Chapter 11: Divergence Amidst the Broken Walls
After clearing the three-meter-long scaled beast at the entrance of the garage, the air in the ruins seemed to grow even colder.
A thick, putrid stench lingered among the shattered buildings, mixed with the gray dust and the weathered scent of concrete. Breathing it in left a faint, lingering stiffness in the lungs. Lin Yan tossed the steel bar, coated in mucus and blood, beside the beast's corpse, choosing not to carry it further. While it was sharp, it was too cumbersome. Navigating the rubble-strewn, labyrinthine ruins with it would only hinder his agility.
Su Qin's face was still pale; the shock to her Sea of Consciousness had not yet fully faded. Every few steps, she would pause briefly, close her eyes to focus, and silently gather her turbulent core of consciousness. The Sea of Consciousness stabilizer pendant around her neck trembled faintly, continuously buffering the scattered psychic residue in the environment.
"The second coordinate is inside that half-collapsed seven-story building up ahead." Su Qin took out the simple paper map from her emergency kit, using the daylight filtering down from the collapsed gap above to determine their location. "The signal marker is on the remaining platform on the third floor. The floor slabs in that building have collapsed extensively; many areas only have steel frames left, so watch your step. Also, ventilation inside the building is poor. Once you enter enclosed rooms, psychic turbulence can easily accumulate."
Lin Yan raised his eyes to look.
The ruined building ahead looked as if it had been half-eaten by a beast. One entire wall had collapsed, exposing twisted steel bars stretching outward like the exposed ribs of a rotting giant. The floors were intermittent, with many floor slabs suspended in mid-air; a single misstep could send one plummeting into the darkness below. The shadows inside the building were deep, offering no view of the bottom, leaving it unknown what lurked within the dark.
The two slowed their pace, advancing in a circuitous route along the low, broken walls, trying to stay on paths with open visibility and avoiding blind spots completely obscured from light. The closer they got to the ruined building, the denser the psychic turbulence floating in the air became. However, its intensity was far less than the explosive surge at the garage entrance earlier; it only caused slight mental disturbance, not enough to directly shatter the Sea of Consciousness.
Carefully avoiding loose piles of rubble along the way, they reached the damaged first-floor entrance of the building.
Just as they were about to step inside, a chaotic shout suddenly echoed from deep within the ruins, interspersed with piercing roars. It was the unique hiss of scaled beasts, and it was not far away.
"Someone's there." Lin Yan raised his hand to signal Su Qin to stop. Lowering his body, he hid sideways behind a broken concrete pillar and peered toward the source of the sound.
In a collapsed plaza area diagonally ahead, four other candidates were locked in a fierce struggle with two low-level scaled beasts.
There were two men and two women. They had originally been traveling together, but their formation had completely fallen apart. One scaled beast was entangled with the two men, while the other blocked the two women, continuously releasing psychic turbulence to suppress them. One of the men had a long wound on his forearm from the beast's claws, his gray work uniform soaked in blood. He gripped a short blade, desperately blocking, but his movements were already beginning to falter. The woman behind him was clearly unable to withstand the continuous psychic assault; her Sea of Consciousness had reached its limit. She crouched on the rubble, clutching her head, trembling all over, and even standing had become difficult.
"I can't hold on! Press the alarm!" the girl crouching on the ground screamed in a tearful voice. The agonizing pain from the headache had destroyed all her perseverance. "We can't beat them! If we keep dragging this out, we'll all suffer severe Sea of Consciousness damage!"
"We can't press it! We're only one coordinate away!" the man with the short blade gritted his teeth, swinging his blade fiercely to force back the scaled beast in front of him, and shouted breathlessly, "We've already collected two markers. If we give up now, all our previous risks will be for nothing! Hold on a bit longer, and look for a chance to get past them!"
"Hold on? How do we hold on!" the other woman's voice trembled. Her eyes were fixed on the approaching scaled beast. "It keeps releasing psychic shocks! My Sea of Consciousness is about to split open! Do we have to wait until everyone suffers permanent damage before you're willing to stop?"
The divergence among the four completely erupted in the face of the life-and-death crisis.
Some were unwilling to let their efforts end in failure and wanted to risk their lives to continue the assessment; others had been crushed by fear and the agonizing pain in their Sea of Consciousness, wanting only to trigger the signaler immediately to call the garrison for rescue and abandon this trial. Stimulated by the arguing, the faint glow of the scaled beasts' glands grew continuously brighter, and a new wave of psychic fluctuations slowly spread out, enveloping the entire collapsed plaza.
Hiding behind the pillar, Su Qin furrowed her brows and said to Lin Yan in a low voice, "Should we go up and help? Both are low-level scaled beasts. If we join forces, we have a chance to force them back."
Lin Yan observed quietly for a moment, then slowly shook his head. "Don't intervene rashly. Their internal opinions have already fractured. Even if we temporarily force the scaled beasts back, they will find it hard to act in unison. Once we join, if someone gets injured or suffers Sea of Consciousness damage later, unpredictable complications could easily arise. Our goal is to collect the second coordinate; there's no need to get entangled in someone else's choice."
This trial in the ruins tested not only the ability to fight scaled beasts and resist psychic turbulence but also the ability to make choices. Everyone had the right to press the alarm. Whether to continue gambling or to cut their losses in time was a decision only they could make. Others could offer help, but they could not bear the price of the choices made by others.
Su Qin fell silent for a moment and sighed softly. "You're right. It's just... it doesn't feel good watching them trapped here."
"We'll bypass this plaza and climb to the third floor through the broken window on the back side of the building," Lin Yan said softly.
The two no longer paid attention to the melee in the plaza. They carefully navigated along the rubble pile on the outside of the building, making their way to the back of the seven-story ruin. A large section of the rear wall had collapsed, revealing empty windows, with half-sections of floor slabs remaining beneath some of them.
Lin Yan climbed onto the rubble pile first to scout the environment inside the window. The light inside the building was dim, the air thick with dust, and psychic turbulence drifted slowly. After confirming there were no signs of lurking scaled beasts, he signaled Su Qin to follow.
Stepping on the remaining steel bars and floor slabs, the two climbed upward step by step. The concrete beneath their feet had long weathered; a slight step would cause gravel to cascade down. Every step required careful judgment of the load-bearing capacity. Outside the floor slabs was a suspended void over ten meters high; a misstep would mean falling to one's death.
Reaching the remaining platform on the third floor, they found a blue signal collector resting quietly in the center, half-covered by a fallen section of floor slab. The second coordinate point.
Su Qin took out the collection chip and stepped forward to complete the signal entry. The blue light flashed, and the second marker was collected.
"There's only the last coordinate left." Putting the chip away, Su Qin's tone held a hint of faint anticipation, along with heavy vigilance. "The last coordinate is in the basement of the old command center, the deepest part of the ruins. That is the most unstable area for psychic turbulence in the entire ruins. Rumor has it that when scaled beasts broke through the defenses back then, a large number of people died there. The turbulence often surges without warning, and there's even a possibility of encountering larger scaled beasts."
Lin Yan stood at the edge of the platform, looking through the broken wall toward the depths of the ruins.
In the distance, the earth undulated, with countless broken walls and ruins layered upon each other, stretching to the end of their vision. A gray mist shrouded the deepest part of the ruins. Faintly, one could hear low, drawn-out roars of beasts from deep underground, layered and overlapping, as if countless monsters waiting to awaken were蛰伏 (lurking) beneath the entire earth.
Just then, a sharp blare of a signaler rang out from the plaza diagonally below.
The high-frequency sound unique to the silver alarm pierced through the ruins, clearly reaching the ears of the two. Someone had pressed the distress signal.
Immediately after, the answering signal of the garrison sounded in the distance, indicating that the rescue team was rushing to the collapsed plaza.
In the end, they had chosen to give up.
"Someone surrendered," Su Qin murmured softly.
Lin Yan's gaze was calm. "Cutting losses in time isn't necessarily a bad thing. Not everyone has the ability to withstand the trials of these ruins."
After a brief rest, confirming that their Seas of Consciousness were stable and had sustained no new damage, the two turned around and headed toward the deepest part of the ruins, in the direction of the basement of the old command center.
The final coordinate point lay in that underground area where psychic turbulence was the most treacherous.
The trial of the entire ruins was about to reach its climax.
End of Chapter
A thick, putrid stench lingered among the shattered buildings, mixed with the gray dust and the weathered scent of concrete. Breathing it in left a faint, lingering stiffness in the lungs. Lin Yan tossed the steel bar, coated in mucus and blood, beside the beast's corpse, choosing not to carry it further. While it was sharp, it was too cumbersome. Navigating the rubble-strewn, labyrinthine ruins with it would only hinder his agility.
Su Qin's face was still pale; the shock to her Sea of Consciousness had not yet fully faded. Every few steps, she would pause briefly, close her eyes to focus, and silently gather her turbulent core of consciousness. The Sea of Consciousness stabilizer pendant around her neck trembled faintly, continuously buffering the scattered psychic residue in the environment.
"The second coordinate is inside that half-collapsed seven-story building up ahead." Su Qin took out the simple paper map from her emergency kit, using the daylight filtering down from the collapsed gap above to determine their location. "The signal marker is on the remaining platform on the third floor. The floor slabs in that building have collapsed extensively; many areas only have steel frames left, so watch your step. Also, ventilation inside the building is poor. Once you enter enclosed rooms, psychic turbulence can easily accumulate."
Lin Yan raised his eyes to look.
The ruined building ahead looked as if it had been half-eaten by a beast. One entire wall had collapsed, exposing twisted steel bars stretching outward like the exposed ribs of a rotting giant. The floors were intermittent, with many floor slabs suspended in mid-air; a single misstep could send one plummeting into the darkness below. The shadows inside the building were deep, offering no view of the bottom, leaving it unknown what lurked within the dark.
The two slowed their pace, advancing in a circuitous route along the low, broken walls, trying to stay on paths with open visibility and avoiding blind spots completely obscured from light. The closer they got to the ruined building, the denser the psychic turbulence floating in the air became. However, its intensity was far less than the explosive surge at the garage entrance earlier; it only caused slight mental disturbance, not enough to directly shatter the Sea of Consciousness.
Carefully avoiding loose piles of rubble along the way, they reached the damaged first-floor entrance of the building.
Just as they were about to step inside, a chaotic shout suddenly echoed from deep within the ruins, interspersed with piercing roars. It was the unique hiss of scaled beasts, and it was not far away.
"Someone's there." Lin Yan raised his hand to signal Su Qin to stop. Lowering his body, he hid sideways behind a broken concrete pillar and peered toward the source of the sound.
In a collapsed plaza area diagonally ahead, four other candidates were locked in a fierce struggle with two low-level scaled beasts.
There were two men and two women. They had originally been traveling together, but their formation had completely fallen apart. One scaled beast was entangled with the two men, while the other blocked the two women, continuously releasing psychic turbulence to suppress them. One of the men had a long wound on his forearm from the beast's claws, his gray work uniform soaked in blood. He gripped a short blade, desperately blocking, but his movements were already beginning to falter. The woman behind him was clearly unable to withstand the continuous psychic assault; her Sea of Consciousness had reached its limit. She crouched on the rubble, clutching her head, trembling all over, and even standing had become difficult.
"I can't hold on! Press the alarm!" the girl crouching on the ground screamed in a tearful voice. The agonizing pain from the headache had destroyed all her perseverance. "We can't beat them! If we keep dragging this out, we'll all suffer severe Sea of Consciousness damage!"
"We can't press it! We're only one coordinate away!" the man with the short blade gritted his teeth, swinging his blade fiercely to force back the scaled beast in front of him, and shouted breathlessly, "We've already collected two markers. If we give up now, all our previous risks will be for nothing! Hold on a bit longer, and look for a chance to get past them!"
"Hold on? How do we hold on!" the other woman's voice trembled. Her eyes were fixed on the approaching scaled beast. "It keeps releasing psychic shocks! My Sea of Consciousness is about to split open! Do we have to wait until everyone suffers permanent damage before you're willing to stop?"
The divergence among the four completely erupted in the face of the life-and-death crisis.
Some were unwilling to let their efforts end in failure and wanted to risk their lives to continue the assessment; others had been crushed by fear and the agonizing pain in their Sea of Consciousness, wanting only to trigger the signaler immediately to call the garrison for rescue and abandon this trial. Stimulated by the arguing, the faint glow of the scaled beasts' glands grew continuously brighter, and a new wave of psychic fluctuations slowly spread out, enveloping the entire collapsed plaza.
Hiding behind the pillar, Su Qin furrowed her brows and said to Lin Yan in a low voice, "Should we go up and help? Both are low-level scaled beasts. If we join forces, we have a chance to force them back."
Lin Yan observed quietly for a moment, then slowly shook his head. "Don't intervene rashly. Their internal opinions have already fractured. Even if we temporarily force the scaled beasts back, they will find it hard to act in unison. Once we join, if someone gets injured or suffers Sea of Consciousness damage later, unpredictable complications could easily arise. Our goal is to collect the second coordinate; there's no need to get entangled in someone else's choice."
This trial in the ruins tested not only the ability to fight scaled beasts and resist psychic turbulence but also the ability to make choices. Everyone had the right to press the alarm. Whether to continue gambling or to cut their losses in time was a decision only they could make. Others could offer help, but they could not bear the price of the choices made by others.
Su Qin fell silent for a moment and sighed softly. "You're right. It's just... it doesn't feel good watching them trapped here."
"We'll bypass this plaza and climb to the third floor through the broken window on the back side of the building," Lin Yan said softly.
The two no longer paid attention to the melee in the plaza. They carefully navigated along the rubble pile on the outside of the building, making their way to the back of the seven-story ruin. A large section of the rear wall had collapsed, revealing empty windows, with half-sections of floor slabs remaining beneath some of them.
Lin Yan climbed onto the rubble pile first to scout the environment inside the window. The light inside the building was dim, the air thick with dust, and psychic turbulence drifted slowly. After confirming there were no signs of lurking scaled beasts, he signaled Su Qin to follow.
Stepping on the remaining steel bars and floor slabs, the two climbed upward step by step. The concrete beneath their feet had long weathered; a slight step would cause gravel to cascade down. Every step required careful judgment of the load-bearing capacity. Outside the floor slabs was a suspended void over ten meters high; a misstep would mean falling to one's death.
Reaching the remaining platform on the third floor, they found a blue signal collector resting quietly in the center, half-covered by a fallen section of floor slab. The second coordinate point.
Su Qin took out the collection chip and stepped forward to complete the signal entry. The blue light flashed, and the second marker was collected.
"There's only the last coordinate left." Putting the chip away, Su Qin's tone held a hint of faint anticipation, along with heavy vigilance. "The last coordinate is in the basement of the old command center, the deepest part of the ruins. That is the most unstable area for psychic turbulence in the entire ruins. Rumor has it that when scaled beasts broke through the defenses back then, a large number of people died there. The turbulence often surges without warning, and there's even a possibility of encountering larger scaled beasts."
Lin Yan stood at the edge of the platform, looking through the broken wall toward the depths of the ruins.
In the distance, the earth undulated, with countless broken walls and ruins layered upon each other, stretching to the end of their vision. A gray mist shrouded the deepest part of the ruins. Faintly, one could hear low, drawn-out roars of beasts from deep underground, layered and overlapping, as if countless monsters waiting to awaken were蛰伏 (lurking) beneath the entire earth.
Just then, a sharp blare of a signaler rang out from the plaza diagonally below.
The high-frequency sound unique to the silver alarm pierced through the ruins, clearly reaching the ears of the two. Someone had pressed the distress signal.
Immediately after, the answering signal of the garrison sounded in the distance, indicating that the rescue team was rushing to the collapsed plaza.
In the end, they had chosen to give up.
"Someone surrendered," Su Qin murmured softly.
Lin Yan's gaze was calm. "Cutting losses in time isn't necessarily a bad thing. Not everyone has the ability to withstand the trials of these ruins."
After a brief rest, confirming that their Seas of Consciousness were stable and had sustained no new damage, the two turned around and headed toward the deepest part of the ruins, in the direction of the basement of the old command center.
The final coordinate point lay in that underground area where psychic turbulence was the most treacherous.
The trial of the entire ruins was about to reach its climax.
End of Chapter