Chapter 480: The True Face of the "Prophet" |
The four-story building by the artificial lake looked inconspicuous from the outside, but inside it was a different world.
The high-standard access control at the entrance made it clear this was no ordinary residence, but an official institution of Manchidon. Inside, the first through third floors were filled with filing cabinets, and the Prophet was currently in an office on the fourth floor, listening to a subordinate report.
"Prophet, the records here are well preserved. All registered Ascendants in Manchidon are included. Besides paper copies, there are backups stored on servers underground. The administrators didn't destroy them in time before we eliminated them."
The Prophet nodded. "Good."
This four-story building was a secret archive of Manchidon.
It stored not ordinary people, but the files of all registered Ascendants nationwide. Their initial Mind Power upper limits, abilities, items... everything was cataloged.
Every nation had to do this work, even field camps were no exception. The reason was simple: group managers needed to know the capability range of their members so they could make informed decisions during crises or special situations.
At any time, in any place, the most valuable thing is effective information. Faced with huge information gaps, even the highest IQ is powerless.
Therefore, information about Ascendant files sold for high prices on the black market for a long time. Some official personnel responsible for such information stole and sold what they guarded, exchanging it for Ascension Coins.
Now the Prophet valued this information for the same reason: he urgently needed to replenish his forces.
After suffering several sweeps from the Human Consortium, the overall number of parasitized forms had significantly decreased. His ability to lead elite forces to decapitate Manchidon partly relied on intelligence, and partly on how weak Manchidon had become.
Eliminating Manchidon's leadership by strike was only the first step. The second step was more critical... converting the country's more than a hundred thousand Ascendants into parasitized forms based on the archive data!
Once that was completed, the parasitized army would reach sufficient scale. With those parasitized forms unified under command and unafraid of death, an army of hundreds of thousands of parasitized forms could be more combat-effective than tens of thousands of human Ascendants.
By then, the Human Consortium would no longer be able to...
The cloth blindfold over his eyes warmed slightly. The Prophet raised a hand to touch the area around his eyes, calming a rising emotion.
Don't rush... the Seli Divine Nation will be established on this planet sooner or later.
At that moment, a subordinate suddenly came in carrying a tablet to report. "Prophet, sir, there's a video call request from Liruo'an."
"Connect it."
"Yes."
After connecting, the subordinate held the tablet up like a human stand for the Prophet.
Han Qiu's face appeared on the screen, a trace of puzzlement in his eyes.
"Prophet, sir, didn't your operation succeed? Why haven't you returned?"
"I have some urgent matters to handle."
"This wasn't part of the plan." Han Qiu warned, "Our plan was for you to return to Liruo'an right after your speech. That was for your safety. You understand that, right?"
"For your safety?" The Prophet replied calmly, "Uenoshi, are you really stupid enough to think humans will accept you? Even when you're among them, they're still scheming how to discard you when you're no longer useful."
Uenoshi fell silent for a few seconds, then sighed. "…It seems hero movie plots are right. Villains don't lose because of lack of ability, but because of internal divisions, sometimes they sabotage themselves first."
The Prophet: "Stop saying nonsense. The intelligence he provided was useless. Before you finish fully converting Trenton, he'll do what he wants to help him."
"Prophet, are you kidding me?" Trenton's tone heated, "Does he think the Human Consortium will send people to arrest him before he gives the TV speech? He'd stay in his hiding place in Liruo'an and remotely control his subordinates to act. That's the most dangerous scenario."
"Yes, Trenton, he simply understands... everything, it's all for dissemination."
Han Qiu froze for a moment, his expression changing as if he had just realized something severe. "Could it be that you..."
The Prophet no longer wished to converse, and signaled his subordinate to end the call.
Almost within seconds, countless black spikes burst from the floor, stabbing into the Prophet's body!
"Pfuf pfuf pfuf—!"
A dense hail of Shadow Blades cut the Prophet's body into sections. The subordinate holding the tablet was stunned, and only belatedly screamed, "Where is the Proph—!!!"
Before the parasitized form could finish the sentence, shadow lines coiled around its neck and then snapped the neck with a crack.
Guan Tong, who was remotely manipulating his Shadow from the artificial lake to carry out the assassination, was slightly astonished. He didn't expect things to go so smoothly. Did the Prophet not have a single Mind Power defensive item on him? How could he die so easily?
Through Shadow's vision, he saw the Prophet's corpse emit a wheezing sound and then bizarrely burst into flames. From the burning face, two swarms of insect-like things tore through the blindfold over the eyes and flew out the window!
Guan Tong then realized the eye area beneath the cloth was hollowed-out sockets with no eyeballs. It was eerie—perhaps this body wasn't the real Prophet, and the two insect swarms that flew out of the eye sockets were the true core.
He immediately shaped his Shadow into a large net to trap the two swarms, but at that moment parasitized forms guarding outside went berserk and charged in, using their bodies to smash into Guan Tong’s Shadow-net, not caring that they were sliced and bleeding, sacrificing themselves to let the insect swarms fly out the window.
"Brother Guan, something's wrong!" Chen Na, eyes closed and using her Perception Domain, whispered. "Parasitized forms are rapidly converging around us. No, not just nearby... a huge, huge area of parasitized forms is moving in!"
"I understand." Guan Tong said in a low voice, "This 'Prophet' is no longer truly human; it's a living corpse, a high-level parasitized form. Those two insect swarms in its eye sockets are likely cores capable of remote control and receiving information from other parasitized forms!"
Adam further speculated, "It seems this guy cannot prophesy like Moon Key. The meaning of 'Prophet' should simply be that it can ignore distance limits and receive information transmitted by parasitized forms around the world."
"It integrates massive amounts of information to make actions that benefit itself. We avoided all the parasitized forms' sight this time, so it didn't know we were here."
As he spoke, Guan Tong had already dealt with the parasitized forms that were trying to block the Shadow, but the two swarms had taken the chance to fly out the window and disappeared.
He grew frantic. "Those two swarms are the core. If they escape, they could parasitize someone else, and that person would become the new 'Prophet'!"
"They sound like some kind of king larvae—or rather, king spores." Silver Fox looked at Chen Na. "Xiao Na, can you sense them?"
Chen Na concentrated. With the hint of "insects," she quickly detected two strange entities rapidly drifting away.
"I found them!"
"Guide me to them!"
Guan Tong lifted Chen Na onto his back, letting her guide their movement.
The parasitized forms swarmed in from all directions. Guan Tong looked to Adam, who nodded. "I got it. You go eliminate the insects. Leave these guys to me."
"I'll stay and help you." Uenoshi said.
She knew Adam's current condition made facing such numbers of parasitized forms dangerous. Adam was the key to breaking this Rule, he couldn't die here.
"Okay. Uenoshi, you and Adam hold off these parasitized forms. Silver Fox, you and I chase those two spore-swarms!"
After saying that, Guan Tong dashed off under Chen Na's guidance, Silver Fox close behind.
Left were Adam and Uenoshi. She said, "Hide behind me."
"...I don't think I need that level of protection." Adam chuckled, shaking his head, then raised his right hand into a loose grip. An invisible gravity field instantly descended around him and Uenoshi, crushing dozens of parasitized forms charging at the front into the ground, immobilizing them.
Uenoshi's eyes glittered. Those parasitized bodies twisted and became Serpent Servants. Seeing this, Adam coordinated and lifted the gravity field; the Serpent Servants immediately rose and joined the other parasitized forms in a brutal melee. In an instant, the picturesque artificial lake turned into a battlefield, hosting a savage slaughter.
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