The Truth That Was Swallowed

The ship screamed. Not with the sound of metal grinding, but with the howls of tens of thousands of vocal cords tearing apart at once.

The Golden Eagle was diving at supersonic speed, plunging through the layers of ruins in the Bottom Hive, smashing through enormous ventilation ducts and drilling toward the depths of the planet's core like a bunker-buster missile.

Inside the cockpit, gravity had failed completely.

Li Wei and Aurelia floated in midair, surrounded by golden, amniotic-fluid-like liquid seeping from the walls.

Aurelia had stopped screaming.

She curled into a ball, clamping her hands over her ears as bloody tears streamed from her eyes.

In her perception, this was no spaceship cockpit at all.

What she saw was a vast, pulsating womb.

The surrounding walls were covered in countless familiar faces—the nobles who had died at the banquet. They poked their heads out from the flesh walls and issued her a silent invitation: "Join us... merge... there will be no more pain..."

For an ordinary person, that kind of mental corruption was harder to endure than death.

But Li Wei saw only something disgusting. Through his Soulless Vision, none of those illusions existed.

All he saw were the surrounding instrument panels turning into twitching organs, the control stick becoming a spinal cord, and the floating golden liquid actually being highly acidic digestive fluid.

"Don't fall asleep, Aurelia!" Li Wei grabbed her by the collar and pulled her close.

As they made contact, the "silence field" around Li Wei spread like a bubble, temporarily shutting out the mad whispers.

Aurelia drew a sharp breath, and a little focus returned to her eyes. "Where... where are we?"

"We're in the monster's stomach." Li Wei glanced at the data-slate in his hand, its timer steadily counting down.

[00:12:30]

"In twelve minutes, the big thing up in the sky will perform cranial surgery on this planet." Li Wei looked toward old Governor Tiberius in the pilot's seat, who had completely melted into a heap of rotten flesh pasted across the screen.

"Hey, old man." Li Wei drifted over and prodded that stretched, skin-thin face with the barrel of his gun.

"Stop the car. I'm getting out."

The governor's face twitched. His once-cloudy eyeballs suddenly rolled over, revealing purple bundles of nerves behind them.

"Get out? No... we've already arrived."

"This is sacred ground. The great hatchery."

Boom!!!

A violent impact struck.

The ship did not explode.

It was as though it had crashed into an enormous block of jelly. Its speed dropped sharply, and then it was enveloped by something viscous.

The hull began to turn transparent—or rather, into some kind of translucent membrane.

Through it, Li Wei saw the scene outside.

At that moment, even as a Pariah, he felt a chill shoot from the soles of his feet straight to the top of his head.

This was the deepest part of Atalos Hive City, the geothermal core.

But there was no longer any rock or magma here.

This was an underground hollow made of flesh and blood.

The cavern, several kilometers wide, was completely covered in purple fungal mats.

Countless enormous, blood-vessel-like tubes linked the upper and lower reaches, carrying green nutrient fluid.

At the center of the cavern stood a "biological spire" built from bones and chitinous shells.

It pulsed like a beating heart. With every throb, it released a ring of visible purple ripples into the surroundings.

Around the spire were tens of thousands of densely packed eggs.

Some of the eggs had already split open, and half-human, half-insect monsters crawled out of them.

"Look..." the governor's face murmured dreamily.

"This is the future. No classes, no conflict, no pain."

"Only unified... hunger."

The now-living Golden Eagle was slowly merging into this enormous network of flesh.

The ship's hull began to dissolve. Countless tiny tentacles extended from the fungal mat outside, piercing into the vessel and trying to assimilate the two "outsiders."

"It wants to digest us." Aurelia watched the skin on her arms redden and blister. The spores in the air were trying to break her down.

"It can't digest me," Li Wei said coldly.

The air around him was pure.

The corrosive spores dropped one after another as soon as they came near him, as though they had struck insecticide.

"But I can't stay here and wait to die." Li Wei glanced at the data-slate.

[00:09:45]

The positioning beacon had already been sent.

The Inquisition's Vortex Torpedo was on its way.

Once that thing bored into the crust, it would detonate the planetary core and crush this planet like an egg.

"We need to find an escape pod." Li Wei looked around.

"This ship has already turned into a living creature. Where would it have a mechanical escape pod?" Aurelia said despairingly.

"Then we'll do this the biological way." Li Wei's gaze settled on the rear of the ship.

That had originally been the engine room, but it had now become an enormous sphincter-like organ that contracted rhythmically.

Every few seconds, it released a burst of hot air. That was the ship's exhaust outlet.

"This thing is breathing." Li Wei pointed at the organ. "Or defecating."

He turned to look at the governor melted into the chair.

"Old man, I need to borrow your brain."

Li Wei had no intention of showing any respect for the elderly.

He shoved the Exterminatus beacon data-slate, its red light flashing madly, straight into the governor's pile of rotten flesh—more precisely, into the eye socket that had once connected to the neural interface.

"Ahhh!!!" The governor let out a heart-rending scream.

This time, it was no illusion.

To the governor, who had become a living radar, the data-slate's high-frequency electronic signals and the Exterminatus locking beam were like a red-hot branding iron being driven into his brain.

"Hot! So hot! That is the fire of destruction!" The governor's face twisted wildly, and the entire ship began to convulse violently.

"Now!" Li Wei grabbed Aurelia and sprinted toward the rear of the ship.

The spasms caused by the ship's agony made the rear sphincter snap open and shut frantically.

"We're going to jump into... that?" Aurelia stared at the hole spewing yellow-green gas, her face turning green.

"You can stay here and become insect shit, or jump out from there and become free... uh, excrement." Li Wei still had the mood to crack a joke.

Just as they reached the opening.

Countless hands suddenly extended from the ship's flesh walls—the faceless "dough people" crewmen from before.

They melted out of the walls and gripped Aurelia's ankles tightly.

"Stay... become one..." Countless voices overlapped.

"Get lost!" Aurelia swung her Fire Axe, severing several hands, but more reached out, trying to drag her back into the flesh wall.

Li Wei stopped.

He turned back and looked at the crewmen who had become completely inhuman, along with the governor screaming in the cockpit.

He drew a deep breath, removed his glove, and pressed his bare palm directly against the ship's flesh wall.

Full-power release: Void Infusion.

Since this was a living ship, it possessed one vast, unified soul.

Li Wei poured his "black hole" nature madly into the ship's neural network through the point of contact.

It was like forcibly injecting a sleeping person enjoying a pleasant dream with a poison called "Void."

Buzzz—!!!

The entire ship went rigid in an instant.

That nauseating, hollow, despairing sensation spread through every cell along the neural network.

The hands clutching Aurelia recoiled as though electrocuted, while the points of contact necrosed and festered.

The ship felt sick.

For a massive organism, when something unbearably disgusting and indigestible was inside its stomach, it had only one instinctive reaction—

To vomit.

The opening at its rear suddenly stretched to the limit, and a tremendous force erupted from within.

"Go!" Li Wei scooped Aurelia into his arms.

Bang! Like a date pit spat out of a mouth, the two of them were violently launched from the ship amid a deluge of mucus and exhaust gas!

Their bodies traced an arc through the air.

They landed on the thick purple fungal mat outside, which spread like a carpet.

It was soft, but sticky.

Li Wei struggled to his feet, covered from head to toe in some unknown fluid.

He looked up.

The Golden Eagle was rolling painfully across the ground. The tentacles that had connected it to the floor were snapping one after another.

Like a dying slug, it was heading toward death from the "poison" inside it—the beacon.

"It's not over yet..." Li Wei pulled Aurelia to her feet. "We're still underground."

He looked around.

There was no exit in this enormous cavern of flesh.

There were only the eggs still hatching and the pulsating biological spire in the distance.

Suddenly, Li Wei felt a gaze upon him.

It did not come from the ship, nor from those little bugs. It came from above.

He raised his head.

At the top of this underground cavern several kilometers deep, there was no rock.

There was a vast psychic membrane, as reflective as a mirror.

Through the membrane, he could actually see space.

It was a "psychic window" created by the Hive Mind, used to connect signals to the surface.

And on the other side of that window, in the pitch-black void of space.

An enormous meteor wreathed in red flames was falling toward this place at a speed beyond anything he had ever seen.

That was not a meteor. It was a Vortex Torpedo.

The Inquisition's final judgment.

[00:03:00]

The countdown was nearly over.

The torpedo had already penetrated the crust and was drilling toward this beacon.

"We're going to die." Aurelia looked at the fireball drawing closer, but a relieved calm appeared on her face instead. "Being burned to death by heavenly fire is better than becoming a bug."

"Maybe." Li Wei looked around.

He was searching for something. In this place full of alien technology, if they could create a "window" connected to space, then there had to be some kind of "biological elevator" capable of transporting matter.

His gaze locked onto the base of the biological spire.

There was an opening there, blasting a cloud of spores upward.

Countless winged gargoyles were riding that airflow toward the surface.

"That's an air vent! It's also an updraft!" Li Wei pointed at the opening. "That's our only way out!"

"That's the center of the bugs' nest!" Aurelia shouted.

"That's the only exit!" Li Wei grabbed her and began running. "Unless you want to wait here for the torpedo to scour the ground!"

The two of them ran unevenly across the fungal mat.

Countless newly hatched bugs rushed toward them, but they were forced back by Li Wei's "nauseating aura" the moment they approached.

It was practically a biological version of Moses parting the sea.

Just as they were about to charge into the opening blasting out the airflow.

A vast will descended.

The biological spire suddenly split open.

A gigantic purple hand, even larger than the Golden Eagle and formed entirely from psychic energy, reached out from the spire and blocked their path.

Valorian's voice, which had vanished earlier, echoed throughout the cavern. "Soulless... you cannot leave."

"You are the key. Stay... let us study your emptiness..."

The gigantic hand came down.

It was not a physical attack. It was a psychic entity.

It covered every possible escape route.

Aurelia closed her eyes in despair.

Even if Li Wei was immune to magic, being hit by such an enormous mass of materialized psychic energy would still flatten him into a meat patty.

But Li Wei did not stop.

As he ran, he pulled something from his coat.

It was a bottle of Promethium Fuel Concentrate he had bought on the black market.

He stuffed the fuel bottle into the battery chamber of the Hellgun in his hand, which had already overheated.

"Study me?" Li Wei flashed one last savage grin at the gigantic hand blotting out the sky.

"Study this first!"

He pulled the trigger hard and hurled the gun out at the same time.

The Hellgun's battery was unstable to begin with, and now it had been loaded with explosive fuel.

Boom!!!

It was no ordinary explosion.

Empowered by Li Wei's "Void Field," the blast generated a peculiar "Anti-psychic Shockwave."

Like striking a match in a room filled with gas.

The massive purple hand made of psychic energy underwent a violent chain reaction the instant it touched the shockwave.

It ignited. Not with fire, but with the Voidfire of psychic backlash.

"Ah!!!" A soul-shattering scream echoed from the void.

The giant hand disintegrated, turning into purple motes that filled the sky.

Taking advantage of the opening.

Li Wei held Aurelia and leaped into the biological exhaust vent spewing a powerful upward airflow.

Whoosh—!!! The immense current carried them upward like two leaves, hurtling toward the surface thousands of meters above.

Behind them.

The red "meteor"—the Vortex Torpedo—finally bored through the last layer of rock. Even from thousands of meters away, Li Wei could feel the heat wave that would destroy everything.

[00:00:00]

Judgment Fall.