Above the Blood Moon

As the doors of the Gear Tavern closed behind him, Jockley realized that the atmosphere tonight was completely different from usual.

The bell hanging on the door frame only had time to make a short, soft sound before it was drowned out by the squeezing through the door crack.

The lights inside the tavern were dimmer than usual.

Art turned off most of the lights, leaving only a few old wall lamps behind the bar, casting a dim and flickering yellow glow.

A strange silence filled the air as Dahuang and Daikiri prepared to move their newly purchased items to the kitchen, while Chokri's gaze slowly swept across the room.

Margaret sat on a high stool at the bar.

Jockley still remembered her, the woman he met at the Power Station bar, who was also the hacker that Art had mentioned who couldn't come before because of something.

She leaned limply against the table, her plain face adorned with heavy dark circles under her eyes. She wore a pink sundress and held a half-empty glass of wine in her hand. Her eyes stared blankly at the amber liquid swirling in the glass, as if she could see something invisible to others.

The priest sat beside her, still wearing his black robe, the shadow cast by his hood obscuring most of his face.

A glass of water sat before him, its surface calm and still, just as Jockley had seen it when he was about to go on his last mission.

Behind the bar, Art was pouring drinks for another man.

That man, Jockley, also remembered Old Scar.

He looked worse today than the last time I saw him. His left prosthetic eye was still there, but the lens was broken, and the optical components inside were exposed, flashing with chaotic blue light.

Old Scar's right eye, his original eye, was closed at the moment, with a rough suture wound at the corner of his eye that was still bleeding.

Even so, the high-end prosthetic arm on Old Scar's body did not disappear, which made Jockley feel a little strange.

Art pushed the glass in front of Old Scar. The liquid in the glass was murky. Old Scar used his still-functioning right hand to grab the glass and tilted his head back to drink it all in one gulp.

The alcohol burned his throat, and he coughed violently, his whole body trembling.

"Another one, please."

Old Scar said in a hoarse voice.

Art looked at him and pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses.

"You only have one eye left. If you keep drinking, you won't even be able to afford your food tomorrow. Go home, Old Scar."

Old Scar raised his head and looked at Art with his broken mechanical eye. The optical components inside the prosthetic eye flickered wildly, emitting a faint electrical noise.

Finally, he let go of the wine glass, fell backward, and his back slammed heavily against the back of the bar stool.

"It was worth it," Old Scar murmured, his voice carrying a kind of almost manic laughter.

"An eye for a bottle of wine, it's worth it..."

He struggled to slide off the bar stool, staggering and nearly falling, as he slowly and laboriously made his way to the door.

Old Scar paused as he passed by Jockley.

He turned to look at Jockley, the blue light flashing inside his prosthetic eye casting eerie spots of light on Jockley's face. In that instant, Jockley felt as if he were being scrutinized by some inhuman being.

"Kid, stay alive! Staying alive is everything..."

After saying this, he pushed open the tavern door, and his hunched figure quickly disappeared into the night outside, stained red by the blood moon.

The door closed behind him, shutting out the soft ringing of the bell.

Jockley stood there, his mind blank for a few seconds.

The despair in Old Scar's last words was so heavy that he could almost feel its cold texture.

"see a visitor out."

Art's voice pulled him back to reality.

Dekiri was standing by the door, and upon hearing At's words, he opened the door almost without hesitation.

The few remaining customers in the tavern seemed to realize something as well. They silently stood up, put down their glasses, and headed towards the door one by one.

As the last customer left, Art walked over and flipped the sign on the door that said it was open for business.

Then he turned around and his gaze swept over the few people left in the tavern: Jockley, Big Yellow, Daikiri, the priest, and Margaret, who was still lying on the bar.

"We've got a job, and a big one at that!"

As Jockley carried the purchased supplies into the kitchen, his mind was still racing.

He piled the last box of synthetic protein blocks in the corner, washed his hands, and slowly dried them with a towel. This action gave him some time to calm down and allow his boiling thoughts to cool down a bit.

When they returned to the front hall, Art was gone. There were light footsteps coming from the direction of the stairs, probably preparing to talk to the employer about something. After saying that he had come to work, he stopped talking and left everyone to guess.

Daikiri sat in a booth by the window, holding a children's picture book in her hands, while Margaret was still leaning on the bar.

Only the priest remained calm and composed, showing no surprise or joy, remaining as usual.

Jockley walked to the seat opposite the priest, gently pulled out a chair and sat down. Before he could speak, the priest spoke first.

"I asked some people and did some research on the question you asked me before."

Jockley paused for a moment, then remembered that it had happened two weeks ago.

During a training break, taking advantage of the priest's seemingly good mood, he tentatively asked some questions about the newly contracted development zone of Yadea Technology Company and the number of those men in red.

He always felt that mysterious figures like priests must know some secrets that ordinary people cannot access.

Seeing that Jockley was getting into the flow, the priest continued, his long, slender fingers gently stroking the inside of the glass.

"There's been almost no news coming out of that development zone. Yadea Technology Company has kept it tightly under lockdown, and all the work is being done in stages."

"No one knows what they dug up, no one knows what they transported, and no one knows where the disposed items ended up. The information was cut and encrypted to ensure that no one had a complete picture."

Jockley's heart sank; this was worse than he had anticipated.

"What about the man in red?" he asked, his voice unconsciously lowering.

The priest picked up his glass and took a sip of water.

"If you want to know the origin of the people in red, you don't need to ask me. You can ask many people about their stories."

As for their numbers, I can tell you that in the seventy years since the Deep Space Graveyard was established, the total number of Red-Clad Men dispatched from the Olympus Ring has been no less than five thousand.

Jockley felt his breath catch for a moment.

He had personally witnessed the fighting prowess of the men in red. Pisius and his small squad of only twenty men nearly cornered him. If there were five thousand such madmen…

"but"

The priest put down his cup, his grey eyes peering at Jockley through the shadow cast by his hood.

"You don't need to despair too much. The red-clothed man's modification takes an extreme approach. Either he's fully cybernetically transformed, completely abandoning his flesh and blood, or he's implanted with a high-level superpower chip, forcibly generating power that doesn't belong to him."

"And most of the missions they carry out involve high concentrations of alien energy pollution, or contact with things that shouldn't be touched."

He paused for a moment, seemingly considering his words.

"So they go crazy very quickly. Once they completely lose control and go insane, their nervous system is forcibly shut down by their companions, sealed in a specially made container, and transported back deep into the base."

"After seventy years, the number of red-clad people who are still conscious is actually not large, probably only one or two hundred."

One or two hundred people.

Jockley breathed a slight sigh of relief, but the tension in his heart remained high.

Several hundred fully armed, well-trained, and varying degrees of madness-ridden modified warriors would be enough to wreak havoc on the Forgotten City, not to mention they might still be hunting him.

"I've told you everything you wanted to know."

The priest gently pushed the empty cup in front of him forward.

"However, I do have a question for you."

Jockley sat up straight.

"Please speak."

The priest remained silent for a few seconds, and the only sound in the tavern was the faint hum of electricity passing through the wall lamps.

"If you had to kill someone completely innocent of you to fulfill a certain obsession or dream, what would you do?"

Jockley hadn't expected the priest to ask such a question. He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but all his words froze in his throat, unable to take shape.

Kill an innocent person? Just to go home?

The words "Lu Yao" engraved on the wall of the cryo-chamber flashed through his mind, along with images of Earth, his parents' nagging admonitions on the phone, and everything he once took for granted but now found unattainable...

"I...I don't know."

The priest didn't speak, but just watched him quietly through the shadow of his hood. Jockley took a deep breath, trying to calm his chaotic thoughts.

"If this were before I came to this place, I would never have done it. Murder without cause is murder, and there is no reason to justify it."

He paused, his fingers unconsciously tightening their grip on the fabric on his knees.

"But I've already killed people here, though those people might not have been entirely innocent. They wanted to kill me, so I killed them, just to survive."

"What if it's to go home? I remember you told me you weren't a native of Forgotten City."

Jockley fell silent, and this silence lasted for a very long time. Finally, he looked up at the priest.

"I think I still don't know. Maybe I'll make a choice when I'm really forced into a corner, but I don't want to become the kind of person who would stop at nothing to achieve their goals."

"Because I think that no matter what kind of person they are, they should have their own meaning in life. They also have their own families and their own lives. They should not lose the right to live."

"Of course, all of this is based on the premise that he is truly completely innocent."

The priest looked at him for a few seconds, then slowly nodded, without saying whether it was right or wrong.

"Feed, feed, feed—"

Daikiri's voice broke the heavy silence. He had wandered over from the booth at some point, still clutching the fairy tale book in his hand.

"Are you guys done talking?" Daikiri plopped down in the chair next to Chokri and crossed his legs.

"After we finish chatting, how about I introduce you to him?"

He gestured towards Margaret with his lip.

Jockley glanced at Margaret, who was still slumped over the bar.

"I know her," Jockley said.

"You know him?" Daikiri raised an eyebrow, looked Jockley up and down, his eyes seeming to say, "You actually know someone like this."

"Okay, but since we know each other, we should introduce ourselves more formally."

He cleared his throat and put on a serious expression.

"Margaret, a VIP customer and part-time information broker at this tavern, occasionally takes on hacking jobs. Don't let her usual demeanor fool you, she's actually quite capable."

She's a very skilled hacker. We've completed several missions together before, and she played a crucial role in many of them. She's very intelligent, and she... she..."

Daikiri seemed to be racking his brains for words to praise Margaret, but in the end he gave up.

He really hadn't received any proper education, so he could only awkwardly sit down next to Jockley.

Margaret slowly raised her head, her face radiating utter despair, her pink curly hair plastered messily to her cheeks.

"Just average." She waved her hand weakly.

I feel like I have three penises right now.

Jockley: "...?"

"Damn it, what a miserable, miserable, and stupid guy. He's being fucked half to death by this lousy world because of these three. It's really helpless. Damn company, I've lost more than half of my customers. Otherwise, I wouldn't be working as a mercenary anymore. Being a prostitute is no easier than being a mercenary."

Jockley was unsure how to react, and he even vaguely felt that what Margaret said made some sense.

After all, in the Forgotten City, these mercenaries risk their lives, while prostitutes only sell their bodies. Since they have to sell something to survive, selling their bodies is better than selling their lives.

However, Margaret's overly straightforward words still left Jockley somewhat speechless.

The language may be rough, but the logic is sound. This is just too rough, isn't it?