Chapter 118: Shadows Returning to the Wasteland
The moment they climbed out of the entrance of Rift No. 79, the wind from the outside world enveloped them first.
It was no longer the hot, foul-smelling, spore-laden stagnant air from the underground karst cave. The wind on the wasteland was coarse and dry, carrying fine sand grains that tapped against their visors with a soft rustling sound. The grayish sky hung oppressively low. The sun was nowhere to be seen; there was only a perpetual, murky haze that rendered the entire expanse of land desolate and lifeless.
It had been nearly seven hours since the squad entered the rift.
Two war zone sentries waiting at the outer perimeter checkpoint immediately rushed forward, holding detectors to quickly scan everyone's bodies. The indicator lights on the psychic contamination detectors lit up one by one, and the values ticked upward slowly.
"Identify yourselves and check your psychic infection index," a sentry said in a steady voice. "Remove your masks one by one. Don't rush to take deep breaths. The rift spores will linger in the respiratory tract for a while after leaving the illusion web's environment."
Lu Heng was the first to take off his mask. A fresh scrape on his temple was crusted with dark red blood. His face was pale, and his lips were chapped. The damage to his Sea of Consciousness, caused by enduring the priest's psychic splinter in the passage, left no visible wounds, but it was far more grueling than a flesh injury.
"Mission accomplished. Confirmed objectives: the main intersection node of the illusion web in Rift No. 79 is destroyed, and the resonance link between the dual priests is permanently severed. Both are injured and have fled to the deep levels, temporarily losing their ability to fight in coordination." Lu Heng gave a brief report, raising his hand to pass over the fungal carpet sample tube Su Wan had packed. "Samples collected. However, there is an unknown, high-tier matrix consciousness underground, which is missing from our intelligence records. I recommend the war zone re-evaluate the danger level of Rift No. 79."
The sentry took the sample, carefully placing it in a shockproof, insulated box. Hearing this, his expression grew solemn, and he immediately took out a communicator to relay the message to the bastion command center in the rear.
Lin Yan took off his tactical mask, the slightly cool air rushing into his lungs. The red marks left by the fungal whip on his forearm were still faintly numb, the paralysis not yet fully subsided. Deep within his Sea of Consciousness lingered a dull ache from the shock. The wills of the two priests and the illusion web matrix were like a fine thorn, lodged in the corner of his consciousness, impossible to shake.
The words "We will meet again" echoed repeatedly in his mind.
It wasn't an empty threat. The illusion web matrix had seen countless intruders; most of them had silently dissipated within it. Only he had not only survived the encirclement by the dual priests but had also actively destroyed the main trunk node, forcibly breaking the resonance system they relied on to dominate the shallow rifts. In the eyes of that ancient entity, he had become a variable that needed to be marked and watched individually.
Su Wan squatted nearby, her head bowed as she reviewed the data logs saved in her detector, her fingers swiping rapidly across the screen.
"Looking back at the records, the matrix never launched a direct attack. Its two interventions were merely supportive. The first time, it spread the Sea of Consciousness quagmire to suppress all of us. The second time, it merely watched the priests surround and kill, without stepping in to deliver the final blow." Su Wan's brow furrowed. "It was more like a selection, testing the upper limits of the intruders. The priests are its tentacles, tools used to probe external enemies."
Old Guo leaned against the side of an all-terrain vehicle, taking out a basic medical kit. He tore open a disinfectant spray and sprayed it onto a scratch left by a scaled beast on his arm, hissing as he drew in a sharp breath.
"It's too bizarre. In the rift nodes we've dealt with before, the priests always fought to the death. This time, there was an old monster hiding behind the scenes, sitting comfortably underneath and watching the show." Old Guo shook his head. "We were lucky today that our entire squad made it out alive. If it were another team, when Lin Yan was entangled by the two priests alone in that corridor just now, it would have been a dead end."
Chen Ye stood not far away, silent, staring down at his slightly trembling hands.
Today's mission had been a massive shock to him. The appearance of his deceased classmate in the illusion, the tide-like siege of scaled beasts, the sinister psychic shrieks of the priests, and the boundless, oppressive feeling from underground had all been etched layer by layer into his Sea of Consciousness. He wasn't physically injured, but he had suffered severe mental exhaustion, and his eyes still held a lingering daze.
Noticing his condition, Su Wan stood up, walked over, and handed him a slow-release sedative injection. "It's a normal Sea of Consciousness stress response. Injecting this will calm your mental fluctuations and prevent night terrors or illusion recurrences once you get back. It's not an anesthetic; it's just a potion to stabilize the mind. Standard war zone issue."
Chen Ye hesitated for a moment, took the syringe, and injected himself into his upper arm.
"Thanks, Sister Su," he said softly. "Back in the cave, I almost couldn't hold on several times. If you guys hadn't pulled me through..."
"No one gets used to the illusion web right away." Su Wan gently patted his shoulder. "The illusion web is best at exploiting the soft spots in people's hearts. The fact that you held on until evacuation means you've passed. Just remember, if you encounter similar illusions in the future, don't let your thoughts follow your obsessions downward."
Before long, the roar of engines came from the distant wasteland. A war zone armored transport vehicle drove along the reinforced wasteland road. Its heavy tires crushed over gravel, kicking up a massive cloud of gray dust behind them.
The group boarded the vehicle one by one. The interior space was cramped, and the walls were lined with lead shielding to block psychic signals, used to isolate the scattered illusion web spores drifting on the wasteland. When the door closed, the howling wind of the wasteland and the faint, distant roars of scaled beasts from the direction of the rift were completely shut out.
The cabin fell silent, filled only with the low hum of the vehicle's instruments.
Lu Heng leaned against the cabin wall with his eyes closed to rest. While slowly regulating his breath to repair his damaged Sea of Consciousness, he arranged the follow-up tasks in a low voice: "Once we get back to the bastion, the first thing everyone must do is submit a mission report. Lin Yan, focus on detailing your contact with the matrix consciousness in the corridor; this is the most important new intelligence from this mission. Su Wan, package and encrypt the detection logs, and submit them directly to the intelligence department. Do not route them through intermediaries."
"Understood," Lin Yan replied.
He leaned against the opposite cabin wall and closed his eyes, not rushing to regulate his breath.
He was recalling the details of the skirmish in the corridor just now: the attack rhythm of the two priests, the path of the fungal carpet's energy flow, and the matrix's emotionless, pure will that was as immutable as the laws of nature. He had been stuck at the second tier of the Sea of Consciousness for a long time. He knew that to break through to the third tier, he had to undergo a life-and-death tempering that would shatter his consciousness. But today's bitter battle was still one step short of that critical threshold.
He had survived. He had won against the encirclement. But he hadn't reached the point where his consciousness collapsed and was reborn.
To break through his realm, he still needed a more extreme, desperate situation.
As soon as this thought surfaced, he was slightly taken aback himself.
It wasn't a craving for battle; rather, he clearly understood this rule of cultivation. Sea of Consciousness cultivation was different from the ancient martial arts he had practiced since childhood. Ancient martial arts tempered the flesh and accumulated internal energy step by step. But the advancement of the Sea of Consciousness was often completed in the fleeting moment of near-collapse. The price was that failure meant eternal silence of the consciousness.
The transport vehicle drove smoothly, heading back toward the bastion city.
Outside the window, the gray wasteland continuously receded. Broken concrete ruins, abandoned barbed wire fences, and deep, pitch-black rifts in the earth stretched endlessly. This land, trampled by alien races for twenty-five years, always carried an inescapable aura of death. Occasionally, a lone warning beacon could be seen on the distant wasteland, flashing intermittently. Its red light looked exceptionally tiny against the murky sky and earth.
"Speaking of which," Old Guo suddenly spoke up, breaking the silence. "Since the dual priests can't resonate, the outer perimeter of Rift No. 79 should be stable for a while. But the matrix is still alive. As long as it lives, the fungal carpet network will eventually regrow new main trunk nodes, and perhaps even cultivate new priests. Today, we only delayed the disaster; we didn't eradicate it."
Lu Heng slowly opened his eyes. Though fatigue lingered in his gaze, he was exceptionally clear-headed: "No one ever expected a single squad infiltration to pull out the root cause. The consensus of the six major war zones is that the ancient lizard progenitors have been operating underground for hundreds of millions of years. We humans are merely holding onto the bastions, barely surviving. Every time we destroy a node, it's essentially buying breathing room—giving the war preparation academies time to train another batch of Sea of Consciousness warriors, and giving logistics time to stockpile another batch of supplies and weapons. That's how a war of attrition is fought."
Lin Yan looked out the window at the endless, desolate land.
When he first came down from the mountain, he only knew that alien races crawled out of the rifts to devour humans. Having walked this path all the way to now, having fought bloody battles on the city walls and ventured deep into the underground illusion web, he had slowly touched upon the truth. Those scaled beasts were never independent wild animals; they were hunting tools woven by the matrix and the ancient progenitors. The illusion web was not merely a killing move; it was a sensory organ they used to observe, learn, and filter humans.
They were learning about human fears, obsessions, and weaknesses.
And that illusion web matrix had already remembered him.
"The next time we enter this rift, it won't be the same situation as today," Lin Yan said in a low voice.
Lu Heng turned to look at him. After a moment of silence, he slowly nodded. "Yes. It will prepare traps specifically for you."
The transport vehicle continued forward. The thick, imposing silhouette of the bastion finally emerged slowly at the end of the gray horizon. Tall, cold, and cast from reinforced concrete and alloy steel plates, it was humanity's last barrier on this fallen land.
End of Chapter.
It was no longer the hot, foul-smelling, spore-laden stagnant air from the underground karst cave. The wind on the wasteland was coarse and dry, carrying fine sand grains that tapped against their visors with a soft rustling sound. The grayish sky hung oppressively low. The sun was nowhere to be seen; there was only a perpetual, murky haze that rendered the entire expanse of land desolate and lifeless.
It had been nearly seven hours since the squad entered the rift.
Two war zone sentries waiting at the outer perimeter checkpoint immediately rushed forward, holding detectors to quickly scan everyone's bodies. The indicator lights on the psychic contamination detectors lit up one by one, and the values ticked upward slowly.
"Identify yourselves and check your psychic infection index," a sentry said in a steady voice. "Remove your masks one by one. Don't rush to take deep breaths. The rift spores will linger in the respiratory tract for a while after leaving the illusion web's environment."
Lu Heng was the first to take off his mask. A fresh scrape on his temple was crusted with dark red blood. His face was pale, and his lips were chapped. The damage to his Sea of Consciousness, caused by enduring the priest's psychic splinter in the passage, left no visible wounds, but it was far more grueling than a flesh injury.
"Mission accomplished. Confirmed objectives: the main intersection node of the illusion web in Rift No. 79 is destroyed, and the resonance link between the dual priests is permanently severed. Both are injured and have fled to the deep levels, temporarily losing their ability to fight in coordination." Lu Heng gave a brief report, raising his hand to pass over the fungal carpet sample tube Su Wan had packed. "Samples collected. However, there is an unknown, high-tier matrix consciousness underground, which is missing from our intelligence records. I recommend the war zone re-evaluate the danger level of Rift No. 79."
The sentry took the sample, carefully placing it in a shockproof, insulated box. Hearing this, his expression grew solemn, and he immediately took out a communicator to relay the message to the bastion command center in the rear.
Lin Yan took off his tactical mask, the slightly cool air rushing into his lungs. The red marks left by the fungal whip on his forearm were still faintly numb, the paralysis not yet fully subsided. Deep within his Sea of Consciousness lingered a dull ache from the shock. The wills of the two priests and the illusion web matrix were like a fine thorn, lodged in the corner of his consciousness, impossible to shake.
The words "We will meet again" echoed repeatedly in his mind.
It wasn't an empty threat. The illusion web matrix had seen countless intruders; most of them had silently dissipated within it. Only he had not only survived the encirclement by the dual priests but had also actively destroyed the main trunk node, forcibly breaking the resonance system they relied on to dominate the shallow rifts. In the eyes of that ancient entity, he had become a variable that needed to be marked and watched individually.
Su Wan squatted nearby, her head bowed as she reviewed the data logs saved in her detector, her fingers swiping rapidly across the screen.
"Looking back at the records, the matrix never launched a direct attack. Its two interventions were merely supportive. The first time, it spread the Sea of Consciousness quagmire to suppress all of us. The second time, it merely watched the priests surround and kill, without stepping in to deliver the final blow." Su Wan's brow furrowed. "It was more like a selection, testing the upper limits of the intruders. The priests are its tentacles, tools used to probe external enemies."
Old Guo leaned against the side of an all-terrain vehicle, taking out a basic medical kit. He tore open a disinfectant spray and sprayed it onto a scratch left by a scaled beast on his arm, hissing as he drew in a sharp breath.
"It's too bizarre. In the rift nodes we've dealt with before, the priests always fought to the death. This time, there was an old monster hiding behind the scenes, sitting comfortably underneath and watching the show." Old Guo shook his head. "We were lucky today that our entire squad made it out alive. If it were another team, when Lin Yan was entangled by the two priests alone in that corridor just now, it would have been a dead end."
Chen Ye stood not far away, silent, staring down at his slightly trembling hands.
Today's mission had been a massive shock to him. The appearance of his deceased classmate in the illusion, the tide-like siege of scaled beasts, the sinister psychic shrieks of the priests, and the boundless, oppressive feeling from underground had all been etched layer by layer into his Sea of Consciousness. He wasn't physically injured, but he had suffered severe mental exhaustion, and his eyes still held a lingering daze.
Noticing his condition, Su Wan stood up, walked over, and handed him a slow-release sedative injection. "It's a normal Sea of Consciousness stress response. Injecting this will calm your mental fluctuations and prevent night terrors or illusion recurrences once you get back. It's not an anesthetic; it's just a potion to stabilize the mind. Standard war zone issue."
Chen Ye hesitated for a moment, took the syringe, and injected himself into his upper arm.
"Thanks, Sister Su," he said softly. "Back in the cave, I almost couldn't hold on several times. If you guys hadn't pulled me through..."
"No one gets used to the illusion web right away." Su Wan gently patted his shoulder. "The illusion web is best at exploiting the soft spots in people's hearts. The fact that you held on until evacuation means you've passed. Just remember, if you encounter similar illusions in the future, don't let your thoughts follow your obsessions downward."
Before long, the roar of engines came from the distant wasteland. A war zone armored transport vehicle drove along the reinforced wasteland road. Its heavy tires crushed over gravel, kicking up a massive cloud of gray dust behind them.
The group boarded the vehicle one by one. The interior space was cramped, and the walls were lined with lead shielding to block psychic signals, used to isolate the scattered illusion web spores drifting on the wasteland. When the door closed, the howling wind of the wasteland and the faint, distant roars of scaled beasts from the direction of the rift were completely shut out.
The cabin fell silent, filled only with the low hum of the vehicle's instruments.
Lu Heng leaned against the cabin wall with his eyes closed to rest. While slowly regulating his breath to repair his damaged Sea of Consciousness, he arranged the follow-up tasks in a low voice: "Once we get back to the bastion, the first thing everyone must do is submit a mission report. Lin Yan, focus on detailing your contact with the matrix consciousness in the corridor; this is the most important new intelligence from this mission. Su Wan, package and encrypt the detection logs, and submit them directly to the intelligence department. Do not route them through intermediaries."
"Understood," Lin Yan replied.
He leaned against the opposite cabin wall and closed his eyes, not rushing to regulate his breath.
He was recalling the details of the skirmish in the corridor just now: the attack rhythm of the two priests, the path of the fungal carpet's energy flow, and the matrix's emotionless, pure will that was as immutable as the laws of nature. He had been stuck at the second tier of the Sea of Consciousness for a long time. He knew that to break through to the third tier, he had to undergo a life-and-death tempering that would shatter his consciousness. But today's bitter battle was still one step short of that critical threshold.
He had survived. He had won against the encirclement. But he hadn't reached the point where his consciousness collapsed and was reborn.
To break through his realm, he still needed a more extreme, desperate situation.
As soon as this thought surfaced, he was slightly taken aback himself.
It wasn't a craving for battle; rather, he clearly understood this rule of cultivation. Sea of Consciousness cultivation was different from the ancient martial arts he had practiced since childhood. Ancient martial arts tempered the flesh and accumulated internal energy step by step. But the advancement of the Sea of Consciousness was often completed in the fleeting moment of near-collapse. The price was that failure meant eternal silence of the consciousness.
The transport vehicle drove smoothly, heading back toward the bastion city.
Outside the window, the gray wasteland continuously receded. Broken concrete ruins, abandoned barbed wire fences, and deep, pitch-black rifts in the earth stretched endlessly. This land, trampled by alien races for twenty-five years, always carried an inescapable aura of death. Occasionally, a lone warning beacon could be seen on the distant wasteland, flashing intermittently. Its red light looked exceptionally tiny against the murky sky and earth.
"Speaking of which," Old Guo suddenly spoke up, breaking the silence. "Since the dual priests can't resonate, the outer perimeter of Rift No. 79 should be stable for a while. But the matrix is still alive. As long as it lives, the fungal carpet network will eventually regrow new main trunk nodes, and perhaps even cultivate new priests. Today, we only delayed the disaster; we didn't eradicate it."
Lu Heng slowly opened his eyes. Though fatigue lingered in his gaze, he was exceptionally clear-headed: "No one ever expected a single squad infiltration to pull out the root cause. The consensus of the six major war zones is that the ancient lizard progenitors have been operating underground for hundreds of millions of years. We humans are merely holding onto the bastions, barely surviving. Every time we destroy a node, it's essentially buying breathing room—giving the war preparation academies time to train another batch of Sea of Consciousness warriors, and giving logistics time to stockpile another batch of supplies and weapons. That's how a war of attrition is fought."
Lin Yan looked out the window at the endless, desolate land.
When he first came down from the mountain, he only knew that alien races crawled out of the rifts to devour humans. Having walked this path all the way to now, having fought bloody battles on the city walls and ventured deep into the underground illusion web, he had slowly touched upon the truth. Those scaled beasts were never independent wild animals; they were hunting tools woven by the matrix and the ancient progenitors. The illusion web was not merely a killing move; it was a sensory organ they used to observe, learn, and filter humans.
They were learning about human fears, obsessions, and weaknesses.
And that illusion web matrix had already remembered him.
"The next time we enter this rift, it won't be the same situation as today," Lin Yan said in a low voice.
Lu Heng turned to look at him. After a moment of silence, he slowly nodded. "Yes. It will prepare traps specifically for you."
The transport vehicle continued forward. The thick, imposing silhouette of the bastion finally emerged slowly at the end of the gray horizon. Tall, cold, and cast from reinforced concrete and alloy steel plates, it was humanity's last barrier on this fallen land.
End of Chapter.