"You mean, the guests drinking in the box are of special status?" Victoria reacted immediately.

"More than unusual..." Ke Lan walked to the sliding door of the box. There were several obvious bumps and scratches about 30 centimeters from the door frame to the ground. He squatted down and gently stroked these scratches with his fingers. "Although there are many ways to cause such marks, in this place, combined with the identity of the drinkers, these bumps should be caused by the samurai sword sheaths tied around their waists... Speaking of samurai swords, Ms. Victoria, what do you think of?"

"Arasaka Samurai Club." Victoria still had that expressionless look on her face, but there was a hint of realization in her eyes.

"This izakaya is obviously one of the gathering places for members of the Samurai Club... Only people with the status of club members can afford to enjoy the precious sashimi that is priced by gram. Not long ago, a group of members of the Arasaka Samurai Club were sitting in this room drinking. They knew in advance that a power outage was about to happen, so when all the lights went out, they were not panicked at all. They were even able to calmly put their chopsticks on the chopstick holder."

"Then what?" Victoria stared at Ke Lan and asked.

"These people should have been assigned corresponding tasks by the Arasaka Group... or the heretical sect. I think that gathering the people on the streets of East District 9 should be part of their tasks." Ke Lan said, "After all, this must have been planned by them for a long time, so it is normal to have such an arrangement."

"So, what is their purpose in rounding up the civilians?"

"I don't know about that. Maybe those civilians are up there." Ke Lan raised his head, and a drop of half-coagulated blood fell from the ceiling, landing on the plate of expensive sea bream sashimi in the middle of the table.

No bodies were found in the izakaya on the first floor. All the bloodstains had seeped from the "Kyoto-style Teppanyaki Restaurant" on the second floor.

The little girl who was made into a "container" also jumped out from the second floor.

"Go upstairs." Victoria made the decision immediately.

The stairs leading to the second floor are located at the end of the corridor between the back kitchen and the bathroom. The stairs are also made of a polymer that imitates real wood and are covered with dark red carpet. There are many scratches left by fingernails on the handrails of the stairs.

"It seems that those people were dragged up there by force." Ke Lan whispered to Victoria, "As for the people who dragged them up there, they should be the guys from the Warrior Club."

"Those people... shouldn't still be upstairs, right?" Major Ashkani asked somewhat uneasily.

"Probably not." Victoria shook her head. "In order to absorb enough nutrients, the Corrosion Seeds in the Rapid Transformation Period will indiscriminately attack all living things within its field of vision. If the 'Container' had been staying on the second floor before, there should be no living people on the second floor."

"I, I think... I'd better be careful." Major Ashkani held the pistol tightly with both hands, with his thumbs on the safety device above the grip. This made Ke Lan secretly complain in his heart: If there is any emergency later, this guy must not get nervous and accidentally shoot his own people...

The team climbed the stairs, and just when the agent holding the shield in the front reached the same level as the ground on the second floor, he suddenly raised his hand and signaled the people behind him to stop.

"What's wrong?" Victoria asked immediately.

"...Corpses, so many corpses..." The agent's voice trembled slightly.

"Have you found any threatening targets?" Victoria was not too surprised. She had already prepared herself for the worst situation on the second floor.

And filling up an entire floor with corpses is actually not the worst case scenario.

At least, the corpse poses no threat to the living.

"Not yet." The agent lowered his arms and continued to climb up the last few steps. He squatted at the entrance of the second floor and placed his pistol with a tactical flashlight on his shield.

The agent following behind him lit up two lighting sticks again and threw them into the distance.

"No threat targets were found."

Victoria and Ke Lan followed the leading agents to the second floor. In the light of the spotlights, they could vaguely see hundreds of corpses piled on the ground. These corpses had an obvious feature: their fingers were cut off at the roots, their arms were crossed in front of their chests, and their bare palms were placed on their shoulders - this posture was exactly the same as the posture of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt when they were buried.

"It's a sacrifice, these people are sacrifices." Victoria whispered.

"Sacrifice? What is a sacrifice? These corpses?" Major Ashkani at the side couldn't help but ask. His legs were shaking slightly. Fortunately, the shaking was not strong and the environment was dark, so people around him didn't notice it.

"Hmm." Victoria pulled out a lighting stick and threw it towards the pile of corpses. "This is an extremely cruel ritual of the heretical sect. They use living people as sacrifices and pray to the 'great god' they call it, in order to obtain the so-called protection and blessing of the 'god'..."

"Living sacrifice..." Ke Lan silently repeated the word. He had read in a book that in the barbaric period on Earth, it was very common to use people as living sacrifices. But later, with the development of civilization, human sacrifice was gradually regarded as an extremely barbaric and bloody thing. Except for some uncivilized areas, most countries on Earth rarely performed human sacrifices after entering the feudal era.

But now, on this Ark, which symbolizes the highest achievement of human civilization, human sacrifice has appeared again.

"I have seen a few prayer ceremonies in which heretical sects used living people as sacrifices, but they were all outside the Ark, and the sacrifices were all slaves who were already dying..." The agent who said he had heard the sound said to Ke Lan and Ashkani, "But I have never seen a living sacrifice on this scale... Generally speaking, this kind of prayer ceremony only requires two or three sacrifices..."

"A human sacrifice of three hundred people... I think what they want to pray to that 'god' must be a very big event, right?" Ke Lan whispered.

"Let's not talk about that for now," Victoria waved her hand. "One team will test the corpses to see if there are any corpses infected with the Seed of Erosion cells. That 'container' jumped out from this place. All the corpses here have a high risk of infection."