Chapter 31 — Spoils of War and Clouds of Suspicion

After the bloodbath, the concave plaza of the Embers Camp was filled with scalding high-dimensional golden divine blood and the pungent, intense smell of electromagnetic gunsmoke. Dead silence and the fanaticism of victory intertwined in the air.

The [Golden Saint] heavy patrol boat, hovering in mid-air, having lost its divine core self-lock control, was forcefully pulled down by veteran Caleb leading dozens of mortal old miners who understood mechanics and high-frequency runes, risking their lives using dozens of heavy electromagnetic cables, anchoring it firmly in the center of the concave plaza.

This heavy patrol boat, a hundred meters long and forged entirely from pure gold alloy, had now become the greatest spoil of war since the establishment of the Mortal Vanguard!

"Hahahaha! Brothers! We're rich! We've truly trampled the gods beneath our feet this time! Gods aren't shit!"

Caleb's berserk roar echoed throughout the front cabin of the entire warship! The veteran's thick mechanical iron arm slapped heavily against the golden main console. That military electronic prosthetic eye spewed fanatical light. Several old miners nearby danced with excitement, hot tears welling in the corners of their eyes.

"This patrol boat is not only equipped with a miniature Akashic computing main furnace, but it also has three whole crates of high-density holy golden armor plates! If we melt down this high-dimensional alloy, we can forge a complete set of overloaded electromagnetic armor for every single mortal warrior! We won't have to fear the gods raining down gravity bombardments anymore! And the thermomelt crystal cores in the main cannons are enough for our entire camp to use for years!"

Dozens of mortal warriors cheered and flooded into the warship, cutting battle lances, carrying energy storage batteries. Excitement and fanaticism filled the entire cabin. The old miners wielded cutting torches, arcs of light flashing as they cut golden decks piece by piece from the lofty pure gold bulkheads. The mortals who had suffered endless torment deep underground in the past were now dismantling the blood and bones of a god's warship!

And beside the main holographic console, several astrologers were physically docking the [Orbit-breaking Astrolabe] with the ship's main brain data interface, continuously retrieving information about the jurisdictions under their command from the Heavenly Realm's military database.

On the holographic streaming disc, rows of deep blue law runes rolled down like a waterfall, displaying the troop deployments, patrol trajectories of the Aries Lord's legion, as well as the baptism records of the various mining planets in the lower realm. The hologram marked hundreds of low-dimensional deadzone planets across the entire 6th Star Zone, each bearing a countdown to resource depletion and population purging.

Caleb's expression suddenly became unprecedentedly serious. He projected a newly decrypted high-dimensional top-secret military order from Aries into the air:

"We've caught the dark secret of the Aries Lord overstepping his authority! Gar leading his squad to descend on the blind spot for a massacre this time wasn't approved by the Inner Cabinet of Chief Gods and the 6th House Lord Asclepius at all! It was the Aries Lord secretly mobilizing his trusted divine envoys to act beyond his authority!"

Caleb pointed at the cold microscopic ledgers in the military order, his voice filled with anger and shock:

"That dog Aries Lord has secretly been embezzling 30% of the [High-density High-dimensional Star-marrow Divine Ore] in the Tartarus mining zone for years, hiding it from the Heavenly Cabinet to secretly expand his own private divine army! And that black box you guys dug up, Elias, not only recorded the physical data of the mining zone's collapse, but perfectly recorded all the hard evidence of him secretly embezzling divine ore and falsifying accounts! Once the black box falls into the hands of the 6th House's inspecting Lord Asclepius, the Aries Lord will face the severe punishment of being stripped of his divinity and impeached as a heavy minister! That's why he frantically sent Gar to secretly infiltrate the Deadzone beyond his authority, to snatch back the black box and kill all of us mortal witnesses to silence us!"

Elias stared at the glaring scarlet Aries absolute kill order on the holographic image, his palm clenching slightly.

Through this decrypted military order, the massive dark curtain and five-tiered power structure of the Divine Court's rule over the universe were bloodily displayed before mortals for the very first time. The God King Jupiter led the Inner Cabinet to wield heavenly principles, the Twin Gods hung independently in the Sanctum, the Twelve Zodiac Lords controlled the military, and the Twelve House Lords managed political affairs. In this utterly cold, high-dimensional order, the Aries Lord embezzling divine ore and expanding his army in violation of rules was a major crime in itself. And the ulterior motives and rifts in interests between the Lords and House Lords, between the military and civil officials, were the only path to survival for mortals seeking life amidst death! The Aries Lord's frantic attempt to silence witnesses and cover up his crimes precisely proved that the high-and-mighty gods were not invulnerable!

"Gods also fear corruption scandals being exposed. Gods also scheme against each other internally." Elias's voice was low as iron. "As long as there are rifts in interests, it means they are absolutely not invincible. Aries acting privately and overstepping his authority means he's even hiding it from the Heavenly Cabinet, and might not even dare report Gar's death to the Cabinet. This is our best breathing room and opportunity to develop!"

After delegating the tasks of cleaning up the battlefield and dismantling the holy armor, Elias took a packet of medicated gauze, walked off this spoil-of-war warship, stepped over the messy ground of golden divine blood and broken divine lances, and arrived at a quiet explosion-proof cabin in the inner layer of the camp. A faint kerosene lamp burned inside.

Under the crude explosion-proof light, the girl Lyra sat on a scrap iron stool, head lowered, using gauze to wipe the silver powder staining her fingertips. The girl's delicate body bore quite a few dark bruises left by gravitational squeezing. Her long hair was soaked, clinging to her pale cheeks, making her look somewhat weak and pitiful. The fierce battle just now had exhausted her physical and mental strength.

"Don't move. I'll apply medicine for you." Elias walked over, smoothly crouching down in front of the girl, and gently untied her injured wrist.

The girl obediently let Elias apply the medicine for her. Under the bleak light, those large, bright black eyes of hers watched the boy's profile, her eye sockets turning slightly red. The warm body temperature transmitted from the boy's fingertips dispelled the coldness and numbness from her delicate body.

"Elias..."

Lyra spoke softly, her voice carrying a trace of suppressed trembling and weakness: "Actually... just now when the divine envoys descended, seeing Gar swing his gravity halberd to slice open the defense line, seeing so many comrades die tragically on the spot... I was really scared. I was afraid all our efforts were a laughable, futile struggle, and I was even more afraid... of losing you. Even in my dreams, I fear seeing you fall in the mud."

Speaking up to here, tears sparkled on the girl's long eyelashes. She mustered her courage, reaching out that slender hand covered in medicinal ointment, and gently held Elias's large palm, full of blood and calluses, in the night wind. Her small canine teeth gently bit her lower lip, her eyes full of unreserved attachment and love.

"But as long as I see you standing in front of me... as long as I see your battle knife still swinging, I feel that as long as I follow behind you, even if I die on this wasteland, there's nothing to regret. Where you are is where my astrolabe points. Even if the Divine Court is going to crush us, I want to die by your side."

The attachment, sincerity, and unreserved deep affection in the girl's tone radiated an incredibly warm light in the cold, cruel Deadzone night. On this precarious wasteland, this frail girl had entrusted her everything to the boy before her.

Elias's gaze softened. Looking at the earnest face of the girl who resembled his dead sister Aira, he slowly grasped the girl's ice-cold hand in return. He gently wiped the mud from her cheeks with his thumb, his tone as steady as a massive mountain: "With me here, I won't let you die here. Trust me. I will lead you all out of this Deadzone."

After applying the medicine, Elias gently pushed open the explosion-proof door and left the cabin. Stepping on cold broken iron and mud, the boy walked step by step to the shadows of a waste pressure station at the highest edge of the camp. The blizzard beat against his burning face.

The night wind howled. Pale purple moonlight shone on the ruins.

Deep in the shadows of the massive iron tower, "Vespera," wearing a rough cloth dress, stood quietly in the gale. Her thin dress spiraled in the wind, her entire being as cold as a ghost independent of this low-dimensional wasteland.

Elias stopped his steps. The boy's right hand tightly gripped the handle of the heavy industrial cutting knife at his waist. Those bloodshot, bright black eyes stared dead at "Vespera"'s profile like sharp blades. The boy breathed heavily, the scars on his back faintly burning.

"Just now, when Gar threw his spear..."

Elias's voice was low, his tone suppressing a violent suspicion and collision like a volcano about to erupt:

"You flicked out that strand of black light. Gar's right arm and golden spear evaporated and melted into absolute zero-waste nothingness in an instant."

The boy took a step forward, the Anomaly negative energy on his body faintly roaring, every word seeming to be smashed out from between his teeth:

"That black pulse frequency band... is entirely identical in physical microscopic architecture to the world-destroying black light that descended from the high sky of the Tartarus main continent ten days ago, wiping out my sister Aira and our entire home! There is no microscopic deviation whatsoever!"

"Who exactly are you?! What purpose do you have coming here?! What conspiracy do you have in approaching us?!"

Facing the boy's violent questioning that seemed ready to tear her soul apart, "Vespera" did not shed tears, nor did she retreat. She simply slowly stopped her steps.

The night wind tore at her thin dress, the pale purple moonlight shining on her pale and cold face. Facing the battle knife held half an inch from her throat, spewing pitch-black killing intent, those eyes of hers, pitch-black as the night, remained as calm as a ten-thousand-year-old pool of stagnant water.

"The black light frequency band, you say."

Her voice was plain and cold, lacking the slightest hint of a sob or weakness, nor the high-and-mighty mockery of a god. There was only an almost indifferent narration.

She extended her slender, ice-cold palm. At an extremely close distance, she casually tossed a few tiny, black crystalline fragments onto a waste gas iron barrel, emitting a soft clack. The surface of the fragments faintly pulsed with a dead, residual amplitude.

"That's the black crystal residue I peeled from the slag when you rescued me from the escape pod ruins." The girl looked at him indifferently, her eyes cold. "The underground of the Deadzone is filled with traces baptized by high-dimensional disasters. Any deflection force field that strikes these irradiated hard-core slag fragments will erupt with residual black energy reactions. You've been in Tartarus for so long, can you really not even distinguish the residual reaction of matter soaked in dark energy radiation? Based solely on a physical echo, you think I'm a god?"

The fingers the boy used to grip the knife tightened slightly, his eyes wavering violently.

"Vespera" looked calmly at the battle knife that was almost slicing her hair. Her tone had no fluctuations, but instead carried a chilling coldness that struck straight to the heart:

"If a god possessing the power to level planets was truly standing here, she wouldn't stand here freezing, wouldn't let you draw away her body heat in the middle of the night, and certainly wouldn't let you point this industrial battle knife at her neck."

"As for you wanting to swing that knife—"

She slightly tilted her head, her pitch-black eyes looking directly into Elias's bloodshot, bright black eyes, plainly spitting out the final sentence:

"Your knife is right here. If venting your anger on a mortal who can't even walk steadily brings you peace of mind, you can stab down right now."

The night wind howled and spiraled among the ruins.

Elias stared at the slag fragments pulsing with residual radiation on the iron plate, then looked at this girl with a pale face, a cold gaze, yet absolutely unyielding. The physical data from the black box instantly flashed through his mind—just as she said, the matter in the core disaster zone was indeed severely polluted by high-dimensional dark energy, and under high-pressure collisions, it indeed released brief micro-pulses of radiation.

The boy's hand gripping the battle knife trembled. The berserk killing intent melted away bit by bit before the cold facts and the girl's calm, fearless gaze.

He looked at his battle knife suspended in mid-air, which had almost pierced his companion's throat, and only felt a tide of extreme absurdity and self-blame well up in his heart.

Clang—!

Elias violently sheathed his knife. The sound of clashing metal seemed exceptionally piercing in the dead-silent night sky.

The boy took a deep breath, suppressing the surging blood qi in his chest. Pressing his faintly throbbing forehead, he closed his bloodshot eyes.

"I'm sorry... I was too sensitive." Elias's voice was hoarse, carrying deep exhaustion and self-blame. "I shouldn't have used the Deadzone's residual reactions... to suspect you."

"Vespera" did not press further, nor did she say anything more. She simply calmly lowered her eyelids, casually tugging at her freezing clothes. The instant she lowered her head, a coldness and glimmer that others could absolutely never detect flashed through her deep, pitch-black pupils.

The night wind gradually calmed down. Elias wiped the bloodstains from his face, turned around, and stood guard beside her. The storm and suspicion before his eyes had temporarily subsided, but the causality of fate had already quietly intertwined amidst the sky-filling blizzard.