# 692
Chapter 693: The Evil of Human Enclosure
Tokyo.
【Pure Land】.
An Qingyu sat in the center of the main control room, surrounded by flickering screens on all sides. His gaze remained fixed on every screen simultaneously, as still as a statue.
"Qingyu, you've been reading for five hours straight now. You should take a break."
Suddenly, Jiang Er's figure silently walked to his side, waving gently to plunge all the screen displays into darkness.
An Qingyu slowly closed his eyes, rubbing his temples with both hands, and let out a long sigh, his gaze complicated beyond measure:
"Truly... I've learned something terrible..."
"What did you discover?"
An Qingyu didn't speak. He silently stood up and walked to the massive floor-to-ceiling window, gazing down at this neon-lit metropolis beneath his feet.
"Jiang Er, tell me... for such a large country, how many kilowatt-hours of electricity does it use each year?" He posed the question back to Jiang Er.
Jiang Er was startled. After a moment of hesitation, she answered: "It should be around 5 trillion kilowatt-hours?"
"It should be far more than that." An Qingyu shook his head. "So, how is the electricity generated?"
"Nuclear power, natural gas power generation, oil power, wind power, hydropower? Those should all be included, right?"
"That's right, but haven't you noticed a problem?" An Qingyu said calmly, "This country's own mineral resources are extremely scarce. Where does the natural gas and oil it uses for power generation come from?"
Jiang Er froze in place.
"Or, let me ask in another way." An Qingyu paused. "Without fossil fuels, how do the power stations here generate electricity? Relying solely on nuclear, wind, and hydropower cannot possibly sustain such enormous electricity consumption."
"What's going on?"
"The answer is, the power stations here are nothing but decorations—they can't actually generate electricity." An Qingyu glanced at the ground beneath his feet. "All the electricity they output flows out from here. Every source of power for this country comes from the【Pure Land】."
"Here?" Jiang Er frowned. "But there are no power generation devices here either. Where does the electricity come from?"
An Qingyu extended his hand, pointing toward the clouds below, toward the countless figures swarming through the streets like ants:
"People... or rather, the dead."
...
"Death leads to eternal torment?" Jialan seemed unable to comprehend this statement.
"Let me give you an analogy." The knight continued explaining, "For humans to survive, they need water, air, soil, food, energy... But divine artifacts themselves cannot automatically generate these things. However, they can create them out of nothing by absorbing souls.
The people living in this 'Human Enclosure'—every drop of water they drink, every breath of air they take, even every kilowatt-hour of electricity they use... the driving force behind all of it comes from the souls of the dead.
Burning biological corpses releases a large amount of heat, but burning human souls produces an even more astronomical amount of energy."
"In other words, to maintain this 'Human Enclosure' operating, you must kill large numbers of people and use their souls as fuel?" Wu Xiangnan pondered thoughtfully. "But what if the number of people who die naturally inside the 'Human Enclosure' can't keep up with this consumption rate? Wouldn't that break the cycle?"
"It's not that simple." The knight shook his head. "Did you forget? To preserve themselves, the gods sacrificed the vast majority of lives, and this number of lives... was calculated in the tens of millions or even hundreds of millions.
Just the lives they sacrificed would be enough to sustain the 'Human Enclosure' operating for quite a long time.
So, in a sense, the reason people in the 'Human Enclosure' can live and奉献 their faith is because tens of millions or even billions of ancestral souls are burning as fuel for the world they inhabit."
Jialan spoke with furrowed brows, "This is utterly insane."
"That's right, so the very existence of 'Human Enclosure' is evil itself." The knight continued, "And the more humans caged within a 'Human Enclosure,' the greater the energy consumed, the more human souls used as fuel, the heavier the罪恶 of that city.
Harassing, attacking, or even destroying 'Human Enclosure'—that is one of the core objectives of our Oath Society."
"Destroy?" Wu Xiangnan asked puzzledly. "After destroying the 'Human Enclosure,' what happens to the caged humans inside?"
"Generally speaking, we rarely perform 'destruction.' At most, we demolish the temples or statues used to collect faith and save some of the people in the process.
If we truly must execute 'destruction,' it depends on the scale of that 'Human Enclosure.'"
The knight shrugged and answered, "If the number caged is less than 500,000, we will guide them into the【Utopia】created by our president, where they can continue living. If it exceeds that number... we have no other choice—we can only transport 500,000 women, children, and young adults with special skills to【Utopia】. The rest... can only be left to perish with the destruction of the 'Human Enclosure.'"
"In other words... everyone inside will die?" Wu Xiangnan's brow furrowed. "Isn't that indiscriminate slaughter?"
"'Indiscriminate slaughter'?" The knight raised an eyebrow. "You can interpret it that way if you like, but I hope you understand—we are in the mist, and our Oath Society is by no means some saintly organization. We are 'evil.'
We cannot, and have no obligation to save everyone. Being able to transport 500,000 people as seeds into【Utopia】is already the greatest respect we can offer to those countries and their cultural heritage.
Moreover, destroying the 'Human Enclosure' means saving those tens of millions of souls burning in agony. It may be destruction for those living within it, but for those wretched souls, this is salvation!"
The knight's voice fell, and the entire cabin fell into dead silence.
The howling wind mingled with the rumble of waves crashing against the ship's hull, echoing through the dim cabin. After a long while, Wu Xiangnan finally spoke slowly:
"I understand... In any case, I will follow the mission and coordinate with your operations."
"Long live understanding." The knight smiled faintly.
"So, what do we do next?"
"Every time our Oath Society prepares to strike at a 'Human Enclosure,' we always conduct a series of infiltration preparatory work." The knight spoke unhurriedly. "Among these, the two most important types of people are called 'Paratroopers' and 'Sentinels.'
Since 'Human Enclosure' is crucial to the divine kingdoms, getting inside a 'Human Enclosure' is no easy task. The key point of infiltrating 'Human Enclosure' lies in finding the 'gap' that connects it to the outside world."