"Is he your friend?" Sun Hang asked.
"Friend? What is a friend?" Nuer retorted.
Sun Hang couldn’t help but feel lost. Could it be that among these Desert Sea survivors, even the concept of "friend" doesn’t exist?
"Are you... close to him?" Sun Hang tried a different approach.
"I’ve known him since we were little," Nuer replied.
Known him since childhood? That means they’re childhood buddies?
This guy killed his childhood friend without hesitation; he must be ruthless.
"Don’t you feel sad for killing him?"
"If I didn’t kill him, he would have killed you and then reported it to the Priest, at which point the Priest might kill me or turn me into an accursed one, so I had to kill him," Nuer answered honestly.
It’s a classic case of saving your own skin at the expense of others. Although in a post-apocalyptic environment, only the truly selfish can become the final survivors, the problem is that these Desert Sea survivors have already formed a settlement with some degree of social cooperation, and logically, it shouldn’t be a dog-eat-dog dark forest.
Even if Nuer had to kill Baha due to the circumstances, he would still feel some remorse or shock, but Sun Hang sensed no other negative emotions from Nuer, apart from tension and fear.
He killed Baha as naturally as a hunter killing prey.
Likewise, for humans, killing beasts and killing their own kind brings entirely different feelings—unless you’re a battle-hardened veteran who is numb to killing your own kind. In other words, from Sun Hang’s perspective, Nuer’s mental state and social awareness clearly deviate significantly from what Sun Hang understood as "normal people."
"Is murder illegal in your settlement?" Sun Hang couldn’t help but ask.
"Illegal... what does that mean?"
"Okay, let me rephrase. If you kill someone from the same settlement, will there be any punishment?" Sun Hang asked.
"No," Nuer shook his head, "If you’re stronger than him and you kill him, why would you get punished?"
"So, in your settlement, the strong can kill the weak at any time?"
Nuer nodded, then shook his head again: "They can, but we generally don’t kill people because fewer people mean more work for everyone... plus, the Priest wouldn’t be happy if random killings happened."
"So, if there’s a food shortage or similar situation, wouldn’t chaos easily erupt in the settlement?" Sun Hang asked further, "Like people killing each other recklessly to snatch food?"
"Yes, but at that time, the Priest will intervene," Nuer said, "He will turn the unfaithful into accursed ones... as long as there are enough accursed ones, food will never be short."
By this point in the dialogue, Sun Hang had pretty much understood—the settlement of the Desert Sea survivors is essentially a society of people eating people, literally.
As the ultimate ruler of the settlement, the Priest Nuer mentioned has the power and ability to turn "people" into "food" at any time—rather than a human settlement, it’s more like a group of carnivorous beasts being raised, and the Priest is the "shepherd" of these beasts.
Sun Hang even thought that the Priest and these ordinary survivors were probably not even the same species—initially, Sun Hang thought the Priest was simply an infected among the survivors, but now, whether they were human was still open to debate.
Nuer dragged Baha’s body to a secluded cave, then broke his bone spear and plunged it into the corpse’s throat until half of the spear was completely embedded in the chest cavity.
"Do you have a custom of desecrating corpses as well?" Sun Hang, who was watching from the side, couldn’t help but ask.
Although Nuer didn’t understand what "desecrating corpses" meant, he still explained his intention to Sun Hang: "This is to prevent the dead from becoming vengeful spirits and returning to this world."
"Are you saying he might come back to life?"
"Vengeful spirits truly exist. If those who are killed do not receive ’proper disposal,’ there’s a high probability they will resurrect and seek revenge on their enemies... and these resurrected vengeful spirits, after completing their revenge, will become accursed ones," Nuer explained.
"Got it, death will likely trigger the latent memetic viruses in your body, turning you into infected or anomalous entities, is that what you mean?"
"Memes? Infected? Anomalous entities?"
Nuer was completely baffled by the new terms Sun Hang threw out, but Sun Hang was too lazy to explain further and instead urged, "Now can you continue to take me to your Priest?"
"The Priest’s residence is the ’Holy Temple,’ and there are many people living around the ’Holy Temple.’ If you’re seen by them, you won’t even have the chance to meet the Priest before they kill you... everyone in our settlement firmly believes that outsiders will bring disaster and destruction; they won’t allow you..."
"Everyone? Are you sure?" Sun Hang glanced meaningfully at Nuer.
Nuer suddenly became speechless.
"You believe in the Priest’s words, right?" Sun Hang asked again.
"I... I don’t know." Nuer shook his head, "But the Priest has the power to control life and death... mortals can’t resist the Priest..."
"Yet you’re willing to lead me there?" Sun Hang smiled, "Are you tired of living?"
"I... I just think..." Nuer bit his lip, but within his limited vocabulary, he couldn’t organize a sentence that represented his true thoughts, "I... I..."
"Alright, just take me there. Don’t worry about those people obstructing us, and you don’t need to kill anyone else." Sun Hang waved his hand.
"But they will..."
"They can’t stop me," Sun Hang replied.
After a fierce internal struggle, Nuer still took Sun Hang to a vast hollow area.
Inside this cavity was a hill made of bones and fluorescent stones, with bone and leather tents scattered around it, while at the top of the hill stood a "palace" almost touching the cavity’s ceiling.
This palace’s style was completely different from the other dwellings of the Desert Sea survivors. It was evident to Sun Hang with a single glance that the materials used to build it came from the legacy of the old civilization—just to mention, the dozens of large coils standing outside the palace could not be made by current Desert Sea survivors.
Hundreds of bare-chested Desert Sea survivors surrounded these coils, constantly pushing them to rotate, and bluish-white electric arcs occasionally flashed on the coil surfaces before being guided along suspended copper wires into the palace’s interior.
"Are these things... human-powered generators?"