Chapter 346: Fairness
"Heaven and Abyss have both vanished from the present world..." Many devout believers watched the mirage on the sky gradually fade, a sense of wistful loss stirring within their hearts.
In stark contrast, Pope Gondor was gripped by surprise and uncertainty, lost in a haze of doubt concerning his faith. He had always firmly believed that the Lord he worshipped would not possess emotions as changeable as humans, that He should be a perfect and flawless being. Yet, this unexpected encounter had plunged him into deep contemplation.
As the pillars of light vanished across the various regions, the Holy Light Divine Kingdom suspended above Europe, and the Nine Netherworlds connected to it, both gradually disappeared beyond the horizon under Bai Mo's final control.
Heaven and Abyss, artificially linked, were about to commence a battle that might well be without end.
"To kill us, he truly spared no expense." The Disciple of the Crimson World and Gaia, before the Nine Netherworlds fully vanished, proactively withdrew all the power they had disseminated among Earth's inhabitants.
Within the Nine Netherworlds, layers upon layers of information blockade barriers would sever the main will's connection to other parts of the body. Over a long period, given their life tiers, the isolated bodies might even develop new consciousnesses.
Especially for information life forms like them, once a new consciousness emerged, it could directly inherit all memories of the original body, thereby causing immense trouble.
To prevent Bai Mo's plan from succeeding, which aimed to artificially split off more personalities, Gaia and the Disciple of the Crimson World ultimately decided to reclaim all information and power back to themselves as much as possible.
On the other hand, Bai Mo had learned the information blockade barrier too recently; he could only maintain such a barrier indiscriminately, preventing either himself or his enemies from transmitting information to the outside.
"For who knows how many years to come, we'll just focus on watching the show." The Disciple of the Crimson World remarked, a hint of self-mockery in its tone.
As existences freed from the limitations of physical lifespan, their sole constraint was the lifespan of their thoughts. Yet, an incalculably long time remained before the extinction of their thoughts, so the Disciple of the Crimson World possessed ample patience to formulate its escape plan.
"How long do you think it'll take them to figure out that the Spirit Devourer, and even the drugs meant to combat it, were nothing but a hoax?" After completing its arrangements, Gaia proactively sought out the Disciple of the Crimson World for a chat.
The relationship between the two had always been subtle; at times, they were mortal enemies, at others, close allies. The very concept of immortality allowed them to view many things with a profound detachment.
The hastily deployed information blockade barrier only prohibited the outflow of all information, but not the inflow of external information. Thus, the two would become eternal spectators, suspended high in the heavens, beyond reach.
There was no such thing as a Spirit Devourer virus; it was merely a particle casually conjured by Gaia. The true cause of death was Gaia controlling certain segments of these people's genes to continuously synthesize enzymes that decomposed their bodies.
And these very decomposition enzymes, belonging to the host's own body and thus not rejected by the Life Field, were precisely the reason for the victims' horrifying demise.
The so-called research results were merely an illusion it created by manipulating the researchers. How could an effective treatment plan be developed for a non-existent virus? As soon as Gaia ceased the synthesis of decomposition enzymes, the patients would immediately recover.
As for the matter of it only affecting superhumans, that was even simpler to achieve. Gaia, being able to control genes to a certain extent, could essentially kill whoever it wished.
Whether ordinary people or superhumans, in its eyes, they were merely files within a computer. It could delete whoever it wanted; the only difference was that an ordinary person was a small file of only a few tens of kilobytes, taking mere seconds to completely delete, whereas the stronger a superhuman, the larger the data volume represented by their file, and the more troublesome it was to delete them.
It was simply because quantitative change had led to qualitative transformation that it had capsized in a ditch, transforming from an administrator into a mere spectator.
"If not for his letter, I would have proceeded with my plan to refine Ying Huo into my own avatar, instead of merely leaving behind a Golden Apple that had lost more than half of its efficacy, and then embarked on the path of devouring others to grow stronger." Before falling into slumber, Bai Mo pondered how a past choice might have altered events.
"Compared to painstakingly pondering and deducing the path ahead, devouring others to gain strength is undoubtedly an absolute shortcut."
"If it were me, I would first start by devouring bought experimental subjects, then quickly become like Gaia and its counterpart, or even more thoroughly consume, turning the entire world into my personal dinner plate... This final battle might have been fought with greater ease."
"I could also have brought the Sea Race into consideration, using the entire planet as a cage to breed intelligent beings, harvesting them periodically just like the Disciple of the Crimson World."
"Or, if I were to do it more discreetly, I could turn the Nine Netherworlds into an immortal realm, forcibly making superhumans who reached a certain level 'ascend' into my mouth..."
"But ultimately, this was my own choice. I merely desired a different world." He slowly shut off all his senses.
No matter who was missing from this world, society would continue to function. After these dark clouds that had hung over humanity's head dissipated, the world embarked on a new round of transformations.
Although the final method of resolution was fraught with injustice, in the reality where five-tier superhumans remained largely unharmed and still wielded absolute military might capable of suppressing all dissent, the plan for handling this unrest was executed in an orderly fashion.
An "Amnesty Order" issued from Ziliu Sea brought an imperfect conclusion to the matter, or rather, merely an ellipsis.
All who had taken human lives, regardless of their status or strength, were uniformly sent to the front lines to kill enemies and repay their debts, allowed to return to their original residences only upon death or completion of their missions. As compensation, financial losses resulting from the ordinary people's frenzied looting would no longer be pursued.
The scope of the matter was simply too vast, involving the crimes of hundreds of millions of people. The law was powerless, left with no choice but to resolve it with the most brutal, sweeping solution.
"But this is truly unfair to those whose money was stolen yet committed no crimes, isn't it? And those ordinary people whose family members were killed must be quite displeased with the murderers running free." After Yun Jie returned home from several days of meetings, Yue Yu suddenly appeared before him from a certain corner.
"There's no other way. In the face of the larger picture, someone always has to make a sacrifice. If we were to truly investigate to the very end, the Huaxia Federation would immediately collapse. This is merely a compromise. For our class and the class of ordinary people, this resolution is relatively fair. But for individuals, each with different circumstances, there's no such thing as fairness to speak of."
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