Eternal life?
Among all the technologies the interstellar powers were now researching.
The technology of eternal life was, beyond doubt, the thing everyone most longed for.
But though there were now a good many life-extension technologies, true eternal life still lay out of reach,
even with the black technology in Zhao Chen's hands, the Reviver clone-human technology.
By research, even that was not true eternal life.
The clones the Reviver clone-human technology produced could only be built with a body matching the life-will's present age.
It was not that, after you died past a hundred, you could be made a body in its twenties.
That could not be done.
For an 'aged' soul-will could not fit itself to a young body.
But to return to the matter at hand,
at this moment everyone who had heard those words stood with a dumbstruck look.
Proud Angel Race though they were.
Before the vast temptation of eternal life, the will in their hearts wavered now.
The Judgment Angel Queen saw the shock and the open longing in these people's eyes, and the corners of her mouth turned faintly up.
No one at all could refuse the temptation of 'eternal life',
least of all a long-lived race like the Angel Race.
The longer one lived, the more one feared death.
It was the same with the Angel Race.
Clap, clap, clap, clap.
Just then, applause rang out from one side.
Several figures, of all things, slowly appeared.
Stealth technology?
The Judgment Angel Queen knit her brows, her hand going to her waist.
But the next second, an electromagnetic cage appeared around her and her party.
"Who would have thought that the one-time Judgment Angel Queen would abandon her former faith, and for a so-called eternal life help the enemy from beyond destroy her own homeland! Renee! How could you have become what you are now!" came a voice somewhat grief-stricken and indignant.
The Judgment Angel Queen looked over, and saw her old friend.
The Holy Angel Queen.
"You sold me out?" The Judgment Angel Queen looked at the several people who had just been talking with her.
At this moment these several kept their heads meekly bowed and dared not speak.
"Stand aside, all of you. In consideration of your cooperation with us, we will recommend to the Empire that the families behind you not be held to account." The Holy Angel Queen looked coldly at these controllers of certain power families within the Angel Race.
"Yes."
These angels meekly withdrew to one side.
They had indeed had a mind to work with the Judgment Angel Queen.
For these family powers of theirs were at present given no important post within the Angel Race at all.
They did not even have the authority to govern a single star system.
What was more, the founding of the Owl Dragon Interstellar Empire had now touched, more or less, on the interests in their hands.
They all knew very well that sunset families like theirs would sooner or later be cast aside by the times.
Add to that the stubborn angelic pride in their hearts.
After the Judgment Angel Queen sent people to make contact with them, it had been easy to stir up what lay in their hearts.
Only, the Owl Dragon Interstellar Empire's intelligence personnel had not been idle.
They had begun watching matters of this kind early on.
In the end, working with the Holy Angel Queen, they had pinned down these would-be traitors within the Angel Race.
And privately taken them in hand and coerced their cooperation.
Under threat to the fate of their whole race, these people had naturally chosen to cooperate like good children.
And so things stood as they did now.
"Sister Angelia. We meet again." The Judgment Angel Queen gave a faint smile, looking at the good friend before her.
The Holy Angel Queen, for her part, looked at her one-time good friend with the eyes of a stranger.
Very familiar, and yet very strange.
The Holy Angel Queen let out a long sigh. "Surrender. If you will cooperate with us, and tell us the important things you know of this Order behind you, and of the Hive Nest… perhaps… I may yet plead with the Emperor, so that your death is not too painful."
"So that my death is not too painful? Ha-ha-ha-ha. Sister Angelia, should I thank you, or should I thank you?"
One second the Judgment Angel Queen was still laughing; the next, her voice had turned dark. "You have always been this false. In others' eyes you have always been so high above them. Everyone reveres you. They think you the Angel Race's holiest goddess. And when it comes to war, everyone thinks of Wells, that fellow who knows nothing but fighting. But what of me? I am an Angel Queen, the Judgment Angel Queen. Yet when people hear of me, all they do is fear me. They treat me like a plague! By what right! This is not fair!"
The last words were very dark and cold, and at the same time it was as though she were holding something down.
The Holy Angel Queen was taken aback; she looked at the other, unable to believe it. "Renee… I… I never thought that was how you felt. The three of us each kept to our own office, for the Angel Race's future and for our race's faith. There was no high or low, no noble or base, between us. If anything displeased you, you could have raised it with me freely, not… not commit this whole train of irretrievable acts. You even destroyed the Judgment Angel star system with your own hands. Do you know what state that star system is in now? It is… it is nothing less than a hell on earth!"
The Judgment Angel Queen laughed aloud, laughed wildly.
Suddenly she took off the veil she had always worn over her face.
She revealed a face that horrified everyone present.
The Angel Race was fair by nature to begin with; Renee, who had risen to be an Angel Queen, ought by rights to have been a beautiful angel too.
But now not one inch of whole skin could be seen on Renee's face, and one of her eyes was sunk deep in its socket; only on looking closely could one see that it was a prosthetic eye.
"Do you see it! Are we the same? We are not the same at all. I have not even the courage to take off my veil before others."
"You… how did you… come to be like this?" The Holy Angel Queen stared at the other's face in shock.
"Heh-heh-heh, come to be like this? As the Judgment Angel Queen, my duties, besides spying out the enemy's intelligence, were in charge of interrogation and discipline within the Angel Race. Any angel, or angel clan, found wanting, I was the first to go and put them to the question and purge them. Because of that, not a few within the Angel Race were very displeased with me. In the end, they found their chance. While I was out on a mission, they hired interstellar assassins to throw a specially made liquid in my face, and it destroyed my face outright. It could not be repaired at all! And I became this thing, neither human nor ghost. Ha-ha-ha… Tell me, is that not laughable? For the Angel Race's sake I was willing to hide in the shadows. And this was the reward I got. From that time on, I held the Angel Race's faith to be wrong. This whole world is wrong. I was unfortunate then."
A mad light came into the Judgment Angel Queen's eyes. "But good fortune came down on my head soon enough. I met the Great Existence. It told me I could wash away the filth upon me, that I could become a being of eternal life!"