202: Chapter 203 Franny's Confession

In the dim confessional, the lights were off, and only a few circles of dim, yellowish prayer candles were lit.

In the flickering candlelight, a statue of the Emperor's Passion, crafted from pure silver, stood silently in the center of the room.

On the stone floor beneath the statue, Frannie was kneeling with her back to the door.

She had taken off her black tactical jacket, wearing only a thin undergarment.

Her originally fair and toned back was now covered in over a dozen shocking, dark red bloodstains!

Frannie bit her lip, not making a single sound of pain.

She held a barbed scourge in her hand, raising it high, ready to strike her back again.

"Frannie!"

Lin Li rushed forward and grabbed her wrist as she held the whip.

Hearing this familiar voice, Frannie shuddered and turned around abruptly.

By the faint candlelight, Lin Li saw that her delicate face was already covered with crisscrossing tear tracks.

A few strands of white hair, matted with sweat, clung messily to her cheeks, making her look incredibly fragile and helpless.

Seeing that the visitor was Lin Li, panic flashed through Frannie's eyes. She hurriedly dropped the whip and scrambled to pull up her slipping clothes, trying to cover the bloodstains on her back.

Then, she lowered her head deeply, not daring to look Lin Li in the eye.

Lin Li walked up to her and crouched down on one knee.

He reached out and gently wiped the remaining tears from the corners of Frannie's eyes: "What is this?"

Hearing Lin Li's gentle inquiry, the emotions Frannie had been forcibly suppressing finally collapsed like a broken dam.

She suddenly lifted her face, tears bursting forth again, sliding down her cheeks.

"My Lord! I... have I really done something wrong?!"

Frannie's voice was trembling and broken, filled with deep confusion.

"I can't tell! I really can't tell!"

"You are clearly the angel personally chosen by the God-Emperor, and you wield the God-Emperor's flames! But why do the sisters who taught me, and the Bishop... why do they want to kill you?"

"I have lived in the church's monastery since I was a child. Every day, I listened to the God-Emperor's gospel and received the church's strictest teachings. I swore to shed my last drop of blood for the church! Yet today, I picked up a gun with my own hands and stood on the absolute opposite side of the church!"

Frannie hugged her shoulders in pain.

"I knelt here reflecting for a long time, and I don't understand why they have become like this."

"But..." Frannie raised her head, her beautiful eyes filled with tears staring at Lin Li.

"These aren't actually what matter! What truly scares me is my heart!"

"Recently, my mind has been filled with nothing but your figure! My Lord, my faith has wavered!"

Frannie seemed to use all her strength to ask the question that tormented her soul:

"Today, when the Skitarii opened fire, I subconsciously blocked you. At that moment... was I protecting the God-Emperor's miracle? Or... was I merely coveting your body?"

"For a daughter who swore to dedicate her body and soul to the God-Emperor... is this uncontrollable emotion a blessing from the gods? Or an unforgivable blasphemy?!"

Frannie's words were chaotic and incoherent, but Lin Li understood them clearly.

Simply put, she revealed two things that had a devastating impact on her soul: First, the church's actions caused her worldview to collapse; Second, she discovered she had special feelings for Lin Li, which gave her a severe sense of guilt.

Listening to this bloody confession, Lin Li couldn't help but feel a pang of heartache.

He felt heartache for the battered white-haired girl before him, and also for those poor humans in this dark universe who were brainwashed and lived their whole lives in lies and fanatical dogma.

Lin Li looked at the statue of the Emperor standing silently in the candlelight.

He couldn't help but mutter to himself: "Old man, letting your own people live in such a twisted manner is certainly not the future you wanted to see, right?"

Lin Li naturally received no answer and withdrew his gaze.

He opened his arms and pulled Frannie tightly into his embrace.

He reached out and gently stroked Frannie's soft white hair.

"Don't doubt yourself."

"Your faith is not wrong, and the feelings in your heart are not wrong either."

"What is wrong is this decaying world."

Suddenly being hugged, Frannie's body stiffened for a moment, instinctively wanting to struggle.

But soon, feeling the steady heartbeat coming from Lin Li's chest and that reassuring warmth, she gradually gave up resistance and her tense body completely relaxed.

She buried her head on Lin Li's shoulder, crying loudly like a lost child.

However, what neither of them knew was that a few hundred meters away, Nikon Da Niao, who had been lying in ambush, was frantically pressing the shutter while carrying a telephoto lens.

...

The next morning.

After Lin Li left the mess on Mobius Prime for Kolom to handle, he took a group of players and boarded the fleet, immediately heading to Ceres, an agricultural planet at the other end of the galaxy.

In the ruins of the command post, which had been half-destroyed by bugs, Lin Li officially met Duke Louis King.

To Lin Li's surprise, unlike the nobles in other worlds who clung tightly to their privileges, these old-school knight nobles of the agricultural world showed unprecedented, enthusiastic welcome to Lin Li's arrival!

Regarding the clauses in the Spark Alliance's new constitution that reduced noble privileges and protected civilian lives, they didn't even offer a single word of rebuttal, simply signing and stamping it directly.

There was no other reason; it was simply because this agricultural planet was too poor!

Farming in this godforsaken place not only resulted in soil degradation and low yields, but they also had to bear the Empire's suffocatingly heavy tithe.

Every time the Departmento Munitorum' black ships arrived, it was equivalent to drawing a large bucket of blood from the main arteries of these nobles and commoners.

Added to this was the fact that there were many knight families of various sizes on this planet, balancing each other out, so the oppression of the lower classes was actually much less.

Although everyone lived in poverty, the lower-class serfs relatively had some hope.

When Lin Li stood at the spaceport and announced the Spark Alliance's new constitution, new tax system, and the blueprint for regional diversified industrial development to the entire planet, the major families of the agricultural planet, including Duke Louis King, did not hesitate at all and announced the entire territory's accession to the Spark Alliance on the spot!

Because the conditions Lin Li gave were simply too generous!

Lin Li not only decided on the spot to promise to allocate Shelter's industrial resources to focus on supporting local agricultural machinery industrial development, but also waved his hand to directly exempt the agricultural planet from agricultural taxes for a full ten years!

What made Duke Louis King even more moved to tears was that Lin Li also had people unload several large trucks of magical crop seeds from the spaceship that the nobles had never even heard of.

These high-yield, radiation-resistant crops would completely change the desperate situation of food shortages on this planet!

With the recovery of the last piece of the Mobius puzzle, the entire Yuanwang Star System finally returned to a brief peace.

Not only Lin Li, but hundreds of thousands of The Fourth Calamity players were also idle.

Since there were no large-scale fights to be had for the time being, these restless players immediately swarmed into the various planets in the galaxy like wolves and tigers, starting to go crazy!

Because the Legion Territory System was officially opened, every legion could now use their accumulated Core Points to legally purchase an exclusive legion territory on the surface of major planets.

Within the territory, the Legion Commander could freely plan the development direction, build armories, and even set local laws for their territory within the system framework.

For the players, wasn't this just adding a super-large simulation management gameplay mode?!

Therefore, even though there were no battles now, a massive number of new players were still enthusiastically establishing guilds and crazily doing missions to earn points to purchase territories.

Even more outrageous was that, as the permissions for the World Forger on level B7 of Shelter were opened to players, they pooled their points and first stuffed Shelter's Matter Constructor into the World Forger for molecular scanning and replication.

They forcibly replicated dozens of identical Matter Constructors!

Then, the major legions hauled these replicated machine tools back to their own territories.

Using these machine tools, they manufactured various high-end military products in batches day and night!

This included heavy vehicles, high-precision production machine tools, jet aircraft, and even launch vehicles for launching satellites!

Driven by this viral-like crazy production capacity, in just a few months, the several habitable planets in the entire galaxy, under the crazy construction of the players, directly ushered in leap-frog, rapid development! Everywhere there were factories rising from the ground and speeding heavy trucks.

Even the Gorgon industrial planet, with the inside-out cooperation of Iron Man U-999 and the players, was nearing the completion of its unification.

That long-dormant industrial world was about to once again exert its terrifying war production capacity, continuously providing various cutting-edge creations for the Spark Alliance.

...

That afternoon.

Lin Li was taking Frannie, who had changed into casual clothes, for a walk in the newly built green park on the surface of Shelter.

The atmosphere between the two no longer had the previous estrangement and had gained a bit more naturalness and intimacy.

Suddenly, with a beep, the pv terminal on Lin Li's wrist received a voice message.

Lin Li opened it to see that it was an invitation from the leader of Bear Ridge, [Makabazi].

The content was roughly: They had successfully created a real, living biological spaceship at the Abyss Prison planet!

Moreover, this living spaceship had undergone genetic modulation and already possessed a certain level of primary consciousness.

Players could perfectly control the flight of this spaceship by releasing specific pheromone commands!

Seeing this news, Lin Li immediately perked up!

"Let's go! Let's go see what kind of monster those guys have cooked up!"

Lin Li immediately called Iron Man 73 and took Frannie with him to board the sea breeze no. 9, flying at full speed toward the prison planet at the edge of the galaxy.

After the crazy modifications by the players over these few months, the surface landscape of the prison planet had undergone earth-shaking, astonishing changes!

The originally barren surface now had large areas of radiation-resistant green vegetation growing.

Those few artificial deep pits originally used to pull in adamantine meteorites to smash the ground had even turned into several huge, clear lakes!

The surface of this planet was finally no longer just full of dead gravel and dust.

Around the Abyss Prison, a large number of houses and processing plants had been built densely.

Clearly, the heavy criminals who originally lived here had perfectly adapted to this new life of exchanging labor for rewards under the rule of the Spark Alliance.

Because the sea breeze no. 9 was not large, with a total length of only two hundred meters, the spaceship did not dock at the spaceport but directly entered the atmosphere, flying at low altitude along the surface, heading toward the hatchery entrance under the Arctic ice sheet.

However, before the spaceship could get close to the underground entrance in the Arctic, Lin Li stood in front of the porthole, looking at the snowfield below, and his pupils shrank sharply!

He saw that on that boundless white ice sheet, there were densely standing one after another, purple-black incubation sacs as huge as small hills! These fleshy bumps were constantly squirming and breathing in the snow, emitting bursts of white mist.

If the uninformed Imperial Defense Force saw this spectacular and disgusting scene, they would definitely think that this place had been completely occupied by the main force of the Tyranids!

Because this area had no metal spaceports built for takeoff and landing, the surface was covered everywhere with incubation sacs planted by players.

The sea breeze no. 9 could only hover and land on a patch of open space at the edge.

The hatch opened. Lin Li had just stepped off the spaceship with Frannie and 73 when suddenly, a heavy sound of metallic footsteps came.

A tall steel figure, three meters high, ran over quickly from behind the shadow of an incubation sac.

"Eh? Isn't that 999?"

Lin Li was stunned for a moment, "It's not supervising the battle on the Gorgon planet, why did it run to this godforsaken place of the prison planet?"

Iron Man U-999 walked to Lin Li. Its huge steel body made a hydraulic sound and respectfully squatted down on one knee.

"Oh! Great Creator, long time no see."

The red light on U-999's head flickered twice, and it reported its work in that emotionless electronic voice, "During this time, our advance on Gorgon has been very fast. With your clone army and unlimited material support, in a few more days, we will be able to completely wipe out the resistance army and bring the entire industrial world under your control!"

Speaking of this, U-999's tone suddenly paused.

"However, during this period, I have been continuously sending detailed battle progress reports to you through the channel. Why have you never responded to me even once?"

Lin Li rubbed his nose awkwardly and let out a dry laugh.

When did he have time to read those long, boring battle reports?

But he actually heard a hint of loneliness, like someone left to guard an empty house, in the cold electronic voice of this hunk of iron.

Lin Li was racking his brains, trying to find a suitable excuse to brush it off.

At this moment, the optical probe on U-999's head turned, and its gaze fell on Frannie behind Lin Li.

"Beep——"

U-999's scanner made a soft sound. It seemed to have instantly found a reasonable reason for its Creator's lack of focus.

"Detected that the target character is emitting strong pheromones of the opposite sex."

U-999 stood up straight again, its large steel head nodding up and down, and said seriously, "Hmm, if that's the case, I can fully understand. If I haven't calculated wrongly, Creator, you have recently been concentrating on advancing the great population expansion plan."

"Creator, your action capability is very strong! As your servant, I look forward to you successfully breeding offspring soon, and I look forward to your good news!"

Hearing this statement, Frannie's face turned red to her ears instantly.

Lin Li was so angry he almost spat out a mouthful of old blood.

He rolled his eyes directly: "You hunk of iron, what the hell do you know about reproduction! Shut up!"

Lin Li pulled Frannie's hand and walked away quickly.

And behind them, Iron Man 73's synthesized voice sounded faintly: "U-999, your emotional intelligence module is clearly still stuck in the primitive Bronze Age; I suggest you format and reinstall immediately."

Lin Li ignored the daily bickering of these two ancient Iron Men behind him.

He directly dialed Makabazi's voice on his pv terminal.

"Where is your warship? Bring it out for a spin!"

Makabazi's excited roar came from the other end of the communicator: "Boss! You wait there for a moment, look up at the sky! It's coming out right away!"

Lin Li obeyed, raised his head, and looked at the gray Arctic sky.

Within a few minutes, accompanied by a earth-shaking, low roar, the clouds were forcibly pushed away by a huge biological force field.

A huge golden figure, over several thousand meters long, blocking out the sky and the sun, slowly broke through the clouds and hovered overhead!

When he saw the full picture of that behemoth, Lin Li's eyes stared straight, and his mouth was wide enough to stuff a fist.

"Holy shit!!"

Lin Li pointed at the monster in the sky, unable to hold back a curse, "This fucking... is the spaceship you talents hatched using the incubation pool?!"