Chapter 64: The Will of the Ancient Progenitor
Rubble rained down continuously from the top of the passage, and the collapsed rock strata behind them had completely sealed off their retreat. Massive stones were piled together, plugging the entire passage tightly. The explosives expert took a quick glance and reported in a low voice, "The volume of the collapse is too massive. We can't clear it with explosives in a short time. Our way back is cut off."
A circular defensive formation was instantly formed. The eight members stood back-to-back, projecting their Sea of Consciousness barriers outward. The beams from their headlamps intersected, illuminating the endless stream of scaled beasts surging out from the rock caves on both sides. Dark green saliva dripped from their sharp fangs, hitting the muddy ground with a sticky sound.
"Hold the formation! Prioritize killing the ones charging at the front!" Lu Heng drew his long knife and issued a low command.
The first batch of scaled beasts lunged forward. Metal blades tore through the air, colliding with the hard scales and emitting piercing, crisp sounds. A veteran projected his Sea of Consciousness to withstand a weak psychic impact, while his short spear viciously pierced the eye socket of a scaled beast. Dark green blood gushed out, splattering against the damp rock wall. Yet, more scaled beasts followed closely, throwing themselves forward one after another without a hint of fear.
The underground psychic network continued to flow, issuing commands incessantly. The scaled beasts charged in relays, wave after wave, giving the squad no breathing room to rest and regroup.
While patrolling the outer edge of the formation and slashing at the approaching scaled beasts, Lin Yan extended his psychic threads far outward, searching for nodes within the dense flow of commands.
There were three control nodes on this level, interconnected and coordinating the dispatch of this besieging beast swarm. With the computing power distributed, the flow of commands was extremely stable, making it difficult to capture a synchronization blind spot. He tried to gently disturb one of the nodes, but the entire psychic network merely trembled slightly before being quickly compensated and repaired by the other two nodes, failing to cause large-scale chaos.
"The nodes on this level serve as mutual backups," Lin Yan quickly warned Lu Heng. "If we disrupt one, the other two will immediately fill in. We can't cause massive beast swarm disorder like last time."
Just as he continued to extend his mental tentacles outward, attempting to probe the deeper passages, an extremely ancient, cold, and heavy will slowly rose from the deepest part of the rock strata.
It was different from the cold thoughts of the Lizardmen priests he had encountered before. The wills of the other priests were sharp and efficient, like cold tools, solely focused on dispatching the beast swarm and setting up traps. But this will carried an indifference accumulated over long years, like an ancient existence that had slept underground for millions of years. Merely its awakening caused the entire psychic network of the rift to tremble.
The moment Lin Yan's psychic threads touched this will, a violent stabbing pain shot through him.
The outer barrier of his Sea of Consciousness instantly exploded with a massive crack. He stifled a groan, quickly retracting his psychic threads, a layer of cold sweat seeping from his forehead. Just a brief moment of sensory contact had brought such a severe psychic backlash.
"What's wrong?" Su Qing noticed Lin Yan's pale face. While swinging her knife to force back a scaled beast, she urgently asked.
"There is a different existence in the deepest part," Lin Yan suppressed the agonizing pain in his skull, his voice lowered. "It's not an ordinary priest. Its will shrouds the entire underground network. The other priests are all following its dispatch. The multi-point feint beast tide outside earlier and the layered ambushes inside the rift—all the plans were orchestrated by it."
Lu Heng's heart sank as his long knife hacked open a scaled beast leaping toward the formation. "Is it the leader of their race?"
"I'm not sure, but its psychic power is far stronger than any priest we've encountered before," Lin Yan shook his head. "It hasn't used its full power right now; it's merely observing us. The psychic impact just now was just a warning."
Deep within the rock strata, the main Lizardmen Ancient Progenitor sat quietly in the center of the massive resonance rock cave.
Countless psychic threads were wrapped around its body, which was covered in thick scales. The psychic network of the entire Green Rock Rift ultimately converged here. Dozens of secondary priests were lined up on all sides, continuously uploading the collected battlefield information.
This human, Lin Yan, possessed the ability to touch and disturb the psychic network, having ruined their meticulously laid hunting plans twice. The Ancient Progenitor had been observing him for a long time.
Originally, it had planned to consume the combat power of the exploration squad step by step, waiting until everyone's Sea of Consciousness was overdrawn before striking to harvest them. But Lin Yan's psychic probing just now had touched its domain.
The Ancient Progenitor slowly released its thoughts, issuing new commands along the psychic network.
The frontline scaled beasts did not need to rush into fierce attacks to consume them. They should maintain continuous pressure to keep draining the humans' Sea of Consciousness and stamina. At the same time, two hidden nodes were mobilized to superimpose a continuous low-frequency psychic erosion, slowly wearing down everyone's mind and letting their Seas of Consciousness wither bit by bit.
With the commands issued, the offensive of the charging scaled beasts changed slightly. Instead of rushing forward regardless of their lives, they alternated between feinting attacks and retreating, repeatedly stretching and pulling the squad. A low-frequency, continuous, and cold psychic pressure washed over the Sea of Consciousness barriers of the eight members like a tide, slow and unrelenting.
"Something's wrong! The psychic pressure is continuously and slowly rising!" A veteran with a fourth-tier Sea of Consciousness turned pale, sweat constantly beading on his forehead. "It's not a burst attack; it's continuous erosion. The consumption rate of our Sea of Consciousness is terrifyingly fast!"
Everyone felt it.
The psychic impacts they had encountered before were mostly burst attacks, wave after wave, which could be withstood with concentrated force or briefly dodged. But this low-frequency erosion was omnipresent. Even if they shrank their Sea of Consciousness barriers, their psychic power continued to drain. The fourth-tier veteran could barely sustain it for a long time; those with lower Sea of Consciousness levels would collapse even faster.
"Conserve your Sea of Consciousness power! Don't spread your barriers too wide; just protect the core!" Lu Heng loudly reminded everyone. "Rely on cold weapons to fend off the scaled beasts; don't rely on the Sea of Consciousness to stubbornly resist the continuous erosion!"
The squad gritted their teeth and fought bitterly.
However, the prolonged psychic erosion combined with continuous melee combat resulted in a dual drain on their stamina and mental state. A veteran became slightly distracted and had his forearm torn open by a scaled beast's claw, blood instantly gushing from the wound. Enduring the pain, he swung his spear to kill the opponent, but in the brief moment he caught his breath, another scaled beast seized the gap and lunged at him.
Old Chen stepped forward, swinging his long knife horizontally to slay the beast, then turned back to guard the injured veteran's side. "Retreat to the inner side of the formation and bandage the wound!"
The battlefield situation gradually tilted in favor of the Lizardmen. The squad was trapped on the fault platform. Their retreat was cut off, and ahead lay an endless swarm of scaled beasts. Underground, that ancient will continued to monitor them, slowly grinding away at their Seas of Consciousness.
Lin Yan continuously attempted psychic probing, searching for a solution.
He could sense that all the nodes of the secondary priests ultimately needed to synchronize battlefield information with that ancient will deep below. The core of the entire network was located in that deepest resonance rock cave. Only by interfering with the core could the entire massive psychic network truly be paralyzed.
But to reach the core, they had to pass through layers of passages, countless scaled beasts, and the blockade of secondary priests. Moreover, once they actively launched a psychic attack against the Ancient Progenitor, they would directly face its devastating psychic counterattack. The risk far exceeded any previous node disturbance.
"It's waiting for all our Seas of Consciousness to be completely overdrawn," Lin Yan said to Lu Heng in a deep voice. "It's not in a hurry to kill us. It wants to slowly exhaust our ability to resist before making its final move."
Lu Heng's gaze looked toward the pitch-black depths of the main passage; the light from his headlamp couldn't reach that darkness at all. Gripping his long knife, he spoke in a deep voice, "We can't just stay here and defend passively. If we stall in place, everyone's Sea of Consciousness will eventually collapse. Lin Yan, can you find a route that bypasses the frontal beast swarm and continues to push deeper underground? Our goal is to gather evidence, not to fight to the death here."
Lin Yan spread out his psychic threads again. Enduring the continuous psychic stabbing pain, he carefully probed the layout of the branching rock caves on the rock walls on both sides.
The branching caves on both sides were intricate and complex, like a maze. The cave passage on the left was narrow, with a massive number of scaled beasts lying in ambush. On the right, there was a relatively concealed, narrow rock crevice passage. The number of scaled beasts inside was smaller, but the passage was extremely narrow, allowing only single-file passage.
"There is a rock crevice passage on the right that can bypass this current batch of besieging scaled beasts and continue pushing deeper underground," Lin Yan quickly mapped out the route. "But the passage is narrow. Once we are ambushed, our formation won't be able to deploy, and it will be very dangerous."
Lu Heng quickly weighed the pros and cons. Staying in place to defend would only lead to being slowly exhausted. Actively pushing forward at least gave them a chance to reach the core area and obtain the evidence.
"Everyone, transfer to the rock crevice on the right! Explosives expert, cover the rear and use small explosives to temporarily block the pursuing scaled beasts!" Lu Heng immediately issued the command.
Fighting as they retreated, they covered each other in turns, slowly inching toward the entrance of the rock crevice on the right rock wall.
Deep within the rock strata, the Ancient Progenitor sensed the squad's intentions, its cold thoughts shifting slightly.
It allowed them to enter that narrow rock crevice. That was a pre-set death corridor. Once the squad entered, it would be equivalent to voluntarily walking into a deeper encirclement.
The Ancient Progenitor waited quietly, watching this group of humans step one by one into the darker web of the underground. As for the human at the second-tier peak, it would personally see just where this person's true limits lay.
End of Chapter.
A circular defensive formation was instantly formed. The eight members stood back-to-back, projecting their Sea of Consciousness barriers outward. The beams from their headlamps intersected, illuminating the endless stream of scaled beasts surging out from the rock caves on both sides. Dark green saliva dripped from their sharp fangs, hitting the muddy ground with a sticky sound.
"Hold the formation! Prioritize killing the ones charging at the front!" Lu Heng drew his long knife and issued a low command.
The first batch of scaled beasts lunged forward. Metal blades tore through the air, colliding with the hard scales and emitting piercing, crisp sounds. A veteran projected his Sea of Consciousness to withstand a weak psychic impact, while his short spear viciously pierced the eye socket of a scaled beast. Dark green blood gushed out, splattering against the damp rock wall. Yet, more scaled beasts followed closely, throwing themselves forward one after another without a hint of fear.
The underground psychic network continued to flow, issuing commands incessantly. The scaled beasts charged in relays, wave after wave, giving the squad no breathing room to rest and regroup.
While patrolling the outer edge of the formation and slashing at the approaching scaled beasts, Lin Yan extended his psychic threads far outward, searching for nodes within the dense flow of commands.
There were three control nodes on this level, interconnected and coordinating the dispatch of this besieging beast swarm. With the computing power distributed, the flow of commands was extremely stable, making it difficult to capture a synchronization blind spot. He tried to gently disturb one of the nodes, but the entire psychic network merely trembled slightly before being quickly compensated and repaired by the other two nodes, failing to cause large-scale chaos.
"The nodes on this level serve as mutual backups," Lin Yan quickly warned Lu Heng. "If we disrupt one, the other two will immediately fill in. We can't cause massive beast swarm disorder like last time."
Just as he continued to extend his mental tentacles outward, attempting to probe the deeper passages, an extremely ancient, cold, and heavy will slowly rose from the deepest part of the rock strata.
It was different from the cold thoughts of the Lizardmen priests he had encountered before. The wills of the other priests were sharp and efficient, like cold tools, solely focused on dispatching the beast swarm and setting up traps. But this will carried an indifference accumulated over long years, like an ancient existence that had slept underground for millions of years. Merely its awakening caused the entire psychic network of the rift to tremble.
The moment Lin Yan's psychic threads touched this will, a violent stabbing pain shot through him.
The outer barrier of his Sea of Consciousness instantly exploded with a massive crack. He stifled a groan, quickly retracting his psychic threads, a layer of cold sweat seeping from his forehead. Just a brief moment of sensory contact had brought such a severe psychic backlash.
"What's wrong?" Su Qing noticed Lin Yan's pale face. While swinging her knife to force back a scaled beast, she urgently asked.
"There is a different existence in the deepest part," Lin Yan suppressed the agonizing pain in his skull, his voice lowered. "It's not an ordinary priest. Its will shrouds the entire underground network. The other priests are all following its dispatch. The multi-point feint beast tide outside earlier and the layered ambushes inside the rift—all the plans were orchestrated by it."
Lu Heng's heart sank as his long knife hacked open a scaled beast leaping toward the formation. "Is it the leader of their race?"
"I'm not sure, but its psychic power is far stronger than any priest we've encountered before," Lin Yan shook his head. "It hasn't used its full power right now; it's merely observing us. The psychic impact just now was just a warning."
Deep within the rock strata, the main Lizardmen Ancient Progenitor sat quietly in the center of the massive resonance rock cave.
Countless psychic threads were wrapped around its body, which was covered in thick scales. The psychic network of the entire Green Rock Rift ultimately converged here. Dozens of secondary priests were lined up on all sides, continuously uploading the collected battlefield information.
This human, Lin Yan, possessed the ability to touch and disturb the psychic network, having ruined their meticulously laid hunting plans twice. The Ancient Progenitor had been observing him for a long time.
Originally, it had planned to consume the combat power of the exploration squad step by step, waiting until everyone's Sea of Consciousness was overdrawn before striking to harvest them. But Lin Yan's psychic probing just now had touched its domain.
The Ancient Progenitor slowly released its thoughts, issuing new commands along the psychic network.
The frontline scaled beasts did not need to rush into fierce attacks to consume them. They should maintain continuous pressure to keep draining the humans' Sea of Consciousness and stamina. At the same time, two hidden nodes were mobilized to superimpose a continuous low-frequency psychic erosion, slowly wearing down everyone's mind and letting their Seas of Consciousness wither bit by bit.
With the commands issued, the offensive of the charging scaled beasts changed slightly. Instead of rushing forward regardless of their lives, they alternated between feinting attacks and retreating, repeatedly stretching and pulling the squad. A low-frequency, continuous, and cold psychic pressure washed over the Sea of Consciousness barriers of the eight members like a tide, slow and unrelenting.
"Something's wrong! The psychic pressure is continuously and slowly rising!" A veteran with a fourth-tier Sea of Consciousness turned pale, sweat constantly beading on his forehead. "It's not a burst attack; it's continuous erosion. The consumption rate of our Sea of Consciousness is terrifyingly fast!"
Everyone felt it.
The psychic impacts they had encountered before were mostly burst attacks, wave after wave, which could be withstood with concentrated force or briefly dodged. But this low-frequency erosion was omnipresent. Even if they shrank their Sea of Consciousness barriers, their psychic power continued to drain. The fourth-tier veteran could barely sustain it for a long time; those with lower Sea of Consciousness levels would collapse even faster.
"Conserve your Sea of Consciousness power! Don't spread your barriers too wide; just protect the core!" Lu Heng loudly reminded everyone. "Rely on cold weapons to fend off the scaled beasts; don't rely on the Sea of Consciousness to stubbornly resist the continuous erosion!"
The squad gritted their teeth and fought bitterly.
However, the prolonged psychic erosion combined with continuous melee combat resulted in a dual drain on their stamina and mental state. A veteran became slightly distracted and had his forearm torn open by a scaled beast's claw, blood instantly gushing from the wound. Enduring the pain, he swung his spear to kill the opponent, but in the brief moment he caught his breath, another scaled beast seized the gap and lunged at him.
Old Chen stepped forward, swinging his long knife horizontally to slay the beast, then turned back to guard the injured veteran's side. "Retreat to the inner side of the formation and bandage the wound!"
The battlefield situation gradually tilted in favor of the Lizardmen. The squad was trapped on the fault platform. Their retreat was cut off, and ahead lay an endless swarm of scaled beasts. Underground, that ancient will continued to monitor them, slowly grinding away at their Seas of Consciousness.
Lin Yan continuously attempted psychic probing, searching for a solution.
He could sense that all the nodes of the secondary priests ultimately needed to synchronize battlefield information with that ancient will deep below. The core of the entire network was located in that deepest resonance rock cave. Only by interfering with the core could the entire massive psychic network truly be paralyzed.
But to reach the core, they had to pass through layers of passages, countless scaled beasts, and the blockade of secondary priests. Moreover, once they actively launched a psychic attack against the Ancient Progenitor, they would directly face its devastating psychic counterattack. The risk far exceeded any previous node disturbance.
"It's waiting for all our Seas of Consciousness to be completely overdrawn," Lin Yan said to Lu Heng in a deep voice. "It's not in a hurry to kill us. It wants to slowly exhaust our ability to resist before making its final move."
Lu Heng's gaze looked toward the pitch-black depths of the main passage; the light from his headlamp couldn't reach that darkness at all. Gripping his long knife, he spoke in a deep voice, "We can't just stay here and defend passively. If we stall in place, everyone's Sea of Consciousness will eventually collapse. Lin Yan, can you find a route that bypasses the frontal beast swarm and continues to push deeper underground? Our goal is to gather evidence, not to fight to the death here."
Lin Yan spread out his psychic threads again. Enduring the continuous psychic stabbing pain, he carefully probed the layout of the branching rock caves on the rock walls on both sides.
The branching caves on both sides were intricate and complex, like a maze. The cave passage on the left was narrow, with a massive number of scaled beasts lying in ambush. On the right, there was a relatively concealed, narrow rock crevice passage. The number of scaled beasts inside was smaller, but the passage was extremely narrow, allowing only single-file passage.
"There is a rock crevice passage on the right that can bypass this current batch of besieging scaled beasts and continue pushing deeper underground," Lin Yan quickly mapped out the route. "But the passage is narrow. Once we are ambushed, our formation won't be able to deploy, and it will be very dangerous."
Lu Heng quickly weighed the pros and cons. Staying in place to defend would only lead to being slowly exhausted. Actively pushing forward at least gave them a chance to reach the core area and obtain the evidence.
"Everyone, transfer to the rock crevice on the right! Explosives expert, cover the rear and use small explosives to temporarily block the pursuing scaled beasts!" Lu Heng immediately issued the command.
Fighting as they retreated, they covered each other in turns, slowly inching toward the entrance of the rock crevice on the right rock wall.
Deep within the rock strata, the Ancient Progenitor sensed the squad's intentions, its cold thoughts shifting slightly.
It allowed them to enter that narrow rock crevice. That was a pre-set death corridor. Once the squad entered, it would be equivalent to voluntarily walking into a deeper encirclement.
The Ancient Progenitor waited quietly, watching this group of humans step one by one into the darker web of the underground. As for the human at the second-tier peak, it would personally see just where this person's true limits lay.
End of Chapter.