I have never t the lowa leader nad Barrian, except for so information extracted from the Pandora mory bank showing that he is an elderly man who looks just as spirited as Tulazo. In reality, I know very little about this greatest traitor and paranoid in history. No one knows his current ntal state, nor does anyone know how furious this traitor might be in the face of the rebellion: Now Barrian has completely beco reclusive. Information shows that he hasn’t left his palace since the Imperial Army appeared. He has been hiding in a secret place, remotely directing this calamitous war. When the world-spanning slave uprising began to impact the military-industrial base of the lowa, he only issued three cold and brief orders to suppress it. I guess this way of hiding himself and acting mysteriously may be Barrian covering up his panic, needing to sustain a calm and unassailable image with mysterious movents and sporadic short, direct commands—though now I am very curious, is Barrian still maintaining his composure after the bizarre plague outbreak in the Divine Country?
This plague is bizarre, breaking out without warning. The lowa people have no way to explain its origin and transmission, nor do they understand the principles of the plague. It doesn’t even constitute a disease in the eyes of conventional dical experts. The infection on the Divine Country started showing symptoms on the third day of the slave uprising and spread across the entire "Divine Country" planet within twenty-four hours. lowa dical experts speculate that this "disease" may have been latent on this planet for several days, possibly appearing alongside the Imperial Army. Otherwise, they can’t explain why a disease could appear simultaneously in every corner of the planet. They call this "disease" the "Panic Syndro." People infected with the "disease" show no signs of fever or bodily harm. The bodies of the afflicted show no signs of damage, yet day by day they grow weaker, falling into extre emotional states, haunted by nightmares, and overwheld by illusions of the Empire’s Fleet bombing and eternal soul torture after death.
Infected individuals initially display panic, are easily frightened, and beco neurotic. Then they begin to develop severe paranoia, extrely afraid of being alone: this drives them to communicate with others as much as possible. Only when they are with their kind do they feel a little psychological security. Then the symptoms worsen; they can’t rest and begin to hallucinate. Forty-eight hours later, patients cannot distinguish between reality and dreams.
At this ti, depending on the infected individual’s willpower, patients will either gradually "recover" or beco completely controlled by hallucinations. The forr wander around in an uncontrollable state of depression and sadness, telling terrifying scenes they encountered in hallucinations as if they were abandoned grumbling wives, but in the end, they seem to break free from those illusions and gradually "restore ntal health." The latter starts shooting perceived enemies if they have guns by their side. The enemies in their hallucinations include monstrous beasts, Imperial soldiers lunging at them, twisted black shadows, or their old elentary school teacher. Those subdued shout their enemies’ nas in hallucinations until they’re scared to death.
This is the infection symptom of the "plague" outbreak in the Divine Country, appearing to be an extre psychiatric condition but contagious. Statistical reports and growth curves show this symptom is continually spreading, and it transmits between people. However, lowa’s doctors and psychiatrists work hard but cannot find a way to stop the transmission: even most of them are starting to show symptoms of being infected. They hide beneath thick protective suits, behind remote monitoring devices, or simply only read paper reports, but still, they get infected. For every lowa person in the Divine Country, this is simply a nightmare. The greater nightmare, however, is that as the Divine Country falls into chaos, our Imperial Fleet is marching toward all their large military nodes unimpeded.
Here lies a mass collapse point near the lowa Capital Star System, originally a solitary large constant star system. But during the battle, lowa triggered a large-scale space internal bomb, causing the constant star system to disintegrate into ashes. Now all materials here are quickly being drawn toward the center of the battlefield. It won’t be long before a young black hole appears here. The Imperial Army has suffered so spaceship damage from lowa’s suicide attack, but overall this was still a decently successful victory. The Imperial Admiral and Royal Fleet quietly hover 26 light seconds outside the battlefield, silently watching the debris pulled toward the mass collapse point that can’t be seen with the naked eye. The end of this battle ans lowa’s regular army has been 90 percent eliminated, and now this vast empire is virtually paralyzed.
But Barrian still has an ace up his sleeve—I wonder when he plans to play it.
"Hope he didn’t get knocked out directly by Sandora’s spiritual plague?" Qianqian yawns, leaning over the tactical projection device. In the earlier battle, she used her power to isolate the fleet from lowa’s self-destruct attacks, now appearing a bit drained. "That thing seems to have an almost defying rhythm of saying..."
"Not necessarily, the spiritual plague targets 80 percent of ordinary lowa people, those 20 percent of the elite should be able to resist the infection... though I agree to a point, this thing is truly insane."
I recall Sandora’s introduction to her ticulously crafted spiritual plague, causing goosebumps—the lowa can never find a way to stop the infection. Even if they know the initial infection source is those two "deserters," and they have a general idea of the transmission pathway, they still can’t stop this thing.
The spiritual plague spreads through any form of cognitive activity, with the direct bridge of infection being information exchange.
Any type of cognitive activity, as long as it ets the recognition criteria set by Sandora, becos a breeding ground for the spiritual plague. It generates destructive power through your thoughts themselves. All the negative emotions and hallucinations it triggers are drawn from the infected individual’s own mories and subconscious, making it impossible to find any broad and effective treatnt ans. Its transmission manner covers almost all ways of human communication: eye contact, dialogue, hearsay, video, audio, and even written biographies on paper. Sandora’s glory form strength can warp the world’s laws, allowing her spiritual plague to spread through these completely nonsensical ans. If you co across personal information about an upper-level infected person and possibly understand the infected person’s psychology and personality through such information, then beware, the seed of darkness has already taken root in your heart—just such a terrifying thing.
Of course, the spiritual plague’s effects weaken when spreading through "weakly information-associated" channels like remote caras and audio. The more jumps it takes, the more severe the weakening becos, which should be this dreadful "disease’s" only weakness.
The plague that broke out in the Divine Country spread rapidly through these channels. The more technologically advanced, the simpler people’s communication becos. lowa’s civilization at that level certainly can’t be an exception. The staff responsible for investigating the infected were the first sacrifices after directly conversing with the pollution source. Then ca their superiors, colleagues, family, friends, even any passerby exchanging glances or greetings with them started getting infected. Subsequently, the infection spread via video data to other places. The disease reports and audio-visual materials were made publicly available in lowa’s database, and every lowa dical worker and psychiatrist who read those words spread the contamination to an even broader area. To this day, the spiritual plague has reached its design limit: in the pollution heaviest Divine Country, if you know the four words "spiritual plague," and you happen to be a lowa, then congratulations, you’ve been infected—it utilizes text and cognitive capacities to plant the seeds of madness in victims’ minds.
However, it must be noted that the spiritual plague’s pollution is limited to the radicals. Sandora has set a "switch" in the spiritual plague, designating that the terrifying nightmares it induces must regard the Empire as the greatest hypothetical enemy, where the radicals have long regarded Barrian as their greatest enemy. Thus, the conservative lowa people are the only ones spared from this plague: of course, they are also clever enough to play dumb amidst the radicals in infected areas to avoid exposure.
However, unfortunately, the spiritual plague may be able to destroy an ordinary race, but it can’t fundantally crush the lowa. Twenty percent of them are completely immune to this level of erosion, and even among the rest, a considerable number can control their behavior despite extre emotions. This plague plunges them into chaos, but for a race forged with the steel bones and tendons of the Old Empire’s hamring, such chaos isn’t yet a catastrophic disaster.
"Look, there are slave uprisings across the thirteen universes, the regular lowa army has been wiped out by the Empire, and yet they’re still entangled with the disciplinary police and those slaves," I glanced at the report before , sothing sent by Tulazo, "Plagues are still spreading across the Capital World. Barrian really can keep his composure."
"He’s not keeping his composure," Miss shrugged, "he’s riding a tiger and can’t get off. The ard slaves have bogged down his police units and administrative system. Actually, from what I can see, Barrian isn’t even focusing on the slave rebellion anymore. He’s being driven to despair by the infection among his race and the advance of the Imperial Army. Yet, his governnt machinery is all stuck in the vast ocean of the people’s war—truly miserable!"
Barrian indeed is pathetic, but he brought it on himself. No one cares what this tyrant thinks, the Imperial Army continues to advance at a remarkable speed, and except for the Capital World, the other twelve worlds’ battle zones are gradually calming down: our army decisively wiped out every place where the Rebel Army was stationed, leaving no survivors in any battle. Now, various Fleet detachnts are conducting cleanup operations in local battle zones, with most of the main forces returning to this universe to rendezvous with the Royal Fleet and the Third Legion’s flagship. A smaller portion of the fleet disperses to assist those uprising slaves in eradicating the remaining lowa disciplinary police. The latter are now truly pitiful: they set out facing the threat of the Imperial Army, yet at least appeared imposing, enjoying unparalleled glory for a ti. Now, however, the disciplinarians are holed up in small troop transport ships and outposts, out of ammunition, low on energy, and most of them have given up calling for help from their superiors: because their superiors are either calling higher authorities for help or no longer exist. The furious slaves, after exhausting the disciplinarians’ ammunition with human waves, begin to harvest these vile rulers. This situation is actually on the brink of spiraling out of control; the unrestrained slave civilians and Slave Fleet, filled with fury, have only limited enemies to vent on and might destroy themselves with their rage before finding new racial progresses. Now, the Slave Race is sowhat similar to the lowa who defected just then—suddenly unchained, discovering they can freely smash their erstwhile master’s holand, plunging the entire race into grand revelry—hence, without guidance, I am worried these Slave Races could beco another disaster.
We have no ti to spare, so this task was handed to Tulazo and those disciplinarily connected Resistance Organizations widely associated with him. They are the most suitable for this task, after all, they have unprecedented influence among those races on the verge of revelry. In this special war, our Imperial Battleships that appeared out of nowhere, wielding unparalleled power, are not as influential as those rustic Resistance Army leaders.
As the Imperial Army continued to advance, we also made contact with Tulazo’s Conservatives, most of whom are now registered within the Imperial Army’s identification system. Initially, we could have helped evacuate these conservatives, yet they requested to remain around the Radicals—this is dangerous because, in this war, the conservatives have actively assisted those slave uprisings, and repeatedly obstructed radical military actions, and if exposed, Barrian would definitely swiftly exterminate every "traitor" identified. However, the conservative representatives and Barrian both expressed willingness to take this risk, believing evacuating now ans many subsequent tasks cannot unfold, but staying around the radicals allows continued obstruction toward Barrian.
I think there might be a sense of redemption among them, perhaps the Conservatives wish to secure as high an evaluation as possible before the war ends, to alleviate their punishnts during post-war military trials. I won’t comnt much on this mindset; there will undoubtedly be post-war military trials, and what specific judgnts they will face is up to the Imperial Supre Court. Personally, the Conservatives’ current actions are indeed very pleasing: thanks to their activism, it’s unclear how many Slave Races have reduced unnecessary casualties. Every innocent life they save now is a slight bargaining chip to lessen their guilt in military court, so let them continue striving.
A few days later, the war was nearing its end.
The "Divine Country" was right before our eyes, now just one jump away from our main fleet. Of the thirteen worlds under Barrian’s rule, twelve had completely fallen, and the Imperial Starships filled with Angry Warriors had flattened all military nodes across those worlds in nearly half a month. They, of course, faced fierce resistance and sustained so damage during this process, yet, thankfully, there was that half basketball court’s worth of Mass-produced Bubbles, allowing constant replenishnt of damaged grassroots units. The lowa race, under the imperial storm-like offense, teetered on the brink of collapse. EOP-03 and the Galaxy’s Radiant Glow eradicated about ninety percent of their population; now, Barrian’s final sliver of military forces entrenched just over the Divine Country.
The final battle erupted at the Empire’s standard ti of noon, twelve. The Imperial Army first deployed a volley of Super Space-Ti Firepower, knocking out the Gravity Trap devices in the Constant Star System where the Divine Country was located. After that, the entire army forced a jump into this star system. Before this, the special operations team of the Third Fleet already blocked all material transmission activities from this Constant Star System, ensuring no stragglers escaped.
The Divine Country, this cold tallic planet, shone brightly exactly as seen last ti, emitting a golden Radiant Glow, yet devoid of life. Last ti, Lilina and I ventured here alone, witnessing Barrian’s worst atrocities. This ti, we co with thousands of troops, to end that tyrant’s rule.
Enroute over the planet, the lowa fleet stood ready. It’s impressive they persisted to the end in such a catastrophic war, organizing a rebellion until now: perhaps the forr Clan of the Old Empire’s only comndable aspect. But these fleets appeared fragile, with few General-class Carriers; the front line was filled predominantly with auxiliary ships, a third even lacked regular army insignias—this was not Barrian’s regular army.
His regular army had long since been entirely wiped out; now left were only the planetary defense fleet and the last-consolidated "police units." Due to the Spiritual Plague’s spread, even these remaining forces had drastically diminished. Now, Barrian has almost no Ordinary Soldiers to use; only forr lowa high-ranking military officers could maintain self amid the plague. These were once lofty, worshiped by followers in the "Temple" as Fake Gods, now having to lower themselves, personally operating reactors and navigators, even donning equipnt to charge into battle. Sandora’s Spiritual Plague nearly exhausted their final spirit: undoubtedly, what they propped up was a paper-thin defensive line.
"First echelon, fire freely! Second echelon, ignore these obstructions and directly bombard the planet!" Sivis issued a straightforward command for planetary destruction. Anyway, Tulazo’s conservatives already relocated to safety according to instructions, allowing us to attack without restraint. She drew out the Commander’s Sword, unleashing her power, "Leave no survivors, victory belongs to the Emperor!"
But just as our attack comnced, a vast number of shadows suddenly appeared on the battlefield! (To be continued. If you like this work, please co to Qidian (qidian) to vote for recomndations, monthly tickets, your support is my greatest motivation.)
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