1950 Sinners in the Land of Sins

“Hiss!”

The young man was almost electrocuted. His face was blackened, and his messy hair that had been standing up previously was now like a broom on fire, with smoke popping up.

Not even having the time to grunt, he was blown almost five meters away and fell to the ground, cramping nonstop.

But he did not wipe his drool away at all but simply dragged Liu Li behind him. He then drew a storm bolter and aimed it at Li Yao, with blue brightness popping out of the barrel.

There was surprise, delight, and greed in the young man’s eyes. His eyeb.a.l.l.s were shaking quickly. There was no telling what was on his mind.

“Senior Brother!” the young girl Liu Li exclaimed and held the young man’s shoulders from behind. Ivory ripples spread out of her fingertips, and the wounds on the young man’s body caused by Li Yao’s electric shock were healed at a visible rate.

“Be careful. Something’s wrong with the spiritual puppet!” The young man grimaced and stared at Li Yao full of wariness. “It did not feel like a common leakage of electricity but more like—”

Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!

The round body of the garbage can released colorful sparks yet again. All the rune arrays and the indicators were flas.h.i.+ng with a mysterious vibe. The tracks that had been frozen by rust began to move slowly, blowing off the large blocks of rust. The mechanical arms that had been folded previously gradually opened, and the scissors that were meant for gardening revolved rapidly, with coldness beaming out of the sharp edges.

The two young people got gooseb.u.mps, seeing what was happening. Dumbfounded, they were lost for words for a long time.

“Hey,” the mental devil said, “you’re not so ruthless as to interrogate the two brats for intelligence, are you?”

“Of course not,” Li Yao replied. “It just suddenly occurred to me that I can ask the two young fellows to bring me to the local community of the Martial Meritocrats Sector, where I can investigate the information about ‘Starlight’ and ‘the lost Cultivator’. Wouldn’t it be much more convenient if we have two tour guides?”

“Good thinking. But how are you going to explain to the two brats about who we are?”

“Do you remember that Wei Qingqing and her companions had a ‘Grandpa Plan’ in the Tinder Base in Hundred Flowers City? I feel that our style right now is exactly like a handsome, knowledgeable, and well-respected grandpa, isn’t it?”

The moment he saw the girl named Liu Li, Li Yao had thought of Wei Qingqing.

The moment he thought of Wei Qingqing, he naturally recalled Hundred Flowers City, the Tinder Base, the Grandpa Plan, and ‘Grandpa Yao’, the first-generation grandpa.

“Now that you have put it in such a way, it does make a lot of sense,” the mental devil said. “I am so handsome and charming, and you can sort of be called knowledgeable. When the innocent teenagers meet a kindhearted, almighty grandpa like us, they will certainly tell all the secrets and intelligence they know to us obediently. Also, they will listen to whatever we tell them. We can ask them to do anything we want. Hehehe!”

“Despite your sly chuckle, the basic idea is correct,” Li Yao said. “Therefore, the most critical point right now is to convince them in a reasonable way that such a thing as an ‘old grandpa’ exists. This is a complicated, professional, and very tricky problem. Don’t make any noise now and lend all the computational ability to me. I need to think about it carefully…”

Li Yao fell silent, leaving the rune arrays and indicators on the surface of the ‘Universal Janitor’ flas.h.i.+ng.

The young man and the girl looked at each other in bewilderment. They circled the ‘Universal Janitor’ and observed it for a long time, only to find no anomaly.

“S—Senior Brother, what is this thing?” Liu Li asked timidly.

Han Te’s eyes grew brighter and brighter. He grabbed the storm bolter in front of his chest as if it were a stove poker and eyed Li Yao up and down greedily. Then he said, “If I am not mistaken, this shouldn’t be a common spiritual puppet for cleaning purposes but a residence where a powerful remaining soul is hiding. It was sealed for hundreds of years in the darkness below the ground and has accidentally been awakened by us.

“In appreciation for the favor of awakening him, he will certainly tell us all the incredible arts that he knows. He will also inform us of the locations of a lot of ancient residences and treasuries, and he will travel and fight with us without complaint!”

“Huh?” Liu Li covered her mouth, somewhat surprised. “You mean, something like an ‘old grandpa’?”

Han Te nodded heavily, so overjoyed that he was almost dancing. “Exactly. An ‘old grandpa’. I did not expect that we would make such a major discovery on our trip. I thought ‘old grandpas’ only fell from the sky and didn’t know that we could dig them out of the ground. The only issue right now is the condition of the ‘old grandpa’. If it is in good condition, we can sell it on the black market even if it is of no use for us. We will certainly earn a lot of money, and master’s disease will be treated!”

“…” Li Yao.

“…” The mental devil.

Li Yao tried to invoke the broadcast rune array of the spiritual puppet. He uttered dry and unpleasant metallic noises. “Cough, cough. Cough, cough, cough, cough.”

“Grandpa is awake!” Han Te and Liu Li said at the same time.

The two young fellows squatted before Li Yao, their big eyes glittering nonstop, as if they were two babies full of curiosity.

“What… is this place?”

Li Yao desperately wanted to ask why the two teenagers had such a weird brain, believing that he was an ‘old grandpa’ at the first encounter. Also, what was the meaning of the ‘old grandpa’ that they mentioned? Could they sell such things on the black market?

After thinking for a long time, he managed to hold it back and ask a safer question.

“Huh. It does not seem like a common spiritual puppet for cleaning purposes at all. Even if there isn’t a remaining soul hiding inside, there must be a quasi-AI of a high level controlling it. Otherwise, it couldn’t have asked such a question!”

Han Te clapped his hands and was even more rea.s.sured of his judgment. Waving his fingers before Li Yao’s face, he tilted his head and said, “h.e.l.lo. Can you see and hear us?”

“What—is—this—place?” Raising his voice, Li Yao repeated himself. “Why am I here? Who are you?”

“The old grandpa seems to have lost his memories,” Liu Li said.

“Most of the old grandpas suffer amnesia,” Han Te said, looking around. “Didn’t the old grandpa in Zhao Dazhuan’s family to the east of our village remember nothing of the past, too?

“I a.s.sume that the old grandpa’s physical body must’ve been destroyed during the explosion. In desperation, he managed to make part of his remaining soul escape to the spiritual puppet for cleaning purposes. Now that hundreds of years have pa.s.sed, it is great enough that he still has some basic self-awareness. It is perfectly normal for him not to have the memories of the past.”

If Li Yao had eyelids right now, they would have been cramping violently.

“Explosion…” He continued mumbling in the unpleasant voice. “Yes. I remember the explosion. The overwhelming white light, followed by incessant darkness. What exactly happened?”

“You mean ‘Judgment Day’,” Han Te replied frivolously, only to be jabbed by his junior sister in the back. Then he rolled his eyes and licked his lips. “Well, we don’t know how we should address you. Is your brain completely blank without any of your memories, and do you not even remember who you are and how you were stuffed into the iron puppet? Make no mistake. We are both friendly and kindhearted people, and we will certainly tell you the truth because we sincerely want to help you. But please don’t be too excited after you hear everything, alright?”

After a brief silence, Li Yao’s broadcast rune arrays s.h.i.+vered again. “Okay. Tell me everything about ‘Judgment Day’.”

“Judgment Day took place in your time. Well, I don’t know when your time was exactly. In general, it was about five to seven hundred years ago.” Han Te scratched his messy hair. “The people of your age lived the most extravagant, unethical, and outrageous life of sins. In order to compete for resources or for any other random purpose, various forces had a war and bombarded the most precious surface of the planet into an utter mess with weapons that could’ve destroyed the world. The whole civilization was almost doomed.

“The overwhelming white light you saw should’ve been an attack launched by a hostile force with ‘planetary magical equipment’. If you ever get a chance to look at the outside, you will know that the attack razed the city entirely, and it has not been recovered even to this day.

“If I had to guess, I think you must’ve been hiding in a certain secret chamber beneath the earth and luckily avoided the fate of being obliterated on the spot. Part of your soul escaped, but having nowhere to run, you hid yourself in the core of the spiritual puppet, only to fall into hibernation for hundreds of years, until we finally awakened you again through the most arduous effort at the cost of abundant crystals and Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures.

“Such a thing has happened before. I’ve heard it personally many times. So, no worries. We will certainly help you to the end. But I’m wondering, do you know any techniques or skills, and can you recall some of the coordinates of any important facilities? Hehehe…”

The young man grinned cunningly while bas.h.i.+ng his chest to make promises, as if he were the most trustworthy man on the planet.

“It’s been more than five hundred years since Judgment Day?” Li Yao mumbled. “I remember that this place used to be called… Hiss… I can’t remember it now. Who are you exactly? Survivors of Judgment Day?”

“The war known as Judgment Day was fought for hundreds of years. We have no idea when you experienced the explosion,” Liu Li said, biting her lips. “The people before Judgment Day seemed to call the land below our feet the Martial Meritocrats Sector. But right now, all the survivors call it the Land of Sins and themselves ‘sinners’.

“It’s because of the sinful life our ancestors lived that the war that led to the destruction of the whole planet took place, turning the beautiful home of old into the ragged, desolate Land of Sins.

“Everybody says that we survivors are all born with the heaviest sins on our shoulders, that we have to repent for our ancestors for thousands of years. Only when the endless sins of our ancestors are washed away will the land possibly become what it used to be!”