Chapter 166: The Backlash of Bone-Erosion
The dark cyan scale patterns flowed slowly across the Elder's body, and the ancient gray-white curse marks rose and fell with its breathing.
It was in no rush to pounce and kill. Its vertical pupils indifferently locked onto Lin Yan, as if savoring the final struggles of its prey. The rustling sounds from deep within the cavern grew closer. One after another, first-tier scaled beasts squeezed out from the rock crevices, forming a semi-circle behind the Elder. They lowered their bodies, awaiting orders, ready to swarm forward the moment their leader issued a psychic command.
On the ground, Chen Ye struggled to push himself up. His chest bones were injured, and every movement made him gasp in pain. The team member with the knife scar and another assault team member were curled up among the chaotic rocks, their Seas of Consciousness severely damaged. Their consciousness was hazy, leaving only unconscious, muffled groans. The injured team member had long since lost consciousness, his face a grayish-cyan as the toxin continued to erode his flesh and blood.
Of the entire reconnaissance squad, only Lin Yan was still able to stand.
Lin Yan pinched the strong-dose stabilization agent between his fingertips, the cold tube pressing against his burning palm.
He knew the price clearly.
The side effects of the previous dose had not yet completely worn off. Injecting a second dose would stack the effects, causing his ability to distinguish illusions to plummet to its lowest point. The Elder was a master of manipulating minds; once he could no longer tell the real from the fake, he would instantly fall into the illusionary cage it wove, and his Sea of Consciousness would be dismantled and devoured bit by bit.
But if he didn't inject, the next precise psychic shock from the Elder would cause his already damaged Sea of Consciousness fissure to tear open completely. His origin would suffer a devastating blow, and he would instantly become a cripple.
The Elder raised its slender forelimb, and the translucent psychic silk threads slowly stretched out, with faint purple light dancing at their tips.
An invisible pressure descended overwhelmingly. This time, it was no longer merely creating illusions. It directly drove the psychic resonance into the fissure of Lin Yan's Sea of Consciousness, drilling inward along the wound.
The excruciating pain exploded instantly. It was as if countless tiny insects had burrowed deep into his consciousness, gnawing at his origin. Lin Yan's entire body trembled violently, and his short blade nearly slipped from his hand. The scenery before him twisted in overlapping layers—the thatched cottage on the barren mountain, his master's hanging sleeves, the blood flowing on the bastion walls, the densely packed scaled beasts waiting to hatch in the rift... All his fears and regrets intertwined, churning frantically in his field of vision.
Now!
Lin Yan gritted his teeth, biting through his lower lip until the salty, metallic taste of blood spread in his mouth. He raised his hand, swiftly pierced the agent's seal, and drove the needle fiercely into his forearm muscle.
The liquid rushed into his bloodstream, sending a numb, cool sensation straight to his brain.
The bone-eroding, burning pain receded like a tide. The wound in his Sea of Consciousness felt as if it had been wrapped in a layer of icy film. The agonizing pain vanished, and the price arrived simultaneously.
The boundaries of all light and shadows around him began to soften and blur; the line between truth and falsehood was no longer clear. A protruding gray rock beside him, in a momentary daze, looked as if it were his master standing there, gazing at him quietly. Lin Yan fiercely shook his head, forcing himself to discard all distracting thoughts, firmly remembering that the curse-marked bone armor on top of the Elder's skull was his only true target.
"I've seen your tricks before," Lin Yan said, his voice somewhat hoarse. Gripping his short blade, he lowered his center of gravity, stepping forward toward the Elder using the ancient martial arts footwork passed down by his master. "Luring and killing with illusions, anchoring onto the wounds in my Sea of Consciousness, slowly wearing down my mind. But you miscalculated one thing—from the very beginning, I've been accustomed to living with this wound."
The Elder emitted a low hiss from its throat, clearly surprised that he could still steady his mind. The psychic silk threads suddenly pulled taut, and several condensed psychic shocks consecutively slammed toward Lin Yan.
Lin Yan no longer tried to use his Sea of Consciousness to resist head-on. He withdrew all his perception, refusing to distinguish the illusions wrapped within the shocks. He relied solely on his physical instincts and ancient martial arts footwork to dodge. His figure darted and weaved among the jagged, chaotic rocks. Purple light grazed his shoulder and smashed into the stone, instantly melting shallow craters into the gray rock's surface.
With every dodge, he was quietly closing the distance to the Elder.
Its curse-marked barrier relies on continuous psychic supply to maintain, Lin Yan calculated rapidly in his mind. Long-range oscillation attacks are too hard to pierce. Only by getting up close and concentrating all my force into a single point on the bone armor of its skull do I have a chance to break its defense.
Seeing that the psychic shocks couldn't bring Lin Yan down, the Elder finally lost its patience. It stopped releasing psychic attacks from afar. Its body suddenly leaped, its long, powerful forelimbs wrapped in gale-force winds as it clawed toward Lin Yan's head. The psychic silk threads at its fingertips were like venomous snakes, intending to directly entangle and lock down his Sea of Consciousness.
Lin Yan rolled sideways to dodge the sharp claws, rocks splashing everywhere. Using the momentum of the roll, he pressed against the Elder's side. His right hand gripped the short blade, gathering all his strength to thrust upward fiercely at the curse-marked bone armor on its skull.
Clang—
The blade struck the curse-marked barrier on the bone armor, emitting a dull, piercing, crisp sound. The purple light rippled violently, and a rebounding force traveled down the hilt to his arm, numbing his tiger's mouth.
The barrier did not shatter; it merely dimmed for an instant.
Having taken a close-range ambush, the Elder turned in a fury, its thick tail whipping out in a horizontal sweep.
Lin Yan couldn't dodge completely in time. His waist was struck by the tail, and excruciating pain shot through him. He was sent flying sideways, crashing heavily onto a massive boulder. The short blade slipped from his hand and rolled into a nearby rock crevice.
A foul, sweet taste surged from his throat. Propping himself up against the rock to try and stand, his vision had already begun to blur. The side effects of the double dosage were growing stronger. Countless whispers echoed incessantly in his ears; he couldn't tell whether they were the Elder's illusions, the wind against the rock walls, or his teammates' panting.
The Elder walked slowly toward the fallen Lin Yan, its psychic silk threads hanging down, suspended right above his head. The scaled beasts gathering in the cavern also slowly closed in, the foul stench rushing to his face.
"Lin Yan... run..." From afar, Chen Ye screamed with all his remaining strength. His voice was faint, yet it pierced through the layers of auditory illusions like a needle.
This shout became Lin Yan's anchor.
He tightly shut his eyes, refusing to look at the swaying phantoms before him. He circulated his breathing mental technique, gathering all his remaining psychic power inward. He stopped probing outward, simply waiting for a fleeting opportunity.
The Elder bent down, the psychic silk threads slowly lowering, preparing to wrap around his head, directly invading his Sea of Consciousness and crushing his awareness.
Just as the silk threads were about to touch his forehead, Lin Yan's eyes snapped open.
He didn't reach for the short blade. His left hand pulled out the last high-explosive shock grenade at his waist, his thumb flicking off the safety. Using the momentum of his rolling body, he fiercely shoved the grenade into the scale gap on the side of the Elder's neck—the spot where the curse-mark coverage was relatively thin, not as thick as the skull.
The Elder sensed the danger instantly, its pupils contracting sharply as it tried to retreat.
It was too late.
A deafening roar exploded within the confined cave!
Blinding light, accompanied by shockwaves, swept in all directions. Rocks and debris danced wildly in the air. The Elder let out a piercing, agonizing shriek. Its massive body was blown backward by the explosion, stumbling. The scales on the side of its neck shattered, and thick, dark green blood gushed out. The gray-white curse marks flowing across its body dimmed and cracked in large patches; the psychic link sustaining the barrier snapped directly.
The first-tier scaled beasts gathered behind were close to the blast. Swept by the shockwave, several of them collapsed instantly, never to move again.
The curse-marked barrier was broken.
Seizing this once-in-a-lifetime window, Lin Yan endured the excruciating pain in his waist bones and lunged forward. He snatched the short blade from the rock crevice, leaped into the air, and poured all his remaining physical strength and Sea of Consciousness power into the blade. Aiming at the curse-marked bone armor on the Elder's skull, now stripped of its barrier, he thrust it down fiercely!
Squelch.
The short blade pierced half an inch into the hard bone armor.
The Elder's entire body convulsed violently. Its shriek turned into intermittent, collapsing psychic wails. Its psychic core at the top of its skull had suffered a devastating blow. In an instant, the illusion web nodes that had been flowing throughout the karst area lost their commander. The drifting purple fog rapidly faded and dissipated, and the illusions trapping everyone shattered like bubbles.
It fiercely thrashed its body, throwing Lin Yan away with tremendous force. Lin Yan crashed into a pile of chaotic rocks, his arm slashed open by the stones. The short blade remained embedded in the Elder's skull.
The Elder stumbled backward a few steps, the light in its vertical pupils fading rapidly. Unbelieving, it lowered its head to look at the blade stuck in its skull. Its massive body swayed a few times before it collapsed heavily to its knees on the gray rock. Its limbs twitched incessantly, the psychic silk threads gradually losing their luster, drooping down, no longer able to stir up even a fraction of a psychic wave.
A moment later, it stopped moving entirely.
Inside the cavern, there was only the dust lingering from the explosion and the heavy stench of blood.
The surviving first-tier scaled beasts, having lost their leader's psychic commands, wandered aimlessly in place. Without unified coordination, they no longer had the consciousness to surround and attack; they merely emitted faint, fragmented hisses out of instinct.
Lin Yan lay on the rubble, panting heavily.
The numbing effect of the two strong-dose agents was fading rapidly. This time, what awaited him was not ordinary pain.
Having forcibly erupted and overdrawn his origin earlier, combined with the suppression from two consecutive doses, the backlash finally surged in.
The fissure deep within his Sea of Consciousness felt as if it had been completely torn open. An endless, agonizing pain engulfed him. His consciousness began to sink and surface repeatedly, and his vision darkened in waves. He knew clearly that this injury was worse than any he had suffered before. He was only a third-tier Sea of Consciousness cultivator; forcibly fighting in the Elder's illusion array, detonating a shock grenade, and breaking the core at close range had far exceeded his current carrying capacity.
"Lin Yan!" Chen Ye struggled to crawl over, kneeling beside him and reaching out to support his shoulder. His voice was a mix of shock, joy, and deep worry. "Hold on! The Elder is dead, and the illusion web has dispersed!"
The other team members also slowly awakened from their psychic trauma, staring blankly at the fallen corpse of the Ancient Progeny Elder, momentarily speechless.
The team member with the knife scar propped himself up against a rock and immediately checked the injured teammate's pulse, reporting in a low voice, "He's still breathing, but the toxin is spreading fast. We can't delay."
Lin Yan艰难ly (with great difficulty) rolled his eyeballs to look deep into the cavern.
Although the Elder was dead, the underground veins connected to this karst area were complex. No one knew if other Ancient Progeny or scaled beasts would come rushing toward the sound of the explosion. They had no time to stay and rest.
"We can't stay long..." His lips trembled, his voice faint. "The signal of the Elder's death here will soon reach the secondary priests at Rift No. 79. We must seize the time, using the temporary collapse of the illusion web to continue our circuitous route toward the bastion. The intelligence... must be delivered."
He raised his hand, touching his pocket. Inside was only the last remaining strong-dose stabilization agent.
This was his final trump card. Unless in a life-or-death extremity, he could never use it again.
Chen Ye nodded, quickly making arrangements: "We'll take turns carrying the injured. Quickly scavenge some curse-mark fragments from the Elder's body as physical evidence to corroborate the intelligence, then leave this cavern immediately."
Enduring their pain and injuries, the group sprang into action.
Inside the gray rock cavern, the cold corpse of the Ancient Progeny Elder lay quietly among the chaotic stones, its flowing dark green blood seeping into the rock crevices. This karst territory, which it had controlled for so long, had finally lost its master, if only briefly.
Yet, everyone knew in their hearts that this was merely a minor victory in the long war of attrition on the Western Front. Deep underground, there were still countless Ancient Progeny and innumerable scaled beasts lurking beneath the earth, waiting for the next opportunity to strike.
Supported halfway by Chen Ye, Lin Yan stood up. With every movement, the fissure in his Sea of Consciousness transmitted waves of tearing pain.
Looking at the gray fog outside the cavern, now stripped of its purple light, he understood clearly that his path of cultivation had just begun. The distance to the ninth-tier peak was still unfathomably far. And this Sea of Consciousness scar, accompanying him for life, would forever remind him of the terror of the alien race, and the price of staying alive.
"Move," Lin Yan whispered a single word.
Supporting each other, the group stepped over the scene of devastation, struggling forward toward the outskirts of the karst area, in the direction of the West Bastion.
End of Chapter.
It was in no rush to pounce and kill. Its vertical pupils indifferently locked onto Lin Yan, as if savoring the final struggles of its prey. The rustling sounds from deep within the cavern grew closer. One after another, first-tier scaled beasts squeezed out from the rock crevices, forming a semi-circle behind the Elder. They lowered their bodies, awaiting orders, ready to swarm forward the moment their leader issued a psychic command.
On the ground, Chen Ye struggled to push himself up. His chest bones were injured, and every movement made him gasp in pain. The team member with the knife scar and another assault team member were curled up among the chaotic rocks, their Seas of Consciousness severely damaged. Their consciousness was hazy, leaving only unconscious, muffled groans. The injured team member had long since lost consciousness, his face a grayish-cyan as the toxin continued to erode his flesh and blood.
Of the entire reconnaissance squad, only Lin Yan was still able to stand.
Lin Yan pinched the strong-dose stabilization agent between his fingertips, the cold tube pressing against his burning palm.
He knew the price clearly.
The side effects of the previous dose had not yet completely worn off. Injecting a second dose would stack the effects, causing his ability to distinguish illusions to plummet to its lowest point. The Elder was a master of manipulating minds; once he could no longer tell the real from the fake, he would instantly fall into the illusionary cage it wove, and his Sea of Consciousness would be dismantled and devoured bit by bit.
But if he didn't inject, the next precise psychic shock from the Elder would cause his already damaged Sea of Consciousness fissure to tear open completely. His origin would suffer a devastating blow, and he would instantly become a cripple.
The Elder raised its slender forelimb, and the translucent psychic silk threads slowly stretched out, with faint purple light dancing at their tips.
An invisible pressure descended overwhelmingly. This time, it was no longer merely creating illusions. It directly drove the psychic resonance into the fissure of Lin Yan's Sea of Consciousness, drilling inward along the wound.
The excruciating pain exploded instantly. It was as if countless tiny insects had burrowed deep into his consciousness, gnawing at his origin. Lin Yan's entire body trembled violently, and his short blade nearly slipped from his hand. The scenery before him twisted in overlapping layers—the thatched cottage on the barren mountain, his master's hanging sleeves, the blood flowing on the bastion walls, the densely packed scaled beasts waiting to hatch in the rift... All his fears and regrets intertwined, churning frantically in his field of vision.
Now!
Lin Yan gritted his teeth, biting through his lower lip until the salty, metallic taste of blood spread in his mouth. He raised his hand, swiftly pierced the agent's seal, and drove the needle fiercely into his forearm muscle.
The liquid rushed into his bloodstream, sending a numb, cool sensation straight to his brain.
The bone-eroding, burning pain receded like a tide. The wound in his Sea of Consciousness felt as if it had been wrapped in a layer of icy film. The agonizing pain vanished, and the price arrived simultaneously.
The boundaries of all light and shadows around him began to soften and blur; the line between truth and falsehood was no longer clear. A protruding gray rock beside him, in a momentary daze, looked as if it were his master standing there, gazing at him quietly. Lin Yan fiercely shook his head, forcing himself to discard all distracting thoughts, firmly remembering that the curse-marked bone armor on top of the Elder's skull was his only true target.
"I've seen your tricks before," Lin Yan said, his voice somewhat hoarse. Gripping his short blade, he lowered his center of gravity, stepping forward toward the Elder using the ancient martial arts footwork passed down by his master. "Luring and killing with illusions, anchoring onto the wounds in my Sea of Consciousness, slowly wearing down my mind. But you miscalculated one thing—from the very beginning, I've been accustomed to living with this wound."
The Elder emitted a low hiss from its throat, clearly surprised that he could still steady his mind. The psychic silk threads suddenly pulled taut, and several condensed psychic shocks consecutively slammed toward Lin Yan.
Lin Yan no longer tried to use his Sea of Consciousness to resist head-on. He withdrew all his perception, refusing to distinguish the illusions wrapped within the shocks. He relied solely on his physical instincts and ancient martial arts footwork to dodge. His figure darted and weaved among the jagged, chaotic rocks. Purple light grazed his shoulder and smashed into the stone, instantly melting shallow craters into the gray rock's surface.
With every dodge, he was quietly closing the distance to the Elder.
Its curse-marked barrier relies on continuous psychic supply to maintain, Lin Yan calculated rapidly in his mind. Long-range oscillation attacks are too hard to pierce. Only by getting up close and concentrating all my force into a single point on the bone armor of its skull do I have a chance to break its defense.
Seeing that the psychic shocks couldn't bring Lin Yan down, the Elder finally lost its patience. It stopped releasing psychic attacks from afar. Its body suddenly leaped, its long, powerful forelimbs wrapped in gale-force winds as it clawed toward Lin Yan's head. The psychic silk threads at its fingertips were like venomous snakes, intending to directly entangle and lock down his Sea of Consciousness.
Lin Yan rolled sideways to dodge the sharp claws, rocks splashing everywhere. Using the momentum of the roll, he pressed against the Elder's side. His right hand gripped the short blade, gathering all his strength to thrust upward fiercely at the curse-marked bone armor on its skull.
Clang—
The blade struck the curse-marked barrier on the bone armor, emitting a dull, piercing, crisp sound. The purple light rippled violently, and a rebounding force traveled down the hilt to his arm, numbing his tiger's mouth.
The barrier did not shatter; it merely dimmed for an instant.
Having taken a close-range ambush, the Elder turned in a fury, its thick tail whipping out in a horizontal sweep.
Lin Yan couldn't dodge completely in time. His waist was struck by the tail, and excruciating pain shot through him. He was sent flying sideways, crashing heavily onto a massive boulder. The short blade slipped from his hand and rolled into a nearby rock crevice.
A foul, sweet taste surged from his throat. Propping himself up against the rock to try and stand, his vision had already begun to blur. The side effects of the double dosage were growing stronger. Countless whispers echoed incessantly in his ears; he couldn't tell whether they were the Elder's illusions, the wind against the rock walls, or his teammates' panting.
The Elder walked slowly toward the fallen Lin Yan, its psychic silk threads hanging down, suspended right above his head. The scaled beasts gathering in the cavern also slowly closed in, the foul stench rushing to his face.
"Lin Yan... run..." From afar, Chen Ye screamed with all his remaining strength. His voice was faint, yet it pierced through the layers of auditory illusions like a needle.
This shout became Lin Yan's anchor.
He tightly shut his eyes, refusing to look at the swaying phantoms before him. He circulated his breathing mental technique, gathering all his remaining psychic power inward. He stopped probing outward, simply waiting for a fleeting opportunity.
The Elder bent down, the psychic silk threads slowly lowering, preparing to wrap around his head, directly invading his Sea of Consciousness and crushing his awareness.
Just as the silk threads were about to touch his forehead, Lin Yan's eyes snapped open.
He didn't reach for the short blade. His left hand pulled out the last high-explosive shock grenade at his waist, his thumb flicking off the safety. Using the momentum of his rolling body, he fiercely shoved the grenade into the scale gap on the side of the Elder's neck—the spot where the curse-mark coverage was relatively thin, not as thick as the skull.
The Elder sensed the danger instantly, its pupils contracting sharply as it tried to retreat.
It was too late.
A deafening roar exploded within the confined cave!
Blinding light, accompanied by shockwaves, swept in all directions. Rocks and debris danced wildly in the air. The Elder let out a piercing, agonizing shriek. Its massive body was blown backward by the explosion, stumbling. The scales on the side of its neck shattered, and thick, dark green blood gushed out. The gray-white curse marks flowing across its body dimmed and cracked in large patches; the psychic link sustaining the barrier snapped directly.
The first-tier scaled beasts gathered behind were close to the blast. Swept by the shockwave, several of them collapsed instantly, never to move again.
The curse-marked barrier was broken.
Seizing this once-in-a-lifetime window, Lin Yan endured the excruciating pain in his waist bones and lunged forward. He snatched the short blade from the rock crevice, leaped into the air, and poured all his remaining physical strength and Sea of Consciousness power into the blade. Aiming at the curse-marked bone armor on the Elder's skull, now stripped of its barrier, he thrust it down fiercely!
Squelch.
The short blade pierced half an inch into the hard bone armor.
The Elder's entire body convulsed violently. Its shriek turned into intermittent, collapsing psychic wails. Its psychic core at the top of its skull had suffered a devastating blow. In an instant, the illusion web nodes that had been flowing throughout the karst area lost their commander. The drifting purple fog rapidly faded and dissipated, and the illusions trapping everyone shattered like bubbles.
It fiercely thrashed its body, throwing Lin Yan away with tremendous force. Lin Yan crashed into a pile of chaotic rocks, his arm slashed open by the stones. The short blade remained embedded in the Elder's skull.
The Elder stumbled backward a few steps, the light in its vertical pupils fading rapidly. Unbelieving, it lowered its head to look at the blade stuck in its skull. Its massive body swayed a few times before it collapsed heavily to its knees on the gray rock. Its limbs twitched incessantly, the psychic silk threads gradually losing their luster, drooping down, no longer able to stir up even a fraction of a psychic wave.
A moment later, it stopped moving entirely.
Inside the cavern, there was only the dust lingering from the explosion and the heavy stench of blood.
The surviving first-tier scaled beasts, having lost their leader's psychic commands, wandered aimlessly in place. Without unified coordination, they no longer had the consciousness to surround and attack; they merely emitted faint, fragmented hisses out of instinct.
Lin Yan lay on the rubble, panting heavily.
The numbing effect of the two strong-dose agents was fading rapidly. This time, what awaited him was not ordinary pain.
Having forcibly erupted and overdrawn his origin earlier, combined with the suppression from two consecutive doses, the backlash finally surged in.
The fissure deep within his Sea of Consciousness felt as if it had been completely torn open. An endless, agonizing pain engulfed him. His consciousness began to sink and surface repeatedly, and his vision darkened in waves. He knew clearly that this injury was worse than any he had suffered before. He was only a third-tier Sea of Consciousness cultivator; forcibly fighting in the Elder's illusion array, detonating a shock grenade, and breaking the core at close range had far exceeded his current carrying capacity.
"Lin Yan!" Chen Ye struggled to crawl over, kneeling beside him and reaching out to support his shoulder. His voice was a mix of shock, joy, and deep worry. "Hold on! The Elder is dead, and the illusion web has dispersed!"
The other team members also slowly awakened from their psychic trauma, staring blankly at the fallen corpse of the Ancient Progeny Elder, momentarily speechless.
The team member with the knife scar propped himself up against a rock and immediately checked the injured teammate's pulse, reporting in a low voice, "He's still breathing, but the toxin is spreading fast. We can't delay."
Lin Yan艰难ly (with great difficulty) rolled his eyeballs to look deep into the cavern.
Although the Elder was dead, the underground veins connected to this karst area were complex. No one knew if other Ancient Progeny or scaled beasts would come rushing toward the sound of the explosion. They had no time to stay and rest.
"We can't stay long..." His lips trembled, his voice faint. "The signal of the Elder's death here will soon reach the secondary priests at Rift No. 79. We must seize the time, using the temporary collapse of the illusion web to continue our circuitous route toward the bastion. The intelligence... must be delivered."
He raised his hand, touching his pocket. Inside was only the last remaining strong-dose stabilization agent.
This was his final trump card. Unless in a life-or-death extremity, he could never use it again.
Chen Ye nodded, quickly making arrangements: "We'll take turns carrying the injured. Quickly scavenge some curse-mark fragments from the Elder's body as physical evidence to corroborate the intelligence, then leave this cavern immediately."
Enduring their pain and injuries, the group sprang into action.
Inside the gray rock cavern, the cold corpse of the Ancient Progeny Elder lay quietly among the chaotic stones, its flowing dark green blood seeping into the rock crevices. This karst territory, which it had controlled for so long, had finally lost its master, if only briefly.
Yet, everyone knew in their hearts that this was merely a minor victory in the long war of attrition on the Western Front. Deep underground, there were still countless Ancient Progeny and innumerable scaled beasts lurking beneath the earth, waiting for the next opportunity to strike.
Supported halfway by Chen Ye, Lin Yan stood up. With every movement, the fissure in his Sea of Consciousness transmitted waves of tearing pain.
Looking at the gray fog outside the cavern, now stripped of its purple light, he understood clearly that his path of cultivation had just begun. The distance to the ninth-tier peak was still unfathomably far. And this Sea of Consciousness scar, accompanying him for life, would forever remind him of the terror of the alien race, and the price of staying alive.
"Move," Lin Yan whispered a single word.
Supporting each other, the group stepped over the scene of devastation, struggling forward toward the outskirts of the karst area, in the direction of the West Bastion.
End of Chapter.