Chapter 136: The Triangular Cage
The afterglow of the setting sun was filtered by the thick, gray haze above the bastion into a bleak orange-yellow. The convoy of off-road vehicles drove into the West Gate, and the heavy alloy gates slowly closed behind them, sealing off the boundless, dead silence of the wasteland outside.
Back at the base, everyone unloaded their equipment. Having continuously discovered three sets of dual-anchor linked phantom seeds today, Lin Yan and Gu Shen had taken turns bearing the burden of perception and discrimination. Even with rotation and regulated timing, their mental power was still continuously overdrawn. When getting out of the car, Lin Yan had a faint trace of exhaustion in his eyes. Deep within his Sea of Consciousness, that old hidden injury lay quietly dormant; it hadn't flared up with stabbing pain, but it constantly reminded him that he couldn't let his guard down.
Gu Shen patted his shoulder. His voice was hoarse, carrying the fatigue accumulated from years of guarding the wasteland. "The matrix is learning too fast. From individual dormant phantom seeds, to remote-controlled single seeds, to paired deployments with one visible and one hidden—the intervals are very short. It's using our external squads as test subjects, continuously iterating the trap structures."
"It has mastered our behavioral patterns," Lin Yan responded softly. "After we find a phantom seed, we habitually guard in place and wait for the disposal team. This fixed behavior is the breakthrough point for its layout."
"Exactly," Gu Shen nodded. "The command center just sent a temporary notice. There will be an online consultation for high-tier cultivators on the Western Front tonight at eight o'clock. All third-tier and above Sea of Consciousness cultivators must attend to assess the early warning plan for the triangular linked phantom array. The intelligence department just received a distress record from the Northern Front. A patrol squad ran into a prototype trap suspected to be a triangular anchor point. Fortunately, the fourth-tier cultivator leading them reacted extremely fast, forcibly tearing apart the psychic pull. The entire squad fought desperately to retreat, but two people suffered permanent, mild damage to their Sea of Consciousness."
Lin Yan's heart sank.
Three-anchor linkage. A triangular cage.
Three points surrounded the target, with the fungal hyphae links between the phantom seeds weaving into a stable triangular closed loop. The three corridors were interconnected, leaving no single direction for retreat. Once stepping into the inner area of the triangle, whether retreating forward, left, or right, one would fall into the radiation range of one of the phantom seeds. It was no longer just blocking a single retreat route; it directly locked down the entire space.
After parting ways, Lin Yan first went to the psychiatry department for a quick re-examination. The monitoring waveform was stable, and the hidden injury hadn't worsened. After reviewing the data, Instructor Wen repeatedly instructed that tomorrow's external mission must continue with rotating perception, and strictly forbade single-person full-area scans.
Night enveloped the bastion.
At eight o'clock, the online consultation started on time. In the virtual projection meeting room, the Western Front's remaining five third-tier and two fourth-tier cultivators all logged on, with the war zone commander, the intelligence director, and psychiatry researchers lined up on both sides.
The intelligence director brought up the wasteland terrain map. Several pale purple triangular markers fell on a few supply branch roads on the Northern Front.
"The on-site survey of the distress scene on the Northern Front is complete. Three phantom seed anchor points are arranged in an equilateral triangle, spaced one hundred and twenty meters apart. The hyphae are interconnected underground and trigger synchronously. Once activated, the triple corridors intertwine and overlap, multiplying the looping layers of the illusion. The anchor points are hidden in three different crevices of the corridor. To find any one of them, you must simultaneously endure the continuous mental power consumption from the other two phantom seeds."
The projection played the survivor's oral account. The fourth-tier cultivator described the feeling of being trapped: it wasn't a terrifying illusion rushing at them, nor a sharp psychic impact. In an instant, all directions around them turned into identical, endless gravel dirt roads. Walking forward was a corridor; turning back was still the same corridor; breaking out to the side was still a looping passage.
Everywhere they looked was a cage.
"With dual phantom seeds, there is at least an escape route to gamble on. The triangular phantom array has no safe direction," a fourth-tier cultivator said in a deep voice. "Even a fourth-tier Sea of Consciousness has to pay a price to forcibly break free. If a third-tier falls deeply into it, the probability of escaping is less than twenty percent."
The atmosphere in the meeting room was oppressive.
Someone proposed a plan: increase fixed detection towers and densify the wasteland monitoring network.
It was immediately vetoed by the intelligence director. "The wasteland is too vast, with rifts scattered like stars. The deployment cycle for detection towers is too long; the consumables and manpower can't keep up with the matrix's seeding speed. The matrix's hyphae can follow the rock crevices, bypassing the monitoring blind spots of the towers to deliver phantom seed embryos."
Someone else suggested that external squads no longer wait in place for the disposal team. Once traces of a phantom seed are found, they should mark the coordinates and retreat directly, leaving the subsequent remote bombardment to heavy firepower squads.
"The drawbacks are obvious," Instructor Wen took over. "Phantom seeds are buried under rock strata and concrete blocks; ordinary artillery fire is very hard to completely destroy the anchor points. If the surface rock layer is blasted to pieces, the phantom seed embryos might actually follow the broken hyphae to transfer to deeper soil layers, becoming an even harder-to-locate hazard. Moreover, artillery bombardment will disturb the geomagnetic field, covering the signals of other surrounding phantom seeds, making it very easy to miss the other two anchor points of the triangular array."
Several plans were weighed and vetoed one by one.
On the human side, defensive measures could never keep up with the speed of the matrix's trap iterations. It didn't need to create large-scale beast tides or sacrifice massive numbers of scaled beasts. Relying solely on underground hyphae to transport phantom seed embryos, it used low-cost, silent methods to continuously compress humanity's operational space.
The consultation finally established new external operational guidelines:
First, when all squads enter suspected high-risk areas, they must prioritize drawing a large-scale perimeter. Two third-tier cultivators will conduct separate full-area scans. Only after confirming that there is no triangular anchor closed loop may they approach the target.
Second, if two phantom seeds are found in the same area, assume a third exists. Immediately retreat entirely; do not stay nearby.
Third, if a triangular phantom array activation is encountered, the first command is not to search for the anchor point to break the situation. It is for all personnel to synchronously retract their Sea of Consciousness, abandon perception, and blindly retreat relying on pre-agreed directional markers. Do not waste mental power searching for weaknesses inside the corridor.
The meeting ended, and the communication channel was closed.
Sitting at the desk in his dormitory, Lin Yan took out paper and pen, writing down the characteristics, risks, and retreat guidelines of the triangular phantom array one by one. Ancient martial arts combat focused on finding flaws and attacking weak points, but the entangled struggle of Sea of Consciousness illusions was different. Many times, the best choice wasn't to break the situation, but to escape.
Early the next morning, the squad assembled.
Today's patrol route was an abandoned branch road on the south side of the West Old Path. In the early years, it was used to transport building materials. The roadside was dotted with deeply excavated quarry pits, with chaotic rocks piled up and rock strata fractures crisscrossing. It was an excellent terrain for setting up a triangular phantom array. As usual, Lin Yan was paired with Gu Shen for rotating dual-person perception, while Lu Heng, Chen Ye, and Zhao Kai were responsible for guarding, instruments, and communications.
The vehicles drove onto the branch road. The view was filled with massive, shattered blue-gray rocks, with continuous pits. The wind blew through the rock crevices, emitting a low, mournful wail.
"Spread out, maintain a one-hundred-meter distance," Lu Heng said in a lowered voice. "Lin Yan, Gu Shen, spread out your perception separately. Prioritize investigating the pit bottoms and rock crevice clusters. Focus on searching for anchor point traces where three locations can form a triangular closed loop."
The two simultaneously released their perception threads.
The geomagnetic conditions today were decent, and the perception signals transmitted smoothly. Lin Yan's perception extended downward along the western rock wall of the quarry pit, and he quickly caught the familiar, placid waves beneath a collapsed rock pile.
"Western edge of the pit, first Corridor Phantom Seed discovered."
The channel instantly fell silent.
Gu Shen immediately redirected his perception. No longer scanning aimlessly over a large area, he extended his probe toward the other two directions along the azimuths that could form a triangle.
A moment later, Gu Shen's voice sounded, taut with tension: "Southeast direction, bottom of the rubble pile, second one! Distance to the first is one hundred and thirteen meters; the distance fits the deployment spacing of a triangular array!"
Everyone's heart tightened.
Two. Two had already appeared. According to last night's consultation judgment, there was a very high probability that a third anchor point was hidden here.
"All personnel retreat! Fall back to the high ground two hundred meters away first!" Lu Heng ordered without hesitation.
The few of them retreated in an orderly fashion, their vigilant gazes sweeping over the jagged rocks around them. No one knew under which rock the third phantom seed was hidden.
While retreating, Lin Yan maintained his perception lock on the two known anchor points, while slowly extending threads toward the northern area.
A few dozen seconds later, beneath the entrance of a karst cave on the north side, buried by rubble, a third wave, as silent as stagnant water, slowly emerged from the chaotic rock strata noise.
The three anchor points formed an almost perfect equilateral triangle.
The triangular cage was fully formed.
"Below the northern karst cave, the third anchor point. The three links are interconnected; a closed loop has been formed," Lin Yan's voice sank. "As long as we step into this area inside the triangle, the matrix can synchronously activate the three phantom seeds at any time."
A chill ran down Chen Ye's back as he looked at this seemingly ordinary quarry pit. There was no blood, no scaled beasts, no intuitive signs of danger. Yet the entire area surrounded by the triangle had already turned into a consciousness maze waiting for prey to step in.
Lu Heng immediately reported the coordinates, stating it was a complete triangular linked phantom array, and requested the deployment of more than two neutralization suppressors. The disposal team needed double the manpower. He also applied for the remote observation watchtower to lock onto this area to prevent the matrix from taking advantage of the disposal team's arrival to mobilize scaled beast scouts for a coordinated sneak attack.
Lin Yan and Gu Shen stood at the edge of the high ground, taking turns maintaining the perception lock.
The phantom seed link of the triangular closed loop was even more stable than that of paired phantom seeds. The three phantom seeds mutually supplied weak psychic resonance. Even if one link was briefly damaged, the other two could still maintain the trigger conditions, drastically increasing the difficulty of breaking it.
"The matrix has already polished this set of traps to maturity," Gu Shen said in a low voice. "Give it some time, and we might see multi-node illusion web traps with four or five anchors."
Lin Yan looked down at the crisscrossing rocks in the quarry pit and nodded silently.
He suddenly realized that the essence of this war was no longer a bloody slaughter.
Using long years, the ancient lizard progenitors had thoroughly digested all the weaknesses of the human Sea of Consciousness cultivation system, turning psychic traps into a war weapon that could be mass-produced and deployed in a standardized manner.
The wasteland wind swept over the stone pit, causing the rubble to roll slightly.
Within the triangle, three phantom seeds lay quietly dormant, waiting for the next group of humans to accidentally wander into the encirclement.
And deep beneath the earth, at the core of the fungal carpet in Rift No. 79, it had already begun calculating the next combination method for multi-node phantom arrays.
End of Chapter.
Back at the base, everyone unloaded their equipment. Having continuously discovered three sets of dual-anchor linked phantom seeds today, Lin Yan and Gu Shen had taken turns bearing the burden of perception and discrimination. Even with rotation and regulated timing, their mental power was still continuously overdrawn. When getting out of the car, Lin Yan had a faint trace of exhaustion in his eyes. Deep within his Sea of Consciousness, that old hidden injury lay quietly dormant; it hadn't flared up with stabbing pain, but it constantly reminded him that he couldn't let his guard down.
Gu Shen patted his shoulder. His voice was hoarse, carrying the fatigue accumulated from years of guarding the wasteland. "The matrix is learning too fast. From individual dormant phantom seeds, to remote-controlled single seeds, to paired deployments with one visible and one hidden—the intervals are very short. It's using our external squads as test subjects, continuously iterating the trap structures."
"It has mastered our behavioral patterns," Lin Yan responded softly. "After we find a phantom seed, we habitually guard in place and wait for the disposal team. This fixed behavior is the breakthrough point for its layout."
"Exactly," Gu Shen nodded. "The command center just sent a temporary notice. There will be an online consultation for high-tier cultivators on the Western Front tonight at eight o'clock. All third-tier and above Sea of Consciousness cultivators must attend to assess the early warning plan for the triangular linked phantom array. The intelligence department just received a distress record from the Northern Front. A patrol squad ran into a prototype trap suspected to be a triangular anchor point. Fortunately, the fourth-tier cultivator leading them reacted extremely fast, forcibly tearing apart the psychic pull. The entire squad fought desperately to retreat, but two people suffered permanent, mild damage to their Sea of Consciousness."
Lin Yan's heart sank.
Three-anchor linkage. A triangular cage.
Three points surrounded the target, with the fungal hyphae links between the phantom seeds weaving into a stable triangular closed loop. The three corridors were interconnected, leaving no single direction for retreat. Once stepping into the inner area of the triangle, whether retreating forward, left, or right, one would fall into the radiation range of one of the phantom seeds. It was no longer just blocking a single retreat route; it directly locked down the entire space.
After parting ways, Lin Yan first went to the psychiatry department for a quick re-examination. The monitoring waveform was stable, and the hidden injury hadn't worsened. After reviewing the data, Instructor Wen repeatedly instructed that tomorrow's external mission must continue with rotating perception, and strictly forbade single-person full-area scans.
Night enveloped the bastion.
At eight o'clock, the online consultation started on time. In the virtual projection meeting room, the Western Front's remaining five third-tier and two fourth-tier cultivators all logged on, with the war zone commander, the intelligence director, and psychiatry researchers lined up on both sides.
The intelligence director brought up the wasteland terrain map. Several pale purple triangular markers fell on a few supply branch roads on the Northern Front.
"The on-site survey of the distress scene on the Northern Front is complete. Three phantom seed anchor points are arranged in an equilateral triangle, spaced one hundred and twenty meters apart. The hyphae are interconnected underground and trigger synchronously. Once activated, the triple corridors intertwine and overlap, multiplying the looping layers of the illusion. The anchor points are hidden in three different crevices of the corridor. To find any one of them, you must simultaneously endure the continuous mental power consumption from the other two phantom seeds."
The projection played the survivor's oral account. The fourth-tier cultivator described the feeling of being trapped: it wasn't a terrifying illusion rushing at them, nor a sharp psychic impact. In an instant, all directions around them turned into identical, endless gravel dirt roads. Walking forward was a corridor; turning back was still the same corridor; breaking out to the side was still a looping passage.
Everywhere they looked was a cage.
"With dual phantom seeds, there is at least an escape route to gamble on. The triangular phantom array has no safe direction," a fourth-tier cultivator said in a deep voice. "Even a fourth-tier Sea of Consciousness has to pay a price to forcibly break free. If a third-tier falls deeply into it, the probability of escaping is less than twenty percent."
The atmosphere in the meeting room was oppressive.
Someone proposed a plan: increase fixed detection towers and densify the wasteland monitoring network.
It was immediately vetoed by the intelligence director. "The wasteland is too vast, with rifts scattered like stars. The deployment cycle for detection towers is too long; the consumables and manpower can't keep up with the matrix's seeding speed. The matrix's hyphae can follow the rock crevices, bypassing the monitoring blind spots of the towers to deliver phantom seed embryos."
Someone else suggested that external squads no longer wait in place for the disposal team. Once traces of a phantom seed are found, they should mark the coordinates and retreat directly, leaving the subsequent remote bombardment to heavy firepower squads.
"The drawbacks are obvious," Instructor Wen took over. "Phantom seeds are buried under rock strata and concrete blocks; ordinary artillery fire is very hard to completely destroy the anchor points. If the surface rock layer is blasted to pieces, the phantom seed embryos might actually follow the broken hyphae to transfer to deeper soil layers, becoming an even harder-to-locate hazard. Moreover, artillery bombardment will disturb the geomagnetic field, covering the signals of other surrounding phantom seeds, making it very easy to miss the other two anchor points of the triangular array."
Several plans were weighed and vetoed one by one.
On the human side, defensive measures could never keep up with the speed of the matrix's trap iterations. It didn't need to create large-scale beast tides or sacrifice massive numbers of scaled beasts. Relying solely on underground hyphae to transport phantom seed embryos, it used low-cost, silent methods to continuously compress humanity's operational space.
The consultation finally established new external operational guidelines:
First, when all squads enter suspected high-risk areas, they must prioritize drawing a large-scale perimeter. Two third-tier cultivators will conduct separate full-area scans. Only after confirming that there is no triangular anchor closed loop may they approach the target.
Second, if two phantom seeds are found in the same area, assume a third exists. Immediately retreat entirely; do not stay nearby.
Third, if a triangular phantom array activation is encountered, the first command is not to search for the anchor point to break the situation. It is for all personnel to synchronously retract their Sea of Consciousness, abandon perception, and blindly retreat relying on pre-agreed directional markers. Do not waste mental power searching for weaknesses inside the corridor.
The meeting ended, and the communication channel was closed.
Sitting at the desk in his dormitory, Lin Yan took out paper and pen, writing down the characteristics, risks, and retreat guidelines of the triangular phantom array one by one. Ancient martial arts combat focused on finding flaws and attacking weak points, but the entangled struggle of Sea of Consciousness illusions was different. Many times, the best choice wasn't to break the situation, but to escape.
Early the next morning, the squad assembled.
Today's patrol route was an abandoned branch road on the south side of the West Old Path. In the early years, it was used to transport building materials. The roadside was dotted with deeply excavated quarry pits, with chaotic rocks piled up and rock strata fractures crisscrossing. It was an excellent terrain for setting up a triangular phantom array. As usual, Lin Yan was paired with Gu Shen for rotating dual-person perception, while Lu Heng, Chen Ye, and Zhao Kai were responsible for guarding, instruments, and communications.
The vehicles drove onto the branch road. The view was filled with massive, shattered blue-gray rocks, with continuous pits. The wind blew through the rock crevices, emitting a low, mournful wail.
"Spread out, maintain a one-hundred-meter distance," Lu Heng said in a lowered voice. "Lin Yan, Gu Shen, spread out your perception separately. Prioritize investigating the pit bottoms and rock crevice clusters. Focus on searching for anchor point traces where three locations can form a triangular closed loop."
The two simultaneously released their perception threads.
The geomagnetic conditions today were decent, and the perception signals transmitted smoothly. Lin Yan's perception extended downward along the western rock wall of the quarry pit, and he quickly caught the familiar, placid waves beneath a collapsed rock pile.
"Western edge of the pit, first Corridor Phantom Seed discovered."
The channel instantly fell silent.
Gu Shen immediately redirected his perception. No longer scanning aimlessly over a large area, he extended his probe toward the other two directions along the azimuths that could form a triangle.
A moment later, Gu Shen's voice sounded, taut with tension: "Southeast direction, bottom of the rubble pile, second one! Distance to the first is one hundred and thirteen meters; the distance fits the deployment spacing of a triangular array!"
Everyone's heart tightened.
Two. Two had already appeared. According to last night's consultation judgment, there was a very high probability that a third anchor point was hidden here.
"All personnel retreat! Fall back to the high ground two hundred meters away first!" Lu Heng ordered without hesitation.
The few of them retreated in an orderly fashion, their vigilant gazes sweeping over the jagged rocks around them. No one knew under which rock the third phantom seed was hidden.
While retreating, Lin Yan maintained his perception lock on the two known anchor points, while slowly extending threads toward the northern area.
A few dozen seconds later, beneath the entrance of a karst cave on the north side, buried by rubble, a third wave, as silent as stagnant water, slowly emerged from the chaotic rock strata noise.
The three anchor points formed an almost perfect equilateral triangle.
The triangular cage was fully formed.
"Below the northern karst cave, the third anchor point. The three links are interconnected; a closed loop has been formed," Lin Yan's voice sank. "As long as we step into this area inside the triangle, the matrix can synchronously activate the three phantom seeds at any time."
A chill ran down Chen Ye's back as he looked at this seemingly ordinary quarry pit. There was no blood, no scaled beasts, no intuitive signs of danger. Yet the entire area surrounded by the triangle had already turned into a consciousness maze waiting for prey to step in.
Lu Heng immediately reported the coordinates, stating it was a complete triangular linked phantom array, and requested the deployment of more than two neutralization suppressors. The disposal team needed double the manpower. He also applied for the remote observation watchtower to lock onto this area to prevent the matrix from taking advantage of the disposal team's arrival to mobilize scaled beast scouts for a coordinated sneak attack.
Lin Yan and Gu Shen stood at the edge of the high ground, taking turns maintaining the perception lock.
The phantom seed link of the triangular closed loop was even more stable than that of paired phantom seeds. The three phantom seeds mutually supplied weak psychic resonance. Even if one link was briefly damaged, the other two could still maintain the trigger conditions, drastically increasing the difficulty of breaking it.
"The matrix has already polished this set of traps to maturity," Gu Shen said in a low voice. "Give it some time, and we might see multi-node illusion web traps with four or five anchors."
Lin Yan looked down at the crisscrossing rocks in the quarry pit and nodded silently.
He suddenly realized that the essence of this war was no longer a bloody slaughter.
Using long years, the ancient lizard progenitors had thoroughly digested all the weaknesses of the human Sea of Consciousness cultivation system, turning psychic traps into a war weapon that could be mass-produced and deployed in a standardized manner.
The wasteland wind swept over the stone pit, causing the rubble to roll slightly.
Within the triangle, three phantom seeds lay quietly dormant, waiting for the next group of humans to accidentally wander into the encirclement.
And deep beneath the earth, at the core of the fungal carpet in Rift No. 79, it had already begun calculating the next combination method for multi-node phantom arrays.
End of Chapter.