“Ah, Miss Molly… He… Hello.” After Hank turned around and saw the woman, he recognized her immediately and began stammering.
“How many times have I told you, Hank? You can just call me Molly.” The woman looked about the same age as Hank. She was slightly shorter than him, and she was wearing a white-colored outfit, a sign that she was a resident of the third layer.
“Are these two your friends? Eh? Why are they still in their protective gear?” Molly asked in curiosity.
“Miss Molly.” Hank was tense, and sweat slid down his sideburns. He gathered his courage and spoke before Feng Bujue could. “My friends and I have something else to attend to. Please forgive us, but we cannot stay to chat. I will return to apologize to you when we are done with our business…”
As he spoke, he ushered the two to move forward.
“Important business? At the third segment?” Molly leveled Hank a confused gaze. Her eyes soon landed on Feng Bujue and Flashes of Sword again. “Why haven’t they removed their protective gear?”
Her eyes moved upward, and the two players’ abnormal height aroused her suspicion even more. “Are you two scavengers as well? What business are you on?”
“This is the superior’s order,” Hank replied firmly. “Miss Molly, would you please let us be?”
“Hank, what is going on with you?” Molly demanded. “You would never talk to me like that.”
“Sigh…” Feng Bujue finally spoke. “Actually, he was trying to help you. Unfortunately, I have already decided that we cannot let you go.”
“We’re in the open. If you kill anyone, we’ll be surrounded instantly!” Hank lowered his voice to warn Feng Bujue.
“Lady Molly.” Feng Bujue ignored Hank and turned to Molly. “I’m sorry, but I will have to invite you to come along with us.”
“Who are you?” Molly took two steps back instinctively and turned to Hank. “Hank, what is going on?”
“Hank is currently our captive. If you scream, run, or do anything that might attract the patrol’s attention, we will have to kill him.” Feng Bujue led with the threat to prevent the woman from doing anything stupid. “I know you might not believe me, but please consider the situation calmly based on your understanding of Hank and discern whether I am telling you the truth or not.”
“We possess a weapon that can quickly and effectively murder people around us, and the two of us possess power beyond your imagination. Be it running speed, jumping height, or survivability, it is beyond your understanding of humans.
“If we are exposed, Hank will die instantaneously, and then we will kill every villager that tries to stop us. Your village will lose more than one thousand residents, and that is not counting the material loss.
“However, if you choose to cooperate with us and lead us deeper into the village for a tour, we will leave silently after we’ve achieved our goal.
“Now, it is time to make your choice. Will you cooperate with us or start screaming?”
…
Five minutes later, inside the third segment, Molly groaned at Hank in an accusing manner. “This is unbelievable. You brought outsiders into the village.”
Hank walked to her side and softly replied, “I was held hostage… just like how we are now.”
“What we? From this moment onward, there is no we,” Molly replied sourly. “I should have listened to my family and stayed away from people hailing from the first segment.”
“Sigh…” Hank opened his lips but only sighed. Many times, even though he had many things he wanted to express, it would only come out as a sigh. At the time, Feng Bujue and Flashes of Sword were walking behind the two. Ever since they had Molly in their company, the patrols stopped bothering them. It looked like having a guide from the third layer was very useful.
“Don’t worry, Lady Molly, you only need to follow us to the area that separates the third and fourth layer,” Feng Bujue said, “and then you are free to go.”
Molly was dumbfounded when she heard that. “You plan to enter the fourth layer? Then what about Hank? Will you let him go as well?”
“Hmm… That will be unlikely, and we can’t,” Feng Bujue replied.
“Ha… Thanks, I guess,” Hank replied with a bitter smile.
This surprised Molly, but then Hank uttered an explanation with a self-debasing tone. “I believe… the moment I led you into the village, I lost the chance of staying here anymore, didn’t I?”
“Oh? You’ve finally realized it,” Feng Bujue said.
“I should have realized it when you forbad me from handing in my report earlier, but in the end, I was still tricked by you.” Hank sighed. “That is my fault for being too naïve.”
“In that case,” Feng Bujue answered, “I don’t need to hide things from you anymore. No matter how this ends, as long as the Corbens are still around, your only end will be death. Only by having us succeed will you survive.”
“I don’t even know what you plan to do,” Hank shot back.
Flashes of Sword squinted and leveled his gaze at Feng Bujue. “That’s right… I don’t know the details either. Can you explain it to us?”
“First, the thing that we need to do is of course not to massacre the villagers. If that was our goal, we would have done that when we entered the residential area,” Feng Bujue explained. “Secondly, we are not here for a tour of the village. I believe you didn’t believe that lousy excuse that I came up with anyway. Hehe. My main motive is to obtain the scientific knowledge inside the shrine, and the second motive is to improve the societal condition of this village.”
“What is this scientific technology? There is no such thing inside the shrine. The only things in there are the edicts given to us by God, and only a small amount of priests have the right to study them,” Molly interrupted.
“Those are nothing but lies fed to all of you when you were still too young to discern the truth from falsehood.” Feng Bujue shrugged before sighing regretfully. “The Corben family has been hiding knowledge of the natural world away from you. They do not want any of you to know of such knowledge and thus use religion to enslave the villagers. Idiocy and fear are two hungry beasts that always reside inside the human heart. Only civilization can defeat them. Their job is to block human progress and consume anyone who dares take the first step forward.
“About one thousand years ago, people burned innocent women as witches so that they could sleep better at night or for a better harvest in the future; five hundred years ago, people mistook Darwin’s theory and yelled ’we are not monkeys’, banning the teaching of natural selection theory in schools. Haha… if you ask me, I don’t think humans are that different from monkeys anyway.
“And then two hundred years ago… the Corben family held the seed of knowledge close to their heart so that the rest of you would stay fearful and ignorant while living in the darkness. This way, they can rule over all of you for a long time.”
“I will not believe your hypnotizing words. The priests have already warned us about you. Outsiders are demons plying lies,” Molly shot back. “You are not going to use your blasphemous words to challenge my faith.”
“Ah… They are merely ensuring that… you are not going to be influenced by others when you come across those who know the truth,” Feng Bujue scoffed coldly. “They also ordered you to kill any outsiders on sight, didn’t they?”
“You should surrender now. Once you run into the special guards, it’s over. They are armed differently from normal patrols. They will kill anyone who tries to enter the fourth area whether you have a hostage or not…” Molly stood her ground firmly. “But if you promise to let me and Hank go, I will figure out a way to send you out of the village safely.”
“Hmm… You’re a better negotiator than Hank, that’s for sure,” Feng Bujue praised. “But unfortunately, our goal will never change. Plus… I believe that Hank has ceased standing on Corben’s side, right buddy?”
Molly turned to Hank in shock, and the latter was the calmest he had ever been. “Sorry, Miss Molly, but I only see only road ahead, and that is to cooperate with them. There is no way back for me anymore.”
“Hank…” Molly gasped. “Have you been brought under the outsiders’ evil spell?”
“No, I am very conscious. I’ve never been so clear-minded in my life,” Hank replied. “Even though these two outsiders have repeatedly threatened my life, at least they have not tried to control my thoughts with talk of Gods and the like. If everything God’s Child told us is real, then I am a sinner that is helping two outsiders dethrone the divine. I don’t know what the result will be. At most, I’ll die. Even if I kill these two outsiders with my own hands now, how will things change? Will the priests forgive me? I will be punished and executed. In that case, why not try to survive?”
Hearing that, Flashes of Sword revealed a bright smile. “Well said, Hank, continue.”
Hank obliged. “And what if these two outsiders are right? What if the God’s Child and the priests are nothing but a lie?”
“Can you even hear yourself? Hank, how is that possible…” Molly wanted to stop him.
Hank tossed the question back. “How is that not possible?”
He turned to Molly. “Since I was born, I was told, I’m a citizen of God, and I have to listen to every order of the Corben family and the priests because they are the representation of God. If I violate their words, I am violating the divine will and will be punished accordingly. My father and brothers risked their lives, and we are barely eking out a living, but the priests live such lavish lives without having to lift a finger.
“I can only learn the things that they want me to learn, say the words they allow me to say, do the things they tell me to do, and I have to sing their praises and bow in their presence. If that’s God’s will, then I don’t think I want to serve such a God anymore. Because, obviously, they have never thought of repaying us for our piety; they merely treat us as slaves. Only the Corben family and the priests are seen as humans.”
Molly looked at Hank like the latter had gone insane. “You have lost your mind…”
“Perhaps.” Hank shrugged. “But I have never felt better. For the first time, I’ve realized that my destiny is in my hands, and even if the trade-off for the possibility of it is death, I have no regret.”
“That feeling is called ’freedom’,” Feng Bujue said in an incredibly incendiary tone. “When the shackles they have put on you have been shattered, even if they throw you into prison, at least from that moment onward, you are free. As long as you have a breath in you, no one can strip you of your freedom ever again.
“If you help us to overthrow the Corben family and the priest’s hold over the knowledge and tear down their lies… Hank, you not only can survive, you will be hailed as a hero. All of your fellow man, including our Miss Molly, can taste the sweetness of freedom.”