Chapter 153: The Millstone
Blood had soaked through the gravel in front of the bunker, the dark crimson seeping slowly into the soil through the cracks, mingling with the foul, dark green bodily fluids of the scaled beasts to emit a nauseating stench.
The gunfire on the front lines had thinned out slightly. It wasn't because the offensive had been repelled, but because many of the firearms had overheated. The soldiers were seizing the brief window to swap out barrels and reload magazines. The wounded were quickly dragged back to the rear first-aid stations. The shouts of the medics and the suppressed groans of the injured stood out with eerie clarity in the brief lulls between artillery barrages.
Lin Yan's Sea of Consciousness barrier was still barely holding.
Every time he pushed his psychic power outward, the fissure deep within his Sea of Consciousness was yanked violently, as if torn by an invisible hand. Waves of excruciating pain overlapped, no longer just intermittent, dull aches, but a continuous, heavy torment. The edges of his vision repeatedly darkened. Several times, the waves dispelling the illusions briefly faltered, and he had to rely on his ancient martial arts breathing techniques to forcefully pull his focus back to stability.
"I'm finding it harder and harder to hold on over here," Gu Shen's voice came through the communication channel, accompanied by obvious panting. "The priests are adjusting the illusion frequencies specifically to target us. The phantoms are deliberately burrowing into the weak points of our Sea of Consciousness."
Gu Shen was also a third-tier. After days of endless vigilance and slaughter, his Sea of Consciousness fatigue had accumulated to a dangerous level. The Western Front's only two third-tier Sea of Consciousness cultivators were being ruthlessly drained by this protracted war.
Instructor Wen rushed to Lin Yan's side with a first-aid kit, shoving a silver-gray vial into his hand.
"Inject it quickly. It can only suppress the pain; it can't repair the fissure." Her speech was rapid, her gaze solemn. "I must emphasize once again: there is no cure for an origin tear injury. The agent is just to help you temporarily stabilize your consciousness. Do not forcefully increase your output. If the fissure completely ruptures, you will instantly become a psychic invalid."
"I understand," Lin Yan replied, taking the vial and without hesitation injecting it into the vein of his forearm.
The cool liquid flowed through his bloodstream, quickly reaching his Sea of Consciousness. The tearing pain receded slightly, but the fissure still lay distinctly across the depths of his consciousness, like a scar that would never fade. He had never harbored any other fantasies. Everyone had told him that this injury would follow him for the rest of his life.
The medicine was merely a buffer, not salvation.
Suddenly, a cry of alarm erupted from the left sentry post.
Seizing the brief moment when the illusion barrier flickered, a second-tier scaled beast broke through the blockade, its massive head lunging straight at a young soldier. Three soldiers beside him reacted instantly, their shock weapons simultaneously slamming into the scale gaps under its jaw. The violent impact caused the beast to cry out in pain and jerk its head aside. Its fangs grazed the soldier's shoulder, tearing away a massive chunk of flesh.
The soldier collapsed with a scream of agony, and someone immediately stepped up to fill the gap.
It was always like this. Dealing with a single second-tier scaled beast required the coordinated effort of three to four warriors. The slightest mistake meant paying the price in blood.
Chen Ye led the assault squad back and forth, plugging gaps in the line. His baton slammed against the skulls of the scaled beasts with dull thuds. A deep, long wound had been torn open on his arm by the beast's claws, his blood soaking through his sleeve, yet he seemed completely oblivious to it.
"There's no way to win if we keep fighting like this!" Chen Ye roared, kicking away a pouncing scaled beast. "We can't kill them all! They keep pouring out from behind the curtain endlessly! For every one of our men we lose, we can't get another!"
Lu Heng stood behind the main bunker, his gaze sweeping across the entire defense line. A chill settled in his heart.
He saw it clearly. The matrix was treating the Western Front defense line as a millstone.
The scaled beasts were the grinding stones, sent up wave after wave. It wasn't seeking to breach the city in a short time; it only sought to continuously consume ammunition, soldiers, and, most importantly, drain Lin Yan and Gu Shen, the two most critical Sea of Consciousness fulcrums. Once their Seas of Consciousness collapsed, the illusions would swallow the entire defense line without resistance. At that point, no matter how sturdy the city walls were, they couldn't stop the defending troops, now bewitched by phantoms, from slaughtering each other.
"Zhao Kai, keep marking the nodes. Prioritize striking the ones with the strongest signals!" Lu Heng ordered in a deep voice. "Don't aim to destroy the links. Just disrupt the priests' synchronous frequency-adjustment rhythm and lighten the burden on Lin Yan and Gu Shen!"
"Received! Continuously marking!" Zhao Kai stared at the screen, his fingers flying across the controls. "But the priests are incredibly cunning. The moment the signal is locked, they immediately shift the center of resonance. Our artillery fire is always one step behind!"
Boom!
Another round of heavy artillery fire landed at the forefront of the curtain. Dirt flew everywhere, and the purple resonance waves trembled violently. Yet, mere seconds later, the waves re-converged, the illusions stabilized once again, and the scaled beasts hidden behind the shifting lights and shadows continued their steady advance.
It treated the symptoms, not the root cause.
Seizing the window of relief provided by the medication, Lin Yan tried to carefully deconstruct the resonance rhythm of the illusions before him.
Since the Battle of Bone-Dry Valley, he had been quietly collecting the rules of the illusion web's linkage. He wanted to find a way to break through the curtain. But every time his deductions reached a profound level, the fissure in his Sea of Consciousness would sound an alarm, reminding him of his own upper limit.
He was currently only a third-tier. The distance to the ninth tier, the pinnacle of human cognition, was separated by an impassable chasm. To reach that step, he would have to endure countless life-and-death perils in the future, risking his life with every breakthrough. And on this long road, this scar would follow him forever.
"Lin Yan, right sector! The illusions are layering!" Gu Shen's urgent voice rang out.
Lin Yan immediately redirected his Sea of Consciousness power to the right.
The originally single illusion layered upon itself, the scenery alternating rapidly. One second it was a barren dirt slope, and the next it transformed into the image of a fallen comrade, deliberately targeting the soldiers' deepest, most terrifying memories. Two new recruits lost their grip on reality. They stood frozen in place, clutching their rifles, their eyes vacant, on the verge of completely plunging into the dream.
Lin Yan gritted his teeth, forcefully increasing his Sea of Consciousness output.
The fissure was violently stretched open. A severe wave of dizziness rushed to his head. He let out a闷哼 (muffled groan), his forehead instantly covered in cold sweat. The dispelling waves swept over the two recruits just in time. They shuddered violently, suddenly snapping back to their senses, their faces pale with lingering terror.
"Hold steady! Don't lose focus!" Lin Yan warned in a low voice, while quickly reining in a portion of his power, not daring to continue overloading himself.
He didn't dare to gamble. If the fissure ruptured, he wouldn't be able to help anyone. Worse, he would instantly lose his ability to resist the illusions, becoming a burden on the defense line.
The battle continued for nearly another hour.
The rhythm of the scaled beasts being deployed from deep within the curtain finally slowed down. The scattered beasts still moving forward were wiped out by the joint efforts of the frontline soldiers. The wasteland was littered with scaled beast corpses, and the foul stench was overwhelming.
The casualty list on the human side grew longer once again. Six new deaths, over a dozen severely wounded, and four soldiers who had sustained mild Sea of Consciousness tremors.
Lin Yan slowly retracted his Sea of Consciousness. As the effects of the medication faded, the familiar, hidden pain rolled back in. He stumbled half a step, supporting himself against the edge of the bunker as he gasped for air, his vision blurring in waves.
Gu Shen walked over to him, his face equally pale, his breathing unsteady.
"Take a breather for now," Gu Shen said, looking at the silent curtain in the distance. "But this isn't over. The millstone has just temporarily stopped turning. The priests are still behind it, adjusting the links. After they rest, the next wave of attacks will come soon."
Lu Heng walked up to the two of them, his expression heavy.
"We just received cipher reports from the other war zones. All bastions are enduring harassment of equal intensity in rotation. The six major bastions are all trapped within the net woven by this curtain, fighting bitter battles individually, unable to support one another."
The wind swept across the blood-stained wasteland, and the curtain lay dormant quietly within the gray fog.
It was like a massive hand extended by the alien race, gently pressing down upon this land. In no rush to crush it to death, it simply slowly ground and wore it down.
Lin Yan raised his hand to press against his brow, feeling the eternal, unchanging pain deep within his Sea of Consciousness.
He did not yet know that this fissure, which currently brought only torment and had been deemed by everyone as a permanent ruin, would, in the desperate situation of that distant, decisive battle, become an opportunity unique to him, one that no one else could replicate.
For now, it was merely a shackle, merely a wound, merely the price he had to bear as he walked forward.
End of Chapter.
The gunfire on the front lines had thinned out slightly. It wasn't because the offensive had been repelled, but because many of the firearms had overheated. The soldiers were seizing the brief window to swap out barrels and reload magazines. The wounded were quickly dragged back to the rear first-aid stations. The shouts of the medics and the suppressed groans of the injured stood out with eerie clarity in the brief lulls between artillery barrages.
Lin Yan's Sea of Consciousness barrier was still barely holding.
Every time he pushed his psychic power outward, the fissure deep within his Sea of Consciousness was yanked violently, as if torn by an invisible hand. Waves of excruciating pain overlapped, no longer just intermittent, dull aches, but a continuous, heavy torment. The edges of his vision repeatedly darkened. Several times, the waves dispelling the illusions briefly faltered, and he had to rely on his ancient martial arts breathing techniques to forcefully pull his focus back to stability.
"I'm finding it harder and harder to hold on over here," Gu Shen's voice came through the communication channel, accompanied by obvious panting. "The priests are adjusting the illusion frequencies specifically to target us. The phantoms are deliberately burrowing into the weak points of our Sea of Consciousness."
Gu Shen was also a third-tier. After days of endless vigilance and slaughter, his Sea of Consciousness fatigue had accumulated to a dangerous level. The Western Front's only two third-tier Sea of Consciousness cultivators were being ruthlessly drained by this protracted war.
Instructor Wen rushed to Lin Yan's side with a first-aid kit, shoving a silver-gray vial into his hand.
"Inject it quickly. It can only suppress the pain; it can't repair the fissure." Her speech was rapid, her gaze solemn. "I must emphasize once again: there is no cure for an origin tear injury. The agent is just to help you temporarily stabilize your consciousness. Do not forcefully increase your output. If the fissure completely ruptures, you will instantly become a psychic invalid."
"I understand," Lin Yan replied, taking the vial and without hesitation injecting it into the vein of his forearm.
The cool liquid flowed through his bloodstream, quickly reaching his Sea of Consciousness. The tearing pain receded slightly, but the fissure still lay distinctly across the depths of his consciousness, like a scar that would never fade. He had never harbored any other fantasies. Everyone had told him that this injury would follow him for the rest of his life.
The medicine was merely a buffer, not salvation.
Suddenly, a cry of alarm erupted from the left sentry post.
Seizing the brief moment when the illusion barrier flickered, a second-tier scaled beast broke through the blockade, its massive head lunging straight at a young soldier. Three soldiers beside him reacted instantly, their shock weapons simultaneously slamming into the scale gaps under its jaw. The violent impact caused the beast to cry out in pain and jerk its head aside. Its fangs grazed the soldier's shoulder, tearing away a massive chunk of flesh.
The soldier collapsed with a scream of agony, and someone immediately stepped up to fill the gap.
It was always like this. Dealing with a single second-tier scaled beast required the coordinated effort of three to four warriors. The slightest mistake meant paying the price in blood.
Chen Ye led the assault squad back and forth, plugging gaps in the line. His baton slammed against the skulls of the scaled beasts with dull thuds. A deep, long wound had been torn open on his arm by the beast's claws, his blood soaking through his sleeve, yet he seemed completely oblivious to it.
"There's no way to win if we keep fighting like this!" Chen Ye roared, kicking away a pouncing scaled beast. "We can't kill them all! They keep pouring out from behind the curtain endlessly! For every one of our men we lose, we can't get another!"
Lu Heng stood behind the main bunker, his gaze sweeping across the entire defense line. A chill settled in his heart.
He saw it clearly. The matrix was treating the Western Front defense line as a millstone.
The scaled beasts were the grinding stones, sent up wave after wave. It wasn't seeking to breach the city in a short time; it only sought to continuously consume ammunition, soldiers, and, most importantly, drain Lin Yan and Gu Shen, the two most critical Sea of Consciousness fulcrums. Once their Seas of Consciousness collapsed, the illusions would swallow the entire defense line without resistance. At that point, no matter how sturdy the city walls were, they couldn't stop the defending troops, now bewitched by phantoms, from slaughtering each other.
"Zhao Kai, keep marking the nodes. Prioritize striking the ones with the strongest signals!" Lu Heng ordered in a deep voice. "Don't aim to destroy the links. Just disrupt the priests' synchronous frequency-adjustment rhythm and lighten the burden on Lin Yan and Gu Shen!"
"Received! Continuously marking!" Zhao Kai stared at the screen, his fingers flying across the controls. "But the priests are incredibly cunning. The moment the signal is locked, they immediately shift the center of resonance. Our artillery fire is always one step behind!"
Boom!
Another round of heavy artillery fire landed at the forefront of the curtain. Dirt flew everywhere, and the purple resonance waves trembled violently. Yet, mere seconds later, the waves re-converged, the illusions stabilized once again, and the scaled beasts hidden behind the shifting lights and shadows continued their steady advance.
It treated the symptoms, not the root cause.
Seizing the window of relief provided by the medication, Lin Yan tried to carefully deconstruct the resonance rhythm of the illusions before him.
Since the Battle of Bone-Dry Valley, he had been quietly collecting the rules of the illusion web's linkage. He wanted to find a way to break through the curtain. But every time his deductions reached a profound level, the fissure in his Sea of Consciousness would sound an alarm, reminding him of his own upper limit.
He was currently only a third-tier. The distance to the ninth tier, the pinnacle of human cognition, was separated by an impassable chasm. To reach that step, he would have to endure countless life-and-death perils in the future, risking his life with every breakthrough. And on this long road, this scar would follow him forever.
"Lin Yan, right sector! The illusions are layering!" Gu Shen's urgent voice rang out.
Lin Yan immediately redirected his Sea of Consciousness power to the right.
The originally single illusion layered upon itself, the scenery alternating rapidly. One second it was a barren dirt slope, and the next it transformed into the image of a fallen comrade, deliberately targeting the soldiers' deepest, most terrifying memories. Two new recruits lost their grip on reality. They stood frozen in place, clutching their rifles, their eyes vacant, on the verge of completely plunging into the dream.
Lin Yan gritted his teeth, forcefully increasing his Sea of Consciousness output.
The fissure was violently stretched open. A severe wave of dizziness rushed to his head. He let out a闷哼 (muffled groan), his forehead instantly covered in cold sweat. The dispelling waves swept over the two recruits just in time. They shuddered violently, suddenly snapping back to their senses, their faces pale with lingering terror.
"Hold steady! Don't lose focus!" Lin Yan warned in a low voice, while quickly reining in a portion of his power, not daring to continue overloading himself.
He didn't dare to gamble. If the fissure ruptured, he wouldn't be able to help anyone. Worse, he would instantly lose his ability to resist the illusions, becoming a burden on the defense line.
The battle continued for nearly another hour.
The rhythm of the scaled beasts being deployed from deep within the curtain finally slowed down. The scattered beasts still moving forward were wiped out by the joint efforts of the frontline soldiers. The wasteland was littered with scaled beast corpses, and the foul stench was overwhelming.
The casualty list on the human side grew longer once again. Six new deaths, over a dozen severely wounded, and four soldiers who had sustained mild Sea of Consciousness tremors.
Lin Yan slowly retracted his Sea of Consciousness. As the effects of the medication faded, the familiar, hidden pain rolled back in. He stumbled half a step, supporting himself against the edge of the bunker as he gasped for air, his vision blurring in waves.
Gu Shen walked over to him, his face equally pale, his breathing unsteady.
"Take a breather for now," Gu Shen said, looking at the silent curtain in the distance. "But this isn't over. The millstone has just temporarily stopped turning. The priests are still behind it, adjusting the links. After they rest, the next wave of attacks will come soon."
Lu Heng walked up to the two of them, his expression heavy.
"We just received cipher reports from the other war zones. All bastions are enduring harassment of equal intensity in rotation. The six major bastions are all trapped within the net woven by this curtain, fighting bitter battles individually, unable to support one another."
The wind swept across the blood-stained wasteland, and the curtain lay dormant quietly within the gray fog.
It was like a massive hand extended by the alien race, gently pressing down upon this land. In no rush to crush it to death, it simply slowly ground and wore it down.
Lin Yan raised his hand to press against his brow, feeling the eternal, unchanging pain deep within his Sea of Consciousness.
He did not yet know that this fissure, which currently brought only torment and had been deemed by everyone as a permanent ruin, would, in the desperate situation of that distant, decisive battle, become an opportunity unique to him, one that no one else could replicate.
For now, it was merely a shackle, merely a wound, merely the price he had to bear as he walked forward.
End of Chapter.