Chapter 604 50: World Peace is Everyone's Responsibility

"This won't take long. It will be over soon."

He said this casually. As he spoke, the Artifice Sage's prosthetic fingers began to deconstruct and separate as he extended them, revealing the precision instruments beneath the flesh-like shell—a needle containing countless nanoscale filaments.

Flexing his finger, the Artifice Sage seemed to inspect the sharpness of the needle on his fingertip. Then, with a quiet POP, he calmly inserted the needle directly into the Spirit Summoner's brain.

Then, his Spiritual Power activated. The needle began to deploy the stored nano-filaments, which spread inside the skull to entangle and envelop the Spirit Summoner's brain tissue.

HUMMM— A light glowed, shining from the Spirit Summoner's eyes, ears, and nostrils.

Behind the Artifice Sage's helmet, which resembled a pair of VR goggles, an identical icy-blue radiance shone.

Three minutes later, just as the Spirit Summoner's body began to tremble erratically, the Artifice Sage removed his helmet. An icy-blue light still flickered in his prosthetic eyes.

Turning his head, he looked at Levler and Su Zhou and offered a standard smile. "The Controller's technology hasn't improved much. After breaking through the firewall, I searched her memory banks."

"The Spirit Summoning Association's goal is simple. They plan to go to the Central Volcano and find Typhon's divine corpse. The Silent has a Secret Technique that can use the resentment and pain hidden within the corpse to create a colossal, terrifying being called the 'Dusk Giant'. And the Dusk Giant's power, if it were to reach its complete form, would be enough to crush all of Earth and destroy the world."

"This isn't a joke. The Dusk Giant possesses power at the Overlord High Rank, at minimum. It could directly shatter continental crusts and turn the entire Europe Region into a disaster zone within three days. For us, right now, it is indeed an unstoppable force—at least, not without playing our bottom cards."

"Furthermore, if the Dusk Giant summoning fails, they can also look for an opportunity to sever the connection between the Demon Realm and Earth World. If they do that, they can gain complete control over a Planet World no smaller than Earth and develop in peace... It might sound like a once-and-for-all solution, getting rid of them for good, but who knows if they won't just come back with a horde of Monsters?"

'Dusk Giant?' Su Zhou thought of the Demon of Punishment.

'If the Demon of Punishment is a smaller version of the Dusk Giant, created using Divine Wrath and a god's pain, then that kind of power is truly extraordinary.'

"Very much the Spirit Summoning Association's style. Utterly insane." Su Zhou couldn't help but shake his head. "Have they never considered the possibility that they won't be able to control the Dusk Giant and will just get themselves wiped out by it?"

However, after he finished speaking, Su Zhou frowned. "Wait, does the Silent not care about that at all? The Dusk Clan all seem to be self-destructive fanatics..."

"Congratulations, Su Zhou."

At that moment, Yara scoffed in his mind. "You've discovered the most detestable thing about those lunatics from the Dusk Clan—they harm others with no benefit to themselves, and they're enthusiastic about dragging everyone else off a cliff with them or just self-destructing."

"Gotta say, that's true. Those people are seriously annoying."

Now that he understood the Spirit Summoning Association's goals, Su Zhou suddenly felt he had been too lenient before. He had let those detestable Monsters die too easily. He should have at least burned them with Karmic Fire for a few more days.

However, the most crucial question remained unanswered. "Artifice Sage, where is the Spirit Summoning Association's true core located?"

Faced with Su Zhou's childlike curiosity, the Artifice Sage—who didn't dislike this kind of personality and even found it quite affable and endearing—smiled. "It's simple. It's the memory of 'Evil' that the Spirit Summoning Association stores in the Soul of every member to brainwash them."

"That thing is, in essence, a kind of mind virus, similar to a 'Heart Demon' or a Spiritual Qi Virus. It spreads the memory of 'Evil' through contagion. There's evidence that before the Spirit Summoning Association left Earth, they left behind Seeds of this mind virus in numerous underdeveloped regions. When the time is right, they will activate this virus and let it spread."

"The virus Seeds are extremely well-hidden. Only the Leaders of the Spirit Summoning Association know where they've placed these disgusting things. However, I just found their locations in their memories."

Retracting his finger, the countless nano-filaments withdrew back into the needle. The machinery wrapped in flesh folded back in sequence, returning to the appearance of a normal finger. The Artifice Sage once again clasped his hands behind his back in a stately manner and looked out the window. He said calmly, "That is the Spirit Summoning Association's true nest."

"The source of all filth and corruption."

"Many people wonder why we, the world-class powers who hold an absolute advantage in strength, can never seem to eliminate a minor player like the Spirit Summoning Association. In truth, if it were merely a matter of suppressing them to the point where they can only operate in remote regions, we could do it. But the version of the Spirit Summoning Association that operates in the physical world was never its true form."

"Their true form is actually the 'mind virus' that spreads like a plague—an abnormal, painful contagion that enables certain innately unusual people with Talents to Awaken and connect with the Great Beings they speak of."

Hearing this, Su Zhou immediately recalled the memories he had seen flash through the minds of the Silent, the Reborn, and the Controller when they were being burned by his Karmic Fire...

The reason they became Leaders of the Spirit Summoning Association, it seemed, was always because they were in some kind of special emotional state. Then, for no apparent reason, they would suddenly connect with those Great Beings, begin their Awakening of various powers, and become Transcendents.