CHAPTER 548: CHAPTER 58 SPIRITUAL ESSENCE POLLUTION

Twenty minutes later.

In the middle of the empty square, Aske stood with a dagger in his right hand and a sword in his left, amidst the scattered data shards on the ground.

Raphael stared at him blankly, his expression as if his system had crashed.

"Your swordsmanship is off," said Raphael after a long silence. "I just monitored your battle process."

"With such a highly complex battlefield environment, to replicate the effect your swordsmanship just achieved, the computational power theoretically needed would have already broken through the sky... That’s not an ability ordinary people can achieve. Is it the power from your Extraordinary Swordsmanship?"

"I don’t know what you’re talking about." Aske sheathed his sword, looking around. "So these are all the encrypted programs?"

"What’s the name of your Extraordinary Swordsmanship?" Raphael didn’t answer, but instead flew quickly to his side, his expression curious and excited—like a child seeing a beloved toy.

"Is this everything?" Aske asked again.

"If it doesn’t have a name, I’ll give it one," said Raphael seriously. "How about ’Demon of Laplace Sword’?"

Aske: .........

"I think ’Sword of AI Must Die’ sounds better," Aske squinted his eyes.

"Ha ha, I’m joking," Raphael said with a chuckle. "This should be everything. I’ve sensed a reconnection with the main body, shall we go now?"

"Hurry up," Aske said.

"Alright." Raphael spread his arms, smiling warmly. "Hold on to me, I’ll take you out."

Aske drew his longsword in a ringing slide.

Then, he woke up from the Information Connection Pod.

"Aske!" Nora hurried to assist him, "Are you alright?"

"I’m fine. I didn’t come back dead," Aske understood what she was worried about. "My sanity is intact."

"That’s good," Nora breathed a sigh of relief, patting her chest.

"Where’s your brother?" Aske asked.

"It seems like they’ve found something, they had to go out urgently," Nora said.

"Lord Aske, Miss Nora," Raphael’s voice sounded again, this time without the vivacity of the virtual world, but a certain cold and indifferent female voice:

"Thank you both for your assistance in decrypting. Please return to the Lysine Building as soon as possible to await our further instructions."

"Let’s go," noticing something was off with Raphael, Aske realized a plot mission might be about to happen and quickly said to Nora.

"Alright," Nora replied seriously. "I will lead you out."

----------------

A few minutes earlier, based on Raphael’s analysis of the decrypted, fragmented data, some location information was exposed to the priests.

The Valian Bishop rushed to the Outer City with the Pope’s Guard, while the Cardinals, along with the Pope, were discussing at Ratlan Palace how to deal with Bishop Landeng and closely monitoring Valian’s fieldwork progress.

Even after capturing and subduing Bishop Landeng, the hand of the Giotto Bell remained still, not rewinding—indicating that the threat determined by Raphael was not yet neutralized.

The location Raphael decrypted was found inside an abandoned building near the Tiber River in the North District. In the Fourth Epoch, this place was originally planned to be developed into a commercial complex, but was abandoned due to a broken funding chain.

The group descended through the underground parking garage’s passage, quickly finding the hidden entrance: to the metro station at the bottom of the building, which of course had already been deserted for some time.

After rushing into the metro station, they discovered that the metro facilities had been removed, replaced with a variety of biological research equipment, and even a row of neatly arranged culture dishes along the wall, extending from subway exit A to B, containing neither human nor some kind of half-human, half-tree corpses.

A large amount of material was scattered on the ground, clearly indicating the staff had evacuated in haste, only managing to take important documents. The Pope’s Guards rushed to the nearest computers, pulled data cables from their temples, and quickly invaded the servers here.

In Ratlan Palace, the deleted information that Raphael restored in real time was also presented before the Cardinal Bishops.

The Spiritual Tree Project:

Use a large number of Transcendent clones on the brink of losing control to "stimulate and mutate" parts of the Source Tree.

The goal is to leverage the "evolutionary" characteristic of the Source Tree to mutate this part into the "Spiritual Tree," which craves spirituality.

The Spiritual Tree inherited the Source Tree’s "contamination" ability and could secrete "Spiritual Essence" to contaminate and create appendages. These appendages autonomously crave any beings with spirituality and devour and contaminate them.

"Prepare to initiate a Level 4 martial law order immediately!" Before the information finished scrolling, Innocent suddenly exclaimed loudly.

The Cardinal Bishops below collectively shivered with fright. A Level 4 martial law order corresponded to an outbreak of an R4 level deterring event—how many years had it been since one last occurred?

Does it mean that the so-called Spiritual Tree...

...had already been released by Bishop Landeng’s people?

"Raphael!" Innocent stood up, "How many potential Spiritual Essence Polluters are there currently in Solomon City?"

Raphael fell silent.

The Cardinal Bishops also held their breaths nervously.

Suddenly, a map appeared on the screen, densely packed buildings radiated out from the center of Solomon City, following the streets in all directions.

Afterward, several deep red dots appeared on the map, beside them in blood-red numbers: 23.

"We have discovered 23 Spiritual Essence Polluters so far." Raphael displayed a video on the adjacent screen, footage taken by city sheriffs on patrol.

In the window was a pedestrian on the roadside, with a frozen complexion and a vacant expression. From the nape of his neck, a translucent figure stretched out, covered in strange branches and vines that frantically twisted and danced in the air.

Temple Knights and Sheriffs were shooting at him, yet this contaminated pedestrian, riddled with dozens of bullets, was still stubbornly and mechanically moving forward.

"So far, a total of 23 cases of Spiritual Essence contamination have been confirmed," said Raphael indifferently, "The Temple Knights and Sheriffs have been notified to deal with them."

Before the Bishops present could breathe a sigh of relief, they heard Raphael continue,

"Based on the 23 contaminators’ movement patterns and contact range in the past 6 hours, a potential danger of 28,821 secondary contaminators has been assessed."

The map of Solomon City at the center of the screen was instantly covered in countless pale red dots. A great portion of Solomon City was almost instantly dyed red.

The Bishops: !!!

"Level 4 martial law order has been initiated, and a citywide lockdown has begun," Raphael concluded, "But the estimated effectiveness is not optimistic."

"Due to the recent influence of the Magic Tide, including the Anti-Demon Magnetic Field, complex technological devices cannot be used, and the related industrial production lines have not yet been restored. Judging by the combat capabilities exhibited by the Spiritual Essence Polluters, it will not be easy for the Temple Knights armed with ordinary gunpowder weapons to suppress the confirmed contaminators."

"Also, within the next 24 hours, the number of second-generation contaminators is expected to rise exponentially. This will drastically increase the difficulty of suppression."

"Raphael," a Cardinal suddenly asked, "what is the attack tendency of these Spiritual Essence Polluters?"

"Based on the analysis of their leftover data," Raphael replied, "due to the innate craving for spirituality, Spiritual Essence Polluters tend to attack Transcendents, the higher the Level, the more likely they are to be attacked."

"Next are ordinary humans who have not consumed the Magic Potion but have ingested a certain amount of Spirituality through various channels in their daily life."

"Celestine, what do you mean?" Innocent asked sternly.

"The Purebloodists led by Bishop Landeng," Celestine answered, "They created and spread the Spiritual Tree with the unmistakable purpose of eliminating Transcendents, thus to purify humanity."

"If the Spiritual Tree contaminates all living beings indiscriminately like the Source Tree, and irreversibly pollutes the targets, then how could it possibly achieve their ’purification of humanity’ goal?"

Celestine said gravely: "I suggest we immediately capture a contaminator for emergency experimentation."