Chapter 149: Anomalous Movements
The command room was brightly lit, the air filled with the faint, mixed scent of metallic coolant and disinfectant. A massive spectrum light screen occupied an entire wall, displaying dense purple waves like a surging tide. The previously smooth and relaxed curves now showed widespread, distorted wrinkles.
Lu Heng stood in front of the light screen, his fingertips pointing at the area where the waves were concentrated and deformed, his expression solemn.
"Just three minutes ago, a large-scale psychic flow appeared deep within the curtain. It wasn't the minor fluctuation of a priest fine-tuning the node frequency; it was a massive, unified, low-frequency consciousness signal, moving in groups along the illusion web's links."
Zhao Kai had already maxed out all detection channels. Multiple instruments were synchronously capturing signals, continuously filtering out the false noise generated by the illusion web.
"After eliminating the illusion interference, my preliminary estimate is that the numbers far exceed the thirty-plus beasts from the last harassment. Moreover, the signal arrangement is highly orderly. It's not the chaotic consciousness of scaled beasts charging blindly; it's as if they are being uniformly dispatched by a priest, sneaking beneath the curtain along fixed channels."
Gu Shen leaned closer to the light screen, his gaze firmly locked onto the drifting cluster of signals. "They aren't advancing toward the buffer zone. Their direction of movement is skewed toward the north side of the curtain, which is the direction of the North Sentinel Bastion."
Instructor Wen frowned deeply, clutching an inter-war-zone briefing in her hand. "We just received an urgent notification from the North Sentinel. The concentration of corrosive breath there is also rising. By dusk, civilian hallucination cases had already appeared. It seems the matrix doesn't intend to concentrate its forces for a strong assault on our single defense line; it's preparing to apply pressure separately."
Lin Yan stood quietly to the side, his gaze fixed on the jumping waveforms. Subconsciously, he released a wisp of his Sea of Consciousness to sense the area.
It was merely a probing perception, yet the old wound within the core of his Sea of Consciousness immediately transmitted its familiar pulling sensation. A sharp, stabbing pain spread along his nerves. Without showing any change in expression, he retracted his perception, his brow furrowing slightly.
He had long been accustomed to this price, and he had never harbored the illusion that this fissure would disappear one day. It was a constant shackle upon him; whenever he used his Sea of Consciousness, it would constantly remind him of his limitations.
"Harassing us separately," Lin Yan said in a low voice. "Splitting our limited Sea of Consciousness experts, forcing the six major bastions to fight individually, making it difficult for them to support one another."
"That is exactly the goal," Lu Heng said in a deep voice. "The six war zones are distant from each other, and the channels were long ago severed by rifts and wasteland alien beasts. Communication relies solely on encrypted shortwave. Large-scale troop reinforcement across war zones takes an extremely long time. The matrix knows our weaknesses perfectly. It doesn't want to bet all its main forces on a single decisive battle; instead, it wants to bloom at multiple points, taking turns consuming the Sea of Consciousness combat power of each defense line."
On the light screen, that large cluster of signals slowly sank into silence deep within the northern curtain. The spectrum gradually returned to calm, as if the massive movement just now was merely an illusion. But everyone knew it wasn't a hallucination.
The scaled beast cluster was in position, lying dormant beneath the curtain outside the North Sentinel defense line, waiting for the priest to issue the signal to attack.
"The Sea of Consciousness manpower at the North Sentinel is even tighter than ours on the Western Front," Instructor Wen said, flipping through the briefing, her voice lowered. "They only have one third-tier cultivator who can stably go out on duty. Once a large-scale illusion is paired with a scaled beast assault, the pressure on their defense line will be far more dangerous than what we experienced at the eastern sentry post last time."
Someone in the command room proposed transferring Lin Yan or Gu Shen via a high-speed transport vehicle to support the North Sentinel.
Before the words even faded, Zhao Kai immediately shook his head and vetoed the idea. "No. We only have these two third-tier Sea of Consciousness cultivators on the Western Front as it is. Right now, the curtain's links go everywhere. Who can say whether the matrix is making a feint? What if they deliberately release this signal here to attract us into diverting our forces, only to have their main force launch a surprise attack on the West Bastion?"
This struck at everyone's concerns.
The ancient lizard progeny's tactics iterated time and time again, their cunning far exceeding humanity's initial estimates. The illusion web could create false signals and fabricate troop movements. Any division of forces could potentially lead them into a trap.
The debate lasted for a moment before the war zone's high command finally issued orders:
Establish shortwave communication with the North Sentinel to share curtain spectrum data; the Western Front will maintain its current deployment. Lin Yan and Gu Shen are to continue their vigilance rotations and are strictly forbidden from leaving the West Bastion without authorization. All heavy firepower squads are to enter Level-1 standby, guarding against any surprise attacks that may arrive at any moment.
With the orders finalized, the crowd gradually left the command room.
Stepping out of the building, the night wind outside was even colder, carrying the unique bloody chill of the wasteland. The night sky was hazy, devoid of stars, and the entire world was shrouded in the turbid aura emanating from the curtain.
Chen Ye was waiting for them by the corridor railing, a shock baton resting on his shoulder. "I just heard the discussion inside. Is the North Sentinel in trouble?"
"It could happen at any time," Gu Shen nodded. "We can't go over to support them; we can only watch over our own defense line here."
Chen Ye fell silent for a moment, his grip tightening on his weapon. "This feeling is the most unbearable. Knowing clearly that our companions are in mortal peril on the other side, yet we can do absolutely nothing, and can only guard our own little patch of land."
Lin Yan looked toward the hazy horizon in the north. Separated by tens of kilometers of wasteland, and separated by that boundless psychic curtain, he could almost imagine the tense atmosphere currently gripping the North Sentinel Bastion.
He tried to mobilize his Sea of Consciousness again, wanting to cross the distance and capture a fainter signal. The pain from the fissure suddenly worsened, and his vision blurred slightly. He quickly stopped and slowly exhaled a long breath.
The upper limit of his strength, and this eternally unhealing wound, had trapped him together. All he could do was guard the city wall beneath his feet, waiting for an attack that might fall at any unknown moment.
"We must prepare well for our own side," Lin Yan said calmly. "If the matrix is making a feint, the next wave of attacks will fall right here on us."
For most of the rest of the night, the entire West Bastion remained in a state of extreme tension.
The detection towers kept rotating, and spectrum signals were transmitted back to the command center in real time. The heavy artillery barrels were aimed toward the wasteland curtain. Soldiers clutched their weapons, taking turns dozing in the bunkers, not daring to fall into a deep sleep. The nightmares brought by the corrosive breath already lingered at the edge of everyone's consciousness.
Lin Yan returned to his sentry post on the city walls, relieving the exhausted guard.
He sat cross-legged in the corner of the watchtower. While operating the ancient martial arts mental technique to regulate his breath and stabilize his Sea of Consciousness, he continuously released a faint perception, pressing against the surface of the curtain to monitor any anomalies. The hidden pain continued to circle deep within his Sea of Consciousness, like a scar that would never leave.
He had accepted the fact that it would accompany him for the rest of his life. He had no expectations, no illusions; he only learned to stabilize his perception amidst the pain and hold the defense line.
He didn't know how much time had passed when the shortwave communicator suddenly erupted with a burst of urgent static. Immediately after, the hoarse, desperate roar of the North Sentinel defense line commander pierced through the channel:
"Alert! North Sentinel! Curtain resonance is rising, illusions are pouring out! A massive number of scaled beasts are attacking! We can't hold on! Requesting support!"
After that brief sentence, the communication signal violently distorted and tore apart, leaving only the buzzing of electrical noise.
The alarm in the command room instantly rang out across the entire West Bastion.
On the light screen, the purple waves in the northern area surged madly, churning like giant waves.
Beneath the curtain, the second blaze of war had been ignited.
End of Chapter.
Lu Heng stood in front of the light screen, his fingertips pointing at the area where the waves were concentrated and deformed, his expression solemn.
"Just three minutes ago, a large-scale psychic flow appeared deep within the curtain. It wasn't the minor fluctuation of a priest fine-tuning the node frequency; it was a massive, unified, low-frequency consciousness signal, moving in groups along the illusion web's links."
Zhao Kai had already maxed out all detection channels. Multiple instruments were synchronously capturing signals, continuously filtering out the false noise generated by the illusion web.
"After eliminating the illusion interference, my preliminary estimate is that the numbers far exceed the thirty-plus beasts from the last harassment. Moreover, the signal arrangement is highly orderly. It's not the chaotic consciousness of scaled beasts charging blindly; it's as if they are being uniformly dispatched by a priest, sneaking beneath the curtain along fixed channels."
Gu Shen leaned closer to the light screen, his gaze firmly locked onto the drifting cluster of signals. "They aren't advancing toward the buffer zone. Their direction of movement is skewed toward the north side of the curtain, which is the direction of the North Sentinel Bastion."
Instructor Wen frowned deeply, clutching an inter-war-zone briefing in her hand. "We just received an urgent notification from the North Sentinel. The concentration of corrosive breath there is also rising. By dusk, civilian hallucination cases had already appeared. It seems the matrix doesn't intend to concentrate its forces for a strong assault on our single defense line; it's preparing to apply pressure separately."
Lin Yan stood quietly to the side, his gaze fixed on the jumping waveforms. Subconsciously, he released a wisp of his Sea of Consciousness to sense the area.
It was merely a probing perception, yet the old wound within the core of his Sea of Consciousness immediately transmitted its familiar pulling sensation. A sharp, stabbing pain spread along his nerves. Without showing any change in expression, he retracted his perception, his brow furrowing slightly.
He had long been accustomed to this price, and he had never harbored the illusion that this fissure would disappear one day. It was a constant shackle upon him; whenever he used his Sea of Consciousness, it would constantly remind him of his limitations.
"Harassing us separately," Lin Yan said in a low voice. "Splitting our limited Sea of Consciousness experts, forcing the six major bastions to fight individually, making it difficult for them to support one another."
"That is exactly the goal," Lu Heng said in a deep voice. "The six war zones are distant from each other, and the channels were long ago severed by rifts and wasteland alien beasts. Communication relies solely on encrypted shortwave. Large-scale troop reinforcement across war zones takes an extremely long time. The matrix knows our weaknesses perfectly. It doesn't want to bet all its main forces on a single decisive battle; instead, it wants to bloom at multiple points, taking turns consuming the Sea of Consciousness combat power of each defense line."
On the light screen, that large cluster of signals slowly sank into silence deep within the northern curtain. The spectrum gradually returned to calm, as if the massive movement just now was merely an illusion. But everyone knew it wasn't a hallucination.
The scaled beast cluster was in position, lying dormant beneath the curtain outside the North Sentinel defense line, waiting for the priest to issue the signal to attack.
"The Sea of Consciousness manpower at the North Sentinel is even tighter than ours on the Western Front," Instructor Wen said, flipping through the briefing, her voice lowered. "They only have one third-tier cultivator who can stably go out on duty. Once a large-scale illusion is paired with a scaled beast assault, the pressure on their defense line will be far more dangerous than what we experienced at the eastern sentry post last time."
Someone in the command room proposed transferring Lin Yan or Gu Shen via a high-speed transport vehicle to support the North Sentinel.
Before the words even faded, Zhao Kai immediately shook his head and vetoed the idea. "No. We only have these two third-tier Sea of Consciousness cultivators on the Western Front as it is. Right now, the curtain's links go everywhere. Who can say whether the matrix is making a feint? What if they deliberately release this signal here to attract us into diverting our forces, only to have their main force launch a surprise attack on the West Bastion?"
This struck at everyone's concerns.
The ancient lizard progeny's tactics iterated time and time again, their cunning far exceeding humanity's initial estimates. The illusion web could create false signals and fabricate troop movements. Any division of forces could potentially lead them into a trap.
The debate lasted for a moment before the war zone's high command finally issued orders:
Establish shortwave communication with the North Sentinel to share curtain spectrum data; the Western Front will maintain its current deployment. Lin Yan and Gu Shen are to continue their vigilance rotations and are strictly forbidden from leaving the West Bastion without authorization. All heavy firepower squads are to enter Level-1 standby, guarding against any surprise attacks that may arrive at any moment.
With the orders finalized, the crowd gradually left the command room.
Stepping out of the building, the night wind outside was even colder, carrying the unique bloody chill of the wasteland. The night sky was hazy, devoid of stars, and the entire world was shrouded in the turbid aura emanating from the curtain.
Chen Ye was waiting for them by the corridor railing, a shock baton resting on his shoulder. "I just heard the discussion inside. Is the North Sentinel in trouble?"
"It could happen at any time," Gu Shen nodded. "We can't go over to support them; we can only watch over our own defense line here."
Chen Ye fell silent for a moment, his grip tightening on his weapon. "This feeling is the most unbearable. Knowing clearly that our companions are in mortal peril on the other side, yet we can do absolutely nothing, and can only guard our own little patch of land."
Lin Yan looked toward the hazy horizon in the north. Separated by tens of kilometers of wasteland, and separated by that boundless psychic curtain, he could almost imagine the tense atmosphere currently gripping the North Sentinel Bastion.
He tried to mobilize his Sea of Consciousness again, wanting to cross the distance and capture a fainter signal. The pain from the fissure suddenly worsened, and his vision blurred slightly. He quickly stopped and slowly exhaled a long breath.
The upper limit of his strength, and this eternally unhealing wound, had trapped him together. All he could do was guard the city wall beneath his feet, waiting for an attack that might fall at any unknown moment.
"We must prepare well for our own side," Lin Yan said calmly. "If the matrix is making a feint, the next wave of attacks will fall right here on us."
For most of the rest of the night, the entire West Bastion remained in a state of extreme tension.
The detection towers kept rotating, and spectrum signals were transmitted back to the command center in real time. The heavy artillery barrels were aimed toward the wasteland curtain. Soldiers clutched their weapons, taking turns dozing in the bunkers, not daring to fall into a deep sleep. The nightmares brought by the corrosive breath already lingered at the edge of everyone's consciousness.
Lin Yan returned to his sentry post on the city walls, relieving the exhausted guard.
He sat cross-legged in the corner of the watchtower. While operating the ancient martial arts mental technique to regulate his breath and stabilize his Sea of Consciousness, he continuously released a faint perception, pressing against the surface of the curtain to monitor any anomalies. The hidden pain continued to circle deep within his Sea of Consciousness, like a scar that would never leave.
He had accepted the fact that it would accompany him for the rest of his life. He had no expectations, no illusions; he only learned to stabilize his perception amidst the pain and hold the defense line.
He didn't know how much time had passed when the shortwave communicator suddenly erupted with a burst of urgent static. Immediately after, the hoarse, desperate roar of the North Sentinel defense line commander pierced through the channel:
"Alert! North Sentinel! Curtain resonance is rising, illusions are pouring out! A massive number of scaled beasts are attacking! We can't hold on! Requesting support!"
After that brief sentence, the communication signal violently distorted and tore apart, leaving only the buzzing of electrical noise.
The alarm in the command room instantly rang out across the entire West Bastion.
On the light screen, the purple waves in the northern area surged madly, churning like giant waves.
Beneath the curtain, the second blaze of war had been ignited.
End of Chapter.