Safe City Ch.190.2

Chapter 190.2: “…may you sleep well”

“Oh, heavens…”

Bo Huan, from Kadan’er Safe City, stared at the scene with a deathly pale face.

He had been rather confused about what was going on at first.

He’d originally been fighting [Zephyr] alongside the main force. Then, in the middle of the battle, his squad leader announced that [Ota] had started fighting [Norn] as well, so their unit was reassigned to deal with [Norn]’s remaining forces.

Those winged mutants were practically demons. [Norn]’s remaining forces had already been crippled by the mantle-piercing weapons, and then these mutants had proceeded to beat them into the ground.

Then [Ota] emerged victorious.

Bo Huan suddenly learned that [Ota] was actually a safe city called Blue Sea.

Before he could even process that revelation, he had already followed the main force to [Norn Company]’s headquarters.

Now, he no longer felt the slightest confusion over the fact that “[Ota] was Blue Sea.” After seeing those brains, Bo Huan’s mind had gone completely blank.

He had heard about the things the local [Companies] did, but hearing about them and witnessing them with his own eyes were two entirely different matters.

Especially when he watched the electrical currents being directed into the brains, constantly assaulting them and forcing them to think every second of every day. And when he looked at the Moon Silk script displaying scientific and technological knowledge on the giant screens, he noticed that approximately every three paragraphs, a line of tiny, densely packed text would appear.

[—Kill me kill me kill me kill me kill me please kill me kill me—]

With a deathly pale face, Bo Huan forced himself to keep reading the text displayed beneath the giant screen. It stated that the brain nearest to him had already been “working” for five hundred and thirty years.

Five hundred and thirty years.

Five hundred and thirty years of experiencing excruciating pain without a single second of respite, all while being forced to calculate various sets of data under that torment.

Bo Huan only had to imagine himself in that position for a moment to feel a chill run through his entire body. A sense of despair rapidly swept over him.

In his native civilization, an intelligent mind was a gift from heaven.

But on Moon Silk, an intelligent mind was practically a curse.

The most despairing aspect of this whole situation was that their minds had been thoroughly controlled. Each once-vibrant, brilliant life had been reduced to nothing more than a tool.

And not just any tool, either, but an extremely useful one capable of generating even greater profits for others.

Those who controlled these brains demanded that they think, and they were not allowed to stop.

All they could do was endure the pain, forever, throughout the long years that followed.

Bo Huan pressed his lips together and forced himself to look away from the nearest brain. He said nothing.

What could he possibly say?

As far as Blue Sea was concerned, he was an outsider himself. His own city lord had sent him along to share in the spoils of war. The fact that his identity had been exposed but Blue Sea hadn’t seized him was already fortunate enough.

And here were at least a hundred thousand brilliant brains. No matter who obtained them or where they ended up, their owner would essentially be able to leap straight from Technology Level 1 to Technology Level 7, then continue climbing the technological ladder as time went on.

Faced with such enormous potential gains, no one would be willing to let these brains go.

Bo Huan felt compassion for them, but his own life mattered more. The only thing he could do was avert his eyes.

As he lowered his head to stare at the ground, his squad leader returned, patted him on the shoulder, and handed him a pair of heavy-duty shears.

“Come on. I’ve got the tools ready, and here’s a pair for you. Your next task is to use these to cut the wires connected to the brains. Remember, cut every single wire.”

Holding the shears, Bo Huan froze.

“Why are we cutting the wires?”

He had assumed Blue Sea would transport the brains away together with their glass tanks. But if they cut the wires, wouldn’t the brains lose their viability?

The squad leader’s face was also slightly pale. Clearly, he couldn’t bear the scene here, either, though he was holding up reasonably well. He explained quite naturally,

“Cut the wires to give these brains a merciful end.”

Bo Huan froze again. As if parroting someone else’s words, he repeated stiffly, his tongue seemingly refusing to move.

“…A merciful end?”

“Yeah. To kill them.”

The squad leader sighed and patted Bo Huan on the shoulder.

“Brother, I know you can’t bear to do it. But trust me, this is the kindest thing we can do for these people. It’s what these brains want. We’re doing the right thing, understand?”

Bo Huan’s tongue still felt stiff.

“The right thing…”

Faced with at least a hundred thousand brains belonging to researchers who could dramatically increase an entire Safe City’s technological capabilities, Blue Sea had decided to give them a merciful end?

“We’ve already studied this thoroughly. These brains can only stay alive when they’re being electrocuted and forcibly kept in a state of suffering. Freezing them or trying anything else won’t work. So the only option is to end their lives. We can’t just leave them to suffer like this forever, can we? We did the same thing in [Zipa].”

“Did you know? They can hear us. The screens here transmit outside voices directly to them. But they can’t move or speak, and they have to remain in constant agony, forced to think endlessly under coercion. Even what they hear is beyond their control—”

As he spoke, the squad leader shuddered.

“Terrifying. My God, I’m going to pay a proper visit to the Temple and pray when we get back.”

Ever since Velvet Star, he had killed quite a few enemies. He had killed zombies, mutated beasts, and hostile combatants.

But killing an enemy was one thing. Torturing someone was another.

Watching this scene unfold, Cheng Qisheng did nothing but continue bestowing blessings upon the believers present, soothing their deeply shaken minds.

It wasn’t that Cheng Qisheng had never considered finding a gentler way to preserve these brains.

But even Moon Silk’s technology couldn’t accomplish that, so naturally, Blue Sea had even less chance of succeeding.

Blue Sea had even invited Xicao, an expert from the Duxi civilization, to examine them. However, Xicao explained that the Duxi civilization’s technological development was focused on transferring human consciousness into machines.

To achieve that, though, leaving aside whether the necessary equipment even existed, the human body itself had to remain intact. The brains on Moon Silk no longer met that requirement.

“Furthermore, if these brains really have been suffering continuously from electric shocks, as you described, without a single moment of respite, then even their thought processes have been damaged.”

Xicao explained, “No one can endure such agony. At this point, death is what they need most.”

Cheng Qisheng didn’t take long to reach her decision.

Since she couldn’t put an end to their suffering by other means, she would let them enter eternal peace.

[Norn] had possessed at least a hundred thousand genius brains, and hadn’t it still lost to Blue Sea?

Blue Sea wasn’t afraid of battle. Even without these brains, it could continue advancing, step by step.

“Our God above, may you sleep well.”

Meanwhile, the squad leader turned around. Offering a blessing, he began cutting through the various wires connected to the brain in the nearest vat without the slightest hesitation.

As one wire after another was severed, the giant screen above the brain first paused in the middle of its calculations, then displayed several lines of garbled text, as though trying to confirm something.

Finally, two Moon Silk characters appeared on the screen.

[Thank you]

The screen went dark, signifying that after enduring such prolonged torment, this brain—one that had never been given a name and was identified only by a number—could finally enter the world of eternal sleep.

Bo Huan looked at the darkened screen, then at the squad leader as he moved on to the next brain in a vat, and finally at the Blue Sea residents around him.

They were all doing the same thing.

Moving past one brain in a vat after another, they wielded their heavy-duty shears, freeing each one from its endless agony.

Bo Huan felt as though a massive boulder had slammed into his heart, then rebounded, leaving him unable to utter a single word.

For some inexplicable reason, his eyes grew red, and his nose began to sting. He strode forward and chose the nearest brain in a vat, helping it find release as well.

From the perspective of a city lord, Blue Sea’s decision might have seemed overly idealistic, giving far too little consideration to profit and the future.

But Bo Huan was a resident.

As he forcefully snipped through one wire after another, he made up his mind.

When he caught up with the squad leader, he continued cutting as he asked, “Captain, can I join Blue Sea?”

“Of course! Once you join, you’ll become an Outer-City resident.”

Many Safe Cities were divided into different social tiers. Bo Huan understood that much.

“Then what do I need to do to become an Inner-City resident? Is there some kind of merit-based system?”

The squad leader carefully took out the small statue of the Great Creator God of Blue Sea that hung around his neck.

“Blue Sea worships our God.”

“If you become a believer of the Great Creator God of Blue Sea, you can become an Inner-City resident.”

Bo Huan had already guessed that Blue Sea worshipped a deity. After all, ever since they had stopped pretending to be [Ota], they had been saying things like ‘Our God above’ and ‘Oh, my God’ at every turn.

But he hadn’t expected that the requirement for becoming an Inner-City resident of Blue Sea was simply to become a believer.

Worship the Creator God of Blue Sea?

Standing among countless brains in vats, Bo Huan gazed intently at the small pendant depicting the statue.

—Cheng Qisheng sensed it: a new chain of faith was slowly rising within her vast sea of believers.

After feeling that warm, gentle pat on the head, a single tear finally fell from Bo Huan’s reddened eyes.

“My God…”

How could he describe this feeling?

It was as though a wanderer who had been away from home for years had finally found his way back.

He could feel that, at this very moment, the squad leader beside him and all the other Blue Sea residents he had never even met before had become people he could trust.

So this is the world the captain and the others experience?

It really was… wonderful.

—One giant screen after another went dark under the tireless efforts of Blue Sea’s residents.

[Thank you]

[Thank you]

[Kill me kill me kill me—thank you]

[Thank you]

Countless expressions of gratitude were the final messages displayed on the giant screens before they went dark.

Once they realized what the people of Blue Sea were doing, almost all the brains seemed desperate for them to hurry.

The residents of Blue Sea understood. Who wouldn’t want to be freed a little faster, then a little faster still, after enduring eternal suffering and finally glimpsing the hope of release?

One Blue Sea resident had even developed muscle memory from all the snipping.

He would snip-snip through the wires connected to the brain in the vat on his left, then execute a smooth turn and snip-snip through the wires connected to the brain on his right.

—Snip, snip.

After finishing with the wires on his left, the resident glanced at the giant screen to make sure it had gone dark, then immediately turned around.

Snip, snip… Huh??

The giant screen above the brain in the vat on the right displayed something different from the others.

It wasn’t a string of Moon Silk numerals that could be vaguely deciphered, nor was it a [Thank you] or a jumble of garbled characters. Instead, several neat, orderly lines of text appeared on the screen.

The Blue Sea resident hesitated.

Cheng Qisheng’s spiritual power immediately detected what was happening.

She promptly issued a divine oracle, ordering the believer whose shears were already poised over one of the wires connected to the brain in the vat to stop.

Among Cheng Qisheng’s believers, the prophet Gong Cheng and his butler, Xie Wuke, were both natives of Moon Silk.

Once Gong Cheng became a believer of the Great Creator God of Blue Sea, Cheng Qisheng gained an understanding of the Moon Silk language and written script that her believers knew.

She studied the lines of Moon Silk text on the giant screen.

[Please do not cut my life-support lines. At least, not yet. Thank you for everything you have done. Thank you for your help. Thank you for saving my colleagues and my descendants. Pain—I heard you. I saw you. I know you can be trusted—

Please go to these coordinates and open the underground shelter there. There are 451 people inside, 39 of whom are Black-tier researchers. All the rest are White-tier. Please take them away and save them. Once they learn what you have done, they will work for you.]

Beneath the message was a set of coordinates identifying a location somewhere on Moon Silk.

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