The Mech Touch

6043 Extraordinary Crime

After a bit more discussion where Ves collected a good amount of critical information, the chief councilor finally arrived.

Unlike before, the god pilot chose to present herself in a more militaristic uniform. Her entire aura swept across the virtual council chamber and affected everyone present no matter how far away they were located.

The Evolution Witch seemed to have entered a more martial mindset. Her entire aura and God Kingdom took on a harsher and more aggressive edge.

It was a good thing that none of her animosity was directed towards the councilors!

Clearly, the upcoming native alien offensive occupied much of her attention. She was keeping herself in a condition to unleash her full power at any time. This was fine, but it also affected the people who got into contact with her. True Gods were just that terrible!

Fortunately, the Evolution Witch did not forget to increase the noise and decrease the bandwidth of the virtual chamber's data transmissions. This caused her to look a little fuzzier and less distinguished than before, but it successfully tempered the impact of her aggressive aura.

Bad connection or not, no one present in the virtual meeting dared to display anything but their full respect and attention towards the only god pilot that had made an effort to be present today.

As the head of the Interim Leadership Council, she could not excuse her absence like the others.

Once she took her seat in the largest and most opulent seat next to Ves, Divine Lucie Miyazaki pointedly swept her gaze across the round table.

She did not take note of the empty seats. She knew better than most why so many councilors found themselves unable to attend this important occasion.

"<nullb>We have ctogether yet again on the eve of the third year of the Age of Dawn. The Red Collective is continuing to take shape. Much has been decided and arranged after the conclusion of the first session. If not for the impending escalation of the Red War, we would have been able to make considerably greater progress. With the survival of our species at stake, all of us have been forced to set aside many of our priorities, hence the notable absence of numerous councilors today. Let us hope that their seats will not remain empty on a more permanent basis."

The air in the virtual chamber grew heavier upon that remark. Although Ves did not think that the native aliens were capable of killing powerful god pilots and admirals, he could not rule out any possibility.

War was not fair. It was also foolish and naive to think that it would unfold exactly according to his estimations and predictions.

The Evolution Witch did not talk about the war for long. It was not tfor the Interim Leadership Council to get involved in the affairs of the Red War.

"<nullb>Several important decisions will have to be made today." The intimidating god pilot continued to speak. "<nullb>The previous session largely revolved around the organization of cultivators. We formed a consensus around the sect policy, where we decided that the Red Collective should maintain its distance from ordinary cultivators but also strictly overrsee the so-called sects that are responsible for educating and controlling those who yearn for greater power by practicing different methods. However, this is hardly a perfect plan to contain the excesses of cultivation. Pay attention to the following incidents."

A large projection appeared above the circular table. It depicted a gruessight that elicited sickening reactions from a few of the councilors.

It depicted a gruescellar where a lot of blood had been splattered across the walls, ceiling and floor.

The snapshot had clearly been censored to save the councilors from having their eyes seared with unpleasant imagery, but everyone could clearly guess what was beneath all of the blacked out areas!

Dozens of severed limbs, ground organs and shattered corpses caused the cellar to descend into a hellish ritual site!

Ves knew that the motivation for doing this was for ritualistic purposes because the perpetrator of the massacre of so many men, women and even children had specifically created a demented ritual circle and altar!

The craftsmanship of these features were very poor to say the least, but Ves knew enough about this kind of stuff to deduce that the mass murderer did not randomly put stuff together based on horror dramas or dark virtual reality games.

Ves could perceive a very faint but distinct harmony between all of the blood and corpses and the ritual circle!

The ritualistic elements themselves also clearly did not appear to be designed by amateurs who knew nothing. Having pulled off a few rituals himself, Ves was able to evaluate the work in the projection in a more professional manner.

Compared to his improvised and ad-hoc approach to conducting rituals, whoever designed this bloody arrangement was clearly a knowledgeable expert!

Ves shuddered at that thought. If the mass murderer actually got rewarded for his efforts, then this would definitely happen again!

"<nullb>The 86th Street Massacre is one of the earliest murder incidents in the Age of Dawn that can be directly tied to cultivation. Many more incidents have occurred where different perpetrators across human space have engaged in varying degrees of slaughter in a misguided attempt to extend their lifespan and increase their power."

The projection turned into a slideshow that depicted different crscenes. Sof them showed obvious ritualistic characteristics, while others hinted that the perpetrators had killed their victims to plunder their strength.

During the Age of Mechs, such acts would have been useless as the barren environment at the twould never have been able to fuel such acts.

It was different during the Age of Dawn. E energy radiation was just so damn responsive that it reacted to any action, especially more dramatic and emotional ones such as engaging in depravity!

The projection finally changed to show actual footage of a murderous cultivator in action!

The view cfrom a surveillance drone that monitored a small agricultural settlement.

These were places where people all knew each other. They worked for the scompanies and lived fairly close together.

However, these settlements also lacked sufficient enforcement. Not a single mech was on guard, and the perpetrator deliberately targeted the police first!

"Hahahaha!" A maddened young man cackled as he used a smuggled or stolen assault rifle to tear through the armor of a pair of law enforcement officers! "Your souls are mine! You will receive the honor of becoming a part of a new god!"

The ecstatic cultivator opened his mouth and actually swallowed what appeared to be his victim's souls!

The crazed cultivator did not leave it at that. Now that all of the effective threats had been dealt with, the murderer proceeded to barge into different homes and kill anyone he encountered!

Despite practicing an unknown cultivation method, the man sensibly made use of modern equipment to enhance his killing efficiency.

Not every settler allowed themselves to be killed without putting up a fight.

Unfortunately, these were ordinary colonists and civilians. They did not own any combat armor, and whatever pistols or other small arms they possessed completely failed to overcthe cultivator's personal shield generator.

Even if it was an outdated gadget that did not contain any phasewater, the protection offered by the shield generator was still too powerful to overcby a collection of small arms!

Once the cultivator managed to kill 40 or so civilians, the man suddenly stopped and dropped to his knees.

"Aaaaahhh!"

The cultivator screamed as the souls of multiple victims seemed to jump out of his head!

"YOU ARE MINE! BE STILL AND LETDEVOUR YOU! I AM A GOD! SUBMIT TOAND BECMY NOURISHMENT!"

Every councilor watched on with varying degrees of expressions.

Most councilors maintained stoic faces, but the ones that showed a little emotions were either disgusted, concerned or intrigued.

Ves felt a mixture of concern and interest himself. He was concerned by this display of violence because crazy people like this soul eater would definitely give cultivators a bad name. The more such depravities occurred, the more the leaders of human civilization wanted to shackle the phenomenon of cultivation!

He also grew interested in these kinds of incidents because it opened himself up to a form of empowerment through predation. Although the means were despicable, the process was still fascinating!

Ves did not forget that his mother practiced similar methods. Predation may often be associated with evil deeds, but it did not have to be so. There was still value in absorbing the strength of real enemies.

It was a pity that the screaming cultivator did not sign up for frontline service, but instead chose to visit an isolated farming village on a typical rural planet!

The criminal cultivator continued to scream for one more minute until he finally couldn't withstand the backlash of absorbing so many unwilling souls in a short amount of time.

His head exploded!

"Good riddance." A councilor muttered.

"<nullb>The Renare Village Affair is one of the first incidents where we have managed to obtain fairly complete and detailed footage of a murderous cultivator in action." The Evolution Witch stated. "<nullb>The Red Association has immediately chosen to suppress any news of it to the greatest extent. We feared that if more people hear what is taking place, they will develop the desire to pursue greater strength gth by imitating these acts. We believe that our efforts have been somewhat successful, as similar affairs have remained fairly sparse for the tbeing."

That would not last forever. So long as the temptation of greater strength and longevity existed, there would always be weak-willed people who yearned to becmore powerful without putting in the hard work to practice a more orthodox cultivation method!

Although the dangers of predatory cultivation methods were much greater, they imposed fewer requirements and usually yielded faster results.

The projection began to show other pieces of footage. Many cultivators with ill intentions weren't stupid enough to prey on other humans in full view of surveillance, but it was very difficult to evade every possible recording device.

Monitoring had becfar too ubiquitous in the modern era!

This was why much of the slaughter occurred far away from large and technologically advanced settlements.

"<nullb>As you can see, many of these recorded incidents are taking place in small and isolated third-class settlements. More and more cultivators who apparently managed to gain access to ancient demonic cultivation methods are deliberately preying on the weakest of humans. The benefits of harvesting the energy or materials of first-class humans is not that much greater than the benefits of doing the sto third-class humans. It is much less riskier and more cost-

effective to target the latter for that reason."

More and more incidents occurred. It becharder for the Red Association and other authorities to cover up the massacres.

It turned out that a lot of alleged raids conducted by native aliens were actually false! The real perpetrators of a lot of massacres turned out to be human demonic cultivators!

The Evolution Witch clearly harbored a lot of animosity towards these gutless cultivators who maliciously targeted fellow humans as opposed to taking the fight to the native aliens.

Her God Kingdom grew a little more intense as everyone couldn't help but develop an even worse impression towards these short-sighted killers!

"<nullb>Crwill always exist as long as long as there is temptation. It is futile to eliminate these massacres entirely, but that does not mean we should allow them to happen. We must decide upon the laws that cultivators must abide by and a means of enforcement to constrain criminals with extraordinary means. If we do not impose a firm regime, our society will degenerate due to the wholescale breakdown of law and order. This session will not end until we have decided upon a complete framework of laws and enforcement."