Silent Flock

In the central square of the small town, several thousand people gathered.

No one spoke, no one conversed, and not even a cough could be heard.

These thousands of soulless hollow shells stood like a forest of gray tombstones, silently upright in the white dust.

Li Wei pulled Elena, blending into the middle of the crowd.

Elena's face was smeared with dried, blackened blood, making her look like a vengeful spirit.

She tightly clutched the corner of Li Wei's jacket, her entire body rigid.

"What are they waiting for?" Elena's voice was as soft as a mosquito's hum, yet even so, it sounded exceptionally grating in this deathly silent crowd.

"Shh." Li Wei placed a finger against his lips.

He pointed up at the sky.

In the previously gray sky, those green auroras began to undulate violently.

A deep, bone-resonant hum washed over them.

Hum—hum—

A massive shadow pierced through the clouds and descended.

It was a huge, rib-shaped metal structure suspended in mid-air.

It resembled the chest skeleton of an ancient giant beast, except it was forged from living metal, with each rib pulsing with a faint green glow.

A Necron Transport Barge—or perhaps a giant variant of a Ghost Ark.

It did not land, instead hovering ten meters off the ground.

A green tractor beam projected from the vessel's belly, enveloping a corner of the square.

"Collection... commences..." That harsh broadcasted voice sounded once more.

"Units... board vessel... proceed to... processing node..."

The crowd moved.

There was no pushing, no panic.

The hundreds of hollow shells caught in the beam began to march in unison toward the center of the beam.

As they stepped into the pillar of light, their bodies slowly lifted, rising like lifeless cargo to be sucked up into the colossal ribbed ship.

"Are they... gathering people?" Elena watched this scene in horror.

"The Necrons don't farm, nor do they mine resources." Li Wei coldly stared at the people ascending. "To them, biomass is a resource. Or... they need a massive number of test subjects to measure the effects of that Dead Space of Exorcism."

"We're going up." Li Wei made his decision.

"What?!" Elena's eyes widened. "That's walking to our deaths! That's a laboratory!"

"It's the only shuttle to the core." Li Wei pointed to the distant inverted pyramid.

"This ship will transport this batch of cargo right beneath that pyramid. If we want to get close to it, this is the only way."

"Besides..." Li Wei glanced at Elena. "Your condition is getting worse. If we don't shut down that field soon, even if I don't kill you, you'll soon become just like them."

Elena fell silent.

She truly felt it.

That numbness was creeping up from her fingertips; she was beginning to forget the second line of the morning prayer, and even started to think that... becoming those empty shells might not be so bad, since at least it was peaceful.

"Let's go." Li Wei took her hand.

"Remember, act natural. Keep your mouth shut, let your gaze go blank, don't think, don't pray."

The two of them moved slowly with the stream of people toward that column of green light.

As the distance closed, Li Wei saw the interior of the Ghost Ark clearly.

There were no seats.

Only dense rows of metal compartments resembling a honeycomb.

Every person sucked up was seized by mechanical arms and forcefully shoved into those slots like batteries, secured in place by stasis fields.

"Like canned food." That word popped into Li Wei's mind.

It was their turn.

The green beam enveloped them entirely.

A sensation of weightlessness struck, and Li Wei's feet left the ground.

He felt like a feather, drifting toward that massive metal maw.

Around him were expressionless miners and women.

They offered no resistance, submissively accepting their fate.

Scanning commenced.

A green scanning grid swept across the ascending crowd.

Li Wei immediately held his breath and emptied his mind.

He felt the scanning grid pierce through his body.

[Detected: Biomass.] [Soul reading: Extremely low (confirmed fully stasis-locked individual).] [Verdict: Qualified sample.]

He passed!

To the Necron programming, Li Wei's state of lacking any soul reaction was precisely the perfect product they wished to manufacture.

They might even think that among this batch of cargo, Li Wei was the most thoroughly pickled one.

Next was Elena.

The scanning grid swept across her blood-smeared face.

Elena bit down hard on the tip of her tongue, using the pain to maintain a shred of sobriety while desperately suppressing her terror.

Li Wei's blood worked.

That layer of Pariah genetic material acted like a sheet of lead, blocking the Necrons' detection of her soul spark.

[Detected: Biomass.] [Soul reading: Faint (approaching stasis threshold).] [Verdict: Qualified sample (further processing required).]

She passed as well.

The two of them rose into the cabin.

Clack! Cold mechanical arms gripped Li Wei's shoulders, the immense force nearly crushing his bones.

He was roughly shoved into a narrow metal slot.

Immediately afterward, a transparent energy barrier rose before him, locking him tightly inside.

Unable to move, even turning his head was difficult.

In the slot beside him, Elena was shoved in as well.

Her posture was twisted, like a doll forcefully crammed into a box.

She looked at Li Wei, her eyes filled with helplessness.

The ship was full.

Thousands of people were neatly packed like this inside the giant airborne coffin.

Hum—The engines engaged.

The colossal ribbed ship altered its course, flying toward the massive, inverted black pyramid on the horizon.

Through the energy barrier in front of him, Li Wei watched the white desert below recede at high speed.

In his field of vision, front, back, left, and right were entirely lifeless human faces.

No sound of breathing, no sound of a heartbeat.

Only the cold, death-knell roar of the ship's engines.

This was industrial horror pushed to its absolute limit.

Humanity here was no longer the master of all things, nor even an enemy—merely raw material.

"If I were a person with a soul..." Li Wei looked at the ship full of cargo, a chill rising in his chest.

"Even without going mad, spending ten minutes here would drive anyone insane with despair."

While everyone else sank into stillness, Li Wei's fingers were quietly moving.

He discovered that the energy barrier holding him seemed to be composed of some kind of flowing living metal.

And this metal had an extremely faint repulsive reaction to the sweat on his hands.

If he rubbed against the barrier for a prolonged time, would it cause localized aging or malfunction?

Li Wei began to experiment.

He was like a hamster locked in a cage, using his fingers to pick bit by bit at the edge of the barrier.

In this deathly silent ship laden with thousands of the living dead, that insignificant friction noise became the sole act of resistance.

The ship flew into that expanse of green aurora.

The massive inverted pyramid—the core node of the Dead Space of Exorcism—was already close at hand.

That thing was too enormous.

Large enough to obscure the sky.

It resembled an inverted mountain peak, its apex pointing straight down at the ground.

And beneath that apex, Li Wei saw a massive crater.

Inside the crater, there were no machines.

Black mist churned within it.

Yet amidst the mist, something enormous seemed to be writhing.

"What is that?" Li Wei narrowed his eyes.

Necron technology was usually clean, orderly, and glowing green. But the things in that pit looked organic, even chaotic.

Could it be that the Necrons built this massive force field not merely to turn people into fools?