175: Wanli Jinsha (1)

(Just to be clear, this person will not be accepted)

...

"Why should I waste my breath on you?"

"I am a dying person anyway—and isn't this entire planet just a burial object in your plans?"

"Stop wasting your breath. Do whatever you want with me, kill me or scrape me."

Listening to Muldra's stubborn demeanor on the other side of the screen, Xi Hai shook his head and did not offer any explanation.

He simply used the remote to open the interrogation room's screen, connecting to the scene under the statue in the city center—

This was, of course, not filmed specifically for it to watch; two amphibious Cloud Sea-class landing ships were carrying two large holographic projection screens, broadcasting that scene to the entirety of Baghdad.

And in the footage, it was precisely the trial of those yujin people.

After receiving instructions from Xi Hai, the Ninth Mobile Fleet immediately established a temporary military tribunal.

They followed the flexible trial principle of "try and execute immediately, execute while trying, execute even without a trial," and rapidly launched a purge of those heretics.

And bearing the brunt of this was, of course, the prisoner with the highest military rank, Kaims Hill—

"Kaims Hill Borea, you are accused of 313 crimes, including war crimes, massacre of civilians, and illegal invasion,"

"Do you plead guilty?"

Held down by two people by his shoulders, Kaims Hill raised his head to look at the judge's bench and shouted loudly:

"I plead guilty to your damn self!"

"I want to send a telegram to the Imperial High Command!"

"I want to report this! I want to request identity verification! You have no qualification or authority to judge me!"

However, the judge did not take the bait and recited in a routine, perfunctory manner:

"Very well, the defendant pleads guilty."

"Based on the aforementioned crimes, this court sentences the defendant to death, to be executed on the spot."

Immediately, one of the soldiers holding him drew the sidearm from his waist and aimed it at Kaims Hill's head.

"You bunch of Traitors! How dare you attack your superior!"

"I will wait for you in hell! The lord of ten thousand changes will torture your souls for eternity!"

"Bang!!!"

After feeling the movement behind him, Kaims Hill's face flushed red, and he screamed in a loss of composure,

Almost simultaneously, a burst of bullets passed through his head, sending him to meet his ancestors.

The soldier behind him put away the gun with disdain,

"A Traitor of the Empire also believes in the Empire's god?"

"Go play in that cesspit yourself; our souls have long since found their belonging!"

"All of you monsters and demons, get the hell out of here and die!"

As he spoke, he and his companion tossed the guy cosplaying as Louis XVI to the side and dragged another guy up from under the stage.

...

The footage of the trials continued to play. One by one, guys wearing Imperial Navy uniforms were declared war criminals, followed by summary collective trials, and then the efficient "Raise guns! Aim! Fire!"

Muldra just watched the trial footage playing on the screen, expressionless and silent.

Until Xi Hai turned on the microphone again and dropped a cold remark:

"We are not like you; we will not massacre innocent humans,"

"This is the last time I will give you a chance to speak. Don't think that we didn't bring a memory extractor."

Muldra took one last deep look at the trial footage and finally let out a sigh of relief.

Willing to hold public trials—does that mean they won't kill everyone from its hometown?

Thinking of this, its shoulders slumped suddenly, and an air of decadence instantly emerged.

Two lines of turbid tears streaked across its charred face, and it began to recount the past of this land.

...

The organization known as the Saints was born in the midst of a wasteland.

The wasteland had already persisted for who knows how many years at that time.

No one knew why this place was a wasteland—even the term "wasteland" itself had become a noun after countless years of word-of-mouth transmission.

People on the wasteland called themselves Wastelanders, just as people on Earth called themselves Earthlings.

Time lost its meaning here.

Only the never-ending wind, carrying heat waves and sand, reminded people that the world was still moving forward—though no one could say for sure whether what lay ahead was hope or destruction.

For those born here, life seemed to consist of only a few eternal cycles:

Finding water, foraging for food, reproduction, and conflict.

And all of this, after the end of each cycle, was buried in the ten thousand miles of golden sands, disappearing without a trace—

Immediately followed by the next cycle.

No one knew where they came from, and almost no one was willing to think about where they came from; after all, just moving forward exhausted all their energy, and just living required all their courage.

In the thousand years of sinking, this land did not lack figures with grand ambitions,

And their grand ambitions revolved around only one question—

What is the wasteland, and how can the wasteland be ended.

The first person to challenge the wasteland was an explorer.

The era he lived in was isolated.

He believed that as long as everyone was connected, the wasteland could be solved.

So he organized a massive caravan, constantly feeling out routes to move forward, exploring unknown trade routes—

But he failed.

Countless sacrifices did indeed exchange for long yet real routes,

But people's lives did not change because of this; instead, war and conflict were facilitated.

The second challenger was an ambitious schemer.

The era he ruled was divided.

He believed that as long as the whole world submitted to the feet of one person, the despair of the wasteland could be ended.

But his vision could not even achieve success; his steel army eventually met its doom before the briefly united Wastelanders, and he himself vanished without a trace.

The third challenger was a thinker.

The era he existed in was ignorant.

He believed that as long as one could carefully pick up the memories of the past, one could find a way to return to the past—

In his logic, since the wasteland was called "wasteland," judging from the linguistic structure, the guy who once named the term "wasteland" must have seen "good land" as a reference group,

As long as one found the traces left by those who named the wasteland, perhaps one could find a way to return to the "good land".

But knowledge was the least valuable thing in the wasteland. After he embarked on his journey carrying the hopes of the masses, there was never any news of him again.

His wise brain had perhaps already merged into the sea of sand, or perhaps it had already become a churning lump of protein in the pot of some cannibals.

Following that were the fourth, the fifth, the sixth...

They were like the stars in the night sky; although brilliant and radiant, they could not illuminate the land shrouded in darkness.

Until—

This absurd cycle, this heavy baton,

Was passed into the hands of a young boy.

...