Chapter 139: The Delayed Fuse
The off-road vehicle sped along the road, leaving the area of broken walls riddled with the improved triangular phantom array far behind in the depths of the wasteland. The atmosphere inside the cabin was as heavy as if it had been soaked in ice water. No one spoke; there was only the low roar of the engine and the muffled sound of tires rolling over the sand.
That warning just now had nearly been a disaster.
Everyone knew clearly that if they had harbored a chance and approached the broken walls to excavate after the fifteen-minute monitoring period ended, the moment that delayed fuse was ignited, the entire squad would have been instantly swallowed by the sudden corridor. The matrix had thoroughly grasped the safety rules established by humanity; even the fifteen-minute observation window had been factored into its trap design.
"This rule is void from now on," Lu Heng said, gripping the steering wheel, his gaze fixed dead-set on the gray-yellow road ahead. "The fifteen-minute observation period will no longer serve as the safety determination standard. As long as a phantom array is detected to have secondary bypasses, we will abandon sampling entirely, mark the coordinates directly, and request remote heavy firepower coverage. We will no longer gamble on whether it will trigger with a delay."
Zhao Kai lowered his head to modify the field record on his tablet, his fingertips slightly stiff. "But heavy firepower has its limitations too. The phantom seeds are buried deep in the crevices of the rock strata. Artillery shells can only overturn the surface soil and rocks; it's very hard to completely destroy the deeply buried embryos. Once the hyphae are blasted apart, the bypass links will fragment, potentially scattering into more scattered, independent phantom seeds. The hidden dangers will spread out, making them even harder to track."
This was an unsolvable dead end.
Sampling and dismantling required getting close, facing the secondary bypasses that could detonate at any moment, and even the delayed triggers. On the other hand, artillery bombardment carried the risk of dismantling the trap into more, smaller, and more concealed hazards, scattering them into the rock crevices of the wasteland like dandelion seeds.
Lin Yan leaned against the car window, eyes closed as he regulated his breathing. His perception was kept entirely within the core of his Sea of Consciousness, not releasing a single wisp outward.
In his mind, he repeatedly replayed the image of that secondary bypass slowly elevating its waves. The matrix no longer pursued head-on collisions with humanity. It was learning to use "time" itself to manufacture fear. It didn't detonate immediately, nor did it strike during the alert phase. Instead, it waited patiently, dormant, pressing the switch only when humanity's vigilance dropped to its lowest and they had determined the danger had passed.
Gu Shen rubbed his brow and slowly spoke, "I've seen similar tactics in beast tide ambushes on the Southern Front before. They would first send out a few scouts for a feint attack. Once the defenders thought the threat was over and relaxed their lines, the main beast horde would charge out from the flank or rear. Now, it has transplanted this tactic onto the phantom seed traps."
"It's not an instinctive ambush; it's a standardized timing design," Lin Yan opened his eyes, his voice very soft. "It can precisely remember our disposal processes, alert durations, and behavioral habits, and then set delayed thresholds accordingly. Today it was a fifteen-minute window; in the future, it could change it to twenty minutes or half an hour, constantly shifting in tandem with our adjusted rules."
Gu Shen nodded silently. The most despairing part of fighting an opponent capable of continuous review and tactical iteration was that every self-preservation rule you set would soon become its new hunting benchmark.
Upon returning to the bastion, the convoy drove directly to the intelligence building of the command center.
Today's encounter with the improved delayed-bypass phantom array was classified as a high-risk new sample and had to be entered into the global enemy situation database immediately. When the few of them walked into the briefing room, the large screen on the wall was scrolling with casualty reports continuously arriving from the Northern and Eastern Fronts. In just a single day, three external squads had encountered multi-link phantom arrays with delayed fuses, and two third-tier cultivators had been severely injured and sent to the psychiatric intensive care ward.
The remaining high-tier Sea of Consciousness forces on the Western Front were being depleted at a visible rate.
Instructor Wen was already waiting in the briefing room. A wasteland terrain map was spread out on the desk, densely covered with purple markers indicating all confirmed phantom array locations. Many locations had additional red annotations: [Secondary bypass, suspected delayed trigger. Close-range disposal prohibited.]
"The command center has just finalized two parallel contingency plans." Instructor Wen picked up a pointer and tapped the map at the large contiguous high-risk areas. "First, dense areas of high-risk phantom arrays will be directly designated as permanent quarantine zones. Long-range early warning detection base stations will be deployed, and no discrimination squads will be sent in. Second, a dedicated heavy firepower clearance squad will be formed, equipped with bunker-buster explosive shells, specifically to handle marked locations. After the blast, drones carrying long-range Sea of Consciousness detection modules will conduct a re-examination."
Chen Ye frowned. "The precision of the drone's Sea of Consciousness detection module isn't high enough. If the geomagnetic interference is even slightly strong, it won't be able to catch the faint phantom seed waves. The re-examination will easily miss them."
"This is the optimal solution we can produce at this stage." Instructor Wen's tone was exhausted. "The reserve of high-tier cultivators can no longer sustain being continuously sent in to investigate, observe, and take samples. We must reduce the chances of people directly stepping into the trap zones. The lab is also urgently developing long-acting broadband suppressant agents, hoping that in the future, they can be airdropped to cover an area and suppress the phantom seed links across the entire zone. But it will still be a long time before a finished product is ready."
Lin Yan stood in front of the map, his gaze falling on the direction where the West Old Path extended deeper into the rift. The quarantine zones were shrinking inward in concentric circles, meaning humanity's operational range was constantly being compressed. The bastion defense line that humanity had held for twenty-five years hadn't been overwhelmed by large-scale beast tides, yet it was slowly retreating before these silent, ubiquitous psychic traps.
After the meeting ended, it was nearly evening.
Lin Yan stayed behind alone to discuss the state of his Sea of Consciousness with Instructor Wen. The re-examination instrument was connected to the headset. The waveform was stable, and the hidden injury hadn't temporarily worsened, yet that trace of baseline deviation stubbornly remained on the graph.
"Try to minimize your perception load during tomorrow's external duty," Instructor Wen advised. "Tomorrow, your mission will no longer be long-line investigation. You will instead coordinate with the clearance squad to conduct remote signal verification from a safe distance. You don't need to get close to the ruins or rock pits; just lock onto the target locations from a distance on the high ground and confirm the status of the phantom array links."
"Understood."
Early the next morning, the convoy merged with the heavy firepower clearance squad and set out together.
The scale of the team was significantly larger than usual. Two armored launch vehicles carrying bunker-buster shells pressed into the middle of the formation, their bodies thick and heavy, their gun barrels aimed deep into the wasteland. Lin Yan and Gu Shen remained a pair, responsible for remote Sea of Consciousness discrimination—confirming the link status of the target phantom array before the blast, and verifying from a distance whether any residual phantom seed waves remained after the explosion.
The target location was a dual-secondary bypass triangular phantom array marked three days ago, hidden inside a collapsed mine pit.
The convoy stopped on the high ground three hundred meters away; this distance was sufficient to avoid the psychic radiation range of the phantom seeds. Lin Yan and Gu Shen stood in two separate locations, slowly releasing their perception threads, locking onto the three anchor points inside the mine pit through the soil layer.
"The three main chains are still dormant. There are a total of five secondary bypasses, two of which have preset delayed thresholds," Lin Yan reported in a low voice. "The links are stable, with no premature activation."
The commander of the clearance squad raised his hand to signal. The ballistic computer of the armored vehicle quickly calculated the coordinates.
"Prepare, bunker-buster shells loaded. Target: anchor point cluster at the bottom of the mine pit. Three-round volley."
A dull roar exploded. The shells, trailing pale white flames, tore through the gray air of the wasteland and plunged into the soil layer at the bottom of the collapsed mine pit.
Three consecutive, heavy underground tremors followed. The earth shook slightly, and rubble and dust erupted from the mouth of the mine pit, billowing smoke rising to obscure the area.
The smoke slowly dissipated.
Zhao Kai operated the detector, while Lin Yan and Gu Shen simultaneously spread out their perception to probe toward the mine pit.
The main resonance chain had already broken under the shock of the explosion. The phantom seed embryos at two of the anchor points were torn apart by the shockwave, their waves completely dissipating. But one secondary bypass, hidden in a deeper rock crevice, had narrowly escaped the blast. That faint, placid wave was still quietly dormant deep within the rock strata.
"One bypass remains," Lin Yan said, his voice sinking. "The depth of the shells wasn't enough; it burrowed deeper than estimated."
The commander frowned tightly. "Another round? Continuing to bombard might crack the surrounding rock strata, and the hyphae could spread elsewhere along the fissures."
Everyone was caught in a dilemma.
Continuing to bombard carried the risk of spreading the hazard; not bombing meant leaving this remaining delayed fuse beneath the mine pit—a ticking psychic booby trap. Any future patrol squad accidentally entering this area could run into it.
Gu Shen was silent for a moment. "The distance is too far. Our perception can only confirm it's still there; we can't determine how long its delayed trigger threshold is. It could lie in wait for days, or even weeks, quietly waiting for someone to approach."
Lin Yan's perception thread gently skirted that residual wave, a sense of powerlessness rising in his heart.
Explosions could destroy scaled beasts in physical form, and artillery could level fortifications. But these phantom seeds, hidden in the crevices of the rock strata and surviving on the hyphae network, possessed a resilience far beyond imagination. The matrix had long since turned them into seeds capable of withstanding impacts and waiting opportunistically to lie dormant.
In the end, the commander gritted his teeth and made a decision: no additional bombardment.
"Mark this location, upgrade it to a red high-risk tag, enter it into the quarantine zone database, and permanently prohibit personnel from approaching. Drones will conduct regular long-range inspections."
The convoy didn't stay long. Everyone boarded the vehicles and continued rushing to the next marked location.
Along the way, the same situations played out repeatedly. Some phantom arrays were completely eradicated by the blasts; others managed to retain bypass links, earning them quarantine tags and inclusion in the forbidden zones. Concentric red quarantine circles continued to spread and expand across the wasteland map.
Dusk arrived, and the squad returned.
No one spoke in the cabin.
They had cleared five locations in a single day, but three new quarantine forbidden zones had been added. Humanity was actively clearing traps, yet constantly drawing boundaries it could not cross for itself.
Beneath the earth, in Rift No. 79.
The matrix received all of today's feedback: the lethal depth of the bunker-buster blasts, the survival probability of phantom seeds under shockwaves, and the results of residual bypasses being marked and quarantined.
The massive fungal carpet writhed slowly, nurturing a new batch of phantom seed embryos.
In this new batch, the root systems of the hyphae would burrow deeper, hidden beneath the bearing layer of the rock strata, making them nearly impossible to reach with ordinary bunker-buster shells. Simultaneously, the delayed mechanism would be further complicated; multiple bypasses would be staggered with different trigger durations, forming a cascading detonation.
One fuse would explode first, luring people into thinking the danger had ended and prompting them to approach to investigate. The remaining fuses would then activate at intervals.
It would no longer just set a single waiting trap.
It would create sequential chain traps, wave after wave, layer upon layer, turning the quarantine zones themselves into a massive cage.
End of Chapter.
That warning just now had nearly been a disaster.
Everyone knew clearly that if they had harbored a chance and approached the broken walls to excavate after the fifteen-minute monitoring period ended, the moment that delayed fuse was ignited, the entire squad would have been instantly swallowed by the sudden corridor. The matrix had thoroughly grasped the safety rules established by humanity; even the fifteen-minute observation window had been factored into its trap design.
"This rule is void from now on," Lu Heng said, gripping the steering wheel, his gaze fixed dead-set on the gray-yellow road ahead. "The fifteen-minute observation period will no longer serve as the safety determination standard. As long as a phantom array is detected to have secondary bypasses, we will abandon sampling entirely, mark the coordinates directly, and request remote heavy firepower coverage. We will no longer gamble on whether it will trigger with a delay."
Zhao Kai lowered his head to modify the field record on his tablet, his fingertips slightly stiff. "But heavy firepower has its limitations too. The phantom seeds are buried deep in the crevices of the rock strata. Artillery shells can only overturn the surface soil and rocks; it's very hard to completely destroy the deeply buried embryos. Once the hyphae are blasted apart, the bypass links will fragment, potentially scattering into more scattered, independent phantom seeds. The hidden dangers will spread out, making them even harder to track."
This was an unsolvable dead end.
Sampling and dismantling required getting close, facing the secondary bypasses that could detonate at any moment, and even the delayed triggers. On the other hand, artillery bombardment carried the risk of dismantling the trap into more, smaller, and more concealed hazards, scattering them into the rock crevices of the wasteland like dandelion seeds.
Lin Yan leaned against the car window, eyes closed as he regulated his breathing. His perception was kept entirely within the core of his Sea of Consciousness, not releasing a single wisp outward.
In his mind, he repeatedly replayed the image of that secondary bypass slowly elevating its waves. The matrix no longer pursued head-on collisions with humanity. It was learning to use "time" itself to manufacture fear. It didn't detonate immediately, nor did it strike during the alert phase. Instead, it waited patiently, dormant, pressing the switch only when humanity's vigilance dropped to its lowest and they had determined the danger had passed.
Gu Shen rubbed his brow and slowly spoke, "I've seen similar tactics in beast tide ambushes on the Southern Front before. They would first send out a few scouts for a feint attack. Once the defenders thought the threat was over and relaxed their lines, the main beast horde would charge out from the flank or rear. Now, it has transplanted this tactic onto the phantom seed traps."
"It's not an instinctive ambush; it's a standardized timing design," Lin Yan opened his eyes, his voice very soft. "It can precisely remember our disposal processes, alert durations, and behavioral habits, and then set delayed thresholds accordingly. Today it was a fifteen-minute window; in the future, it could change it to twenty minutes or half an hour, constantly shifting in tandem with our adjusted rules."
Gu Shen nodded silently. The most despairing part of fighting an opponent capable of continuous review and tactical iteration was that every self-preservation rule you set would soon become its new hunting benchmark.
Upon returning to the bastion, the convoy drove directly to the intelligence building of the command center.
Today's encounter with the improved delayed-bypass phantom array was classified as a high-risk new sample and had to be entered into the global enemy situation database immediately. When the few of them walked into the briefing room, the large screen on the wall was scrolling with casualty reports continuously arriving from the Northern and Eastern Fronts. In just a single day, three external squads had encountered multi-link phantom arrays with delayed fuses, and two third-tier cultivators had been severely injured and sent to the psychiatric intensive care ward.
The remaining high-tier Sea of Consciousness forces on the Western Front were being depleted at a visible rate.
Instructor Wen was already waiting in the briefing room. A wasteland terrain map was spread out on the desk, densely covered with purple markers indicating all confirmed phantom array locations. Many locations had additional red annotations: [Secondary bypass, suspected delayed trigger. Close-range disposal prohibited.]
"The command center has just finalized two parallel contingency plans." Instructor Wen picked up a pointer and tapped the map at the large contiguous high-risk areas. "First, dense areas of high-risk phantom arrays will be directly designated as permanent quarantine zones. Long-range early warning detection base stations will be deployed, and no discrimination squads will be sent in. Second, a dedicated heavy firepower clearance squad will be formed, equipped with bunker-buster explosive shells, specifically to handle marked locations. After the blast, drones carrying long-range Sea of Consciousness detection modules will conduct a re-examination."
Chen Ye frowned. "The precision of the drone's Sea of Consciousness detection module isn't high enough. If the geomagnetic interference is even slightly strong, it won't be able to catch the faint phantom seed waves. The re-examination will easily miss them."
"This is the optimal solution we can produce at this stage." Instructor Wen's tone was exhausted. "The reserve of high-tier cultivators can no longer sustain being continuously sent in to investigate, observe, and take samples. We must reduce the chances of people directly stepping into the trap zones. The lab is also urgently developing long-acting broadband suppressant agents, hoping that in the future, they can be airdropped to cover an area and suppress the phantom seed links across the entire zone. But it will still be a long time before a finished product is ready."
Lin Yan stood in front of the map, his gaze falling on the direction where the West Old Path extended deeper into the rift. The quarantine zones were shrinking inward in concentric circles, meaning humanity's operational range was constantly being compressed. The bastion defense line that humanity had held for twenty-five years hadn't been overwhelmed by large-scale beast tides, yet it was slowly retreating before these silent, ubiquitous psychic traps.
After the meeting ended, it was nearly evening.
Lin Yan stayed behind alone to discuss the state of his Sea of Consciousness with Instructor Wen. The re-examination instrument was connected to the headset. The waveform was stable, and the hidden injury hadn't temporarily worsened, yet that trace of baseline deviation stubbornly remained on the graph.
"Try to minimize your perception load during tomorrow's external duty," Instructor Wen advised. "Tomorrow, your mission will no longer be long-line investigation. You will instead coordinate with the clearance squad to conduct remote signal verification from a safe distance. You don't need to get close to the ruins or rock pits; just lock onto the target locations from a distance on the high ground and confirm the status of the phantom array links."
"Understood."
Early the next morning, the convoy merged with the heavy firepower clearance squad and set out together.
The scale of the team was significantly larger than usual. Two armored launch vehicles carrying bunker-buster shells pressed into the middle of the formation, their bodies thick and heavy, their gun barrels aimed deep into the wasteland. Lin Yan and Gu Shen remained a pair, responsible for remote Sea of Consciousness discrimination—confirming the link status of the target phantom array before the blast, and verifying from a distance whether any residual phantom seed waves remained after the explosion.
The target location was a dual-secondary bypass triangular phantom array marked three days ago, hidden inside a collapsed mine pit.
The convoy stopped on the high ground three hundred meters away; this distance was sufficient to avoid the psychic radiation range of the phantom seeds. Lin Yan and Gu Shen stood in two separate locations, slowly releasing their perception threads, locking onto the three anchor points inside the mine pit through the soil layer.
"The three main chains are still dormant. There are a total of five secondary bypasses, two of which have preset delayed thresholds," Lin Yan reported in a low voice. "The links are stable, with no premature activation."
The commander of the clearance squad raised his hand to signal. The ballistic computer of the armored vehicle quickly calculated the coordinates.
"Prepare, bunker-buster shells loaded. Target: anchor point cluster at the bottom of the mine pit. Three-round volley."
A dull roar exploded. The shells, trailing pale white flames, tore through the gray air of the wasteland and plunged into the soil layer at the bottom of the collapsed mine pit.
Three consecutive, heavy underground tremors followed. The earth shook slightly, and rubble and dust erupted from the mouth of the mine pit, billowing smoke rising to obscure the area.
The smoke slowly dissipated.
Zhao Kai operated the detector, while Lin Yan and Gu Shen simultaneously spread out their perception to probe toward the mine pit.
The main resonance chain had already broken under the shock of the explosion. The phantom seed embryos at two of the anchor points were torn apart by the shockwave, their waves completely dissipating. But one secondary bypass, hidden in a deeper rock crevice, had narrowly escaped the blast. That faint, placid wave was still quietly dormant deep within the rock strata.
"One bypass remains," Lin Yan said, his voice sinking. "The depth of the shells wasn't enough; it burrowed deeper than estimated."
The commander frowned tightly. "Another round? Continuing to bombard might crack the surrounding rock strata, and the hyphae could spread elsewhere along the fissures."
Everyone was caught in a dilemma.
Continuing to bombard carried the risk of spreading the hazard; not bombing meant leaving this remaining delayed fuse beneath the mine pit—a ticking psychic booby trap. Any future patrol squad accidentally entering this area could run into it.
Gu Shen was silent for a moment. "The distance is too far. Our perception can only confirm it's still there; we can't determine how long its delayed trigger threshold is. It could lie in wait for days, or even weeks, quietly waiting for someone to approach."
Lin Yan's perception thread gently skirted that residual wave, a sense of powerlessness rising in his heart.
Explosions could destroy scaled beasts in physical form, and artillery could level fortifications. But these phantom seeds, hidden in the crevices of the rock strata and surviving on the hyphae network, possessed a resilience far beyond imagination. The matrix had long since turned them into seeds capable of withstanding impacts and waiting opportunistically to lie dormant.
In the end, the commander gritted his teeth and made a decision: no additional bombardment.
"Mark this location, upgrade it to a red high-risk tag, enter it into the quarantine zone database, and permanently prohibit personnel from approaching. Drones will conduct regular long-range inspections."
The convoy didn't stay long. Everyone boarded the vehicles and continued rushing to the next marked location.
Along the way, the same situations played out repeatedly. Some phantom arrays were completely eradicated by the blasts; others managed to retain bypass links, earning them quarantine tags and inclusion in the forbidden zones. Concentric red quarantine circles continued to spread and expand across the wasteland map.
Dusk arrived, and the squad returned.
No one spoke in the cabin.
They had cleared five locations in a single day, but three new quarantine forbidden zones had been added. Humanity was actively clearing traps, yet constantly drawing boundaries it could not cross for itself.
Beneath the earth, in Rift No. 79.
The matrix received all of today's feedback: the lethal depth of the bunker-buster blasts, the survival probability of phantom seeds under shockwaves, and the results of residual bypasses being marked and quarantined.
The massive fungal carpet writhed slowly, nurturing a new batch of phantom seed embryos.
In this new batch, the root systems of the hyphae would burrow deeper, hidden beneath the bearing layer of the rock strata, making them nearly impossible to reach with ordinary bunker-buster shells. Simultaneously, the delayed mechanism would be further complicated; multiple bypasses would be staggered with different trigger durations, forming a cascading detonation.
One fuse would explode first, luring people into thinking the danger had ended and prompting them to approach to investigate. The remaining fuses would then activate at intervals.
It would no longer just set a single waiting trap.
It would create sequential chain traps, wave after wave, layer upon layer, turning the quarantine zones themselves into a massive cage.
End of Chapter.