people in protective suits descended from several transport vehicles that had been left nearby.

“Recovery begins.”

One broken body after another was loaded into the heavy cargo holds of the transports.

[4-03: Corpse of Fixation]

...

On the way back to the base, the children briefly regained consciousness, then quickly fainted again.

The reception personnel gave them the most basic emergency care to ensure none were in mortal danger. At the same time, they used silver needles to test each child individually, making certain that no evil spirits or other strange things had slipped in.

...

Elsewhere, under the New Law’s arrangements, a large group of workers led refugees while carrying the unconscious people back to the outside of the base.

Some were brought into the base as observation samples; most were left outside to receive the most basic treatment.

Whether they lived or died depended entirely on themselves. If they could not endure it, then they could only be burned.

...

The world was a riot of colors. One looked out and saw the entire world like a giant vat, filled with dyes of every hue. Those colors interwove with one another, creating a strange, twisted distortion.

Within such a distorted world, one slender and beautiful figure stood out with startling clarity.

Emeya stood in that world as though she were its very center.

“So that’s how it is. Truly astonishing.” Emeya looked in wonder at the tiny specks of starlight in her palm.

The white specks flickered on and off; when separated, they faded completely, and when gathered together, they became points of starlight.

The spirituality of ordinary people, which ought to have been hidden by the other world, was now being tugged by these strange star-white lights, wavering back and forth between ignorance and awakening.

Suddenly, the specks of starlight in her hand began to dim further. Emeya hurriedly took out a small cloth pouch filled with scarlet-gold coins.

She scattered all the coins from the pouch. Gleaming coins drifted through the air, faint lines visible upon their surfaces.

“The scarlet gold I swindled from that fool Qin Le is finally coming in handy.”

The floating coins suddenly flared to life, erupting with astonishing spirituality. One after another, mysterious patterns extended outward, and a vast, repeating corridor slowly took shape.

“I see. I understand. I create.”

A cool voice rang through heaven and earth. The twisted sky churned like a storm-tossed sea.

Emeya’s aura kept rising. Her lush green hair was dyed by ink, turning black little by little from the tips upward. Those beautiful eyes, like emeralds, burst with astonishing spirituality and became pupils like silver moons.

Boom!

The specks of starlight in her hand shattered with a sharp crack. They had already burned themselves out; no matter how miraculous the power, it could not restore something that had been destined to vanish.

The starlight was gone, but the patterns remained.

Then blood began to flow from Emeya’s eyes, her mouth, her nose, even her ears. Her exquisite features turned terribly frightening.

Staring at the mysterious lines in her palm, Emeya remained silent for a long while. At last, she squeezed out a few words with great difficulty.

“My scarlet gold... what a colossal loss!”

After all that effort, after stealing... cough, borrowing so much power from the goddess, she had actually produced this useless trifle.

Where was she supposed to find that many spirits whose fixations could shake the other world? Was she expected to go hunt down church believers?