Chapter 111: The Whispers of the Fungal Carpet
The wind at the rift entrance carried a constant geothermal heat, feeling sticky and damp against the skin.
Five members of the task force stood on the last artificially reinforced platform outside the bastion. Behind them, searchlights set up by the war zone barely pierced through the gray, hazy wasteland. Just thirty meters ahead lay the pitch-black chasm where the earth had split open. Spores, nearly invisible to the naked eye, floated in the air. The indicator light on the detector blinked leisurely, with the value resting at the threshold of mild psychic contamination; it had not yet escalated to a dangerous level.
Lu Heng raised his hand and pushed the lower half of his tactical mask up to the bridge of his nose. The metal clasp clicked into a locked position. He was the captain of this squad and the member with the highest Sea of Consciousness cultivation. He was only a hair's breadth away from the third tier and was the only one who had ever engaged dual priests head-on and lived to tell the tale.
"Let me reiterate the mission briefing one last time." His voice came through the squad's internal communication channel, calm and steady, drowning out the faint, rustling sounds resembling a swarm of insects rubbing together from deep within the rift. "The target area is Deep Rift No. 79. Inside, there are two dual priests. Their psychic resonance sustains a localized illusion web. This web can weave memory illusions, amplify Sea of Consciousness trauma, and mobilize all scaled beasts within the rift for coordinated combat."
Su Wan lowered her head to verify the topographical map on her tablet, her fingers swiping across the screen. Dense red markers covered the lower levels of the rift. As the squad's Sea of Consciousness scout, she carried a signal collection box on her shoulder that was half her height, with cables running along her combat suit all the way to the perception headset at her ear.
"The intelligence has limitations," Su Wan added. "We have only confirmed the existence of the two priests. However, the energy supply chain of the illusion web, whether there are secondary nodes guarding it, and whether there are other high-tier scaled beasts at the bottom of the rift are all unknown. The last reconnaissance drone flew four hundred meters in before its screen was instantly filled with illusions. The signal was permanently lost, and no more valid footage was transmitted back."
The veteran standing beside Lin Yan was called Old Guo. An old scar ran from his brow bone down to his jaw, a souvenir from a scaled beast's claws during an early city wall defense battle. He stroked his modified pulse rifle. A small Sea of Consciousness oscillator was welded to the side of the gun body, specifically used to disperse low-tier psychic phantoms.
"Remember one rule above all else: the illusions created by the illusion web can make vision, hearing, and pain indistinguishable from reality. The illusions cannot kill your physical body, but they can shatter your Sea of Consciousness. Once your Sea of Consciousness collapses, even if your body remains intact, you will become a living corpse without independent consciousness, eventually dragged away by scaled beasts." Old Guo's voice was heavy. "If it comes to that, teammates won't save you; they can only give you a quick end. Everyone knows the war zone regulations."
The remaining squad member was a young recruit named Chen Ye, a promising talent recently selected from the war-preparedness high school. His Sea of Consciousness had just stabilized at the peak of the first tier. This was his first deep rift mission. He gripped his rifle tightly, his knuckles turning white, and his gaze involuntarily drifted toward the pitch-black rift entrance, unable to hide the tension in his eyes.
Lin Yan stood quietly at the back of the formation, not saying a word.
He was still at the second tier of the Sea of Consciousness, stuck at this bottleneck for a long time. He knew his shortcomings clearly: in terms of the breadth of his Sea of Consciousness and sustained psychic resistance, he was no match for Lu Heng; in precise signal detection, he was far inferior to Su Wan. His advantage lay in the foundation of ancient martial arts he had practiced in the mountains since childhood. His perception of the flow of aura and psychic trajectories was completely different from that of orthodox Sea of Consciousness cultivators. While others deployed thick defensive barriers outward to resist impacts, he was accustomed to tracing the source by following the veins of psychic flow.
To break through to the second tier, he needed to undergo a life-and-death trial severe enough to crush his consciousness. He always kept this in mind. It wasn't that he didn't want to grow stronger; it was just that such a trial could not be begged for, nor could it be deliberately sought out.
"Equipment check," Lu Heng ordered.
The team inspected themselves in turn: Sea of Consciousness barrier generators, oscillator grenades, sealed sampling tubes, emergency sedatives, barrier-breaking explosives, and the life signal transmitters bound to their wrists. If a transmitter failed to send a signal for ten continuous seconds, the long-range support fire from the bastion would mark the coordinates and directly blanket the entire area, preventing the illusion web from using living humans as new nourishment.
"The maximum communication range is twelve hundred meters. Beyond this distance, the channel will be interfered with by the illusion web, and we will have to rely on hand signals and pre-arranged codes." Lu Heng raised his eyes to scan everyone, his gaze finally landing on Lin Yan. "Lin Yan, your method of perception is unique. The squad has not assigned you a fixed position. You are responsible for roaming and providing early warnings. Prioritize capturing the flow direction of the illusion web's signals. Once you detect the psychic fluctuations of the priests, report them immediately. Do not advance alone without authorization."
"Understood," Lin Yan nodded.
"Everyone, move in."
Lu Heng took the lead, stepping into the shadow of the rift.
The flashlight beam pierced the darkness. The rock walls were rough and damp, with fine water droplets constantly dripping from above, striking the helmets with a soft ticking sound. The passage was formed by the natural tearing of the rock strata, varying in width. The widest parts could accommodate three people walking side by side, while the narrowest required squeezing through sideways. The ground was covered with a thin, grayish-green fungal film. Stepping on it felt soft, like walking on rotting moss. With a grind of the boot sole, faint, fishy water seeped out.
This was the symbiotic fungal carpet—the nerves of the illusion web.
The detector on Su Wan's back began to buzz with increasing frequency.
"The concentration of psychic particles is rising. We have entered the outer radiation zone of the illusion web. The illusions haven't fully formed yet, but it is already 'watching' us," Su Wan said in a low voice. "It is collecting fragments of our consciousness, reading our memories, fears, and obsessions. The illusions that appear later will be the things we are most unable to let go of in our hearts."
Chen Ye's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "I've heard... that some people saw their deceased relatives in the illusion web and couldn't help but reach out to touch them. Their Sea of Consciousness was instantly drained."
"It's true." Lu Heng walked at the very front, keeping his gun barrel raised at a forty-five-degree alert angle. "The illusion web is not good at frontal assaults; it excels at enticement. It won't unleash giant beasts to fight right away. It will first make you drop your guard."
Lin Yan slowly relaxed his mind, his Sea of Consciousness gently stretching outward.
Unlike the others, who immediately erected thick defensive barriers, he merely released an extremely faint, almost imperceptible wisp of consciousness, scattering it into the surrounding fungal carpet.
Countless tiny, weak thoughts flowed back along the fungal carpet. They were not intelligent thoughts, but merely instinctive recording, capturing, and replication. It was like a massive sensory network, silently recording the heartbeat, breathing rhythm, and Sea of Consciousness fluctuation frequency of each of them.
The illusion web was getting to know them.
After walking for about two hundred meters, the passage suddenly opened up into a natural karst cave. In the center of the cave lay a massive pile of whitish broken bones—some human, some from scaled beasts—stacked layer upon layer. The gaps between the bones were overgrown with that grayish-green fungal carpet. The carpet wrapped around the white bones like countless slender tentacles, firmly fixing the remains to the ground.
Chen Ye's footsteps paused, and his breath hitched slightly.
From deep within the pile of bones, a blurry human figure slowly sat up.
It was a teenager wearing a war-preparedness high school uniform, half of his shoulder mangled and bloody. He raised his head, looking at Chen Ye. His voice, laced with tears, floated clearly into everyone's ears: "Chen Ye, save me... I can't run anymore, they're catching up..."
It was Chen Ye's classmate from the same training cohort, who had died during the last field trial.
The illusion appeared without warning.
"Don't make eye contact!" Lu Heng immediately roared in a low voice. His Sea of Consciousness power surged outward, and a layer of pale white psychic ripples swept across.
The phantom twisted and flickered under the impact of the ripples, but it did not dissipate directly. The fungal carpet continuously supplied psychic energy, and the illusion quickly stabilized again. It still sat in the pile of bones, repeating its cry for help over and over.
"It's just an outer illusion; the intensity isn't high. It's being maintained by relying on this fungal carpet node," Su Wan quickly operated her detector. "The signal source is right below the bone pile—a small branch node. We won't waste time destroying it now; let's bypass it. Remember, do not respond to the illusion, and do not converse with it."
Chen Ye bit his lower lip hard, averted his gaze, and forced himself not to look at that familiar figure. His footsteps followed the squad forward, but his hand gripping the rifle still trembled uncontrollably.
Lin Yan's wisp of consciousness extended deeper along the illusion's signal.
He could clearly see that this wisp of illusion signal continued deeper into the cave along the veins of the fungal carpet, branching downward and to the sides, eventually merging into two deeper main passages. The signals from the two main passages echoed and resonated back and forth, with a stable and synchronized rhythm like a beating heart.
That was the location of the two dual priests.
And even lower, deeper underground beneath the two resonating signals, separated by thick rock strata, there was an extremely faint,沉寂 (silent) vast consciousness, almost non-existent. It lay dormant quietly, not participating in this illusion inducement, merely watching coldly from the sidelines.
Lin Yan's brow furrowed slightly.
This consciousness was completely unrecorded in the intelligence.
Just as he was about to open his mouth to report this discovery, dense, fine rustling sounds suddenly erupted from the rock crevices on all sides of the cave.
The flashlight beam swept over. Countless low-tier scaled beasts, half a meter long, silently crawled out along the fungal-carpeted rock walls. Their round, black compound eyes locked onto the five members of the squad, layering in to surround them, sealing off both the path ahead and the retreat.
The illusion web didn't just want to trap them with illusions.
It had already begun to mobilize its claws.
Lu Heng roared in a deep voice, "Prepare for combat! Stabilize your Sea of Consciousness. Prioritize killing the approaching scaled beasts; do not let them divide and surround us!"
The humming charge sound of pulse rifles echoed within the deep karst cave.
Five members of the task force stood on the last artificially reinforced platform outside the bastion. Behind them, searchlights set up by the war zone barely pierced through the gray, hazy wasteland. Just thirty meters ahead lay the pitch-black chasm where the earth had split open. Spores, nearly invisible to the naked eye, floated in the air. The indicator light on the detector blinked leisurely, with the value resting at the threshold of mild psychic contamination; it had not yet escalated to a dangerous level.
Lu Heng raised his hand and pushed the lower half of his tactical mask up to the bridge of his nose. The metal clasp clicked into a locked position. He was the captain of this squad and the member with the highest Sea of Consciousness cultivation. He was only a hair's breadth away from the third tier and was the only one who had ever engaged dual priests head-on and lived to tell the tale.
"Let me reiterate the mission briefing one last time." His voice came through the squad's internal communication channel, calm and steady, drowning out the faint, rustling sounds resembling a swarm of insects rubbing together from deep within the rift. "The target area is Deep Rift No. 79. Inside, there are two dual priests. Their psychic resonance sustains a localized illusion web. This web can weave memory illusions, amplify Sea of Consciousness trauma, and mobilize all scaled beasts within the rift for coordinated combat."
Su Wan lowered her head to verify the topographical map on her tablet, her fingers swiping across the screen. Dense red markers covered the lower levels of the rift. As the squad's Sea of Consciousness scout, she carried a signal collection box on her shoulder that was half her height, with cables running along her combat suit all the way to the perception headset at her ear.
"The intelligence has limitations," Su Wan added. "We have only confirmed the existence of the two priests. However, the energy supply chain of the illusion web, whether there are secondary nodes guarding it, and whether there are other high-tier scaled beasts at the bottom of the rift are all unknown. The last reconnaissance drone flew four hundred meters in before its screen was instantly filled with illusions. The signal was permanently lost, and no more valid footage was transmitted back."
The veteran standing beside Lin Yan was called Old Guo. An old scar ran from his brow bone down to his jaw, a souvenir from a scaled beast's claws during an early city wall defense battle. He stroked his modified pulse rifle. A small Sea of Consciousness oscillator was welded to the side of the gun body, specifically used to disperse low-tier psychic phantoms.
"Remember one rule above all else: the illusions created by the illusion web can make vision, hearing, and pain indistinguishable from reality. The illusions cannot kill your physical body, but they can shatter your Sea of Consciousness. Once your Sea of Consciousness collapses, even if your body remains intact, you will become a living corpse without independent consciousness, eventually dragged away by scaled beasts." Old Guo's voice was heavy. "If it comes to that, teammates won't save you; they can only give you a quick end. Everyone knows the war zone regulations."
The remaining squad member was a young recruit named Chen Ye, a promising talent recently selected from the war-preparedness high school. His Sea of Consciousness had just stabilized at the peak of the first tier. This was his first deep rift mission. He gripped his rifle tightly, his knuckles turning white, and his gaze involuntarily drifted toward the pitch-black rift entrance, unable to hide the tension in his eyes.
Lin Yan stood quietly at the back of the formation, not saying a word.
He was still at the second tier of the Sea of Consciousness, stuck at this bottleneck for a long time. He knew his shortcomings clearly: in terms of the breadth of his Sea of Consciousness and sustained psychic resistance, he was no match for Lu Heng; in precise signal detection, he was far inferior to Su Wan. His advantage lay in the foundation of ancient martial arts he had practiced in the mountains since childhood. His perception of the flow of aura and psychic trajectories was completely different from that of orthodox Sea of Consciousness cultivators. While others deployed thick defensive barriers outward to resist impacts, he was accustomed to tracing the source by following the veins of psychic flow.
To break through to the second tier, he needed to undergo a life-and-death trial severe enough to crush his consciousness. He always kept this in mind. It wasn't that he didn't want to grow stronger; it was just that such a trial could not be begged for, nor could it be deliberately sought out.
"Equipment check," Lu Heng ordered.
The team inspected themselves in turn: Sea of Consciousness barrier generators, oscillator grenades, sealed sampling tubes, emergency sedatives, barrier-breaking explosives, and the life signal transmitters bound to their wrists. If a transmitter failed to send a signal for ten continuous seconds, the long-range support fire from the bastion would mark the coordinates and directly blanket the entire area, preventing the illusion web from using living humans as new nourishment.
"The maximum communication range is twelve hundred meters. Beyond this distance, the channel will be interfered with by the illusion web, and we will have to rely on hand signals and pre-arranged codes." Lu Heng raised his eyes to scan everyone, his gaze finally landing on Lin Yan. "Lin Yan, your method of perception is unique. The squad has not assigned you a fixed position. You are responsible for roaming and providing early warnings. Prioritize capturing the flow direction of the illusion web's signals. Once you detect the psychic fluctuations of the priests, report them immediately. Do not advance alone without authorization."
"Understood," Lin Yan nodded.
"Everyone, move in."
Lu Heng took the lead, stepping into the shadow of the rift.
The flashlight beam pierced the darkness. The rock walls were rough and damp, with fine water droplets constantly dripping from above, striking the helmets with a soft ticking sound. The passage was formed by the natural tearing of the rock strata, varying in width. The widest parts could accommodate three people walking side by side, while the narrowest required squeezing through sideways. The ground was covered with a thin, grayish-green fungal film. Stepping on it felt soft, like walking on rotting moss. With a grind of the boot sole, faint, fishy water seeped out.
This was the symbiotic fungal carpet—the nerves of the illusion web.
The detector on Su Wan's back began to buzz with increasing frequency.
"The concentration of psychic particles is rising. We have entered the outer radiation zone of the illusion web. The illusions haven't fully formed yet, but it is already 'watching' us," Su Wan said in a low voice. "It is collecting fragments of our consciousness, reading our memories, fears, and obsessions. The illusions that appear later will be the things we are most unable to let go of in our hearts."
Chen Ye's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. "I've heard... that some people saw their deceased relatives in the illusion web and couldn't help but reach out to touch them. Their Sea of Consciousness was instantly drained."
"It's true." Lu Heng walked at the very front, keeping his gun barrel raised at a forty-five-degree alert angle. "The illusion web is not good at frontal assaults; it excels at enticement. It won't unleash giant beasts to fight right away. It will first make you drop your guard."
Lin Yan slowly relaxed his mind, his Sea of Consciousness gently stretching outward.
Unlike the others, who immediately erected thick defensive barriers, he merely released an extremely faint, almost imperceptible wisp of consciousness, scattering it into the surrounding fungal carpet.
Countless tiny, weak thoughts flowed back along the fungal carpet. They were not intelligent thoughts, but merely instinctive recording, capturing, and replication. It was like a massive sensory network, silently recording the heartbeat, breathing rhythm, and Sea of Consciousness fluctuation frequency of each of them.
The illusion web was getting to know them.
After walking for about two hundred meters, the passage suddenly opened up into a natural karst cave. In the center of the cave lay a massive pile of whitish broken bones—some human, some from scaled beasts—stacked layer upon layer. The gaps between the bones were overgrown with that grayish-green fungal carpet. The carpet wrapped around the white bones like countless slender tentacles, firmly fixing the remains to the ground.
Chen Ye's footsteps paused, and his breath hitched slightly.
From deep within the pile of bones, a blurry human figure slowly sat up.
It was a teenager wearing a war-preparedness high school uniform, half of his shoulder mangled and bloody. He raised his head, looking at Chen Ye. His voice, laced with tears, floated clearly into everyone's ears: "Chen Ye, save me... I can't run anymore, they're catching up..."
It was Chen Ye's classmate from the same training cohort, who had died during the last field trial.
The illusion appeared without warning.
"Don't make eye contact!" Lu Heng immediately roared in a low voice. His Sea of Consciousness power surged outward, and a layer of pale white psychic ripples swept across.
The phantom twisted and flickered under the impact of the ripples, but it did not dissipate directly. The fungal carpet continuously supplied psychic energy, and the illusion quickly stabilized again. It still sat in the pile of bones, repeating its cry for help over and over.
"It's just an outer illusion; the intensity isn't high. It's being maintained by relying on this fungal carpet node," Su Wan quickly operated her detector. "The signal source is right below the bone pile—a small branch node. We won't waste time destroying it now; let's bypass it. Remember, do not respond to the illusion, and do not converse with it."
Chen Ye bit his lower lip hard, averted his gaze, and forced himself not to look at that familiar figure. His footsteps followed the squad forward, but his hand gripping the rifle still trembled uncontrollably.
Lin Yan's wisp of consciousness extended deeper along the illusion's signal.
He could clearly see that this wisp of illusion signal continued deeper into the cave along the veins of the fungal carpet, branching downward and to the sides, eventually merging into two deeper main passages. The signals from the two main passages echoed and resonated back and forth, with a stable and synchronized rhythm like a beating heart.
That was the location of the two dual priests.
And even lower, deeper underground beneath the two resonating signals, separated by thick rock strata, there was an extremely faint,沉寂 (silent) vast consciousness, almost non-existent. It lay dormant quietly, not participating in this illusion inducement, merely watching coldly from the sidelines.
Lin Yan's brow furrowed slightly.
This consciousness was completely unrecorded in the intelligence.
Just as he was about to open his mouth to report this discovery, dense, fine rustling sounds suddenly erupted from the rock crevices on all sides of the cave.
The flashlight beam swept over. Countless low-tier scaled beasts, half a meter long, silently crawled out along the fungal-carpeted rock walls. Their round, black compound eyes locked onto the five members of the squad, layering in to surround them, sealing off both the path ahead and the retreat.
The illusion web didn't just want to trap them with illusions.
It had already begun to mobilize its claws.
Lu Heng roared in a deep voice, "Prepare for combat! Stabilize your Sea of Consciousness. Prioritize killing the approaching scaled beasts; do not let them divide and surround us!"
The humming charge sound of pulse rifles echoed within the deep karst cave.