Chapter 146: Corrosive Breath
The fact that the curtain had sunk into a low-power dormant state did not mean that the quarantine zone was dead and silent.
It was like an invisible, massive net laid over the wasteland, lying quietly in the darkness, waiting for intruders. Lin Yan stood at the sentry post on the city walls, his fingertips resting against the freezing concrete parapet. He slowly spread out his Sea of Consciousness perception, tentatively probing outward past the five-kilometer buffer line.
In just a brief instant, a fine, dense wave of psychic power washed back along his perception.
It wasn't a violent impact like that of the priests; it was more like countless fine needles, pricking densely into the core of his Sea of Consciousness. That familiar fissure suddenly twitched, and a dull pain spread through his consciousness. Lin Yan frowned slightly, quickly retracting his perception, his chest rising and falling slightly.
"Acting up again?" Gu Shen's voice came through the communication earpiece. He was at the adjacent sentry post, also maintaining his Sea of Consciousness vigil. "The resonance field of this curtain is continuously diffusing. Even in its dormant state, it's seeping out weak corrosive breath outward. For the two of us, third-tiers carrying injuries, maintaining long-distance detection for extended periods is a heavier burden than anticipated."
"Mm." Lin Yan responded in a low voice, leaning against the parapet and slowly adjusting his breathing. He used the ancient martial arts method of calming the mind passed down by his master to suppress the turbulence in his Sea of Consciousness.
In his own eyes, as well as those of Gu Shen, Instructor Wen, and everyone in the command center, this injury was a predetermined fate. It was the origin damage left behind when the priest's resonance tore him apart during the Battle of Bone-Dry Valley. There was no means to erase it. Healing pods, stabilization agents, and Sea of Consciousness breathing techniques could at most alleviate the pain during an outbreak; completely curing it was out of the question. He had long accepted this reality and had never harbored the illusion of a full recovery.
Down in the city below, the effects of the corrosive breath were already becoming palpable.
In neighborhoods that had originally been orderly and stable, strange occurrences began to appear sporadically. People woke up inexplicably in the dead of night, trapped in the same gray nightmare. Others became inexplicably irritable, losing control and arguing over the slightest trivialities. The number of patients visiting the hospital's psychiatry department had doubled in the past few days. Most of them were ordinary people who had no Sea of Consciousness cultivation and no foundation to resist psychic erosion; they were the first to become victims of the curtain's lingering waves.
Instructor Wen had ascended the city walls at dusk, holding a newly compiled report, her expression solemn.
"The corrosive breath is slowly growing stronger. Right now, it's just sporadic emotional disturbances and nightmares. If it continues for a while longer, when the curtain increases its resonance intensity, fragments of illusions will directly penetrate the city walls. At that point, ordinary people inside the city will also be dragged into the corridors." She handed the report to the two of them. "The high command has discussed it, but there is no good countermeasure. Heavy firepower can only strike nodes at specific points; it cannot cover the entire curtain. And the only third-tier Sea of Consciousness cultivators we have who can stably go out on duty are the two of you."
Gu Shen gripped the report, his fingertips slightly white with force. "The new batch of students at the combat readiness academy underwent illusion web resistance tests yesterday. Out of twenty-seven newcomers, nineteen fainted on the spot from Sea of Consciousness tremors, and three sustained permanent, mild damage. The foundation of a crash-trained Sea of Consciousness is too shallow to withstand this level of continuous erosion."
This was the matrix's calculation.
It was in no rush to launch a massive offensive. Instead, it relied on the corrosive breath continuously overflowing from the curtain to slowly permeate. It was eroding the morale inside the bastion bit by bit, consuming humanity's remaining Sea of Consciousness combat power. It waited quietly behind the curtain, waiting for the interior of the West Bastion to collapse first, dragged down by panic and psychic trauma.
As night deepened, a cold wind swept across the wasteland, carrying the stench of rotting soil and the unique, foul odor of alien beasts. It blew past the buffer zone and drifted beneath the city walls.
Zhao Kai brought the detector up to the city walls. The screen displayed densely packed spectrum curves. The purple waves were smooth yet stubborn, firmly covering the entire quarantine zone beyond the five-kilometer mark.
"There are no signs of priest mobilization, and the scaled beast clusters haven't moved. The curtain remains dormant, and the corrosive breath is leaking out at a steady rate." Zhao Kai paused, looking toward the distant wasteland submerged in darkness. "Right now, we can't even detect how many scaled beasts are inside or whether the priests have shifted positions. The moment our perception penetrates deep into the curtain, it will instantly be locked onto by countless phantom seed nodes. At best, our Sea of Consciousness will be injured; at worst, our probing signal will be exposed."
Lin Yan raised his eyes to gaze at that boundless expanse of darkness.
He knew in his heart that stubbornly defending the city walls was merely a choice of passively taking hits. The curtain had locked down the channels for external exploration. The matrix could accumulate its strength undisturbed inside Rift No. 79. When the time was ripe, the curtain would press inward, and it would be a catastrophic disaster.
But he had no way to stop it.
With his third-tier strength and the Sea of Consciousness hidden injury that would backfire on him at any moment, rashly crossing the curtain would be no different from throwing himself into a trap. His mind repeatedly recalled the priest's tactics from the Battle of Bone-Dry Valley and the linkage patterns of the illusion web nodes, trying to find a flaw in the curtain. Yet, every time his thoughts reached a profound level, the fissure in his Sea of Consciousness would send a wave of dull, distending pain as a warning, reminding him of his own limitations.
"Is it possible to find a weak point in the curtain's resonance?" Lin Yan asked.
"Theoretically, any resonance network has a weak frequency band," Instructor Wen shook her head, her tone heavy. "But this curtain is a cross-regional linkage of multiple priests, and the nodes can adjust their frequencies at any time. Even if we accidentally catch a weak point, the next second the priests can recalibrate the links and fill the gap. Finding a stable path through is virtually impossible."
During their conversation, deep in the distant wasteland, an extremely brief, fleeting high-tier psychic signal flashed across the spectrum screen.
The signal vanished in an instant, so fast it felt like an illusion. Zhao Kai immediately operated the instrument to backtrack the recording, and his face instantly went pale.
"That just now... was a priest-level signal. It wasn't any of the fulcrums we've seen before. There is a new priest in position inside the curtain."
The news traveled back to the command center through the communication link, and the atmosphere on the city walls grew even heavier.
The matrix was still dispatching more controllers into the curtain system. The cage was being reinforced, bit by bit.
Lin Yan closed his eyes, continuing to stabilize his externally released Sea of Consciousness perception. The hidden pain of the fissure, like a bone-clinging parasite, lay quietly dormant in the depths of his consciousness. He had grown accustomed to this pain, accustomed to the fact that it would never disappear.
He did not yet know that this fissure, deemed by everyone to be a permanent trauma, would, in a desperate situation in the distant future, become an opportunity unique to him, one that no one else could replicate. At this moment, it was merely a wound that constantly tormented him.
The wasteland was silent, and the curtain was soundless.
The pressure of the siege was pressing against the West Bastion, little by little.
End of Chapter.
It was like an invisible, massive net laid over the wasteland, lying quietly in the darkness, waiting for intruders. Lin Yan stood at the sentry post on the city walls, his fingertips resting against the freezing concrete parapet. He slowly spread out his Sea of Consciousness perception, tentatively probing outward past the five-kilometer buffer line.
In just a brief instant, a fine, dense wave of psychic power washed back along his perception.
It wasn't a violent impact like that of the priests; it was more like countless fine needles, pricking densely into the core of his Sea of Consciousness. That familiar fissure suddenly twitched, and a dull pain spread through his consciousness. Lin Yan frowned slightly, quickly retracting his perception, his chest rising and falling slightly.
"Acting up again?" Gu Shen's voice came through the communication earpiece. He was at the adjacent sentry post, also maintaining his Sea of Consciousness vigil. "The resonance field of this curtain is continuously diffusing. Even in its dormant state, it's seeping out weak corrosive breath outward. For the two of us, third-tiers carrying injuries, maintaining long-distance detection for extended periods is a heavier burden than anticipated."
"Mm." Lin Yan responded in a low voice, leaning against the parapet and slowly adjusting his breathing. He used the ancient martial arts method of calming the mind passed down by his master to suppress the turbulence in his Sea of Consciousness.
In his own eyes, as well as those of Gu Shen, Instructor Wen, and everyone in the command center, this injury was a predetermined fate. It was the origin damage left behind when the priest's resonance tore him apart during the Battle of Bone-Dry Valley. There was no means to erase it. Healing pods, stabilization agents, and Sea of Consciousness breathing techniques could at most alleviate the pain during an outbreak; completely curing it was out of the question. He had long accepted this reality and had never harbored the illusion of a full recovery.
Down in the city below, the effects of the corrosive breath were already becoming palpable.
In neighborhoods that had originally been orderly and stable, strange occurrences began to appear sporadically. People woke up inexplicably in the dead of night, trapped in the same gray nightmare. Others became inexplicably irritable, losing control and arguing over the slightest trivialities. The number of patients visiting the hospital's psychiatry department had doubled in the past few days. Most of them were ordinary people who had no Sea of Consciousness cultivation and no foundation to resist psychic erosion; they were the first to become victims of the curtain's lingering waves.
Instructor Wen had ascended the city walls at dusk, holding a newly compiled report, her expression solemn.
"The corrosive breath is slowly growing stronger. Right now, it's just sporadic emotional disturbances and nightmares. If it continues for a while longer, when the curtain increases its resonance intensity, fragments of illusions will directly penetrate the city walls. At that point, ordinary people inside the city will also be dragged into the corridors." She handed the report to the two of them. "The high command has discussed it, but there is no good countermeasure. Heavy firepower can only strike nodes at specific points; it cannot cover the entire curtain. And the only third-tier Sea of Consciousness cultivators we have who can stably go out on duty are the two of you."
Gu Shen gripped the report, his fingertips slightly white with force. "The new batch of students at the combat readiness academy underwent illusion web resistance tests yesterday. Out of twenty-seven newcomers, nineteen fainted on the spot from Sea of Consciousness tremors, and three sustained permanent, mild damage. The foundation of a crash-trained Sea of Consciousness is too shallow to withstand this level of continuous erosion."
This was the matrix's calculation.
It was in no rush to launch a massive offensive. Instead, it relied on the corrosive breath continuously overflowing from the curtain to slowly permeate. It was eroding the morale inside the bastion bit by bit, consuming humanity's remaining Sea of Consciousness combat power. It waited quietly behind the curtain, waiting for the interior of the West Bastion to collapse first, dragged down by panic and psychic trauma.
As night deepened, a cold wind swept across the wasteland, carrying the stench of rotting soil and the unique, foul odor of alien beasts. It blew past the buffer zone and drifted beneath the city walls.
Zhao Kai brought the detector up to the city walls. The screen displayed densely packed spectrum curves. The purple waves were smooth yet stubborn, firmly covering the entire quarantine zone beyond the five-kilometer mark.
"There are no signs of priest mobilization, and the scaled beast clusters haven't moved. The curtain remains dormant, and the corrosive breath is leaking out at a steady rate." Zhao Kai paused, looking toward the distant wasteland submerged in darkness. "Right now, we can't even detect how many scaled beasts are inside or whether the priests have shifted positions. The moment our perception penetrates deep into the curtain, it will instantly be locked onto by countless phantom seed nodes. At best, our Sea of Consciousness will be injured; at worst, our probing signal will be exposed."
Lin Yan raised his eyes to gaze at that boundless expanse of darkness.
He knew in his heart that stubbornly defending the city walls was merely a choice of passively taking hits. The curtain had locked down the channels for external exploration. The matrix could accumulate its strength undisturbed inside Rift No. 79. When the time was ripe, the curtain would press inward, and it would be a catastrophic disaster.
But he had no way to stop it.
With his third-tier strength and the Sea of Consciousness hidden injury that would backfire on him at any moment, rashly crossing the curtain would be no different from throwing himself into a trap. His mind repeatedly recalled the priest's tactics from the Battle of Bone-Dry Valley and the linkage patterns of the illusion web nodes, trying to find a flaw in the curtain. Yet, every time his thoughts reached a profound level, the fissure in his Sea of Consciousness would send a wave of dull, distending pain as a warning, reminding him of his own limitations.
"Is it possible to find a weak point in the curtain's resonance?" Lin Yan asked.
"Theoretically, any resonance network has a weak frequency band," Instructor Wen shook her head, her tone heavy. "But this curtain is a cross-regional linkage of multiple priests, and the nodes can adjust their frequencies at any time. Even if we accidentally catch a weak point, the next second the priests can recalibrate the links and fill the gap. Finding a stable path through is virtually impossible."
During their conversation, deep in the distant wasteland, an extremely brief, fleeting high-tier psychic signal flashed across the spectrum screen.
The signal vanished in an instant, so fast it felt like an illusion. Zhao Kai immediately operated the instrument to backtrack the recording, and his face instantly went pale.
"That just now... was a priest-level signal. It wasn't any of the fulcrums we've seen before. There is a new priest in position inside the curtain."
The news traveled back to the command center through the communication link, and the atmosphere on the city walls grew even heavier.
The matrix was still dispatching more controllers into the curtain system. The cage was being reinforced, bit by bit.
Lin Yan closed his eyes, continuing to stabilize his externally released Sea of Consciousness perception. The hidden pain of the fissure, like a bone-clinging parasite, lay quietly dormant in the depths of his consciousness. He had grown accustomed to this pain, accustomed to the fact that it would never disappear.
He did not yet know that this fissure, deemed by everyone to be a permanent trauma, would, in a desperate situation in the distant future, become an opportunity unique to him, one that no one else could replicate. At this moment, it was merely a wound that constantly tormented him.
The wasteland was silent, and the curtain was soundless.
The pressure of the siege was pressing against the West Bastion, little by little.
End of Chapter.