Chapter 956 - 24: Apocalyptic Visions

"Alright, I got it." Sun Hang nodded, then clasped his right hand's fingers together like a blade and made a slicing gesture towards the hefty alloy safety door in front of him.

Instantly, a cut as smooth as a mirror appeared on the thirty-centimeter-thick, several-ton-heavy alloy safety door, and through this cut, Sun Hang saw the scene within the core cultivation chamber.

A Desert Sea survivor sat upright on a chair filled with various pipelines, his body adorned with a multitude of totem tattoos, Semitic-script scriptures practically covering every inch of his skin.

On his right arm, he wore a bronze arm ring embedded with countless chips on the surface, intermittently flickering with a pale blue glow between the chip circuits.

This was the original version of "Nephthys."

The most bizarre aspect of this individual was his face—half of which could be considered handsome belonging to a young man, while the other half was a ghastly skull, with strands of wind-dried rot attached, a shriveled eyeball lying quietly in the eye socket, slightly swaying with the breath's rhythm.

The sand-sea survivor sitting on the chair was the esteemed priest of this settlement.

Or, more precisely, the priest esteemed by Nuer and the others.

Sun Hang could immediately tell that this person was merely a puppet devoid of a soul.

As for the one controlling this puppet, they were lying in the "Big Coffin" behind the chair.

"E700 Comprehensive Life Support Pod, predecessor of the modern Eternal Freeze Coffin and immersion medical chamber, the pinnacle biomedical equipment of that era." The mini AI assistant, having completed its reboot at some point, began explaining the artifacts before Sun Hang.

Sun Hang approached the Life Support Pod and peered inside.

Under the transparent glass cover, there was a full pool of bluish-green liquid, with an emaciated body resembling a desiccated corpse submerged within.

This body's thoracic and abdominal cavities were open, displaying the internal organs—more than seventy percent replaced with artificial components, including the heart and lungs.

That artificial heart, whose cost at that time was higher than an entire villa beside Shen City's river, pumped fluid to every corner of the body with each beat... The upper respiratory and alimentary tracts had been abandoned, with the artificial heart and lungs extracting oxygen and nutrients directly from the liquid, using this life-sustaining fluid as a blood substitute to complete repeated internal and external circulation.

"You seek to covet the forbidden... you will..."

A hoarse voice emanated from the puppet's throat, and just as the pipelines detached and the puppet was about to rise, Sun Hang pressed its shoulders, forcing it back into the chair.

Perhaps due to excessive force, one side of the puppet's shoulder collapsed—the crushed flesh enveloped the fractured collarbone and scapula, causing the entire arm to fall limply, as the surrounding instruments began emitting a shrill alarm, painting the entire core cultivation chamber in a blood-red hue.

"You..."

"Save the talk; I'm on the clock." Sun Hang smashed the Life Support Pod cover with a punch and reached inside, grabbing the puppet's head.

Accompanied by the puppet's heart-wrenching scream, the emaciated body began convulsing crazily, creating ripples on the once-calm surface of the life-sustaining liquid.

The struggle lasted about twenty seconds before ceasing entirely, with all lights in the core cultivation chamber extinguished, plunging the room back into darkness.

In the darkness, Sun Hang dragged the unmoving puppet from the chair and sat down himself.

His brow furrowed, continuously analyzing and contemplating the memories he had extracted from the priest's head.

These were quite abstract images, with numerous dream-like visions flashing by—a pyramid hanging upside down from the sky, a massive underground river of elemental mercury, vast swarms of yellow sand, and sinking sand giant worms suspended in mid-air by some force... Many of the visions appeared apocalyptic, yet as the scene shifted, Sun Hang could see dense clusters of humans within them.

Humans were everywhere—climbing the inverted pyramid, fighting each other for the summit; kneeling and crying at the mercury riverbank, immersing their hands and feet in mercury... In the images Sun Hang saw, humans often seemed the most overlooked factor, yet paradoxically were the sole common element in every vision.

"Could this be events occurring on this land after Egypt was abandoned?" Sun Hang wondered internally, "But that can't be right... If such events really happened, it would indicate something killed these sinking sand giant worms... Yet, clearly, the sinking sand giant worms remain active in this area, with no decline in numbers from a century ago."

Sun Hang had assumed he could forcefully retrieve the priest's memories, but even as the priest's brain matter evaporated completely, the memories he obtained were only the trivial affairs within the survivor settlement, with nothing related to the Sphinx.

He couldn't even find the name "Sphinx" within the priest's memories.

Apart from those useless memories, only the previously mentioned abstract visions remained.

The priest's memories were distorted—the priest himself was acutely aware of the Sphinx's existence, yet when others attempted to retrieve this information from his memories, it warped into the visions Sun Hang saw, rather than straightforward, easily comprehensible data.

Sun Hang attempted describing these visions to the mini AI assistant; though he had little hope for the portable artificial intelligence, it unexpectedly responded immediately after hearing Sun Hang's description: "These visions likely depict the content of the Sphinx's prophecy."

"Content of the Sphinx's prophecy?" Sun Hang shivered, "Did Pei Zongjun see similar things when using the main AI for prophecy?"

"Yes, after analysis, Sphinx's prophecy content primarily manifests as visual images," the mini AI assistant explained, "These images often contain surreal elements and numerous metaphors."

"Metaphors? What do you think these things I excavated from the priest's head are metaphorizing?"

"I cannot judge based solely on your verbal description... These images hold immense information and many subtle details; if you need them analyzed, only the main AI's body can accomplish this."