In Buserite during the night, black winds howled, dust and sand filled the sky, and only scattered stars and the moon cast a faint glow upon the land.
On top of a bare giant rock in the middle of a vast sandy area, Jawadin, wearing a flamboyant robe, was kneeling respectfully. Standing before him was his superior in the Order of Rot, Great Chieftain Amu Yaba, who had the appearance of an old woman. He was currently reporting the latest situation in Bastis to Amu Yaba.
"What? You mean... suddenly grain merchants came to sell them grain?"
"Yes, it was a very large merchant claiming to be from Adus, leading a large caravan. He sold a lot of grain to that little Sister. I did a rough calculation, and that grain is enough for the little Sister and her people to eat for at least another month. It's impossible to force them out in a short time by cutting off food!" Jawadin reported to Amu Yaba. After hearing Jawadin's report, Amu Yaba couldn't help but frown slightly.
"At this time, within the territory of Buserite... there are still normal caravans appearing? And a caravan that could find that little Sister at the most crucial moment? This sounds directly unusual... Have you investigated the background of that caravan?" Amu Yaba asked Jawadin, and Jawadin immediately replied.
"I used insects to monitor the movements of that so-called caravan, but unfortunately, that little Sister seems to have directly extended the secrecy work to that caravan. The insects I sent out were quickly discovered and eliminated. It's regrettable, I couldn't find out any more information about them..."
Jawadin said this with his head lowered. Listening to his words, Amu Yaba fell into thought for a moment. At this point, Jawadin slightly raised his head at a subtle angle, looking at her, and spoke.
"Chieftain... we can't force that little Sister in a short time now, what should we do next?" Jawadin asked Amu Yaba. Amu Yaba spoke slowly after a moment of pause.
"For now, first..."
Amu Yaba had just opened her mouth, but before she could finish speaking, Jawadin, who was kneeling before her, suddenly had a sharp look in his eyes. He quickly raised his hand and extended it forward, grabbing straight at Amu Yaba at high speed.
Seeing Jawadin's sudden movement, Amu Yaba also reacted extremely quickly. Her withered hand shot out at a speed that did not match her apparent age, quickly grabbing Jawadin's approaching arm. While gripping it firmly, she also directly broke Jawadin's wrist bone.
Jawadin, whose bone was broken, did not make any sound of pain. From the palm of the hand that was grabbed, a thin thread emitting a faint red glow drilled out, attacking Amu Yaba again at close range. Due to the extremely short distance, as soon as Amu Yaba reacted, the hand she had used to grab Jawadin was pierced by the attacking crimson thread. After successfully connecting to Amu Yaba, the thread quickly disappeared, vanishing into nothingness.
At this moment, Jawadin had become Dorothy's Corpse Puppet. Dorothy used Jawadin as a springboard, extending her materialized spiritual threads and successfully connecting to Amu Yaba at an extremely close distance.
And before Jawadin became Dorothy's Corpse Puppet, he had actually already been profiled by Dorothy into a puppet. Dorothy gradually turned a series of Jawadin's attendants into Living Puppets, constantly interacting and communicating with him day after day, gradually accumulating the profiling progress bar, and finally successfully completed his profile.
After successfully profiling Jawadin, Dorothy completely knew the intelligence Jawadin possessed and was aware of Amu Yaba's existence. From Jawadin, Dorothy learned that Amu Yaba was particularly focused on secrecy due to facing the Shining Light Church. From Ali not allowing Jawadin to discuss topics about her within Bastis, and never allowing Jawadin to use any method to contact her remotely within Bastis, only meeting Amu Yaba face-to-face at specific times and specific locations.
According to Jawadin, Amu Yaba had a method called "Floating Fungi" to sense a wide area around herself, so she only considered communication safe when it happened near her. This was why Dorothy had been monitoring the maintenance section but couldn't get useful information from him.
After knowing that Amu Yaba had a special wide-area detection method, Dorothy naturally wouldn't use a Corpse Puppet with spiritual thread links to approach Amu Yaba. Instead, after profiling Jawadin, she left a puppet mark in his body, had him pray to akasha to connect to the information channel, and then go to meet Amu Yaba.
Because Jawadin had no external traces of extraordinary intervention on him, Amu Yaba didn't find anything unusual and talked with Jawadin. And Jawadin suddenly erupted at this opportune moment. Dorothy used the puppet mark left on him to connect spiritual threads, using the method of materialized spiritual threads, and used Jawadin as a springboard to access and control Amu Yaba.
At the moment Dorothy's spiritual threads connected, Amu Yaba suddenly felt a powerful, invisible controlling force rapidly spreading from the part linked by the red thread towards her entire body, seemingly trying to completely control her. Seeing this situation, Amu Yaba immediately reacted.
Instantly, Amu Yaba's hand, which was originally grabbing Jawadin and was linked by spiritual threads, immediately began to automatically break off. The entire hand detached directly from the wrist. The detached part, after a period of twisting and swelling, rapidly expanded and burst, exploding into several large flying insects that scattered in all directions. At the moment these flying insects burst open, the powerful controlling force that Amu Yaba's body was subjected to immediately dissipated completely.
Amu Yaba's body was composed of countless insects from the very beginning. Although all the insects that made up her body shared the same soul, in a sense, they were separate individual life forms. She had just used the method of splitting to directly treat the part of Amu Yaba linked by the red thread as another single extra life form, so the effect of being controlled would not transmit and spread throughout her entire body.
By abandoning the insects on her wrist, Amu Yaba stopped the tendency for the controlling force to spread throughout her body. Then she directly opened her mouth and spat out a large swarm of tiny flying insects. These flying insects directly rushed towards Jawadin, forcefully drilling into Jawadin's body through his eyes, nose, and mouth. Instantly, Jawadin began to scream miserably. Blood flowed from his facial orifices, and the skin on various parts of his body began to constantly bulge and recede. Finally, the skin of his entire body began to burst open one after another, densely erupting countless dense flying insects.
Among these flying insects, most were Amu Yaba's flying insects that rapidly reproduced by feeding on Jawadin's flesh, blood, and Spirituality, but a small portion were bred within Jawadin himself, belonging to his own flying insects. Dorothy had also left puppet marks on these flying insects, and at this moment, she immediately connected spiritual threads to them.
Under Dorothy's control, countless flying insects broke free from Jawadin, who was screaming and dying, and flew towards Amu Yaba, who had just severed her wrist. Amu Yaba's flying insects immediately began to attack and prey on Dorothy's flying insects. Countless of the flying insects controlled by Dorothy were instantly torn apart. However, despite this, many flying insects still approached Amu Yaba. From these flying insects, Dorothy extended several more spiritual threads, connecting to various parts of her body.
This time, Dorothy had a total of seven spiritual threads connected to Amu Yaba's body. Due to too many parts being linked at once, including even the head, under the powerful controlling force, Amu Yaba didn't even have time to perform a full-body separation and disintegration before a powerful electric current began to conduct through her body.
"Ahhhh..."
Amidst a crackling flash of electricity and fire, thick smoke billowed from all over Amu Yaba's body. She painfully opened her mouth wide, and countless dense flying insects poured out from her mouth.
However, before the flying insects spat out by Amu Yaba could disperse, several figures were flying rapidly towards her from a distance on the giant rock where she was. Looking closely, they were several other Corpse Puppets of Dorothy. Before, they had been waiting on standby outside the coverage area of "Floating Fungi". After the battle began, they immediately flew rapidly towards the center of the battle.
Facing Amu Yaba, who was spewing dense flying insects on the giant rock, several Corpse Puppets successively threw several iron "grenades" from their bodies. These grenades then flew rapidly towards Amu Yaba under the guidance of magnetic force, eventually detonating near her. Finally, amidst fierce roars, Amu Yaba's entire body and the entire giant rock she was on were enveloped in scorching, dazzling golden-yellow flames.
These grenades were standard explosion-flame grenades equipped by the Church's troops. They also contained fixed Spirituality reserves and talismans. The explosion power was much stronger than ordinary explosives of the same size, and the high temperature generated was also beyond what ordinary explosives could achieve.
After the flames swept through, the entire desert giant rock fell silent for a moment. Then, the howling night wind of the desert blew across the area, dispersing all the dust that had spread there, finally revealing what was hidden behind it.
At the location where Amu Yaba was originally, what appeared at this moment was a kneeling, charred, and twisted "corpse". The corpse's hands covered its face, seemingly maintaining a posture of pain before death.
The Corpse Puppets controlled by Dorothy slowly descended onto the platform of the giant rock. While remaining alert to the scorched "corpse" in the center of the platform, they slowly approached. Just now, the life form linked by Dorothy's Spirituality threads had died. Under normal circumstances, Amuyaba should have been declared completely dead by now, but even so, Dorothy did not relax her vigilance and instead had her Corpse Puppets slowly approach Amuyaba's remains.
During this process, Dorothy's Corpse Puppets, who were slowly approaching Amuyaba on foot, suddenly began to show abnormalities. They involuntarily started experiencing intense physiological reactions such as nausea, vomiting, and convulsions. They began to lose control and fall down, and their skin started constantly rippling and bulging, as if something was moving wildly under the skin.
'Infected... when?'
Seeing the state of these Corpse Puppets, Dorothy's eyebrows furrowed slightly as she thought inwardly. What she didn't know was that within the many visible flying insects released by Amuyaba's mouth just now, there were countless tiny insect eggs that were invisible to the naked eye. When faced with the incoming flames, those flying insects actively and rapidly clustered together in the air. Countless insects quickly formed "insect balls" in a very short period of time. The insects in the center of the insect balls were protected to a certain extent.
In addition to the insect balls, the insect eggs within these insects could also sporulate in a short time, transforming into a state that could resist harsh environments. After the intense flames, these spores quickly reverted to insect eggs and hatched, giving birth to countless extremely tiny larvae from the corpses of the flying insects. Although these larvae were so small as to be invisible to the naked eye, they still possessed the ability to fly. They invisibly invaded the bodies of the Corpse Puppets from various parts and then rapidly reproduced and caused disease.
As Dorothy's Corpse Puppets fell down due to extreme pain, the scorched "remains" that originally belonged to Amuyaba also suddenly began to crack, splitting open with several large openings. Then, from these cracks, a dense buzzing sound emanated. Swarms of dense black insects surged out of Amuyaba's shell, spreading in all directions.
"Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz..."
The number of flying insects surging out of Amuyaba's body was astonishing. The swarms of flying insects flew into the sky, constantly circling and hovering. Their density was so great that they completely obscured the moonlight falling onto the giant rock. The total mass of the entire swarm had already far exceeded Amuyaba's own mass by countless times, but even so, more swarms of insects were still continuously surging out of Amuyaba's shell.
At this moment, the skin on the fallen Corpse Puppets on the ground also burst open, and countless insects flew out from within. Amuyaba's swarm had completely devoured these Corpse Puppets of Dorothy's and had also gained something from it: she discovered Dorothy's Spirituality threads!
After capturing the Spirituality threads within the Corpse Puppets, Amuyaba immediately infected the Spirituality threads themselves. In an instant, countless pathogens were transmitted along the Spirituality threads towards their source. Somewhere in the desert around the giant rock, several figures collapsed at this moment, with countless blisters and pustules appearing on their bodies.
These fallen figures were also Dorothy's Corpse Puppets. Currently, Dorothy does not directly control the frontline combat Corpse Puppets, but instead arranges several Corpse Puppets to act as hubs, transferring control layer by layer and relaying Dorothy's Spirituality threads layer by layer. Therefore, when Amuyaba infected along the Spirituality threads, the first ones to be infected were the relay operators at the lowest level of the Spirituality thread network.
After infecting several of the lowest-level relay Corpse Puppets, Amuyaba discovered that these were not the operators of the flesh puppets, the true operator was elsewhere. So she began to continue infecting upwards from the lowest-level relay Corpse Puppets, allowing her pathogens to climb up the entire network structure and infect the higher-level relay Corpse Puppets.
Instantly, Corpse Puppets at various levels under the control of the Spirituality thread network, located in different parts of the desert, successively began to be infected, suddenly falling ill and collapsing. Seeing this, Dorothy immediately cut off the upper-level connections of the Spirituality threads. She could not sever the infected Spirituality threads, but she could sever those that had not yet been infected.
Dorothy's Spirituality thread connections were severed, but Amuyaba, who was infecting the entire Spirituality thread network, did not stop. Because at the moment the Spirituality threads were finally severed, she had felt a merging phenomenon of the entire complex control network. After infecting a series of higher-level relay operators, she discovered that the operational lines of various intricate Spirituality thread networks ultimately connected to the same place. Her final infection towards this place had just begun when the Spirituality thread connection was severed, but even so, she knew the location the connection pointed to.
Amuyaba could confirm that the entity where all the Spirituality thread control converged was highly likely the overall operator of these Corpse Puppets, the true mastermind behind all this despicable activity! Although Amuyaba was unable to infect him, she had already confirmed his location, not far from here. Under these circumstances, Amuyaba would not let the other party go!
Accompanied by an incredibly dense buzzing sound, the super-large swarm of insects circling above the giant rock suddenly moved. Towards the location Amuyaba had found, almost all of them swarmed forward and flew towards it. During the flight, they resembled a moving black giant wall, like a massive dust storm, except this time the dust storm was entirely composed of disgusting flying insects. It would devour all life it encountered along the way, thereby expanding its own scale.
With this massive swarm of insects, Amuyaba was capable of devouring all living beings within a city.
Amuyaba's locust-like swarm of insects flew in the predetermined direction. After flying for a period of time, they finally saw a figure flying and fleeing in the endless sand. Upon seeing this, the grand swarm swarmed forward all at once. Amidst a dense buzzing sound, a roaring tide of insects, like a flood, directly submerged the poor figure who was helplessly fleeing. Countless flying insects converged on that figure, drilling into his body to reproduce and devour his flesh and blood.
Just as the flying insects on the ground, like a tide, were cruelly tearing at their prey, high above the desert, thousands of meters up in the clouds, a massive object was quietly suspended.
That, astonishingly, was a colossal steel behemoth even larger than the airships commonly used in this era. It was over four hundred meters long, with a slender shape like a noble's coffin. Countless large and complex steel attachments were either piled or mounted on the sides and top of the coffin-like main body. Sharp edges and thick spikes were distributed throughout the giant object, making it appear extremely ferocious and terrifying in the darkness.
Under the cold moonlight, this floating steel behemoth was covered in profound religious symbols. If this floating giant object were seen as a ship, then its sides were covered with over ten gun turrets of various sizes. On the coffin-shaped deck, two quad-barreled giant cannons were stacked in a staggered manner. Behind the gun turrets of the giant cannons was a bridge resembling a Gothic cathedral. On the flag ropes of the bridge, countless scrolls inscribed with dense scriptures were hung, gently fluttering in the night wind.
At the front end of the massive steel hull, in the bow section, the armored ram that was originally placed here had now opened. What was revealed was a huge opening like a monster's giant mouth. Within this opening, a ball of high-temperature energy emitting golden-yellow light was suspended. As some kind of brewing continued, the Spirituality contained within it became increasingly intense.
At the top of the steel behemoth's bridge, on the spire of the cathedral, a phantom white figure was silently standing at this moment, gazing down with an indifferent expression.
"Holy Steel Ship - Sister of Annihilation, Purifying Light of Atonement ready, mode: scorching, fire."
With a cold tone, the Sister, named Awei, whispered. Immediately, the golden-yellow energy ball suspended at the front of the steel ship suddenly erupted with an extremely dazzling bright light.
The intensity of this light instantly illuminated almost the entire desert night, making the entire ship the sun in the desert night. Large, vast areas instantly became like daytime.
Under the sudden scorching of this intense light, the temperature of the cold desert surface below the steel behemoth rose sharply, increasing to a level far, far higher than the daytime temperature in just a few seconds, and continued to skyrocket, breaking all local historical records.
Any living organism under the illumination of this intense light, regardless of size, died almost instantly, turning into dust after a brief burning. The swarm of flying insects that was originally flying, like a tsunami, instantly turned into a black smoke, completely disappearing into the blinding light. The exposed skin of the fallen Corpse Puppets was instantly burned away, and their bones shattered into ash in the continuously heating high temperature. After continuous heating and warming, the sand on the surface began to show signs of melting, and large areas of sand dunes began to be covered by molten liquid.
In the intense light that could not be directly looked at, all signs of life were easily destroyed and extinguished.