The actions of a heretical sect can be said to have crossed the bottom line of being a human being... After seeing the sacrificial scene in the restaurant, Ke Lan no longer intended to regard these guys as his own kind.

In the two minutes or so, the team only advanced less than a hundred meters. Just when Ke Lan was thinking whether he should speed up a little, Victoria, who was squatting under the bloodhound's watch, suddenly stood up and shouted at a grocery store on the right side of the street 20 meters ahead: "Come out! Otherwise, I will order the throwing of incendiary bombs into the building where you are hiding!"

As a high-level cyborg, with the help of detection devices directly connected to the body, Victoria's perception ability is already the strongest in this team. Hearing her say this, the agents pointed their guns at the main entrance of the grocery store.

“Crunch—”

The antique-style fence door was gently pushed open, and a man in a floor-length black robe slowly walked out.

There is no doubt that this is a believer of a heretical sect, but no one knows what his rank is in the sect - this black robe is covered with strange patterns, and you can tell at a glance that this person is definitely not one of those ordinary believers at the lowest level.

The man in the black robe walked to the middle of the street, facing Ke Lan and the others. He slowly raised his arms to shoulder level, with his palms facing up and his ten fingers stretched straight.

"What is he doing?" Ke Lan muttered to himself. He subconsciously glanced at Victoria standing on the mecha. He caught a hint of doubt in the latter's vigilant eyes - obviously, the Security Bureau should not have any relevant information about the actions of this man in black robe.

No one knows what this heretic in black robes wants to do.

This action couldn't possibly be a surrender to them.

More than half of the team's weapons were aimed at his vital points. With just Victoria's command, the man in black would be blown to pieces without leaving any trace.

At this moment, the man in black robe spoke. His lips moved slightly, but he didn't utter even a single syllable.

"He... he seems to be saying something?" Alyosha whispered, "but... I can't hear what he is saying at all..."

Of course you can’t hear it... Ke Lan thought, because what the man in black robe said was clearly the language of Alpha civilization!

This is the fourth human that Ke Lan knows of who can speak the language of the Alpha civilization. Apart from him and the "successor" who founded the heretical sect, the other one is the "messenger of the prophet" who sacrificed himself to the Seed of Erosion in the exile camp.

Could it be that the man in black robe in front of me is also a "messenger of the prophet"?

But Ke Lan soon discovered that the man in black robes did not seem to be proficient in the language of the Alpha civilization. He kept repeating the same few sentences, and his reading was very difficult, just like a toddler who was just learning to speak...

The general meaning of these sentences was not far from what Ke Lan saw on the broken stone tablet.

At this moment, Major Ashkani suddenly exclaimed: "You, you...you look at his face!"

The face of the man in the black robe was not covered up. It was the face of a young yellow man without any notable features. He was not handsome, but not ugly either. If his dirty black robe was replaced with an ordinary company employee uniform and then he was thrown into a morning train packed with office workers, he would hardly attract anyone's attention.

But as he continued to recite those prayers, his face was aging rapidly - his originally plump skin gradually became dry and wrinkled, a large number of wrinkles and age spots appeared on his face, and his eye sockets also sank deeply, and his eyeballs became cloudy... It was only a few seconds, but it seemed like decades had passed on him.

At this time, another mechanical voice sounded in the depths of Ke Lan's brain: "The servants of God can temporarily grant the use of some of the holy words to his followers, but as a price, when the servants of God or his followers use these holy words to pray directly to the great God for a gift, they must offer a vitality equal to the power of the gift..."

This passage comes from the information left by the Alpha civilization. Although it sounds mysterious, it is not difficult to understand from the literal meaning, especially when combined with the current situation -

"Servants of God" should refer to the Alpha people or the "heirs" of Alpha civilization, and the so-called holy words should refer to the language of Alpha civilization mastered by Ke Lan and the founder of the heretical sect... This language ability can be temporarily transferred to other people, but whether it is a servant or a servant's family, they have to pay the price of their own lifespan to use this ability...

Wait... Ke Lan suddenly realized that there was something difficult to explain in this information: If using the "Holy Word" requires the cost of life, then he has used this ability more than once, why does he seem to be unaffected?

If using the language of Alpha civilization requires the cost of one's lifespan, this civilization would never have been able to develop, and these ruins on this planet should not exist!

No... No, that shouldn't be the case... I misunderstood it from the beginning! "Holy Words" should not refer to the language of the Alpha civilization, but to a few specific "prayer words". Only when these "prayer words" are "used" will the user's vitality be depleted!

As for the function of these "holy words", it is to exchange one's own lifespan for a "gift" from that "great god"... So, what is this "gift"?

Soon, Ke Lan found the answer.

The black-robed man, who had aged to the point of being on the brink of death, suddenly trembled. His skin, hair, and flesh were rapidly decaying, and his organs and intestines, which had lost their support, fell to the ground one after another... In less than ten seconds, only a pitch-black skeleton was left wrapped in the black robe.

A dark skeleton!

Ke Lan reacted immediately and hurriedly shouted to Victoria: "Be careful! He is not dead!"

"This skeleton... is what you encountered in the cargo hold of the 'Pioneer' icebreaker, right?" Victoria asked. After the Soma Consortium sent the sample of the black skeleton to the research institute, the battle in the cargo hold was no longer a secret, and the Security Bureau naturally obtained the relevant intelligence at the first time.

"Yeah." Ke Lan nodded. "This thing is extremely mobile and difficult to deal with...especially in a place like this."