In the desert night, cold winds howled, and sand swirled. Within an oasis in the ancient desert city of Bastis, in a small grove, the Corpse Puppets Ed and Neff, controlled by Dorothy, were in a hidden spot. Dorothy was performing precise treatment on a Savior Descends Faction member rescued by Neff, using materialized spiritual threads.
This afternoon, when Vanya was confronting the residents of Bastis and the people from the Order of Rot, she used her powerful life sensing ability to detect that one of the Savior Sect members nailed to the city gate was not entirely dead, showing very faint signs of life. After Vanya returned from her confrontation with those people, she informed Dorothy of this news.
To gain a more detailed understanding of what had happened in Bastis recently concerning the Savior Sect, the Order of Rot, and the plague they had created, Dorothy chose to have Neff rely on Soul Xu to rescue this dying Savior Sect member, to see if she could obtain any useful information from her.
"How are her injuries? Can she be cured?" Naifnis, standing nearby and watching Ed perform the healing, couldn't help but ask curiously. Dorothy had Ed answer in a deep voice.
"She has a lot of parasites inside her, and her body has been severely gnawed. Cleaning them out is troublesome, but thankfully, it hasn't reached an unsolvable point," Dorothy controlled Ed to respond to Neff. When Neff heard that the woman she had just carried had countless flesh-eating parasites inside her, she immediately felt goosebumps. Shivering, she began scratching herself.
"Hiss... parasites? That sounds disgusting... No bugs crawled onto me, did they?"
Neff started feeling her body to check if she had contracted parasites, while Dorothy calmly replied through Ed.
"You don't have any inside you, but whether they're on your clothes is another matter."
"On my clothes... Ugh, well, you take your time here. I'm going back to check and take a shower!" Saying this, Neff quickly left the scene, and Dorothy paid her no mind, continuing to treat the Savior Sect woman in front of her.
While removing the parasites from the Savior Sect woman, Dorothy discovered that the woman had severe nutritional loss, and there were signs of being gnawed on in various tissues and internal organs. Crucially, there were traces of food in the woman's stomach, and judging by the state of digestion, she had eaten not long ago. This meant that even when she was nailed to the city gate, she was still being fed, and the only ones openly feeding her in Bastis were that group of Order of Rot followers.
Seeing the condition of the woman's body, Dorothy somewhat understood why this group from the Order of Rot didn't directly kill the Savior Sect members but kept them alive to torment them.
'According to the habits of the Tayi Sect, Extraordinary captured by them would mostly be used for the Blood Nourishment Method, becoming Extraordinary sashimi. The reason these individuals were kept alive and mostly intact was likely because the Order of Rot had a more efficient method of Spirituality absorption, using parasites to absorb Spirituality for them.
'These guys use the human body as a breeding ground for parasites. The parasites can rapidly reproduce by absorbing the host's life force, and then they can seize the Spirituality within the host by recovering the parasites...
'Although the Spirituality gained this way might not be as much as the Blood Nourishment Method in the short term, in the long run, the Spirituality income is probably more significant than the Blood Nourishment Method. This is because the parasitized person won't die immediately. As long as they can use some methods to keep them barely alive, they can continue to serve as a stable breeding ground for parasites. For example, this Savior Sect Extraordinary of the Holy Mother's Path has a much stronger life force than ordinary Extraordinary. It's not difficult to find ways to prolong her life. As long as she lives one more day, she can cultivate more bugs for the Order of Rot people...'
While treating the woman in front of her, Dorothy analyzed. If her analysis was correct, if she hadn't come to rescue her, she would likely have continued to be tormented by parasites for a long time, only finding an end after her body completely collapsed and could no longer serve as a breeding ground to provide Spirituality for the Order of Rot.
'These cults collecting Spirituality... each one is more unconventional than the last...' Dorothy commented inwardly, then continued to focus on her healing work. With the skillful and swift movements of Dorothy's spiritual threads, the parasites and eggs within the woman's body were quickly being cleaned out.
After completely clearing the parasites from the woman's body, Dorothy began using wound transfer to treat the internal injuries caused by the parasites' recent gnawing. After the healing continued for a while, the woman started showing a reaction; her body began to tremble and slightly shake.
Dorothy understood that the patient was about to wake up. So, Dorothy immediately had Ed step back and controlled another Corpse Puppet to go forward. This Corpse Puppet walked out from the bushes, wearing a priest's robe and headscarf adapted for desert conditions. This was the standard attire for Savior Sect priests. This Corpse Puppet was one of the other Savior Sect members who had been nailed to death, whom Dorothy had turned into a Corpse Puppet.
"Cough... cough cough..." Finally, after several violent coughs, the woman lying on the ground slowly opened her eyes after a bout of severe coughing. Weak, she looked ahead and saw the Corpse Puppet Savior Sect follower controlled by Dorothy.
"Adler... it's you... You're still alive?"
"Don't move around yet. You've just been healed, don't make any strenuous movements..." Dorothy had the Corpse Puppet, referred to as Adler, speak. Listening to Adler's words, the woman slightly turned her head again, looking at her surroundings.
"Where... where are we? Where are those disgusting cultists?"
"We've been rescued. The saint church found someone to save us. We've finally escaped their clutches..." As he spoke, Adler looked in another direction. The woman, weakly following Adler's gaze, then saw the masked Ed, wearing a robe and headscarf, smiling at her and saying.
"Now, let's have a good talk."
The moment Ed spoke, the woman immediately felt a sense of reassuring trust.
...
Because she had just regained consciousness from a coma and had been tormented by the Order of Rot for several consecutive days, the woman was in a very confused state after waking up. In this state, Dorothy used her Affinity Aura, combined with controlling her former teammate as assistance, and quickly gained the woman's complete trust, making her have no doubts about her rescue while she was disoriented.
After initially gaining the woman's trust, Dorothy prepared food for her to replenish nutrients while having Ed and Adler talk and communicate with her. Under the effect of the Affinity Aura, the woman had no resistance to this communication at all. Soon, after the conversation had lasted for a while, Dorothy finally completed the woman's profiling, completely taking control of the Savior Sect woman's mind.
After completing the woman's profiling, Dorothy finally got to her main point, asking her for various pieces of information, especially regarding Bastis and the "Wasting Decay" recently.
Through understanding, Dorothy learned that this woman was named Alima, one of the missionaries sent by the Savior Descends Faction to the Buserite region, and an Extraordinary of the Black Earth Stage on the Holy Mother's Path. She and other Savior Sect missionaries were sent to Bastis several years ago, replacing their predecessors to manage the religious affairs of the Savior Sect within Bastis. When she came here, the faith in Bastis, like other cities in Buserite, was already controlled by the Savior Sect; it was the Savior Sect's domain, until the arrival of this plague.
"So you're saying... you were initially able to deal with this plague, but then it gradually got stronger, and you couldn't handle it anymore?" In a hidden grove, Ed looked at Alima, who was concentrating on eating bread not far away, and asked curiously, while Alima responded as she ate.
"Yes, at first this plague was very weak, and could be completely cured quickly using Extraordinary means. I alone could treat four or five hundred patients in a single day. I, Abia, and Jemarr Hai, the three of us together could completely handle the plague in Bastis and also provide treatment for many surrounding villages and tribes. During that time, many surrounding tribes fled to Bastis, and we did our best to treat them in the name of the Lord."
Alima responded in this way. The Abia and Jemarr Hai she mentioned were both Savior Sect members of the Holy Mother's Path stationed with her in Bastis. Among them, Abia was Black Earth like her and died fighting the Order of Rot, while Jemarr was a Chalk, and Hai is an honorific for noble women in North Wu culture. After being defeated, Jemarr was also captured by the Order of Rot. Because of her Chalk status, she was directly sent to a more important base in the south after being captured, to be made into a higher-grade incubator.
"When this plague first started, we could easily handle it, almost eliminating it from Bastis, but later it gradually got stronger, requiring us to spend more time, energy, and Spirituality to deal with it. At first, it took me ten seconds to cure one person, then it gradually became one minute, ten minutes, even an hour... The Spirituality needed to cure this plague also increased. At first, I could cure hundreds of people, but in the end, I could only treat three or four at most in a day.
"Because of the plague's characteristic of gradually getting stronger, we began to shift our strategy from treatment-focused to prevention-focused, isolating patients and cutting off transmission like ordinary mortals. But we didn't expect the plague's transmission ability to also constantly increase. Initially, it only spread through water; people only got sick by drinking contaminated water. But later, even breath could become an accomplice in transmission, making our efforts to enforce isolation increasingly difficult.
"Finally, Jemarr Hai also discovered that the initial spreader of this plague was actually a type of mosquito, a mosquito that seemed to have its own will, pervasive and impossible to guard against. Under the infiltration of this mosquito, all our isolation was meaningless. Facing the mountain of patients in the later stages of the plague, we couldn't win even by giving our all. Bastis, like many other places in Buserite, quickly turned into a hell, until those savage cultists arrived with their evil god faith."
Chewing on bread, Alima spoke, her words carrying a clear sense of decline and sadness. Corpse Puppet Ed paused slightly after seeing this, then began to ask again.
"So... do you have any idea why this plague gradually got stronger?"
"The reason for this plague getting stronger... About that, I don't know much either, I only heard Jemarr Hai talk about it a bit. During the days when the plague was rampant, she had been researching this plague and trying to communicate with healers from other saint churches elsewhere."
"During the period when the plague was getting stronger, I heard her say that these plagues seemed to be constantly self-changing. The more we kept treating it, the stronger it would become. The more patients we cured, the more powerful the overall plague became, gradually making it more and more difficult for us to handle."
"Oh, right, during the time when that group of cultists attacked, Jemarr Hai once said, 'It is our healing that is helping it constantly evolve, it will eventually grow into a form that none of us can handle...'"
Recalling as she spoke, Alima's words made Dorothy's heart skip a beat, and she immediately gained a hint of understanding about this phenomenon.
Mutation... The virus carrying this plague is constantly mutating at an incredible speed! The principle of treating infectious diseases on the Holy Mother's Path is to strengthen the body's own immune system to specifically kill infected bacteria. But this plague virus is evolving through constant mutation to resist the immune system's killing.
The original version of this virus seemed already difficult for the typical human immune system to handle; the immune system could only clear this virus by relying on the strengthening of the Holy Mother's Path. But this virus mutates rapidly. In combat with the strengthened immune system, it quickly adapts and strengthens itself to resist, forcing the Holy Mother's Path Extraordinary to pour in more Spirituality and energy to further strengthen the patient's immunity to resist the virus. As the immune system is strengthened again, the virus also completes mutation evolution through constant engagement with the immune system.
Just like this, the strengthened immunity of the Holy Mother's Path and the Wasting Decay virus began a constant cyclical competition. The harder the Holy Mother's Path healers worked to treat, the more they would strengthen the virus, eventually making the virus themselves difficult to handle. In a sense, these Savior Sect Holy Mother's Path Extraordinary were training this virus...
'No wonder... when Vanya treated the Wasting Decay patients who fled to Adus, the virus in their bodies was so tenacious... It turns out this virus had already had many encounters with the Savior Sect's Holy Mother's Path Extraordinary in Buserite a long time ago. In the hands of the Savior Sect's Holy Mother's Path Extraordinary, this virus has evolved to a considerably high level...'
Dorothy thought this in her heart. While she was pondering this question, she suddenly thought of another possibility.
'Speaking of which... could the Order of Rot choosing a fringe area like Buserite to spread the plague specifically be for training the virus...
'Buserite has the influence of the Savior Sect. Besides the Church, the widely inherited Extraordinary organizations of the Holy Mother's Path in this world are various otherworld forces of the Church, and the Savior Sect is the largest branch. Did they deliberately spread the plague in Buserite because they wanted to use the Savior Sect Holy Mother's Path Extraordinary here to train new plague viruses for themselves?
'For the Order of Rot, the Savior Sect is much easier to deal with than the Church. Moreover, Buserite is far from the Church's regular sphere of influence, and they don't pay much attention to what happens here. If they finish training the virus in Buserite and then release it into densely populated cities on the Main Continent... would the Church's ability to resist the virus be greatly reduced as a result?'