Dimensional Hotel
Chapter 311: Frenzied End

The darkness shattered silently, the last memories of the dead returning to eternal peace. The scene before Yu Sheng swayed a few times before gradually stabilizing, returning to the familiar sight of the holy coffin chamber. The long life that had seemed to stretch on was but a fleeting moment in the reality of time. When Yu Sheng finally regained clarity, he noticed a drop of “blood” from the artificial Saintess’s cheek fall to the ground.

Yu Sheng blinked, using several seconds to clear his mind and return from those painfully vivid memories to the present world. He then lowered his gaze to see the iron doll still pressed against him, unmoving. This cold killing machine hadn’t shifted an inch, not even the faintest noise emanated from within it anymore.

Weakness surged through him from blood loss and the severe damage to his vital organs. Yu Sheng felt as though his short life was nearing its end once more. He could simply lie there, waiting for death, and then, as planned, deliver the remaining members of the Hermitage Order aboard the ship to the Special Affairs Bureau.

But after sitting there, leaning against a pillar for half a minute, he suddenly curled the corner of his mouth and spat out a mouthful of blood-stained saliva. “Damn it, what the hell.”

Still with some strength left, Yu Sheng forced himself to move. He finally managed to push the artificial Saintess’s cold body off of him, then stood, bending down to lift the heavy iron doll by its armpits. It took him several attempts before, with a surge of effort, he managed to pull her upright.

Dragging the cold, lifeless steel body, he slowly moved toward the center of the room. He struggled several times from fatigue but never once stopped to rest. The symptoms of death crept up on him, but he forcibly suppressed them, continuing with great effort until he finally brought the iron doll to the device surrounded by countless tubes and cables. He braced himself against it and shoved her into the “iron coffin.”

“I don’t know if this thing will still be useful,” Yu Sheng said, leaning against the outer shell of the coffin, gazing at the beautiful but hollow, icy face before him. “I’m someone who acts mostly on intuition. Just now, when you reached out to me, though I couldn’t make out your words, it felt like you were asking for help.”

He took a deep breath, adjusting the artificial Saintess’s arm, then used all his remaining strength to lift the heavy “coffin lid” and slowly close it.

“You killed me twice, and I ‘killed’ those who left their hometown with you. We have deep grudges between us, but, from another perspective, I don’t really care about life or death. As for those ‘friends’ of yours… they stopped being themselves many years ago. So, I think we can overlook that part,” Yu Sheng muttered to himself, keeping his mind awake as he smeared the last of his blood, which had begun to leak from his chest, on the holy coffin. “Compared to that… the Hermitage Order people are even worse. I guess you’d agree with that, right?”

He stepped back, descending from the platform, scanning the holy coffin chamber and the now tightly sealed iron coffin.

“Alright, it’s done. I’ll set up an alchemy array next, and then… we leave the rest to fate.”

With that, he fell backward, gazing upward toward the heavens.

Before his body hit the ground, it rapidly disintegrated into dust, silently scattering into the air, vanishing like a handful of loose ash.

The holy coffin chamber fell into silence, broken only by the low hum of some devices as they continued their function.

The bodies of the Hermitage members lay quietly around the holy coffin, cooling slowly.

Two seconds passed, and then a faint sound of scraping and wriggling came from the floor around the holy coffin.

Like an invisible engraving knife scraping across the floor, circular indentations appeared in an instant, quickly expanding and connecting, forming the basic structure of a soul imbuement rite. The center of this alchemical formation was the dark iron coffin.

Beside the holy coffin, the severed conduits and controllers, broken by the heretic cultists, began to self-repair. The long dormant “iron coffin” emitted a low hum, reverberating through the chamber.

The spaceship fell silent.

But this silence was not one of peace—it was an eerie, unsettling stillness that filled every channel.

Now, the control hall had lost contact with all areas. Communication had been cut off minutes ago, followed by the surveillance systems—though everyone knew the feed was no longer reliable. The intruder seemed to have lost all interest in playing the game. What had once displayed “all systems normal” was suddenly cut off, replaced by a single line of text flashing across the black screen: “I’ve come for you.”

Finally, the ship’s sensory system went offline.

Mechanical rooms, power sections, storage areas, living quarters, life-support systems, reactors—signals from all basic devices vanished from the control interface. The entire control hall became a sealed cage. Outside, the massive “Pillar of Order” ship seemed to have disappeared from existence.

Trapped in the control hall, the Hermitage Members felt as if they were adrift in the deep expanse of the cosmos, with no pillar of order, no strong starship armor, nor layers of protective systems around them. All they had was this hall—and the group of mice within it. The cold, deadly void of space was separated from them by only a thin metal shell, and death whispered to them from beyond that fragile barrier, slowly creeping through every vent in the hall, infiltrating the very air they breathed.

Perhaps, it had already seeped in.

Sage remained seated in his chair, his face as dark and oppressive as a storm cloud. He said nothing, but all within the hall understood the fate that awaited them.

The Hermitage Members began to check their weapons. Even those who were not combatants prepared for battle.

The staff distributed the final battle mixture to everyone—potions that enhanced sharpness, strength, and neural reflexes, as well as alchemical elixirs designed to block negative emotions and resist mental corruption.

The only three sets of powered armor in the control hall were assigned to the three cultivators with combat experience.

“It is time for martyrdom, comrades,” Sage finally stood, his deep voice breaking the suffocating silence of the hall. “We all know our fate.

“There is a ghost—it has infiltrated the ship. It pursued us from the Borderlands, desecrating this sacred pillar of order, using foul means to defile it. Through unknown methods, it has devoured many of our comrades, and now we have lost contact with all other sections of the ship. While we cannot ascertain the exact situation in those lost areas… there is no doubt that they are doomed.

“The people in this hall may be the last survivors of the entire ship.

“Now, all facilities outside this hall have lost control, including the ship’s self-destruct system. We can no longer stop the ghost’s infiltration. But the good news is, at least we managed to completely erase the star chart from the navigation system before the core systems were breached.

“Let us go forth with determination, comrades. Our bodies will die today, but our souls will ascend the sacred path to the Divine Order. On the exalted steps leading to perfection, the souls of the martyrs will continue to rise alongside the ancients, and ultimately, we will greet the glorious sunrise on the terrace of the Supreme Holy Temple.”

“For the Divine Path, for Order and Perfection!”

“For the Divine Path, for Order and Perfection!”

The Hermitage Members raised their fists, their spirits burning with fervor, inspired by Sage’s words. The loyalty and fanaticism etched deep in their genes ignited, and with the aid of the potions, they momentarily forgot the crushing pressure and fear they had felt earlier. They forgot the strange changes aboard the ship, the eerie gazes, and the whispers that had once echoed in their listening channels—whispers that seemed to fan the flames of a maddening fervor, urging the followers to believe that even if the ghost appeared in the hall now, they could overcome it with their devotion to the Divine Path.

But when the ghost finally arrived, they realized this was not a “battle” at all.

A Hermitage Member’s scream shattered the fervent atmosphere in the hall, waking those who had fallen into blissful overconfidence.

“It’s alive… Ah! Help me!!”

The cultivator who cried out struggled in his seat, screaming in terror. Desperately, he jabbed his protective short sword at something beside him, but his body was slowly encased by a metallic shell before the eyes of everyone.

The chair beneath him melted away, and countless restraining tendrils extended from the control console beneath, with the ground beneath him seeming to come alive, writhing and surging up toward him. Metallic matter quickly piled up, forming a thick shell that tightly bound him.

Soon, similar cries filled the hall from all directions.

“The ground is melting!”

“I’m trapped! I’m trapped!”

“The walls… something is moving on the walls!”

“This ship is alive! It’s screaming in my mind!”

Sage rose from his position, his face showing no fear, his gaze fixed on a specific spot in the hall. He saw the metal wall flowing like molten liquid, and several Hermitage Members near the edges of the hall had become trapped in it. They weren’t dead yet, but were firmly ensnared within the wall, still struggling and wriggling.

In the center of the flowing, writhing wall, a face began to emerge.

The face took up nearly a third of the wall, silently gazing down on the chaotic hall below.

“Your speech was quite stirring,” the face spoke, its voice grating like steel scraping against steel, “but what about those you dug out, their brains torn open, memories stripped away? What do they have to say?”

Sage was momentarily taken aback, but then, as if understanding something, he calmly walked toward the face, his tone firm and resolute. “That was a noble sacrifice—”

Before he could finish, a metal pipe as thick as a beam crashed down from the ceiling, striking him head-on.

“To hell with you!”

This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation