Gawain slowly opened his eyes, but this time, he didn't see Amber's face that was leaning towards him.
A light snoring sound came from the side.
Looking down at the source of the snoring sound, he saw the sharp-eared half-elf lady lying on the desk with her hands under her head. She was fast asleep.
This guy, after falling asleep, he actually made people feel much more peaceful.
Gawain couldn't help but laugh. As soon as he moved, Hu Po, who was sleeping on the table, woke up with a start. He stared at Gawain and said, "Hey, you're finally back!"
Gwen opened his mouth and was about to say something when Amber followed up. "Hey, I'm telling you, I'm not slacking off. I'm just taking a nap. You can't deduct my salary for this. I'm very sensitive and alert even when I'm asleep …"
Gwen: "… I haven't said anything yet."
Sure enough, Amber's quietness was only limited to when she was asleep. Whenever she opened her eyes, the noise she made was definitely more than two thousand ducks.
"I'm just preparing the words in advance to prevent you from saying anything," Amber mumbled as she wiped the saliva from the corner of her mouth. She looked at Gwen up and down and frowned. "But then again, it's been a long time this time. What happened over there?"
"I followed Daniel to investigate something." Gwen nodded. At the same time, he began to replay the exploration experience in the depths of the mental network. The more he thought about it, the more he could not help but frown.
This exploration … had really gathered too much information, and most of it had left him dumbfounded!
"It seems that the harvest this time is not small?" Amber keenly noticed the subtle change in Gwen's expression. "And some things are quite troublesome?"
Gwen nodded slightly. "The situation is special. We need a meeting. We'll tentatively gather Kamel, Heti, Leit, Veronica, um … Pitman, and you too."
Amber silently memorized these names, and immediately noticed that most of these names were related to a certain field.
She raised her eyebrows, and the tips of her ears trembled slightly. "Is it related to the gods or the Disobedience Plan?"
"Okay," Gwen responded simply, then after a moment of thought, he ordered, "Also, go and investigate the recent abnormal casting signals recorded by the magic monitoring towers all over the southern border, especially the signals of dream-based theurgy, and the monitoring of all kinds of telepathic communications. In addition, there are also records of the investigation and arrest of the followers of Eternal Rest. "
"The Eternal Sleepers... You've almost wiped out all the Eternal Sleepers in the Southern Territory." Amber was a little puzzled. "There are magic monitoring towers everywhere. The low- and middle-level believers are basically tied to the water pipes of the Public Security Bureau by the district security team as soon as they step out of the door. You have 'special means' on your side. The higher-level believers have either been expelled or are under surveillance to collect intelligence. Why do you suddenly want to carry out a large-scale investigation?"
"We may have missed an important target," Gwen said with a serious expression. "A soul, an archbishop of Eternal Rest is hiding in the Southern Territory!"
As he spoke, the words that shocked him for a moment appeared in his mind:
Selena Geerfen, Archbishop (dead), female, soul.
Current location: Ansu/Amended/Cecil Empire - Southern Territory!!
"This target is not trivial. The ordinary security team is very likely to disturb her. Your MIB is secretive, so it's more suitable." Gwen took a deep breath and looked into Amber's eyes. "I'm not sure if you can really find her, but at least try. Her name is Selena Geerfen..."
...
Somewhere in the Typhon Empire, in an ancient underground facility, footsteps broke the silence in the dim corridor.
A middle-aged man in a white robe, with a gentle temperament and a monocle, walked in the long corridor covered with stone slabs and carved reliefs on both sides of the walls. Behind him were several priests of Eternal Rest in dark robes and owl masks.
This man was none other than Archbishop Yuri in the real world.
Compared with the "image" in the mental network, Yuri's temperament and clothes in the real world had not changed much. His image in the mental network was that of a young man, but in reality, he was middle-aged with some white hair on his head.
"Sigh... I'm going to rest," Archbishop Yuri could not help but complain on the way. "Archbishop Selena, have you forgotten that people in the real world need to rest?"
A flickering light suddenly appeared in the air, and Selena Geerfen appeared beside Yuri. The female archbishop in a white dress said indifferently, "You have enough sleep. In the current situation, too much rest is a waste."
Yuri could not help but look beside him and sighed helplessly.
He knew that Selena Geerfen was not in this corridor, not in this facility.
She was no longer in this world.
As early as hundreds of years ago, the former Saintess of the Church had died. In the chain reaction that led to the collapse of faith, she used her life to protect the sanity and souls of thousands of believers of the Church. Her body was torn apart by the power of God, and her soul was also torn apart.
It was Pope Meghul III who personally collected Selena Geerfen's broken soul and stored it in some kind of "container" in the dream plane.
To this day, the archbishop's soul was still transferred from one container to another, and her consciousness wandered in the mental network.
At this moment, the Selena in front of Yuri, as well as the Selena in the eyes of the priests behind him, was actually just a projection in their minds. The projection was so real that even as a transcendent at the peak of the high-order, Yuri could not distinguish the illusory part of the woman in front of him. Her voice, smell, light, shadow, color … everything was so real.
But if there was a person who was completely unaffected by the mental spell standing there, he would see that there was only Yuri and a few masked high-ranking priests in the corridor, and there was no so-called female archbishop at all.
"You are right, there is really no time for rest now." Archbishop Yuri shook his head and looked ahead with a hint of worry in his eyes. "This crisis is no small matter. If the truth is as you and I have guessed … then we have definitely made an almost irreparable mistake."
At the end of the long corridor, a door painted with many runes, inlaid with crystals and magical metals appeared in front of them. As Yuri and others approached, the door automatically and silently slid to the sides.
Behind the door was a brightly lit, extraordinarily spacious hall.
The hall was rectangular in shape, and inside it were neatly arranged square columns. Runes were shining on the surface of the columns, and light was flowing. A large number of vine-like "cables" wrapped around the columns. One end of the cables extended to the ceiling, and the other end spread out around the columns, leading to the neatly arranged spacious seats.
The chairs were distributed around the columns, forming independent areas. At this moment, about half of the areas were in a state of 'full' state. Sitting on the chairs were believers of the Eternal One in black robes with star pendants hanging on their collars. Some of the believers were leaning on the back of the chairs as if they had fallen into a deep sleep, while others were awake. But the nerve cables and runes behind the chairs were also shimmering.
While in the other half of the hall, the nerve cord behind the chair had been stripped out and extended to a corner of the hall. In that corner, there were several beds lined up, on top of which were several dozen members of the Church of Eternal in a state of slumber.
Some people in gray robes or brown robes were walking around the sleeping believers, taking care of their compatriots who could not wake up because of the contamination.
Seeing this scene, Yuri could not help but frown.
He walked towards the area where the beds were placed.
A tall, thin, blond priest came up and bowed respectfully. "Archbishop Selena, Archbishop Yuri."
Then he deliberately turned to Selena Geerfen. "Archbishop, I have increased the frequency of mental comfort as per your instructions. The condition of those people has stabilized."
This was a mid-level priest, and he did not have a high position in the church. Among the believers of this level, many did not even know that Archbishop Selena was actually dead. They could always see the latter appearing in the stronghold of the church, and sometimes even talk to her. Under the coverage of the sensory projection, Archbishop Selena was always a living person in their eyes.
Selina nodded at the middle-level cleric. As she walked forward slowly, she said casually, "Pay attention to the state of those nerve cables. The consciousness of these operators is now fragmented, and the fragments of their minds are deep in the depths of Sandbox No. 1. If there is a problem with the connection of the nerve cables … they won't be able to come back."
The blond priest bowed his head and replied, "Don't worry, we are very careful about this."
Yuri's eyes swept across the people lying on the beds.
Their faces were calm, and their breathing was steady, as if they were just sleeping in a long dream, but could not wake up. Artificial nerve cables extended from the back of their heads and connected to the pillars in the hall. On the surface of the nerve cables, the runes shimmered.
Most of the Eternal Sleepers were actually able to connect directly to the network through dream theurgy, but such a connection was not the most efficient. Therefore, in this "control hall," the operators needed to rely on physical nerve cords to connect to each other and integrate into the network.
These nerve cables were technology from the Universal Finality Society. It was not mature more than a decade ago, but in recent years, it had been improved a lot, and the negative effects were greatly reduced.
When Sandbox No. 1 went out of control and the pollution broke out from the inside, the operators who were directly connected to Sandbox No. 1 were hit in the 'physical connection' state. The weak brain protection of human beings was almost useless in the face of such an impact. The pollution occupied the minds of these compatriots almost instantly and used them as a springboard to enter the mental network.
Now, the contaminated ports of these operators had been blocked, and the overflow of Sandbox No. 1 no longer used them as a springboard. However, the pollution had spread to the Brainservant Array and several virtual connection ports. Even without these operators as a springboard, the connection between Sandbox No. 1 and the mental network could no longer be closed.
And these operators themselves were still tightly bound by Sandbox No. 1. Their consciousness was deep in the sandbox, and they could not wake up.
After a long silence, Yuri suddenly said, "If we go into their dreams, we may be able to directly observe the situation in Sandbox No. 1."
"But it is more likely that we will face the deepest pollution and end up like these people." Selena Geerfen shook her head. "The human mind cannot resist the information impact of that scale. After all, even the Transcendent experts are still essentially 'mortals'. "
Selena emphasized the word 'mortals'. Yuri couldn't help but frown.
"Archbishop Selena, do you think that what appeared in Sandbox No. 1 … is really …"
"It's still too early to say that. At least wait until we report the situation to His Holiness," Selena said. She raised her head and 'looked' at the end of the hall on the other side.
She did not have a pair of eyes that she could open in the real world, but here, she could 'see' everything here through the senses of the believers on the scene.
In that direction, there were rows of neatly arranged windows on the wall at the end of the hall. Through the crystal glass covering the windows, she could clearly see that there was another hall on the opposite side.
In that hall, there were more square columns, and each square column was surrounded by rectangular platforms.
A large number of unconscious' Brainservants' were lying on those platforms. Their cranial nerves were connected to the nerve network in the hall, and their bodies relied on various biomass pipes to carry out nutrient delivery and metabolic cycles.
"We originally wanted to create a beautiful dream …" Selena Geerfen sighed. "However, it will eventually become a nightmare."
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