Chapter 19: Entering Valhalla City (1)
"Lieutenant! We can see the city wall. We are finally home!"
Keiko opened her eyes, looking into the distance in a daze; the face under the mask slowly showed a shocking expression. She involuntarily stood up from the convertible jeep, holding on to the guardrail on the car body, her mouth almost wide open.
The surreal scene in front of her eyes stunned her.
Keiko could see a few cars that had been abandoned for years, covered in moss, and the ruin of a collapsed building, which was now covered in vine and shrubs on both sides of the path, covered in waist-high weeds. As the vehicle was running toward the city, she got a glimpse of a rusting metal signboard with "Sichuan-Shaanxi Highway" written on its surface.
Contrasting with the view around her, the sight in the distance, the direction where her destination would be, was a massive city wall so long she couldn't see where its end was.
The setting sun squeezed out a meager light from the dense and dirty clouds. The sky and the earth were dim, and the city wall was stained with a layer of halo, standing majestically in the distance.
For a second, the spectacular spectacle made her forget to breathe.
Keiko estimated how much farther they were until they reached the city and found that they were still two or three kilometers away from the city wall. However, even from such a distance, they could see the appearance of the city wall so clearly. Such a wall might even be comparable to the Great Wall of China in her memory.
However, it wasn't the gigantic city wall that made Keiko rub her eyes several times in awe and disbelief, but the sky-piercing tower behind that wall.
It was not only as sacred and elegant as a masterpiece carved by an art master, but also sturdy and majestic, like a spiral sword that penetrates into the sky.
Keiko was dumbfounded and speechless, no words sufficient to describe how she felt right now, while a soldier beside her murmured in a voice full of reverence.
"That's... Tower of Babel..."
The Tower of Babel stood at the intersection of three main city-states: Valhalla, the city of war; Ydalir, the city of adventurers; and Gladsheim, the city of nobles.
According to the data, this giant tower is 1027 meters tall, ten times higher than the 100-meter-high city wall. The giant tower was built in the second year of the new calendar and completed in the 29th year of the new calendar, 11 years after the completion of the entire city wall. Its construction required an enormous amount of human and material resources, and it was immediately praised as "the New Wonder of Humankind" upon completion, symbolizing the power of humanity's unity.
The fact was that the real function of the Tower of Babel was actually a signal transmission tower, which covered the entire federal territory and could even reach many outfield bases around it.
It was the cornerstone of the popularization of the Nine Gods System. Without it, the Nine Gods System network would not be able to cover the entire Federation, and the communication between the armies would not be as smooth as it is now.
Before, when Keiko was in the Sleipnir South Bunker, she had seen a female soldier playing with a strange device that looked like a radio. It was actually a receiver of the signal coming from the Tower of Babel.
The majestic Babel Tower has been deified by religion, representing the power to reach heaven, and it is regarded as a bridge between humans and the gods. So now, it had one more function, which was as the main church of the federal state religion, the Babel religion.
Speaking of Babel Religion, we had to briefly mention the spiritual beliefs of the federal people today.
Since the federal people are strictly divided into nine camps, each camp has its own gods. There were nine gods in total, and they were the only nine supreme gods in the Babel religion, representing the nine alignments: Osthia, The Goddess of Lawful Goodness; Akasha, The Goddess of Lawful Neutral; Arnos, The God of Lawful Evil; Otarr, The God of Neutral Good; Ione, The God of Absolute Neutrality; Ituna, The Goddess of Neutral Evil; Yhorr, The God of Chaotic Good; Enos, The God of Chaotic Neutrality; and Motrix, The Goddess of Chaotic Evil.
Each faction had its own allegiance to their respective gods, so the change of the faction was regarded as the biggest betrayal in the world, and couldn't be tolerated.
Therefore, once the 18-year-old adult assessment and confirmation of the camp were given, the vast majority of people would not change the camp in their lifetime.
If there was a change, the personal resume would be permanently stained, and people from the new camp would not accept such a person, even if it meant that the person's life would be ruined for a lifetime.
When Keiko read this in the documents, she felt very uncomfortable. She was an agnostic previously and wasn't a fan of religion's dogma, which was, more often than not, messing with people's minds, turning them into an aggressive and narrow-minded person, at least in Keiko's opinion.
She had lived in a society where freedom of thought was guaranteed, so when she thought about how the Babel Religion worked, she couldn't help but feel a bit suffocated. Why did they need to control the people to such an unreasonable degree?
While Keiko was lost in thought, the city wall was getting closer and closer.
The 100-meter high city wall, with hundreds of thousands of kilometers in length, took 48 years to build. When there were still a hundred or so meters from the entrance to the city wall, Keiko saw several soldiers guarding the wall looking so tiny compared to the massive wall behind them, as though they were as insignificant as ants.
This was the power of human beings! The fire of civilization will never die, and it will inevitably rise again!
This was what Keiko thought as they passed the massive wall.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone