It was the sixth day of the ultimate test.
"I suddenly feel that something is wrong with the test."
As usual, Chu Zhiyun was chewing a lollipop and learning the soap operas from the Imperium from Tang Ka as she always did. For some reason, she suddenly blurted out those words.
"W-What?"
Thangka was almost scared out of her wits. She looked around subconsciously, fearing that a few pairs of eyes would show up somewhere. "W-What's wrong? What did you find?"
"I don't know. I just don't feel good. The Children of Holy Light have the keenest instincts. Don't you find it weird?"
Chu Zhiyun sat on an indoor swing and raised her legs. "Few candidates have entered the town with us in the past two days. The whole city is awfully quiet."
"Then … they've all been eliminated, haven't they?"
Thangka thought for a moment and said, "The elimination rate in the ultimate test is very high in the first place!"
"That's exactly the problem."
Chu Zhiyun was deep in thought. "If the elimination rate in the ultimate test is always so high, and only one in a hundred people can become a 'Purger', why are there so many people in the purge troop?"
"Well …"
Thangka blinked. "It does make sense. That's a big problem."
"Of course it is. Think about it. There are only slightly more than a thousand candidates in the ultimate test. If more than half of them are eliminated, only one or two hundred of them can become 'Purgers'. However, there are at least three thousand purge troops near us."
Chu Zhiyun counted with her fingers and calculated for Thangka. "Also, they are only part of the purge troop. It's impossible that all the Purgers are here to watch 'rookies' like us, right? Most of the Purgers are responsible for purging the entire planet. Then, how many of them are there?
"If the purge troop is made up of the Children of Holy Light like us, there won't be enough people!"
Chu Zhiyun was more and more adept at pretending to be a native of the Imperium. She could even say such a term as' rookies' easily.
"That does seem to be the case …"
Thangka recalled Li Yao's words and smiled both sorrowfully and awkwardly. "There are probably other Children of Holy Light, but we don't know them yet."
"Is that so?"
Chu Zhiyun tapped her nose softly and mumbled, "All in all, I just feel that everything is weird. I don't like our life right now. I don't like the world we grew up in.
"In such a life, all the worlds we grew up in are nothing more than tiny starships, and all the 'facts' we accept are illusions. We receive orders from the mentors and the president through our portable crystal processors, and the mentors and the president receive orders from the captains, and the captains receive orders from the Ultimate Benevolence Masters on another starship in the depths of the sea of stars through the mainframe crystal processors of the starships.
"But nobody ever explained the meaning of the orders to us, and nobody told us how to realize our destiny of 'awakening the gods' step by step. We simply obeyed the uncanny orders from uncanny places in our ignorance. Is that really piety for the gods?
"Let's talk about the past twenty years, or rather, since we were born.
"From the moment we were born, a voice that claimed to be the Ultimate Benevolence Masters told us the will of the gods, that we should worship and obey the gods unconditionally, and that the only significance of our lives was to awaken the gods. Under the blessings of the gods, we would certainly become the sharpest sabers in the sea of stars, invincible and invincible. The devils haunted by extraterrestrial devils were no match for us at all!
"But is that really the case? You and I both know that it is absolutely not. Before we were born, the Imperium of True Human Beings had already invaded our land that was blessed by the gods. In only twenty years, they took away almost a hundred Sectors. A hundred Sectors!
"If we were truly blessed by the gods, why would we have suffered such a huge setback?
"The people above, in order to stop the Imperium of True Human Beings from marching forward, did not hesitate to destroy all the facilities on hundreds of resource planets in dozens of Sectors and established a 'scorched earth defense line'!
"Isn't … Isn't such an action even more outrageous than the people of the Imperium?
"The worlds that took us hundreds of years and countless generations to build up, the rich and prosperous lands, are the best gifts that we can offer to the gods. They should belong to the gods. What right do we have to burn them to the ground?
"Ever since we were born, the fleets of the Holy League seemed to have been retreating, retreating, and retreating. We were transferred from one starship to another, but the space was narrower and narrower, and the resources were more and more scarce. I'm told that there were more and more 'polluters' in the Holy League. It was not until today that we made a minor counterattack and reoccupied Black Castle in the Thick Soil Sector.
"But you've seen the wretched state of this planet with your own eyes. 99% of the area has turned into a desolate, barren, and unpopulated area full of pollution and radiation. It was not done by the people of the Imperium who were invaded by the extraterrestrial devils but by us. Why did we do all that?"
"You're thinking too much."
Naturally, Thangka could not answer those questions. She could only reply drily, "It's about the strategy of the entire universe. The Ultimate Benevolence Masters have their own plans. It's not our turn to worry about them."
"I don't believe it. I find it more and more difficult to believe the Ultimate Benevolence Masters, whom I've only heard of but never met."
Chu Zhiyun suddenly jumped off from the swing. "I suddenly feel that you're right. The Ultimate Benevolence Masters might not want me to point out their mistakes. They might be … infuriated."
"Then —"
Thangka thought for a moment and asked, "What are you going to do?"
"I don't know."
The seemingly mature girl was confused for the first time. She mumbled, "If the gods have given me the mission to point out the mistakes of the Ultimate Benevolence Masters, I have to accomplish the mission no matter what. I can't be sent to the holy temple to purge all my thoughts and memories. Absolutely not."
She paced back and forth like ants on a hot pan.
Thangka was secretly anxious for her monitor, too. She was even more desperate.
Just as the young man and woman were in a daze, something unexpected happened.
After a clang, a row of shelves far away suddenly fell over, and the dazzling goods rolled on the ground.
The noise was as deafening as thunder.
Of course, the shelves wouldn't have fallen over for no reason, unless somebody touched them by accident.
Thangka had locked the only door tightly, and nobody could've snuck in without alarming anyone. They should've been the only ones in such a spacious supermarket.
"Who's there?"
Thangka and Chu Zhiyun looked at each other. They hurried to grab their daggers and storm bolters and dashed toward the overturned shelves.
Their hair was standing on end. They both knew the consequences if they were seen in such a state. It was not necessary to identify dangerous goods.
The shelves in front of them were overturned one after another. A dark figure ran very quickly and gradually escaped to the corner of the supermarket.
This was not a shopping area, but a freezer area where the staff loaded and unloaded goods.
Because part of the energy supply of the supermarket was cut off during the fierce battle, the frost in the freezer melted gradually in the following days. Even the frozen food inside was gradually rotting, and the stench was overwhelming. Thangka and Chu Zhiyun were unwilling to come here. They only searched the place hastily at the beginning and did not check every corner of the freezer.
It was not until this moment that they realized that someone was hiding in the freezer!
"Come out!"
Thangka bellowed. She aimed the storm bolter at the door of the freezer, moved it slightly to the side, and pulled the trigger.
"Boom!"
Although he had adjusted the output to the minimum, the wall next to the door of the freezer was still dented. The door frame was so deformed that it could not be closed at all.
The person was trying to close the door, but the door was squeaking no matter how hard she tried. Because of her large and fat body, cans of food and bottles of water were falling out of her clothes one after another.
"Don't move, or I'll kill you!"
Thangka tried to put on a ferocious look.
"Don't. Don't shoot. There are children inside. Children!"
The person shrieked in desperation and pushed open the door of the freezer helplessly.
Thangka and Chu Zhiyun shone the lights of their portable crystal processors at the person at the same time. The pale light illuminated the face of a middle-aged woman whose skin and flesh were all drooping. She was soaked in sweat, as if she had just been fished out of a swamp.
"Wa! Wa! Wa! Wa! "
The cries of a baby were echoing from the depths of the freezer behind her!
Thangka and Chu Zhiyun were both shocked. Looking at each other in bewilderment, they did not know what to do.
"Don't kill us. Please. We are not soldiers. There are no soldiers here. There are only me and my daughter. Let us go, or capture me and save my daughter!"
The terrified, hideous middle-aged woman suddenly kneeled in front of Thangka and Chu Zhiyun!
-----
Let me tell you a piece of very unfortunate news.
Old Niu was hospitalized.
His ankles were swollen to the size of basketballs due to infectious arthritis. He was crying for his parents and could barely walk without crutches. After he was checked in the hospital, the doctor said that he might develop sepsis if he was not treated. He had to be hospitalized immediately.
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