Alien Hotel.

Chapter 701 Spirit Infusion Furnace
Neat and heavy footsteps sounded at the end of the corridor, and then those familiar tall figures came into everyone's view.

That was hollow armor with a force field sword in hand.

"Holy crap..."

The little doll gasped in surprise, and before her cry had even faded, the swaying, hollow armor had already turned their heads in unison—the next second, the seemingly heavy brass armor suddenly accelerated, rushing towards Yu Sheng and his group like phantoms.

Fortunately, this wasn't the first time the innkeepers had faced these enemies. Before the bronze knights could launch their charge, Yu Sheng's group had already taken action.

With a soft click from the blood needle launcher, a dozen tiny, almost invisible blood needles pierced the air and burrowed into the gaps in the armor of the first few knights. The brass knights hit instantly stiffened, trembling as they collapsed to the ground amidst the intense conflict of commands. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Hu Li grabbed his two large tails and fired a barrage of fox-carrot machine gun shots at the enemies across the corridor: "Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat—"

Almost simultaneously, Luna had already transformed into a blurry phantom. She gracefully and elegantly crossed the corridor, and the next time she appeared, she was already behind those hollow armors.

With a flick of her fingertips, the shields and armor on the knights were as fragile as paper in the face of the artificial saintess's attack. Yu Sheng couldn't even see Luna's movements before several bronze knights in the back row fell to the ground.

However, at that moment, more heavy footsteps came from across the corridor. Out of the corner of his eye, Yu Sheng saw a series of swaying, hollow suits of armor appearing in the dim emergency lights.

Hu Li, clutching his large tail, fired another burst at the opposite side, then quickly turned to Yu Sheng to warn, "My benefactor! More enemies are running towards us from afar! There are some on the other side of the corridor too!"

As they spoke, a suit of brass armor, under the cover of the other knights, broke through the net of fire woven from foxfire. It rushed towards Yu Sheng like a whirlwind, raising the force field sword in its hand high.

Golden threads appeared in the air, instantly burrowing into the knight's joints. Eileen, holding her frying pan in one hand and a strand of golden thread in the other, swung over Yu Sheng like Tarzan, yelling as she slammed the knight to the ground with the pan, then swiftly swung back: "Yu Sheng! This is bad! There are more and more of these things! Have we disturbed a knight's lair?!"

At that moment, Yu Sheng was aiming his blood needle launcher at the other side with his arm raised. Hearing the little puppet's shout, he quickly looked up and glanced around. Then, he gritted his teeth and made a quick decision: "Don't linger, get inside! There's an opening here!"

He pointed to a spot not far away, where a large hole had been torn in the corridor wall. The mountain structure, fractured by the orbital bombardment, had pierced through the facility. On the other side of that gap seemed to be a large space, and lights from other areas of the facility could be seen in the distance.

Without a word, Hu Li yanked off the two tails she was holding, swung them around, and threw them across the corridor: "Whoosh—"

Two fox tails spewed propellant flames and flew out of his hand, exploding between the brass knights with a deafening roar. The powerful impact instantly collapsed the corridor, temporarily trapping more brass knights behind a pile of wreckage.

Almost immediately, violent impacts and digging sounds came from the pile of wreckage.

But at this moment, Yu Sheng and Hu Li had already jumped into the gap in the corridor—before leaving, Yu Sheng threw two blood grenades near the gap, causing a continuously spreading blood mist to permeate the entire corridor.

This way, even if those bronze knights catch up, a few will be converted first, or at the very least, they can be controlled for a few minutes.

The chilling clanging of armor gradually faded into the distance, and the "road" beyond the breach became even more winding and difficult to traverse.

Yu Sheng and his group crawled through these "secret paths" created by the landslide, crawling through broken rocks into a fractured corridor, then through crooked and collapsed corridors, and into machine rooms, halls or warehouses of unknown function.

It wasn't all that happened in between—they encountered several more wandering Brass Knights and were forced to fight two groups of them. Fortunately, the number of them they encountered afterward was not large, and they were not entangled and were able to escape in time.

The deeper Yu Sheng went into the facility, the more his brows furrowed.

Just as Eileen said... has this really stirred up trouble in the Knights' den?
He had never seen so many bronze knights at once—the number of these hollow armors far exceeded that of the cultists in the facility.

And speaking of those cultists... along the way he came in, apart from occasionally seeing a few corpses in cult robes lying on the ground, he didn't seem to see any cultists still alive.

What exactly is the purpose of this facility?

After emerging from a connecting passage, the group entered a dimly lit hall. The lighting system was malfunctioning; all the main lights were out, leaving only a few emergency lights providing basic illumination in various corners. The dim light illuminated the outlines of some strange devices in the hall, creating an unsettling atmosphere.

“You can go through here,” Luna said, raising her hand. “I think I remember the route, but the scenery… is different from what I remember.”

She looked at the place, and the dim emergency lights seemed to transform into a hazy curtain in her eyes. Beneath the curtain, fragmented and distorted memories swayed on the edge of reality.

She seemed to see a bright and radiant corridor, where priests in holy robes and knights in light-forged armor were bathed in sunlight streaming through the side windows. Sisters with swords walked from the direction of the long hall, and the holy emissary's gentle gaze fell on her through the high window.

The dim emergency lights crackled softly, and a few sparks from bursting power lines illuminated the corner of the wall. Yu Sheng walked over and saw two cult members dressed in short robes lying on the ground, their bodies curled up and hunched over.

Hu Li carefully kicked one of the corpses over with his foot and saw a charred and broken face. The corpse looked as if it had been burned from the inside out, roasted into a cracked piece of charcoal from the inside.

“Strange, the corpses here are different from the cultist corpses we saw near the entrance,” Eileen muttered. “They look like they’ve gone out of control and burned themselves to death.”

Luna slowly turned her head to look at the side of the hall. A whole wall of pitch black stood there, its shadows blurred by the emergency lights in the corner.

In a daze, she saw the scene from her memory again. She saw tall, narrow windows lined up to one side, sunlight streaming into the corridor from the courtyard, and newly promoted knights marching in formation across the training ground. The clanging of their armor and their cheerful laughter mingled in the wind.

She walked forward, her cold, metallic fingers touching the black wall.

The backup power was activated, and a slight buzzing sound suddenly came from the wall. Then, the surface of the black wall instantly became transparent, and the originally metallic material became like glass.

Light streamed in from the opposite side, and Yu Sheng, unaware of what was happening, instinctively looked up.

Across from that wall was a production workshop. The assembly line, which had already stopped, faced the observation window. Armor parts waiting to be assembled were suspended on conveyor tracks, and unidentifiable crystalline pipes stretched across the roof, their pipes shimmering with a dim light.

"Holy crap..." Eileen gasped softly, her small hand instinctively gripping Yu Sheng's hair tightly. "It really is a knight's den...?"

Yu Sheng immediately looked up in Luna's direction: "Luna?"

“Further ahead,” Luna raised her hand and whispered, “there’s a place to rest, a place for audiences, and a place for promotions.”

She walked to a corner of the hall, where a door was stuck, but she casually tore it open and threw the twisted and deformed metal gate aside.

Yu Sheng hurriedly followed. As they passed through the hall, they saw several more cult members lying in the passageway outside. Their deaths were the same as those in the hall before, seemingly caused by the backlash of their own psychic energy.

In the next room, they saw something familiar.

A dozen or so neatly arranged "holy coffins".

That's the equipment needed for the artificial saint's hibernation and maintenance—there's a set on the Otherworldly Inn.

"Hey! C-shaped buckle," Eileen immediately started babbling, "your iron coffin, your iron coffin!"

Yu Sheng wasn't as carefree as this little thing. He immediately tensed up, and seeing that most of the iron coffins were illuminated by maintenance lights, he whispered, "Luna, they're all in here..."

"All are in maintenance mode. Three others show signal loss, indicating they are likely damaged."

As Luna spoke, she slowly walked towards the end of the row of holy coffins.

The energy system here is still running, and lights are shining down from above, illuminating the magnificent statues in the hall and the surface of the sacred coffin, blurring the lines between reality and scenes from memory.

The sisters would rest here, pray, share their experiences, summarize their battle lessons, and await the call to arms.

Sometimes, some of the sisters would be taken away, and they and their guard knights would never appear in the facility again. The priests said they were sent to other outposts, and new sisters and guard knights would come here to guard this place...

Infused Furnace.

She raised her head and looked ahead.

The Hall of Ascension is flanked by clusters of flowers—beside the dark steel walkway stand statues of "sages".

The chairs where the sisters rested and discussed matters were bathed in light—while the cold, iron coffin surface shimmered with lights indicating system maintenance.

The door to the Saint's Chamber at the end of the long hall was tightly closed, and I remembered that there were two statues of saints standing on either side of that door.

She saw two sets of heavy sentry guns fixed to the ground, but they appeared to be out of service.

Yu Sheng suddenly sensed that faint aura again. The subtle connection established by his blood whispered at the edge of his perception. It was very close and very blurry, as if his broken and weak consciousness was gradually awakening and being reshaped from chaos.

He heard a slight mechanical whirring sound, and the gate at the far end of the hall, protected by heavy sentry guns, suddenly began to operate.

As several lights came on, the heavy door slowly slid back to the sides.

A gentle, holy light emanated from the gate, and psionic echoes rang out like the soft chimes of a wind chime.

(End of this chapter)