Tokyo.

【Pure Land】.

An Qingyu sat in the center of the control room, with flashing screens everywhere around him. His eyes were fixed on all the screens at the same time, motionless like a sculpture.

"Qingyu, you've been reading for five hours straight. It's time to take a break."

Suddenly, Jiang Er's figure walked silently to his side, waved gently, and the images on all the screens fell into darkness.

An Qingyu slowly closed his eyes, rubbed his temples with both hands, and sighed, his eyes were complicated:

"Really? You know something incredible..."

"What did you find?"

An Qingyu didn't say anything. He stood up silently, walked to the huge floor-to-ceiling window, and looked down at the neon-lit city beneath his feet.

"Jiang Er, tell me...how many kilowatt-hours of electricity does such a large country consume every year?" he asked Jiang Er in return.

Jiang Er was startled, and after hesitating for a moment, he replied: "It should be around 500 trillion watt-hours?"

"It should be much more than this." An Qingyu shook his head. "Then, how is electricity generated?"

"Nuclear power, natural gas power, oil power, wind power, hydropower? They should all be available, right?"

"That's right, but don't you find a problem?" An Qingyu said calmly, "This country's own mineral resources are extremely scarce. Where does the gas and oil used for power generation come from?"

Jiang Er stood there in a daze.

"Or, let me ask it another way." An Qingyu paused, "In the absence of fossil fuels, how do the power stations here generate electricity? Nuclear power, wind power and hydropower alone cannot support such a huge amount of electricity consumption."

"What's going on?"

"The answer is that the power stations here are just for show. They can't generate electricity at all." An Qingyu glanced at the ground beneath his feet. "All the electricity they output comes from here. All the electricity in this country comes from the Pure Land."

"Here?" Jiang Er frowned slightly, "But there is no power generation equipment here either. Where does the electricity come from?"

An Qingyu stretched out his hand and pointed to the figures below the clouds, who were walking through the streets like ants:

"People...or rather, dead people."

…

"After death is eternal torture?" Galan seemed unable to understand this sentence.

"For example," the knight continued to explain, "to survive, humans need water, air, soil, food, energy... and the artifact itself cannot automatically generate these, but it can create them out of thin air by absorbing souls.

For people living in this "human circle", every drop of water they drink, every breath of air they breathe, and even every kilowatt-hour of electricity they use... are driven by dead human souls.

Burning the body of a living thing will release a lot of heat, and burning the human soul will generate an astronomical amount of energy. "

"In other words, in order to maintain the operation of this 'human circle', a large number of people must be killed and their souls used as nutrients?" Wu Xiangnan thought thoughtfully, "But what if the number of people who die naturally in the 'human circle' cannot keep up with the speed of consumption? Wouldn't this cycle be broken?"

"It's not that easy." The knight shook his head, "Have you forgotten that in order to save themselves, the gods sacrificed the vast majority of their lives, and the number of such lives... is calculated in tens of millions or even hundreds of millions.

The lives they sacrificed alone were enough to keep the "human circle" running for quite a long time.

So, to some extent, the reason why people in the ‘Human Circle’ can live and dedicate their faith is because there are tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of ancestral souls burning as fuel for the world they live in.”

Jia Lan frowned and said, "This is too cruel."

"That's right, so the existence of the 'Human Circle' is evil in itself." The knight continued, "And the more humans are kept in the 'Human Circle', the more energy is consumed, the more human souls are used as fuel, and the more sinful this city is.

Harassing, attacking, and even destroying the "human circle" is one of our core goals in the Shangxie Society."

"Destruction?" Wu Xiangnan asked doubtfully, "After destroying the 'human circle', what will happen to the humans kept in it?"

"Generally speaking, we rarely carry out 'destruction'. At most, we just blow up the temples or statues used to collect faith, and save some of the people.

If we really want to carry out 'destruction', it depends on the size of this 'human circle'. "

The knight shrugged and replied, "If the number of people in captivity is less than 500,000, we will extradite them to the [Utopia] created by the president, and continue to live there. If the number exceeds this number... we have no other choice but to extradite 500,000 women, children and young adults with special skills, and the rest... can only be left to perish with the 'Human Circle'."

"That means... everyone inside will die?" Wu Xiangnan frowned. "Isn't this indiscriminate killing?"

"'Indiscriminate killing'?" The knight raised his eyebrows, "It's fine if you understand it this way, but I hope you understand that this is the fog, and we, the Shangxie Society, have never been a saintly organization. We are 'evil'.

We cannot and do not have the obligation to save everyone. However, being able to extradite 500,000 people as a spark to Utopia is our greatest respect for these countries and their cultural heritage.

Moreover, destroying the "Human Circle" means saving those tens of millions of souls that are burning in pain. Maybe it is destruction for the people living in it, but for those miserable souls, it is salvation!"

When the knight's voice fell, the entire cabin fell into silence.

The whistling sound of the wind mixed with the hum of the waves hitting the hull echoed in the dim cabin. After a long time, Wu Xiangnan slowly spoke:

"I understand... Anyway, I will follow the mission and cooperate with your actions."

"Long live understanding." The knight smiled slightly.

"So, what do we do next?"

"Every time we at the Shangxie Society want to attack a 'human circle', we will first carry out a series of infiltration preparations." The knight spoke slowly, "Among them, the two most important types of people are called 'paratroopers' and 'sentinels'.

Since the Human Circle is so important to the Kingdom of God, it is not so easy to enter the Human Circle. The key point to infiltrate the Human Circle is to find the gap that connects it to the outside world. "

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