Soul of Burning Steel

Entering the garden area for the first time, what caught Joshua's eyes was bright light and green grass.

Artificial lights poured from the translucent glass dome, and he felt the fresh air and ethereal music, and the joyful singing of children was coming from the front.

Taking a step forward, he smelled the aroma of milk and honey, and the sweetness of fruit wafted in the breeze. Looking up, there were flowers blooming on the grass, the colors were blooming, fruit trees were scattered scattered, and the ripe fragrance Come from various fruits.

Everything is so beautiful, like heaven.

But these are not what Joshua is concerned about... The soldier's eyes are concentrated, he sees a lot, but also very little, he saw a group of children singing softly led by a few soul puppets right in the center of the garden, He also saw some things that made him dumbfounded.

What Joshua saw was bone and skin.

It's the bones. Joshua controlled the body of the puppet and took a step forward. He stepped from the white tiled avenue into the green grass, causing the soil to sag. He looked around the entire half of the surrounding garden area: the snow-white building surface, paved with The tiles made of bone powder, the artificial lamps hanging from the dome, are completely transformed from human skulls, and the benches placed in the corner of the garden area are made of tibias and thigh bones. Not far from the fountain The man-made hills inside are built with countless bones.

At this time, the children singing in the center of this wonderful garden were holding simple musical instruments. They were singing under the guidance of three soul puppets, reciting simple and beautiful songs, but it was strange Yes, these children and puppets were not affected by Joshua's previous battle at all, and the huge explosion could not even divert their energy. The soldiers could tell at a glance what the musical instruments in those children's hands were. production.

That is bone and skin.

A smiling girl, about seven or eight years old, held a small double-faced drum in her hand, and she beat it under the guidance of the soul puppet, making rhythmic sounds. The drum body of the small double-faced drum was cut and ground from the skulls of two children who were about the same age as her, and then covered with a layer of human skin. Sitting next to the girl, a boy about twelve years old was playing a simple six-hole bone piccolo. No one knew which victim it was made of, but the melodious sound of the flute concealed everything.

"La la la la la... Let us continue this dream, tomorrow will come, continue to sing the melody..."

Sweet children's voices and crisp music lingered around the sonic receiver. Joshua didn't look any further, but listened more, because he found an even more unbelievable thing: it was on the side of the garden, to the left of the maintenance area and the medical area. On the side, a building made of human bones and rocks is under construction. Its structure has been roughly erected, half of the outer layer has been covered with cement, and a small part of bone powder tiles has been laid—when the soldiers really observed carefully, He found that the materiality of the huge dome that loomed over the entire garden area was also very familiar.

Joshua lowered his head in silence, and he looked back at the group of Siberian children who were singing and playing. They were still playing cheerful games under the guidance of soul puppets, holding bone and leather instruments and toys in their hands. And there is no doubt that these things all come from their kind.

Children won't care about that, they won't know if these things are made of the flesh of their parents, siblings... because they don't know anything, they don't know anything.

Until now, neither the three soul puppets nor the Siberia children paid the slightest attention to the explosion nearby and Joshua, even if the soldiers were approaching them with great strides—until Joshua was standing in front of them, The three puppets who were constantly guiding the child through sound and hand and foot movements turned their heads and made some unusually gentle sounds.

"Numbered Snova-21 Harvesting Type, this is not the duty area."

"No. Snova-21 Harvest Type, go to the sixth maintenance section for repair."

"Numbered Snova-21 Harvesting Type, go to the defense line of the breeding area to fight."

Emotional, extremely pleasant and magnetic voices came from the three obviously specially made soul puppet speakers, and they said to Joshua almost simultaneously, repeating his task. But the soldier remained silent. He first glanced at the young Siberian boy who was still playing and singing a few meters away, and didn't respond to the arrival of his huge monster, and then directly stretched out his hand.

Click, click, click.

With three crisp sounds in succession, Joshua, whose effort was at least ten times that of these puppets, crushed and pulled out the heads of the three soul puppets that had no fighting power. How long will the soul be free.

And at the same time, the music stopped.

After destroying the three puppets, Joshua looked at the group of children... let's call them children, the warrior stared at these intelligent life larvae of the Siberians. His mechanized eyes were pure red flashes, but The unique frequency represents Joshua's complicated mind at this time.

After losing the guidance of the soul puppet, the light in the eyes of all the children dimmed. Originally, although their movements were stiff and they looked like puppets even when they were playing, the light in their eyes at least made them seem like a life. But now, all the children have stopped playing their instruments, clapping their hands, and playing. The singing was suddenly interrupted, and the jumping ones suddenly fell to the ground. Everyone lay down neatly, or lay down on the grass, as if the electricity was cut off, and they just stopped in place numbly, lifeless.

Some of the children who had been singing before were still spitting out the lyrics intermittently, but everything became incoherent, as if there had been a programming error.

"La la la...the future repeats...time advances...tomorrow...yesterday...la, la, la..."

Like a machine that reported an error, these children gradually stopped vocalizing in the end, only sporadic single sounds of '嘿', 'Ya' and 'La' came out of their opened mouths, just like simple vocal cord vibrations, without any meaning.

This kind of life... is not alive at all.

Just the first moment of observing this scene, Joshua roughly understood the current situation. The mechanical body couldn't sigh, but Joshua's spirit still took a deep breath, and then let it out slowly. He originally thought that this place might just be a mechanized soul factory, but he didn't expect that these puppets, or in other words, behind the puppets His existence is so thorough.

"Absurd world..."

The low voice slowly echoed in the garden area. The soldier shook his head. He could see that most of the decorations in the entire garden area and other sections were made of human skin and bones. It seems as if it has been carefully selected... It is only now that Joshua has slowly realized why the outside of the garden is called a 'breeding area', and what is the so-called 'worship'.

Besides plant things, what else is good to grow? Of course they are people... In this world that seems to have experienced the end and the whole world has been desolate, besides raising humans, what else can humans do to herd livestock? Looking at the number of these bones and human skins, it is astonishing, just like the ears of grain piled up in the autumn harvest—perhaps, in the eyes of those behind the scenes, the essence of human beings in the breeding area is the same as that of grass and trees, and has nothing to do with barley, wheat, and rice. Any difference is a sustainable resource that will grow again after being harvested.

Stepping forward, Joshua came to a child with dull eyes. This was a boy about thirteen years old. He was dressed in off-white simple children's clothes, his eyes were dull and he had no consciousness. He was just breathing to maintain his life, and his body didn't move at all, even if Joshua raised his index finger and tapped it on his forehead.

The flames of silver mixed with purple and blue flashed past.

Joshua used the power of the steel shards to probe the child's soul, but he only saw an empty piece—nothing, everything was blank. There seemed to be something wrong with the child's brain structure and soul structure. It seems that there are only seven seconds, as long as it exceeds seven seconds, everything will be forgotten by him, and he will return to a flawless blank paper.

A blank sheet of ignorance.

Knowing good and evil, good and bad, no wisdom, no will, nature, no courage, no faith. There is no despair in nothingness, and naturally there is no hope. In this soul deprived of imagination, associative power, and even all enlightenment knowledge, Joshua could find nothing. He stood up silently and looked down. He wanted to feel a little sympathy and anger for a group of children lying on his stomach, but the warrior's rationality did not feel that these 'things' were life.

What is the difference between a young Siberian child who has no self-will and is like a broken doll except for his soul and body, and a real doll or puppet? They are just succulent crops, seedlings waiting to be harvested.

In the myths and legends, Adam and Eve walked in the Garden of Eden. They knew no good, evil or shame, and lived happily under the guidance of God. They knew nothing and understood nothing, so they enjoyed the happiness called ignorance. But the snake tempted them to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, which shattered their happiness and left them in the world from Eden.

Now, everything in the garden area is integrated, and Joshua recalled the allusions in the myths of his previous life. He stared at the wreckage of puppets that were still trembling in front of him, leaking engine oil and parts fragments, and the batches of puppet puppets. The young Siberian children who fell on the ground trembled slightly with the iron hearts of soldiers who had gone through thousands of battlefields.

If so, the bliss of ignorance is Eden.

This, then, is the worst kind of Eden.

a bit difficult to write