I write obituaries for the gods

“Let’s begin,” the section chief said.

Inside the deep well, rings of eerie blue light shone, extending down into the abyss below.

As the deep blue light grew brighter, a grayish-white light flowed out from the depths of the well like water, spreading all the way to the wellhead.

"The subspace has been torn apart and is being oriented."

"Depth, 3.84, calibration complete."

"Operation Break the Nation, First Dive, Mission Objective: Explore the Area."

"Operation begins."

"Click!"

The wire harness was released, and the deep-sea diver plummeted into the deep well below, falling into that gray and white expanse.

After passing through the gray-white surface, his figure left countless overlapping afterimages as he fell, trailing long streaks like playing cards smeared on a table.

"Depth detection...0.51...1.43...2.75...3.47..."

"3.84, anchored."

"Click".

A few dozen seconds later, the green indicator light next to the test bench lit up.

"Deep-sea anchor set up, signal connected."

"Deep dive successful," the diver's voice came from the abyss, "I have arrived at 'Utopia'."

......

Chapter 91 The Cult of Mentis

After dropping off the children, Lin Chen and Li Zhanyi had nowhere to go, so they took a taxi to a coffee shop in the Mingzhu Beach area.

"The deep dive seems to have been successful; they've reached 'Utopia,'" Li Zhanyi said, reading a message on her phone from her window seat. "They're really efficient."

“I don’t want to take a vacation,” Lin Chen sighed. “I want to work.”

“Why are young people so stubborn?” Li Zhanyi glanced at Lin Chen. “Alright, aren’t we helping Professor Jürgen pick up his kids today? Let’s just grab something quick for lunch, go shopping this afternoon, and take the kids to my hidden gem restaurant for dinner!”

"Hmm." Lin Chen picked up his latte, took a sip, and scrolled through his phone.

As he scrolled through his feed, he came across news about the English captain:

"The Foundation claims... that Captain England has been involved in bribery with some warp cultists on the dark web, using warp space for evil... But what are warp cultists? I've never heard of them before."

"Huh? You've never heard of it?" Li Zhanyi asked in surprise. "Don't you browse the dark web?"

"This doesn't sound like a place for ordinary people to browse..." Lin Chen's lips twitched slightly. "What's the black market used for?"

“Illegal arms dealing, black market, assassination orders, mercenaries, illegal prosthetic implants, and abnormal physical sales!” Li Zhanyi exclaimed excitedly. “There are so many interesting things up there, but I usually only browse the gun section to see if there are any niche items. Occasionally, I’ll also look at the abnormal physical sales, and if there are any suitable ones, I’ll catch a few dealers to boost my sales.”

Wow, there's even free performance bonus... Lin Chen shook his head slightly:

"terrible."

"Alright, even the scariest mercenaries on the black market aren't as scary as you," Li Zhanyi nudged Lin Chen lightly with her shoulder. "Just think of this place as a really, really bad place."

"What are the Subspace Cultists?" Lin Chen asked.

"A bunch of lunatics who worship the warp, officially called the 'Mentis Cult.' They believe that the anomalous entities in the warp are backed by a unified great will, and that this will is the warp itself—a very old-fashioned, chuunibyou-ish concept."

Li Zhanyi shrugged helplessly as he spoke.

"Come on, I'll teach you how to access the black market."

"Is...is this okay?"

"What's wrong with this? You can pick up sales figures on it whenever you're free. They think they've hidden their IPs well, but if you knock on their door, they'll kneel down and beg for your favor. Come on."

Li Zhanyi took out his portable laptop and began to operate it.

About five minutes later, the so-called "black network" appeared before Lin Chen's eyes.

The sections on this site were so numerous and disorganized that Lin Chen glanced at them a few times and roughly understood why it was called a "black website".

too dark.

“This is the Mentis Church’s page,” Li Zhanyi clicked on a section, “Take a look.”

Lin Chen looked at the page: the background was a pitch-black sea, and a huge white whale was hanging upside down on the surface of the sea with its eyes closed.

Below, a line of doctrine was written in blood-red font:

"The whale's cry when He awoke came from the depths of the warp, and a tsunami would engulf our nation, and thus He had a nation."

Is it cool or just childish?

Lin Chen glanced at the post and muttered:

"They seem to be promoting some kind of doomsday theory?"

“Yes, they call it the ‘White Trial’,” Li Zhanyi nodded. “It means that a giant whale swims at the bottom of the warp, and then with a ‘whoosh,’ the warp waves turn into a tsunami that swallows our world.”

“Well, you know what, it actually makes sense,” Lin Chen said more seriously. “Professor Jürgen told me that the erosion of the subspace is essentially the ‘overlap of the subspace dimensional wave with reality.’ From a spatial perspective, it does indeed look like a wave sweeping across.”

"No way...you're going to start converting to a religion?" Li Zhanyi's eyes widened slightly.

“I don’t really believe there are whales swimming in the warp,” Lin Chen scratched his head. “Do these cultists have any activities in the real world?”

“Yes, yes,” Li Zhanyi nodded like a chick pecking at rice. “Actually, there are quite a few. Most believers only remain at the mass level, but some of them are extremists who will actively cause subspace erosion through sacrifice!”

Using a sacrificial method... Lin Chen recalled the theory that Professor Jürgen had taught him.

If one of the triggers for warp erosion is the "gathering of a large amount of emotion," then sacrifice seems to actually be able to achieve that.

“So all those people on the black market were just expendable resources,” Li Zhanyi shrugged. “Look, the Foundation hired mercenaries from the black market one minute, and then used the Church of Mentis as a scapegoat the next. Anyone who makes a living on the black market is bound to get into trouble sooner or later.”

"So, what will happen to those captured mercenaries?" Lin Chen asked.

"Put him in jail."

Li Zhanyi picked up his coffee.

"Those guys are beyond redemption."

......

After returning to the Investigation Bureau, Jiang Zhengge did not rush to the Deep Dive Center, but went to the underground prison first.

He was to interrogate Wu Hao, the former rapid response unit investigator who had been captured during the Carnival operation and the leader of the mercenaries.

"..."

Inside the interrogation room, Jiang Zhengge watched as Wu Hao was forced to sit down in a chair, a slight smile playing on his lips.

"Long time no see, old friend," Jiang Zhengge said softly, "although I really didn't want to see you..."

“You fear me,” Wu Hao laughed, “I’ll remind you of your painful past…”

“Yeah, I can’t believe I didn’t kill you, you hopeless stray dog, in my past,” Jiang Zhengge lit a cigarette. “Are you mentally prepared? You attacked the head of the Rapid Response Section One. Be prepared to serve your sentence in thirty-year increments…”

"Jiang Zhengge, you beast..."

“Indeed, I’d be angry too if I were you,” Jiang Zhengge sighed. “Even if your attack had been half, a quarter, or even an eighth successful, what if you had fired a shot straight at me and missed completely, only to be sentenced to thirty years in prison for that one failed shot? What a waste…”

"What do you want..." Wu Hao growled, "Stop beating around the bush, I've told you everything, I still have to go out and make money."

"intelligence."

Jiang Zhengge leaned forward slightly:

"I heard that your mercenaries have started to cooperate with the Mentis Cult on a large scale. Is that true?"

"What good would it do to tell you?" Wu Hao's lips curled into a slight smile. "That's right, Mentis taught us to provide abundant supplies."

"Who is the superior of the Mentis Cult?" Jiang Zhengge narrowed his eyes.

"Heh, you can't possibly not guess, can you?" Wu Hao scoffed. "Of course it's the Foundation, you idiot. But so what if you know? This is nothing new on the dark web!"

"You're really something," Jiang Zhengge said, giving a thumbs up. "But I doubt you'll know what to do next."

"What are you pretending for? Ask me!" Wu Hao shouted.

“Alright,” Jiang Zhengge gently slapped the table, “What is an ideal state?”

After Jiang Zhengge uttered that word, Wu Hao was stunned for a good while, and then suddenly laughed.

"You all know about this..."

"The foundation is already trapped. Confess properly, and maybe I'll have the jailer send you a razor tonight so you can secretly take your own life when it's quiet."

Faced with Jiang Zhengge's sarcasm, Wu Hao's lips twitched twice.

"Ha, what good would it do to tell you? It's an artificial subspace ruin, representing the Foundation's latest technology. You'll never find it in your lifetime."

"Have you been there?" Jiang Zhengge raised his eyebrows.

“Of course I’ve been there. Don’t underestimate me,” Wu Hao said fiercely. “I have a pass…”

"Alright, tell me all the details about the ideal state."

Jiang Zhengge lay back in the chair, his expression indifferent.

"In fact, our deep-sea divers have already reached the ideal land and have obtained some intelligence and data."

"Be careful, I'll ask you all sorts of questions about this information. Don't let me find out you're lying, or I'll use the heavy hammer of bureaucracy to put you in there for another fifty years. The Bureau of Investigation's prisons include burial services, and you can even customize what's in the urn."

Wu Hao: ......

......

Chapter 92 Rewards

At the control console of the deep-sea well, Jiang Zhengge placed a stack of documents on the table:

"This is Wu Hao's statement. It hasn't been simplified much. It's roughly about some of the characteristics of 'Utopia.' It can be transmitted to the deep-sea divers on the front lines."

“No problem,” Professor Jürgen said, taking the pile of materials. “Hmm… although they are all rather rough descriptions, they are still quite meaningful.”

“These are all icing on the cake. The most important information is that the Black Network’s power has almost been exhausted by the Foundation,” Jiang Zhengge sighed. “Even a scoundrel like Wu Hao can use ‘Ideal Country’ as a channel, which shows that they still have a certain weight in the Foundation’s strategic layout.”

Did they find a door opener on him?

“Didn’t find them. According to him, the Black Web mercenaries only have access at certain times,” Jiang Zhengge shrugged. “Let’s not talk about them anymore. How’s the situation at the front?”

"Things are going relatively smoothly, but the outlook is not optimistic..."

Professor Jürgen typed a few words on the keyboard, and the screen in front of him flickered, piecing together a gray and white image.

The footage shows a deep-sea diver carrying a body camera, walking on a bumpy street, holding a submachine gun in one hand and a machete in the other.

The layout of the streets was bizarre, and Jiang Zhengge found it hard to describe the feeling: it seemed that all the houses grew out of trees, a bunch of geometric shapes twisted and turned together, completely uninhabitable by humans.

"It looks alright," Jiang Zhengge muttered. "Has any rule-related event occurred?"

“Nothing yet, just low-level entities,” Professor Jürgen said softly. “The key point is that the city’s structure is very strange…”

"Strange?"

"Bruce, please look up at the sky."

A few seconds later, the first-person perspective slowly shifted upwards to the sky:

Looking along the edge of the horizon, the city's silhouette gradually rises, stretching from the ground to the sky until it forms a ninety-degree angle.

It's as if the city is inside a giant sphere.

"The city's space is a closed loop, with each area being relatively independent and having different rules between blocks."

Jürgen thought for a moment and then began to list:

"Our landing site is called the 'Old Town,' and the entities there are tin men dressed as railroad workers who come at Bruce as soon as they see him."

"After passing through the old town, Bruce used three dimensional anchors to connect the rifts between the blocks and arrived at the 'Horde'."

“The entities in the tribe are ‘fish-headed people’—barbarians with piranha heads, who will attack and kill Bruce as soon as they see him.”

"The area behind the 'tribe' is a 'swamp', and the entities there are blade flowers, which are walking plants with tentacles and bladed petals. As soon as they see Bruce, they grow legs and rush over to slash."

"Bruce is amazing, he's so durable," Jiang Zhengge praised.

"Fuck you, Jiang Zhengge." Bruce's greeting came from the distant subspace.

“Each block appears to be a different subspace ruin, stitched together in some way,” Professor Jürgen continued. “Based on the erosion features we obtained earlier at the ‘school,’ our radar detected the underground air-raid shelter.”