Enforcer Manual
Chapter 593: Purgatory_1

Chapter 593: Chapter 593: Purgatory_1

Song Lan had encountered a problem more thorny than losing a shoe in battle. After the First Army Corp commander turned his body around, his gaze was inevitably drawn to the eyeball on the commander’s back.

The eyeball gazed back at them in the same manner.

This made the atmosphere within the team somewhat suffocating.

At the moment, the First Army Corp commander, weapon in hand, walked proudly at the very front of the team, only a few steps ahead of them. The three following him were all sizing up the eyeball that had grown on his back.

One thing was certain, when they had seen the First Army Corp commander in the "mine" just before, there definitely had not been such an odd thing growing on his back.

Everything had happened after the baptism of the blood pool.

Taking into account the information the First Army Corp commander had provided them, it was not difficult to guess that he had gone through a process similar to Yeying’s before landing.

He had said that only those with a will of steel could resist the invasion of those whispers, which made Song Lan somewhat unsure whether the other party’s current state could be considered resistant to the contamination.

In the eyes of others, the First Army Corp commander was in a delicate state of having mutated, yet not fully mutated.

His consciousness and thoughts were clear, and his goal was as unequivocal as ever—he needed to find the Archbishop Helifis hiding in this world and personally put an end to this drawn-out war.

Song Lan didn’t know if the First Army Corp commander was aware that he had already been afflicted, but when he tactfully asked if the other wanted to rest for a while, he was refused on the grounds that "Why sleep long while alive? In death, one shall sleep forever."

For the third time, Song Lan stopped Yeying with a glance, who was itching to move forward and touch the First Army Corp commander’s back, the way she looked, it appeared she wanted to put the strange large eyeball into her mouth to taste its composition.

Although it was somewhat unkind to say, the appearance of this eyeball had pushed Yeying’s memory of being awakened by whispers to the back of her mind, and also helped Song Lan to recover from his melancholy over losing one shoe.

He tried to sense remotely with Spiritual Energy, but the results were minimal.

He was not a doctor, and support type abilities had always been his weak point, especially when even a real battlefield medic arriving on the scene would find it hard to diagnose a genetically modified soldier. They were, after all, life forms that had undergone genetic modifications, and had merged with their external skeletal armor. Strictly speaking, they could no longer be called human.

The only progress Song Lan made was that the strange eyeball was one with the First Army Corp commander—it was a part of his body. If they rashly attempted to remove it, it could likely cause unpredictable harm to the First Army Corp commander.

"How far are we from Helifis?"

After a prolonged silence, the First Army Corp commander asked Yeying.

He always had an uneasy premonition because there had been no encounters with any enemies on the way from the village to this place. It seemed even the aberrant constructs could not reach this world. He had expected Helifis would try everything to wear them down.

From the current situation, it seemed Helifis might be patiently waiting for their arrival not far ahead.

This meant she had absolute confidence in the upcoming battle.

"It’s right ahead, the distance is closing."

Yeying was somewhat distracted; it was as if a little cat was incessantly scratching at her heart.

For her, encountering an unprecedented phenomenon and having to suppress her curiosity was a real agony.

"What place is this?"

In order to divert the attention of the three people from the eyeballs behind the First Army Corp commander, Lu Xiang changed the subject, "Does the bottom level of the ’mining pit’ connect to a separate world?"

She had never heard of a place with skies shrouded in blood-red, land as scorching as hot sand, and the black, barren, and desolate ground that existed in the world.

Moreover, theoretically, this world should not exist.

The "mining pit" was not formed on the first day; since before the end of the Third War, it had been an important mining site for the former Third Neutral Country. It is recorded that when nuclear bombs descended upon this country, a considerable number of people took refuge deep in the "mining pit." Most of them survived the explosions and even established some basic living infrastructure within the "mining pit."

Before the outbreak of the commercial and religious wars, there were many records about the "mining pit." People had almost explored every corner inside, but they found no records of the blood pool, let alone the world that exists beneath the blood pool.

Lu Xiang was almost certain that both the blood pool and the world below were formed after the Lunar Eclipse Sect designated this place as forbidden land.

Could it be...

That this place is an independent space corresponding to the upper world?

This thought suddenly emerged in Lu Xiang’s mind.

Song Lan described the scenery of the upper world as the vast and boundless universe, a place that seemingly only pure Consciousness Entities could reach. However, when she asked for more details about the upper world, Song Lan could not explain clearly.

He just said that the upper world at least does not exist in any place currently known to mankind.

"This is purgatory, the homeland of all aberrant constructs,"

the First Army Corp commander said without looking back.

"Purgatory? Do you believe in theology?"

Lu Xiang had of course heard of purgatory, but it was not an actual place. Both the doctrine of the Lunar Eclipse Sect and the religions that existed before the Third War spoke of purgatory. They believed in the existence of an afterlife, and purgatory was deemed the dwelling place for souls of great evil.

She speculated that the initial descriptions of purgatory were probably intended to warn believers not to commit evil, as souls sent there would suffer eternal torment.

"Even the doctrines of the Lunar Eclipse Sect are based on something. All descriptions of purgatory were personally completed by Helifis,"

Within the Barrosa Group, there is a department specifically dedicated to studying the doctrines of the Lunar Eclipse Sect. Their daily work involves stripping away all the exaggerated, empty theological parts of the doctrine to study the essence and intent it seeks to convey. The researchers believe that many of Helifis’s ideas likely originated from revelations of Consciousness Entities.

She claimed that she and the saints were the only ones who could heed these revelations.

If Helifis did not lie, then the reason the saints could directly listen to Consciousness Entities was due to the degree to which they were "parasitized" and their proximity to the brink of purgatory.

"If this truly is purgatory, there should be aberrant constructs everywhere."

Lu Xiang looked around; they had been walking for so long, yet they had found not one soul of great evil in purgatory, which was almost impossible in the year 2167.

Because according to those initial descriptions of purgatory, at least one-third of the world’s population would have their souls dragged into purgatory after death.

"On the contrary,"

the First Army Corp commander said, "The doctrine of the Lunar Eclipse Sect believes that everyone’s soul will go to purgatory after death, and what they aim to do is to save these miserable souls from purgatory, allowing them to return to the embrace of the ’Father God.’"