Volume 14: Devastation Chapter 653: Splitting Bullets
"Uh..." Aya's expression suddenly froze.
Ke Lan was not wrong. Children born in such families have lived in an environment with extremely good material conditions since childhood. Things that ordinary children desire, such as candies and toys, are almost not difficult for them to obtain. Over time, these things will naturally no longer have any appeal to them.
"Then...what should I do?" Aya looked at Ke Lan for help - she grew up in the Security Bureau's training institution and started performing missions alone at the age of fourteen. She has almost never been in a normal family environment and has no emotional experience, let alone children... She really has no experience in coaxing children.
"Why are you looking at me? I've never taken care of a child before..." Looking at Aya's eyes, Ke Lan complained in his heart.
But even though she was complaining, Ke Lan still tried to squat down, looking at the delicate little girl at eye level, and said in the softest tone possible: "Your mother is not feeling well right now, little sister, please come over here quickly. This big sister will take you to find your father later..."
As if reacting to the word "Dad", the little girl first shrank her shoulders, then looked at her mother with some fear, and took a cautious step forward.
One step, two steps... until she was about two meters away from the young woman, the young woman did not make any reaction. Only then did the little girl take a step and run towards Aya.
"Take her out." Ke Lan whispered to Aya.
Aya reached out her hand, picked up the little girl, glanced at Ke Lan and Asano Akira, said "be careful", and then left the room.
At this time, the sacrificial ceremony of the young woman opposite the bed had also come to an end. Her eyes were wide open, and her delicate face gradually became distorted and hideous... But for some reason, Ke Lan always felt that something was wrong.
She was breathing heavily, her towering chest rising and falling, the front wall of her chest between the two slender suspenders was stained with a strange crimson color. She leaned back slightly, her hands tightly grasping the edge of the dressing table, not even noticing that her carefully maintained nails were broken on the tabletop, and the speed of her reciting between her two red lips became faster and faster...
Ke Lan suddenly realized that something was wrong. The black-robed cardinals he had encountered before would have their vitality drained away quickly after the sacrificial ceremony began. Especially at the end of the ceremony, the black-robed cardinals would undergo a great change: the more respectable ones might turn into a mummy or a skeleton, while the more serious ones would become festering and corrupt, with pus flowing all over their bodies...
But the body of the widow in front of him didn't seem to have any obvious changes.
Apart from her breathing becoming a little rapid , the young woman's plump body did not give the visual effect of being "hollowed out". Her smooth and delicate skin was as tender as a baby's, and the abundant collagen supported her elastic and attractive curves. The subcutaneous fat and muscles were full and well-proportioned, with no signs of collapse. Only her fair skin became rosy due to congestion... It didn't look like her vitality had been drained away at all.
"Strange..." Ke Lan did not relax his vigilance and still pointed the energy gun in his hand at the young woman's head.
Finally, the long prayer was finished...but nothing happened.
"What's going on?" Asano Akira asked, holding the knife.
"I don't know...it can't be a network delay." Ke Lan shook his head. He had no idea what the other party was doing.
Could it be that this woman is not a cardinal at all and is just trying to scare them?
That's not right... The pronunciation of the prayer she just recited was indeed in accordance with the simulated syllables of the Alpha language, and there was nothing wrong with that. If she had just recited it randomly, Ke Lan would have been able to hear the problem from the beginning.
"Why? Why is this happening?!" It wasn't just Ke Lan and Asano Akira who were shocked and confused. The young woman was the same. She waved her arms hysterically, like a madman.
"Why didn't the messenger of God come? Why? Have we been abandoned? Have we been abandoned by the great God? Abandoned by the prophet?" she cried out in a crying voice.
Prophet? When Ke Lan heard the young woman mention the prophet, he was startled at first, and then he suddenly understood.
Although the battle of the Bronze City Ruins was no longer a secret, the Ark officials did not announce the specific results and casualties to the public. In addition, due to the serious disaster caused by the "Final Judgment" that hit the Ark itself, few people's attention was still on the Bronze City Ruins and Alexander. As for the death of the Prophet himself, it was temporarily blocked by the Undead Crew as a top-level secret.
From the young woman's words, we can tell that she probably doesn't know the news of the prophet's death yet.
"The servants of God can temporarily grant the right to use part of the Holy Word to his followers, but as a price, when the servants of God or his followers use the Holy Word to pray for the great God's blessing, they must offer life force equivalent to the blessing as a sacrifice..."
This is a description of the "Holy Word" in the memory fragments in Ke Lan's brain. Combined with Ke Lan's own actual experience, it can be basically confirmed that the "Holy Word" of these black cardinals were all given to them by the prophet - if the "Holy Word" is compared to a summoning magic that requires life as the cost, the Alpha language is equivalent to the spell required to release the summoning magic, and the only people known to truly master the spell are Ke Lan and the prophet (excluding the consciousness of the living armor), and what the black cardinal holds is more like a disposable magic scroll that seals the spell inside.
Although the price of life force is paid by the person who uses the "magic scroll", now that the person who made the scroll and sealed the spell is dead, the scroll has naturally become useless waste...
To put it in a more concise and understandable way, only Ke Lan and the prophet can communicate directly with "Him". They are equivalent to "modems (commonly known as: cats)" directly connected to the network cable, and these cardinals in black are the terminal devices connected to the "cats". Now the "cats" they are connected to have been smashed by Ke Lan. Even if these terminal devices themselves have no faults, they cannot connect to the network.
Without the existence of a prophet, even if these black cardinals recite the "Holy Word" a thousand or ten thousand times, nothing will happen.
After all, they have never mastered the key to the "Holy Word" - the Alpha language.
This was an unexpected gain that made Ke Lan quite happy. He had never expected that by killing a prophet, he could also eliminate all the most threatening black cardinals in the heretical sect... Once this big problem was solved, the difficulty of purging the remnants of the heretical sect would be reduced by several levels.
Looking at the young woman in front of him who was in despair and confusion, Ke Lan suddenly remembered a classic line: "You can shout, even if your throat hurts, the god you believe in won't hear you."
Of course, considering that the public communication channel is still open, hundreds of security agents and garrison soldiers are still waiting for Ke Lan's order... If I really say this in front of so many people, I'm afraid I can't escape the name of "pervert". Even if they don't say it, they will definitely spread it privately...
Now that I am considered a senior leader, I should pay more attention to my personal image.
"I know what's going on." Ke Lan said to Asano Akira.
"Um?"
"The abilities of these black cardinals were given to them by the prophet. When the prophet died, their abilities naturally disappeared." Ke Lan said, "I think the words "black cardinal" should be removed from the Ark's list of threats in the future."
"What did you say? The prophet is dead?" Although the young woman was crying, she still caught the key words in the conversation between Ke Lan and Asano Akira. Her eyes were fixed on Ke Lan. "You are lying... How could the prophet die! You can't kill him! This is impossible... Impossible!"
"How should we deal with this person?" Asano Akira asked Ke Lan.
"She is no longer a threat. Just take her out and hand her over to the security department... But I think the final outcome won't be any different."
After the abolition of the "exile crime", the Ark officials adopted a "no mercy" attitude towards those who joined the heretical sects... Unless they took the initiative to abandon the dark and join the light, and can make a great contribution to the Ark, there is a chance to make up for their sins. As for the general worthless believers, they are often taken directly to the nearest execution ground after a simple interrogation and filing process, and they will not even be allowed to stay in prison for one more night.
As for this woman... her fate might be even more miserable than that of ordinary heretic believers. As a "black cardinal", even if her abilities were useless, she would most likely be taken by the institute for live research... After all, up to now, the institute has not been able to capture a living black cardinal, and the research progress on the "Holy Word" is almost zero.
…
Suddenly, Ke Lan found that she didn't seem to be as disgusted with the research institute as before... especially such inhumane "live experiments"...
Could it be because his status had changed? He used to be a nobody who kept a secret and lived in fear of being caught for biopsy research; but now, he had become a person in power who was above the institute. Not only did he not have to worry about his own safety, but he could also use the institute as his own tool... So his attitude had changed so significantly?
He couldn't help but twitch the corners of his mouth in self-mockery. It seemed that no matter who it was, it would be difficult to escape the law that "the dragon slayer will eventually become a dragon."
"But at least we have to stick to the bottom line." Ke Lan warned himself in his heart. When he looked up, he saw the young woman pulling out a pistol from under the pillow, with the black muzzle pointing at him.
Unlike the pocket pistol used by Hinata Yuji that couldn't even penetrate Kevlar bulletproof vests, this was a 0.5-inch hunting pistol. Following the threaded rifling, Ke Lan could even see the brass bullet in the barrel.
“Bang!!”
"bite!"
The sound of the hunting pistol was like thunder, so loud that it completely drowned out the sound of metal clashing that sounded almost at the same time. Two gusts of wind passed by Ke Lan's cheeks, and a strand of hair cut off by the airflow slowly fell down.
Ke Lan, who released time stop hundreds of times in just one second, clearly saw the frames in which Asano Akira swung his knife to cut the bullet in half - with his ability, he could have easily avoided this shot, but since Asano Akira had taken action, Ke Lan was too lazy to move.
He trusted Asano Akira very much, just as Asano Akira trusted him very much.
After cutting the bullet, Asano Akira immediately threw out the armor-piercing knife on his waist, and the sharp tip of the knife went straight through the young woman's throat.
The young woman's body twitched, and she seemed to want to reach out her hand to touch the knife stuck in her neck, but before she raised her arm to her chest, the pupils of her eyes began to dilate, and the whole person fell straight down.
"What a pity." Ke Lan sighed... To be honest, he didn't know whether he was feeling sorry for such a beautiful woman's untimely death... or feeling sorry for the research institute losing a precious living specimen.
"Should I not kill her?" Asano Akira asked after a moment's pause.
"It's okay... maybe she should thank you instead." Ke Lan said.
If this woman hadn't died... the fate that awaited her would probably be more unacceptable than death.
"By the way, that knife move just now was pretty cool. The knife cut the bullet, just like in the movies." Ke Lan knew that relying solely on the limits of the human body, the action of swinging a knife could not be faster than a bullet, but with Asano Akira's special ability, this operation was no longer just a special effects shot that could only appear in movies. Even if the picture was captured in a time-stop state, the blade cutting through the bullet only took a few frames, which is only a few milliseconds when converted into real time.
To be precise, it was not Asano Akira who split the bullet. He simply kept the blade on the trajectory of the bullet and waited for the bullet to hit the blade itself.
At the moment when the blade wedged into the inside of the bullet, the blade of the sword trembled slightly. It was this vibration that was almost invisible to the naked eye that split the two halves of the bullet apart and flew out along both sides of Ke Lan's head.
"By the way, when you use these abilities now, will there be any burden or side effects?" Ke Lan asked.
Asano Akira's abilities are almost identical to Marshall's, and Ke Lan doesn't want Asano Akira to end up like Marshall.
"As long as it's not overloaded, there will be no problem." Asano Akira shook his head.
At this moment, a scream suddenly came from the headphones!
It's Aya's——
