Chapter 28: Ambush in the Chaotic Rocks
After cresting a gentle slope covered in shattered stones, they were less than eight hundred meters from the third beacon deployment point.
The fissures on the ground below had grown increasingly dense, the crisscrossing cracks spreading outward in all directions like a spider's web. The surface of the soil was coated with a layer of fine, grayish-black dust that felt loose and slippery underfoot. The air was thick with a damp, putrid stench, mingled with the cold, sinister aura churning up from the underground rift. In the distance, that massive subterranean chasm stretched between the mountains, dark and profound. Every so often, a deep, heavy beast roar rolled out from the depths of the rift, echoing back and forth across the desolate valley, lingering for a long time.
"Maintain lateral spacing. Don't bunch up. Keep a covering distance of about ten meters between each other," the leading veteran whispered, his eyes ceaselessly scanning the rock piles stacked like small hills on both sides. "This rocky area is the scaled beasts' favorite ambush ground. They burrow into the shallow pits beneath the rubble, bury their bodies, and actively suppress their own psychic fluctuations, making them very difficult to detect in advance. Everyone, keep your Sea of Consciousness in a semi-contracted state, monitoring only for nearby anomalies within your immediate vicinity. Do not expand your perception over a large area. Once the psychic signal spreads too far, it's easy for that wounded third-tier scaled beast to lock onto our position."
The four-man squad slowly spread out into formation, advancing steadily forward. The two veterans in the front took the left and right as the shield of the formation; Su Qing guarded the rear left, responsible for precise supplementary fire; Lin Yan fell to the rear right of the formation, maneuvering dynamically and keeping a close watch on all shadowy blind spots on the flank. His energy rifle was kept in a ready-to-fire state, his index finger resting lightly on the trigger. His Sea of Consciousness was maintained in a state of balanced expansion and contraction, covering only a range of a few dozen meters around him.
Having experienced the deadly battle in the Black Mountain trench, combined with a period of retraining and polishing in the bastion city, he had become highly proficient at controlling the consumption rate of his Sea of Consciousness. He no longer continuously drained his mental power the moment he activated his perception as he had in the past.
The mountain wind blew through the scorched and twisted tree trunks, emitting a sound like a mournful wail. The entire mountainous wilderness was eerily silent; there were no chirping insects or singing birds, only the faint, rustling sound of gravel being crushed underfoot.
Everyone had their nerves pulled taut, vigilant against the hidden dangers lurking within the rock piles.
The instant the group stepped past a giant, solitary stone that was half a person's height and covered in weathered cracks—
Boom!
The pile of rubble behind the massive boulder suddenly exploded! Stones and mud flew into the sky as four low-level scaled beasts burst out from beneath the debris. Their scales were a dark, ashen black, their bodies thick and muscular, their mouths filled with dense, sharp fangs, and foul-smelling mucus constantly dripping from their snouts. They had long been lying in wait here, patiently waiting for the squad to step into their encirclement.
The four scaled beasts did not charge head-on in a rush. Instead, they instantly split into two groups. Two of them lunged straight at the two veterans in the front, forcefully drawing their fire from the front; the other two quickly flanked left and right, intending to envelop the squad's rear and cut off their retreat route.
Almost at the exact moment they appeared, four dense psychic stings overlapped together, plunging viciously into the four people's Seas of Consciousness like tens of thousands of fine needles!
"Form up!" the front-line veteran roared, simultaneously pulling the trigger. Two energy beams whistled out, accurately blasting toward the heads of the two scaled beasts charging from the front.
Dazzling, high-temperature flames erupted on the beasts' heads, sending charred scale fragments flying everywhere. Agonized by the pain, the scaled beasts roared. Their charge merely stalled for an instant before they continued to pounce forward, enduring the searing agony. The scaled beast flanking on the right locked onto Su Qing, leaping into the air and releasing a concentrated burst of psychic turbulence at close range, stabbing directly into her Sea of Consciousness.
Su Qing felt a slight ache at her brow. Her Sea of Consciousness rapidly contracted inward as she forcibly suppressed the dizziness. She steadied her energy rifle and fired continuously to force back the giant beast's pouncing trajectory.
Lin Yan's gaze was firmly locked onto the other scaled beast maneuvering in his direction. His feet immediately slid as he stepped forward to seal the gap on the flank. He didn't hastily fire and waste energy; he waited patiently for the scaled beast to enter the effective kill zone. Once the giant beast was within thirty meters, he continuously pulled the trigger. The energy beams struck the soft scale area on the side of the beast's neck in succession.
The searing pain disrupted the scaled beast's flanking rhythm.
"Focus on suppression, don't engage in prolonged combat! Deploy the beacon and retreat immediately!" the front-line veteran shouted a warning. At the same time, he gripped his standard-issue short blade tightly. At the exact moment the scaled beast pounced in front of him, he sidestepped to dodge, and the blade顺势 (in a fluid motion) slashed toward the gap between the scales on the beast's front limb. Metal scraped against the hard scales, emitting a piercing, grating sound.
The four scaled beasts were highly coordinated. The two in the front were responsible for continuously applying pressure, constantly creating pouncing motions to force the front-line veterans to continuously drain their mental power to resist the psychic impacts. The two on the flanks constantly roamed and probed, searching for gaps in the formation, taking turns releasing psychic stings to continuously deplete the four people's Sea of Consciousness reserves. Wave after wave of invisible psychic impacts constantly washed over their consciousness barriers.
Lin Yan constantly maneuvered and pulled, nimbly changing direction among the chaotic rocks. His ancient martial arts footwork was executed on the uneven, rocky ground. His movements were agile, always barely managing to dodge the thick, razor-sharp claws and the sweeping tail whips of the scaled beasts. Every time a scaled beast got close, it would unleash a round of close-range psychic stings, slamming fiercely into his contracted Sea of Consciousness.
A continuous, dull ache throbbed in his skull. The faint, old wounds left on the surface of his Sea of Consciousness from the Black Mountain trench began to throb again.
If this had been before the bloody trench battle, this uninterrupted, stacking psychic harassment would have caused him to become dizzy and disoriented within moments, slowing his physical reactions. But after the tempering of the battlefield and the polishing of retraining, he could still maintain his calm. The intense pain was present, but it did not disrupt his judgment. While enduring the psychic impacts, he simultaneously made micro-adjustments to the degree of his Sea of Consciousness contraction in the midst of battle.
If he contracted it too tightly, his external perception would drop, making him vulnerable to sneak attacks from the scaled beasts; if he relaxed it too much, his mental consumption rate would skyrocket, and his Sea of Consciousness would quickly overdraw.
Amidst repeatedly enduring the impacts and making adjustments, he slowly explored that most balanced critical point.
Seizing the brief window when Lin Yan was changing his energy cell, a scaled beast suddenly leaped into the air, its foul-smelling maw diving straight for his face. Lin Yan misstepped slightly, his body sliding half a meter laterally like a falling leaf. The massive body of the giant beast crashed heavily onto the pile of rubble, sending stones tumbling and flying. After missing its pounce, the scaled beast immediately turned its head, releasing another wave of close-range psychic turbulence.
Lin Yan's skull went numb. Suppressing the discomfort, he raised his hand and fired a supplementary shot into the scaled beast's eye socket.
"The scaled beast on the right flank is wounded! Seize the opportunity!" The front-line veteran caught sight of the battle situation here. Seizing the gap when the frontal scaled beast was suppressed by the firepower, he broke away and lunged forward with lightning speed, driving his short blade deep into the eye socket of the wounded scaled beast.
The scaled beast let out a shrill, piercing shriek. Its massive body twitched violently a few times before collapsing heavily into the pile of rubble, its foul-smelling black blood continuously seeping into the mud.
Seeing their companion fall, the remaining three scaled beasts became even more frenzied. Roaring, they increased their attack frequency. Tail whips swept, claws hacked, and the psychic stings grew denser with each passing wave.
One of the front-line veterans failed to dodge in time and was fiercely struck on the shoulder by the thick tail of a scaled beast. The thick, standard-issue armor instantly caved in and deformed. The veteran groaned, a tearing pain shooting through his shoulder, and his gun-holding arm went numb. Gritting his teeth, he endured it without taking a single step back, still stabilizing the formation.
"I can still hold on! Don't worry about me! Hold the formation!"
Su Qing concentrated her firepower to continuously suppress the scaled beast on the left flank, constantly shooting at the wounds on its front limbs to limit its movement speed. Lin Yan continued to maneuver and distract the remaining two, constantly changing his position, firmly locking down the flank to prevent any scaled beast from circling behind the formation.
The fierce entanglement lasted for nearly twenty minutes.
All three scaled beasts were covered in burn wounds of various sizes. Their physical strength was constantly draining, and their offensive momentum slowly began to wane. Realizing it would be difficult to quickly tear this four-man squad apart, they let out resentful, low roars, slowly retreating backward in turns. Finally, they turned and burrowed deep into the chaotic rock piles, disappearing from sight using the rocks as cover.
The battlefield finally fell silent for the time being. Only the heavy breathing of the squad and the strong, foul stench left behind by the scaled beasts remained.
The four stopped in place to rest, leaning against the massive boulders to seize the time to recover their mental power. The injured veteran unfastened his armor; his shoulder was covered in a large patch of blue-purple bruising. Fortunately, no bones were broken; it was just severe soft tissue trauma. Everyone's Sea of Consciousness had been overdrawn to varying degrees, and exhaustion washed over their entire bodies like a tidal wave.
"You fought well just now." Panting heavily, the veteran looked at Lin Yan and wiped the grime and bloodstains from his face. "Your pacing on the flank was perfectly controlled. You didn't panic under continuous psychic impacts. The stability of your Sea of Consciousness has improved vastly compared to the trench battle. If an ordinary new recruit had been under such stacked psychic stings, their mind would have collapsed long ago, and they would have lost their combat capability."
Lin Yan nodded slightly, closed his eyes, and turned his awareness inward to inspect his Sea of Consciousness. The pale white barrier of his Sea of Consciousness still remained at the second-tier peak, with no signs of an impending breakthrough in the core. But the toughness and impact resistance of the barrier had received another solid polishing in this bitter battle. All progress was the result of subtle,潜移默化 (imperceptible) accumulation; there were no leapfrog advancements.
"This place is not safe to stay in." The leading veteran looked up toward the distant, profound rift, his expression grave. "The intense fighting just now, the roars of the scaled beasts, and the muzzle flashes from the energy rifles could easily attract similar creatures wandering nearby, or even alarm that wounded third-tier scaled beast. Hurry and deploy the beacon, complete the data calibration, and we'll withdraw immediately."
No one dared to delay. Suppressing their exhaustion, they took out the deep-burial monitoring beacons, quickly dug pits to place them, connected the wiring, activated the equipment, and waited for the beacon to transmit the psychic wave data of this area back to the bastion command center in real time.
The indicator light on the screen turned from red to green. The signal was stable.
"Deployment complete. Retreat. Return via the original route."
The squad packed up their gear and quickly set off, retreating along the route they had come.
Just as they were evacuating, Lin Yan's contracted Sea of Consciousness suddenly caught a heavy, cold psychic fluctuation. The fluctuation was still far away, hidden within the shadows of the mountains. It did not launch an attack; it simply hung there quietly in the distance, like a giant, unblinking eye, silently watching the direction in which the squad was retreating.
It was that third-tier scaled beast.
It had been observing from the shadows the entire time.
End of Chapter
The fissures on the ground below had grown increasingly dense, the crisscrossing cracks spreading outward in all directions like a spider's web. The surface of the soil was coated with a layer of fine, grayish-black dust that felt loose and slippery underfoot. The air was thick with a damp, putrid stench, mingled with the cold, sinister aura churning up from the underground rift. In the distance, that massive subterranean chasm stretched between the mountains, dark and profound. Every so often, a deep, heavy beast roar rolled out from the depths of the rift, echoing back and forth across the desolate valley, lingering for a long time.
"Maintain lateral spacing. Don't bunch up. Keep a covering distance of about ten meters between each other," the leading veteran whispered, his eyes ceaselessly scanning the rock piles stacked like small hills on both sides. "This rocky area is the scaled beasts' favorite ambush ground. They burrow into the shallow pits beneath the rubble, bury their bodies, and actively suppress their own psychic fluctuations, making them very difficult to detect in advance. Everyone, keep your Sea of Consciousness in a semi-contracted state, monitoring only for nearby anomalies within your immediate vicinity. Do not expand your perception over a large area. Once the psychic signal spreads too far, it's easy for that wounded third-tier scaled beast to lock onto our position."
The four-man squad slowly spread out into formation, advancing steadily forward. The two veterans in the front took the left and right as the shield of the formation; Su Qing guarded the rear left, responsible for precise supplementary fire; Lin Yan fell to the rear right of the formation, maneuvering dynamically and keeping a close watch on all shadowy blind spots on the flank. His energy rifle was kept in a ready-to-fire state, his index finger resting lightly on the trigger. His Sea of Consciousness was maintained in a state of balanced expansion and contraction, covering only a range of a few dozen meters around him.
Having experienced the deadly battle in the Black Mountain trench, combined with a period of retraining and polishing in the bastion city, he had become highly proficient at controlling the consumption rate of his Sea of Consciousness. He no longer continuously drained his mental power the moment he activated his perception as he had in the past.
The mountain wind blew through the scorched and twisted tree trunks, emitting a sound like a mournful wail. The entire mountainous wilderness was eerily silent; there were no chirping insects or singing birds, only the faint, rustling sound of gravel being crushed underfoot.
Everyone had their nerves pulled taut, vigilant against the hidden dangers lurking within the rock piles.
The instant the group stepped past a giant, solitary stone that was half a person's height and covered in weathered cracks—
Boom!
The pile of rubble behind the massive boulder suddenly exploded! Stones and mud flew into the sky as four low-level scaled beasts burst out from beneath the debris. Their scales were a dark, ashen black, their bodies thick and muscular, their mouths filled with dense, sharp fangs, and foul-smelling mucus constantly dripping from their snouts. They had long been lying in wait here, patiently waiting for the squad to step into their encirclement.
The four scaled beasts did not charge head-on in a rush. Instead, they instantly split into two groups. Two of them lunged straight at the two veterans in the front, forcefully drawing their fire from the front; the other two quickly flanked left and right, intending to envelop the squad's rear and cut off their retreat route.
Almost at the exact moment they appeared, four dense psychic stings overlapped together, plunging viciously into the four people's Seas of Consciousness like tens of thousands of fine needles!
"Form up!" the front-line veteran roared, simultaneously pulling the trigger. Two energy beams whistled out, accurately blasting toward the heads of the two scaled beasts charging from the front.
Dazzling, high-temperature flames erupted on the beasts' heads, sending charred scale fragments flying everywhere. Agonized by the pain, the scaled beasts roared. Their charge merely stalled for an instant before they continued to pounce forward, enduring the searing agony. The scaled beast flanking on the right locked onto Su Qing, leaping into the air and releasing a concentrated burst of psychic turbulence at close range, stabbing directly into her Sea of Consciousness.
Su Qing felt a slight ache at her brow. Her Sea of Consciousness rapidly contracted inward as she forcibly suppressed the dizziness. She steadied her energy rifle and fired continuously to force back the giant beast's pouncing trajectory.
Lin Yan's gaze was firmly locked onto the other scaled beast maneuvering in his direction. His feet immediately slid as he stepped forward to seal the gap on the flank. He didn't hastily fire and waste energy; he waited patiently for the scaled beast to enter the effective kill zone. Once the giant beast was within thirty meters, he continuously pulled the trigger. The energy beams struck the soft scale area on the side of the beast's neck in succession.
The searing pain disrupted the scaled beast's flanking rhythm.
"Focus on suppression, don't engage in prolonged combat! Deploy the beacon and retreat immediately!" the front-line veteran shouted a warning. At the same time, he gripped his standard-issue short blade tightly. At the exact moment the scaled beast pounced in front of him, he sidestepped to dodge, and the blade顺势 (in a fluid motion) slashed toward the gap between the scales on the beast's front limb. Metal scraped against the hard scales, emitting a piercing, grating sound.
The four scaled beasts were highly coordinated. The two in the front were responsible for continuously applying pressure, constantly creating pouncing motions to force the front-line veterans to continuously drain their mental power to resist the psychic impacts. The two on the flanks constantly roamed and probed, searching for gaps in the formation, taking turns releasing psychic stings to continuously deplete the four people's Sea of Consciousness reserves. Wave after wave of invisible psychic impacts constantly washed over their consciousness barriers.
Lin Yan constantly maneuvered and pulled, nimbly changing direction among the chaotic rocks. His ancient martial arts footwork was executed on the uneven, rocky ground. His movements were agile, always barely managing to dodge the thick, razor-sharp claws and the sweeping tail whips of the scaled beasts. Every time a scaled beast got close, it would unleash a round of close-range psychic stings, slamming fiercely into his contracted Sea of Consciousness.
A continuous, dull ache throbbed in his skull. The faint, old wounds left on the surface of his Sea of Consciousness from the Black Mountain trench began to throb again.
If this had been before the bloody trench battle, this uninterrupted, stacking psychic harassment would have caused him to become dizzy and disoriented within moments, slowing his physical reactions. But after the tempering of the battlefield and the polishing of retraining, he could still maintain his calm. The intense pain was present, but it did not disrupt his judgment. While enduring the psychic impacts, he simultaneously made micro-adjustments to the degree of his Sea of Consciousness contraction in the midst of battle.
If he contracted it too tightly, his external perception would drop, making him vulnerable to sneak attacks from the scaled beasts; if he relaxed it too much, his mental consumption rate would skyrocket, and his Sea of Consciousness would quickly overdraw.
Amidst repeatedly enduring the impacts and making adjustments, he slowly explored that most balanced critical point.
Seizing the brief window when Lin Yan was changing his energy cell, a scaled beast suddenly leaped into the air, its foul-smelling maw diving straight for his face. Lin Yan misstepped slightly, his body sliding half a meter laterally like a falling leaf. The massive body of the giant beast crashed heavily onto the pile of rubble, sending stones tumbling and flying. After missing its pounce, the scaled beast immediately turned its head, releasing another wave of close-range psychic turbulence.
Lin Yan's skull went numb. Suppressing the discomfort, he raised his hand and fired a supplementary shot into the scaled beast's eye socket.
"The scaled beast on the right flank is wounded! Seize the opportunity!" The front-line veteran caught sight of the battle situation here. Seizing the gap when the frontal scaled beast was suppressed by the firepower, he broke away and lunged forward with lightning speed, driving his short blade deep into the eye socket of the wounded scaled beast.
The scaled beast let out a shrill, piercing shriek. Its massive body twitched violently a few times before collapsing heavily into the pile of rubble, its foul-smelling black blood continuously seeping into the mud.
Seeing their companion fall, the remaining three scaled beasts became even more frenzied. Roaring, they increased their attack frequency. Tail whips swept, claws hacked, and the psychic stings grew denser with each passing wave.
One of the front-line veterans failed to dodge in time and was fiercely struck on the shoulder by the thick tail of a scaled beast. The thick, standard-issue armor instantly caved in and deformed. The veteran groaned, a tearing pain shooting through his shoulder, and his gun-holding arm went numb. Gritting his teeth, he endured it without taking a single step back, still stabilizing the formation.
"I can still hold on! Don't worry about me! Hold the formation!"
Su Qing concentrated her firepower to continuously suppress the scaled beast on the left flank, constantly shooting at the wounds on its front limbs to limit its movement speed. Lin Yan continued to maneuver and distract the remaining two, constantly changing his position, firmly locking down the flank to prevent any scaled beast from circling behind the formation.
The fierce entanglement lasted for nearly twenty minutes.
All three scaled beasts were covered in burn wounds of various sizes. Their physical strength was constantly draining, and their offensive momentum slowly began to wane. Realizing it would be difficult to quickly tear this four-man squad apart, they let out resentful, low roars, slowly retreating backward in turns. Finally, they turned and burrowed deep into the chaotic rock piles, disappearing from sight using the rocks as cover.
The battlefield finally fell silent for the time being. Only the heavy breathing of the squad and the strong, foul stench left behind by the scaled beasts remained.
The four stopped in place to rest, leaning against the massive boulders to seize the time to recover their mental power. The injured veteran unfastened his armor; his shoulder was covered in a large patch of blue-purple bruising. Fortunately, no bones were broken; it was just severe soft tissue trauma. Everyone's Sea of Consciousness had been overdrawn to varying degrees, and exhaustion washed over their entire bodies like a tidal wave.
"You fought well just now." Panting heavily, the veteran looked at Lin Yan and wiped the grime and bloodstains from his face. "Your pacing on the flank was perfectly controlled. You didn't panic under continuous psychic impacts. The stability of your Sea of Consciousness has improved vastly compared to the trench battle. If an ordinary new recruit had been under such stacked psychic stings, their mind would have collapsed long ago, and they would have lost their combat capability."
Lin Yan nodded slightly, closed his eyes, and turned his awareness inward to inspect his Sea of Consciousness. The pale white barrier of his Sea of Consciousness still remained at the second-tier peak, with no signs of an impending breakthrough in the core. But the toughness and impact resistance of the barrier had received another solid polishing in this bitter battle. All progress was the result of subtle,潜移默化 (imperceptible) accumulation; there were no leapfrog advancements.
"This place is not safe to stay in." The leading veteran looked up toward the distant, profound rift, his expression grave. "The intense fighting just now, the roars of the scaled beasts, and the muzzle flashes from the energy rifles could easily attract similar creatures wandering nearby, or even alarm that wounded third-tier scaled beast. Hurry and deploy the beacon, complete the data calibration, and we'll withdraw immediately."
No one dared to delay. Suppressing their exhaustion, they took out the deep-burial monitoring beacons, quickly dug pits to place them, connected the wiring, activated the equipment, and waited for the beacon to transmit the psychic wave data of this area back to the bastion command center in real time.
The indicator light on the screen turned from red to green. The signal was stable.
"Deployment complete. Retreat. Return via the original route."
The squad packed up their gear and quickly set off, retreating along the route they had come.
Just as they were evacuating, Lin Yan's contracted Sea of Consciousness suddenly caught a heavy, cold psychic fluctuation. The fluctuation was still far away, hidden within the shadows of the mountains. It did not launch an attack; it simply hung there quietly in the distance, like a giant, unblinking eye, silently watching the direction in which the squad was retreating.
It was that third-tier scaled beast.
It had been observing from the shadows the entire time.
End of Chapter