Chapter 114: The Quagmire of the Sea of Consciousness
The crushing weight of that will was like a thick canvas soaked in ice water, tightly wrapping around everyone's consciousness.
Lin Yan tried to mobilize his Sea of Consciousness to push out a warning signal. The wisp of consciousness, usually light and expansive, now felt as heavy as if it were filled with lead. Every inch it extended cost several times the mental effort. He finally understood the true terror of that vast consciousness deep underground—it didn't directly tear apart the Sea of Consciousness; instead, it cast a domain-wide psychic stagnation field, dragging everyone's Sea of Consciousness into a quagmire.
You could still think, see, and pull the trigger, but the operation of all Sea of Consciousness abilities was severely slowed down.
The Sea of Consciousness oscillation barrier erected by Lu Heng could have easily dispersed the surging low-tier scaled beasts in the past. Now, the ripples diffused sluggishly and with drastically reduced power, merely causing the front-line beasts to pause for a moment before resuming their assault, their fangs getting closer and closer to his visor.
Old Guo gritted his teeth and pulled the trigger. The pulse beam struck the head of a scaled beast, exploding its carapace and spraying dark green fluid. Yet, more scaled beasts continuously surged forward, trampling over their companions' corpses. The oscillator attached to his gun body hummed at a high frequency, releasing white ripples that were insubstantial and weak, rapidly decaying within the stagnation field.
"The effectiveness of my oscillation module is down to less than thirty percent!" Old Guo's hoarse voice squeezed through the communication channel, accompanied by suppressed panting. "This thing counters all Sea of Consciousness-based methods. Most of our trump cards have been neutralized!"
Su Wan's situation on the right was even worse.
The interference module of her detector was originally a delicate Sea of Consciousness device, extremely sensitive to psychic stagnation fields. The data streams on the screen jumped wildly, and the warning lights flashed urgently. The reverse interference waves she forcibly output were crooked and erratic, no longer able to precisely target the priests' resonance frequency.
The dual priests' chorus stabilized without any hindrance, the pitch rising layer by layer.
Countless phantoms of fallen soldiers inside the cave took synchronized steps forward. Their footsteps landed on the fungal carpet without a sound, yet they carried an innate, suffocating dead silence. Chen Ye, having the shallowest foundation in his Sea of Consciousness, was the first to succumb to the dual pressure of the stagnation field and the illusion. Darkness swam before his eyes, and the rifle in his hand felt as heavy as a block of raw iron.
"I... I can't hold on much longer," Chen Ye's voice trembled. In his line of sight, the phantom of his deceased classmate had already walked up to him, extending a pale hand and slowly reaching toward his visor. "It's calling me to go with it..."
"Don't listen! Stare at physical objects! Look at the scaled beasts, the rocks, the fungal carpet! Don't let your thoughts drift with the illusion!" Su Wan freed one hand and fiercely pressed the Sea of Consciousness stimulation acupoint on the back of Chen Ye's neck. The intense pain temporarily pulled his scattered consciousness back. "Hold onto yourself. Don't hand over your consciousness!"
Lin Yan quickly weaved through the battlefield, arriving at their flank. With a horizontal sweep of his short blade, he chopped apart a scaled beast that had pounced using the illusion as cover. Warm, foul-smelling blood splattered onto his combat suit. Without sparing it a glance, he fully deployed his wisp of consciousness, simultaneously monitoring three targets: the dual priests on the left and right rock platforms, and the boundless source of the stagnation field beneath the rock strata.
He quickly grasped the pattern.
The dual priests were responsible for the chorus, creating illusions, and deploying the scaled beasts; the colossal entity underground was solely responsible for maintaining this Sea of Consciousness quagmire. Their division of labor was clear; they were not a single entity. As long as this underground entity didn't withdraw the stagnation field, they would never be able to utilize their Sea of Consciousness abilities normally.
But that consciousness was hidden beneath tens of meters of solid bedrock. It had no physical form revealed and no nodes to attack; they couldn't even touch the target.
"Captain, the stagnation field covers the entire area. The source is deep in the rock strata directly beneath us, with no passage for upward advancement!" Lin Yan reported rapidly. "We can't attack it. We can only break free from this chorus zone first and leave the core of its power's radiation!"
"Go where? We're completely blocked in all directions!" Lu Heng forced back a scaled beast pouncing in front of him with a shot, his gaze sweeping across the cave's ceiling. "Can we blast open the rock layer above?"
Su Wan immediately adjusted her detector to scan the rock structure above. "The upper layer is a single block of granite, over twelve meters thick. The barrier-breaking explosives we carry aren't enough. Even if we blast it open, the collapsing rubble will bury us alive!"
Before she finished speaking, the priest behind the left rock platform suddenly changed the rhythm.
The sharp screech abruptly shifted. The chorus no longer eroded them slowly; instead, it transformed into a sharp psychic spike, precisely locking onto Lu Heng, who was bearing the heaviest load.
Lu Heng let out a muffled groan, his body swaying violently. Fine, spiderweb-like cracks appeared on his Sea of Consciousness barrier. A metallic taste of blood rushed to his throat. He forcibly swallowed it back, but his footsteps couldn't help but stagger backward twice.
"Captain!" Old Guo hastily shifted half a step to block in front of Lu Heng, continuously sweeping fire from his pulse rifle to suppress the rock platform. "Your Sea of Consciousness is injured!"
"I'm fine, I can still hold on," Lu Heng gritted his teeth to steady his mind, but everyone could hear that his breathing had already become unsteady.
The situation had completely fallen into a disadvantage.
The scaled beasts were shrinking their encirclement ring by ring, the phantoms were layered densely, the Sea of Consciousness quagmire continued to drain everyone's mental power, and the dual priests were still waiting for opportunities to launch targeted psychic spikes, specifically targeting those whose Sea of Consciousness was most depleted. If they kept dragging this out, someone's Sea of Consciousness would inevitably collapse first.
Lin Yan's thoughts spun rapidly.
Others relied on barriers, oscillators, and detectors cultivated through Sea of Consciousness training to fight the enemy, and all these methods were suppressed by the stagnation field. But he was different. His foundation was ancient martial arts, physical senses, and tracing along psychic veins, rather than simply releasing Sea of Consciousness power outward.
The stagnation field could slow down the operation of his Sea of Consciousness, but it couldn't seal his instinct for sensing the flow of signals.
Staring at the intertwined, purple-glowing main veins of the fungal carpet, a plan formed in his mind.
"Captain, I have a method, but it carries extreme risk," Lin Yan said in a low voice. "All signals and the power of the stagnation field of the illusion web rely entirely on the fungal carpet for conduction. All the veins ultimately converge at the center of the cave floor. That is the main hub of this branch network. I can go there and use an oscillator grenade to directionally blast the hub, forcibly tearing apart the local fungal carpet network for a brief moment. Once the network breaks for an instant, the chorus will snap, and the stagnation field of that colossal underground entity will also experience a brief gap."
"The gap will only last for an instant," Lu Heng immediately understood the cost. "In that instant, all of us must seize the opportunity and concentrate our firepower to strike one of the rock platforms, severely injuring one of the priests to break the dual resonance. If we fail, you will be left in the very center of the encirclement. All the scaled beasts, illusions, and attacks from the two priests will instantly crash down on you."
"I understand," Lin Yan nodded, lightly wiping his short blade on the mucus of the fungal carpet. "My footwork is suited for a sudden advance. If someone else went, they might not be able to reach the hub."
There was no time left to negotiate.
Lu Heng took a deep breath and made a swift decision: "Plan approved. Old Guo, cover Lin Yan's advance. Su Wan, lock onto the right priest; the moment the fungal carpet breaks, release your interference at full power. I will bear the psychic spike from the left priest and seize the window for a strong attack. Chen Ye, follow me, prioritize covering fire. Remember, only seize that one second of opportunity."
"Received!"
Old Guo immediately redirected his muzzle, pouring dense pulse beams onto the scaled beasts blocking the path to the fungal carpet hub, forcefully clearing a brief passage.
"Go!"
Lin Yan exerted force on his feet, unleashing his ancient martial arts footwork. His figure darted rapidly along the undulating pile of white bones. The scaled beasts pounced and bit at him frantically. He either dodged sideways or slashed quickly with his short blade, every strike precisely chopping into the gaps of their carapaces. The fungal carpet was slippery, and he could slide at any moment. Keeping his center of gravity extremely low, he moved through the darkness like a shadow.
Illusions constantly formed beside him. The faces of fallen comrades and his master's appearance before death appeared one after another, whispering for him to stop. Lin Yan did not look sideways, did not listen, and did not respond. All his mental focus was locked onto that hub on the ground where all the patterns converged and the purple light was the most intense.
The distance was getting closer and closer.
The dual priests on the rock platform sensed his intention. The pitch of their chorus suddenly soared. Several psychic spikes abandoned Lu Heng, changing direction to pierce toward Lin Yan.
Lin Yan hastily erected a thin barrier with his Sea of Consciousness. The instant the spikes collided with it, a severe headache struck him. Darkness swam before his eyes, and a mouthful of blood surged to his tongue. He forcibly endured the vertigo, his footsteps not pausing for even a fraction of a second. Leaping into the air, he landed right in the center of the fungal carpet hub.
Dense fungal carpet tentacles frantically wrapped around him, trying to bind his limbs.
Lin Yan raised his hand, pulled out the oscillator grenade from his waist, and ripped off the safety catch in one swift motion.
"Get ready!"
He slammed the grenade deep into the surging purple veins of the fungal carpet.
White light exploded with a roar.
Theviolent Sea of Consciousness oscillation power no longer fought outward against the enemy; instead, it tore inward at the veins of the local illusion web.
The fungal carpet hub churned violently. The purple resonance patterns extinguished in large patches, and countless fungal tentacles instantly withered and shattered.
The illusion web signals throughout the entire cave abruptly cut off for an instant.
The crushing weight of the Sea of Consciousness quagmire vanished.
The dual priests' chorus came to an abrupt halt.
It was this very moment!
"Strike!" Lu Heng roared, unleashing his Sea of Consciousness power without reservation. A white wave of oscillation swept across the left rock platform!
End of Chapter.
Lin Yan tried to mobilize his Sea of Consciousness to push out a warning signal. The wisp of consciousness, usually light and expansive, now felt as heavy as if it were filled with lead. Every inch it extended cost several times the mental effort. He finally understood the true terror of that vast consciousness deep underground—it didn't directly tear apart the Sea of Consciousness; instead, it cast a domain-wide psychic stagnation field, dragging everyone's Sea of Consciousness into a quagmire.
You could still think, see, and pull the trigger, but the operation of all Sea of Consciousness abilities was severely slowed down.
The Sea of Consciousness oscillation barrier erected by Lu Heng could have easily dispersed the surging low-tier scaled beasts in the past. Now, the ripples diffused sluggishly and with drastically reduced power, merely causing the front-line beasts to pause for a moment before resuming their assault, their fangs getting closer and closer to his visor.
Old Guo gritted his teeth and pulled the trigger. The pulse beam struck the head of a scaled beast, exploding its carapace and spraying dark green fluid. Yet, more scaled beasts continuously surged forward, trampling over their companions' corpses. The oscillator attached to his gun body hummed at a high frequency, releasing white ripples that were insubstantial and weak, rapidly decaying within the stagnation field.
"The effectiveness of my oscillation module is down to less than thirty percent!" Old Guo's hoarse voice squeezed through the communication channel, accompanied by suppressed panting. "This thing counters all Sea of Consciousness-based methods. Most of our trump cards have been neutralized!"
Su Wan's situation on the right was even worse.
The interference module of her detector was originally a delicate Sea of Consciousness device, extremely sensitive to psychic stagnation fields. The data streams on the screen jumped wildly, and the warning lights flashed urgently. The reverse interference waves she forcibly output were crooked and erratic, no longer able to precisely target the priests' resonance frequency.
The dual priests' chorus stabilized without any hindrance, the pitch rising layer by layer.
Countless phantoms of fallen soldiers inside the cave took synchronized steps forward. Their footsteps landed on the fungal carpet without a sound, yet they carried an innate, suffocating dead silence. Chen Ye, having the shallowest foundation in his Sea of Consciousness, was the first to succumb to the dual pressure of the stagnation field and the illusion. Darkness swam before his eyes, and the rifle in his hand felt as heavy as a block of raw iron.
"I... I can't hold on much longer," Chen Ye's voice trembled. In his line of sight, the phantom of his deceased classmate had already walked up to him, extending a pale hand and slowly reaching toward his visor. "It's calling me to go with it..."
"Don't listen! Stare at physical objects! Look at the scaled beasts, the rocks, the fungal carpet! Don't let your thoughts drift with the illusion!" Su Wan freed one hand and fiercely pressed the Sea of Consciousness stimulation acupoint on the back of Chen Ye's neck. The intense pain temporarily pulled his scattered consciousness back. "Hold onto yourself. Don't hand over your consciousness!"
Lin Yan quickly weaved through the battlefield, arriving at their flank. With a horizontal sweep of his short blade, he chopped apart a scaled beast that had pounced using the illusion as cover. Warm, foul-smelling blood splattered onto his combat suit. Without sparing it a glance, he fully deployed his wisp of consciousness, simultaneously monitoring three targets: the dual priests on the left and right rock platforms, and the boundless source of the stagnation field beneath the rock strata.
He quickly grasped the pattern.
The dual priests were responsible for the chorus, creating illusions, and deploying the scaled beasts; the colossal entity underground was solely responsible for maintaining this Sea of Consciousness quagmire. Their division of labor was clear; they were not a single entity. As long as this underground entity didn't withdraw the stagnation field, they would never be able to utilize their Sea of Consciousness abilities normally.
But that consciousness was hidden beneath tens of meters of solid bedrock. It had no physical form revealed and no nodes to attack; they couldn't even touch the target.
"Captain, the stagnation field covers the entire area. The source is deep in the rock strata directly beneath us, with no passage for upward advancement!" Lin Yan reported rapidly. "We can't attack it. We can only break free from this chorus zone first and leave the core of its power's radiation!"
"Go where? We're completely blocked in all directions!" Lu Heng forced back a scaled beast pouncing in front of him with a shot, his gaze sweeping across the cave's ceiling. "Can we blast open the rock layer above?"
Su Wan immediately adjusted her detector to scan the rock structure above. "The upper layer is a single block of granite, over twelve meters thick. The barrier-breaking explosives we carry aren't enough. Even if we blast it open, the collapsing rubble will bury us alive!"
Before she finished speaking, the priest behind the left rock platform suddenly changed the rhythm.
The sharp screech abruptly shifted. The chorus no longer eroded them slowly; instead, it transformed into a sharp psychic spike, precisely locking onto Lu Heng, who was bearing the heaviest load.
Lu Heng let out a muffled groan, his body swaying violently. Fine, spiderweb-like cracks appeared on his Sea of Consciousness barrier. A metallic taste of blood rushed to his throat. He forcibly swallowed it back, but his footsteps couldn't help but stagger backward twice.
"Captain!" Old Guo hastily shifted half a step to block in front of Lu Heng, continuously sweeping fire from his pulse rifle to suppress the rock platform. "Your Sea of Consciousness is injured!"
"I'm fine, I can still hold on," Lu Heng gritted his teeth to steady his mind, but everyone could hear that his breathing had already become unsteady.
The situation had completely fallen into a disadvantage.
The scaled beasts were shrinking their encirclement ring by ring, the phantoms were layered densely, the Sea of Consciousness quagmire continued to drain everyone's mental power, and the dual priests were still waiting for opportunities to launch targeted psychic spikes, specifically targeting those whose Sea of Consciousness was most depleted. If they kept dragging this out, someone's Sea of Consciousness would inevitably collapse first.
Lin Yan's thoughts spun rapidly.
Others relied on barriers, oscillators, and detectors cultivated through Sea of Consciousness training to fight the enemy, and all these methods were suppressed by the stagnation field. But he was different. His foundation was ancient martial arts, physical senses, and tracing along psychic veins, rather than simply releasing Sea of Consciousness power outward.
The stagnation field could slow down the operation of his Sea of Consciousness, but it couldn't seal his instinct for sensing the flow of signals.
Staring at the intertwined, purple-glowing main veins of the fungal carpet, a plan formed in his mind.
"Captain, I have a method, but it carries extreme risk," Lin Yan said in a low voice. "All signals and the power of the stagnation field of the illusion web rely entirely on the fungal carpet for conduction. All the veins ultimately converge at the center of the cave floor. That is the main hub of this branch network. I can go there and use an oscillator grenade to directionally blast the hub, forcibly tearing apart the local fungal carpet network for a brief moment. Once the network breaks for an instant, the chorus will snap, and the stagnation field of that colossal underground entity will also experience a brief gap."
"The gap will only last for an instant," Lu Heng immediately understood the cost. "In that instant, all of us must seize the opportunity and concentrate our firepower to strike one of the rock platforms, severely injuring one of the priests to break the dual resonance. If we fail, you will be left in the very center of the encirclement. All the scaled beasts, illusions, and attacks from the two priests will instantly crash down on you."
"I understand," Lin Yan nodded, lightly wiping his short blade on the mucus of the fungal carpet. "My footwork is suited for a sudden advance. If someone else went, they might not be able to reach the hub."
There was no time left to negotiate.
Lu Heng took a deep breath and made a swift decision: "Plan approved. Old Guo, cover Lin Yan's advance. Su Wan, lock onto the right priest; the moment the fungal carpet breaks, release your interference at full power. I will bear the psychic spike from the left priest and seize the window for a strong attack. Chen Ye, follow me, prioritize covering fire. Remember, only seize that one second of opportunity."
"Received!"
Old Guo immediately redirected his muzzle, pouring dense pulse beams onto the scaled beasts blocking the path to the fungal carpet hub, forcefully clearing a brief passage.
"Go!"
Lin Yan exerted force on his feet, unleashing his ancient martial arts footwork. His figure darted rapidly along the undulating pile of white bones. The scaled beasts pounced and bit at him frantically. He either dodged sideways or slashed quickly with his short blade, every strike precisely chopping into the gaps of their carapaces. The fungal carpet was slippery, and he could slide at any moment. Keeping his center of gravity extremely low, he moved through the darkness like a shadow.
Illusions constantly formed beside him. The faces of fallen comrades and his master's appearance before death appeared one after another, whispering for him to stop. Lin Yan did not look sideways, did not listen, and did not respond. All his mental focus was locked onto that hub on the ground where all the patterns converged and the purple light was the most intense.
The distance was getting closer and closer.
The dual priests on the rock platform sensed his intention. The pitch of their chorus suddenly soared. Several psychic spikes abandoned Lu Heng, changing direction to pierce toward Lin Yan.
Lin Yan hastily erected a thin barrier with his Sea of Consciousness. The instant the spikes collided with it, a severe headache struck him. Darkness swam before his eyes, and a mouthful of blood surged to his tongue. He forcibly endured the vertigo, his footsteps not pausing for even a fraction of a second. Leaping into the air, he landed right in the center of the fungal carpet hub.
Dense fungal carpet tentacles frantically wrapped around him, trying to bind his limbs.
Lin Yan raised his hand, pulled out the oscillator grenade from his waist, and ripped off the safety catch in one swift motion.
"Get ready!"
He slammed the grenade deep into the surging purple veins of the fungal carpet.
White light exploded with a roar.
Theviolent Sea of Consciousness oscillation power no longer fought outward against the enemy; instead, it tore inward at the veins of the local illusion web.
The fungal carpet hub churned violently. The purple resonance patterns extinguished in large patches, and countless fungal tentacles instantly withered and shattered.
The illusion web signals throughout the entire cave abruptly cut off for an instant.
The crushing weight of the Sea of Consciousness quagmire vanished.
The dual priests' chorus came to an abrupt halt.
It was this very moment!
"Strike!" Lu Heng roared, unleashing his Sea of Consciousness power without reservation. A white wave of oscillation swept across the left rock platform!
End of Chapter.