Chapter 169: The Aftermath of the Hidden Thread
The one-week recovery period slipped by slowly, accompanied by the continuous, dull ache in Lin Yan's Sea of Consciousness.
He strictly followed the healing instructor's orders, swallowing the yellowish-brown Sea of Consciousness nourishing agents on time. The medicine was gentle, capable only of smoothing out the restless origin on the surface bit by bit. It could not mend the innate fissure, nor could it erase the hidden damage sustained during the death match with the Elder. Whenever he focused his mind and tried to mobilize even a wisp of Sea of Consciousness power, a tearing, dull pain would immediately entangle him, reminding him of the price of overdrawing.
During these seven days, he rarely went out. When he did leave the dormitory, it was only to visit the healing center for routine scans or to pick up simple meals at the logistics canteen. The atmosphere inside the bastion remained tense. Whispers about the intelligence from Rift No. 79 flowed through the streets and alleys. Some were excited, feeling they had finally seized a source of the beast tide that could be actively uprooted; others were terrified, fearing that rashly venturing deep underground would provoke the deeper powers of the Ancient Progeny, triggering a catastrophic beast tide that would sweep across the Western Front.
Chen Ye accompanied him most of the time. His physical bruises healed quickly, and the bruises on his chest had mostly faded. Yet, every time the fallen team member was mentioned, his expression would darken. Of the two surviving team members, one remained in the medical cabin for ongoing rehabilitation for Sea of Consciousness oscillation, while the other, who had only minor injuries, was temporarily reassigned to assist with guard duty at the outpost. The special forces squad that had ventured deep into the rift was no longer intact.
On the last day of the recovery period, the review report meeting was scheduled as planned in the sealed conference hall of the War Zone Research Institute.
Unlike the frontline temporary command post, the walls here were lined with thick lead vibration-isolation panels, blocking out all external psychic fluctuations to prevent the Ancient Progeny's psychic hooks from infiltrating through the acoustic field. There were not many attendees: two high-ranking officials of the Western Front war zone, three senior scholars from the Sea of Consciousness Research Institute, the garrison commander, and Lin Yan and Chen Ye.
The entire meeting was recorded, and all oral testimonies would be archived as Grade A classified documents.
On the projection screen was still the three-dimensional topographical map of Rift No. 79, with far more supplementary annotations than when they had first brought back the intelligence.
The review was presided over by an elderly scholar named Su from the research institute. With his gray hair and a recording pen in his hand, his gaze fell on Lin Yan, his tone cautious: "You were the closest to the Ancient Progeny Elder, the only one who withstood its illusion impact head-on and completed the counter-kill. Recount every detail from the moment you encountered the Elder, from start to finish. Do not leave out any subtle psychic signal, the pattern of the illusions it released, or the sequence in which the curse-mark patterns glowed. This information is of immense value to our research on high-tier Ancient Progeny individuals."
Lin Yan nodded slowly and sat up straight.
He began to speak from the moment he stepped into the karst area and sensed that ancient psychic frequency, so different from the secondary priests, detailing it step by step: the logic of the Elder's illusions, precisely grasping the attachments and guilt deep in the human heart; the psychic impact prioritizing the wounds of those with damaged Seas of Consciousness; the curse-marked bone armor on the top of the skull being the psychic core, and the scale gaps on the side of the neck being secondary weak points; and the scene when the entire karst illusion web instantly lost command and scattered into chaos the moment the Elder died.
He spoke very slowly, restraining himself from mobilizing his Sea of Consciousness to recall those illusory images. Even just remembering them caused the fissure to begin burning faintly.
"There is one point I need to confirm." Scholar Su leaned forward slightly after Lin Yan finished. "When the Elder was controlling the illusions, did you capture any other fragments of consciousness mixed within its psychic signals? Not from the scaled beasts, nor from itself. Some fragmented, chaotic thoughts belonging to humans?"
Lin Yan paused slightly, carefully recalling the fierce battle in the cavern.
At that time, with the double doses of stabilization agents overlapping and the boundary between truth and falsehood blurred, countless phantoms had piled up. He had only focused on finding opportunities to attack and hadn't deliberately tried to distinguish them. He shook his head gently: "At that time, my Sea of Consciousness was suppressed by the agents, and my perception was distorted. I couldn't tell."
Scholar Su did not press further. He simply drew a heavy line in his notebook, his expression growing graver as he turned to the war zone commander beside him: "This matches up. In the past three days, the research institute's全域 (global) psychic monitoring array has captured a few wisps of faint alien psychic remnants. The signal source is not in the wasteland rifts, nor at the outer perimeter outposts. The signal's landing point is right inside the West Bastion city district."
In a single sentence, the conference hall instantly fell silent.
Chen Ye sat up abruptly, his brow furrowed tightly: "Inside the bastion? Impossible. All personnel returning from the rifts have undergone Sea of Consciousness screening; psychic hooks are cleared on the spot. Every checkpoint for the injured, supplies, and sheltered refugees has detection equipment."
"It is not a潜伏 (lurking) hook brought back by a person." Another young scholar brought up another set of spectrum images, projecting them onto the screen. The spectrum curves were fragmented and erratic, sharing the same source as the fluctuations of the secondary priests and the Elder, but at an extremely low intensity. "It is a scattered signal, like an anchor point for some kind of remote infiltration. We have tracked it three times, and every time we were about to lock onto the coordinates, the signal vanished into thin air, as if someone had actively cut it off."
The war zone commander's fingers tapped heavily on the desktop, his deep voice breaking the silence: "What step has the investigation reached?"
"A large-scale screening has been rolled out, but the bastion has a population of hundreds of thousands. Residential areas, academies, logistics zones, barracks, and factories are interwoven, and the coverage of the psychic monitoring array is limited," Scholar Su sighed. "We still don't fully understand the psychic methods of the Ancient Progeny. They don't necessarily intend to create immediate slaughter. These faint anchor points pre-embedded in the inner city can be used to eavesdrop, collect emotions, and mark important targets. When the beast tide launches its general offensive, they can detonate the illusions synchronously, collapsing the defense line from within."
Lin Yan listened quietly, a chill slowly rising in his heart.
They had risked their lives to infiltrate the underground and bring back the defense intelligence of the rift, thinking they had seized the initiative. They never expected that the enemy's tentacles had already quietly reached inside the high walls. The twenty-five-year war of attrition was never just about fighting in the wasteland and the rifts. The Ancient Progeny's attacks had two lines: overt and covert. The overt line was the endless tide of scaled beasts, consuming the flesh and blood of the defenders; the covert line was psychic infiltration, silent and invisible, taking root inside the bastion.
In the second half of the report meeting, the discussion returned to the assault plan for Rift No. 79.
The debate still had not subsided.
The radical faction insisted on taking advantage of the Elder's fall and the vacancy in the rift's illusion web command structure to deploy elite special operations squads,配合 (coordinating) with heavy artillery clusters to launch a surprise attack and destroy the priests' rock pedestal and incubation chambers in one fell swoop. The conservative faction argued that since unknown psychic anchor points had already been found in the inner city, the situation harbored hidden variables. Withdrawing a large number of elite troops from the bastion at this moment would create a massive void in internal defense, a risk that could not be borne.
In the end, the commander made the final decision, temporarily shelving the large-scale assault plan.
First, complete a carpet-style investigation of psychic signals across the entire bastion to lock down that hidden alien anchor point in the inner city; simultaneously, dispatch small-scale reconnaissance scouts to continuously monitor Rift No. 79 to confirm whether the underground Ancient Progeny had dispatched a new commander to fill the vacancy after the Elder's death.
"You two," the commander looked at Lin Yan and Chen Ye, "as those familiar with the rift's terrain, are listed as reserve assault guides. But before Lin Yan's hidden Sea of Consciousness injury stabilizes, you will not be conscripted for combat."
When the review meeting ended and they walked out of the research institute, the sky had already darkened. The searchlights on the bastion's outer wall lit up on time, their beams piercing through the thick gray fog outside.
The evening breeze carried the faint scent of disinfectant and gunpowder smoke.
"There are anchor points inside..." Chen Ye muttered in a low voice, his face grim. "The bastion we fought to the death to defend was never an absolutely safe place."
"They are in no rush," Lin Yan said slowly, his hand unconsciously pressing against his brow, the fissure in his Sea of Consciousness still throbbing faintly. "The Ancient Progeny are good at waiting. Twenty-five years—they can slowly drain us, slowly infiltrate, and grind away humanity's confidence bit by bit."
The two walked along the corridor toward the dormitories, passing the training grounds of the combat preparation university along the way.
In the night, young cadets were practicing Sea of Consciousness fortification under the guidance of instructors. Thin but resolute psychic barriers flashed and vanished in the mid-air of the training ground. These children had been learning how to counter illusions and resist alien psychic intrusion since their first day of enrollment; they were the future defenders of the bastion. Yet, no one knew if this training could protect their minds when the enemy's whispers sounded from within the high walls.
Before parting, Chen Ye patted Lin Yan's shoulder: "For the next few days, I'll be participating in the district psychic screening with the garrison team. Rest well, and don't forcibly catalyze your Sea of Consciousness again."
Lin Yan nodded and walked back to his dormitory alone.
Closing the door, only he was left in the small room. He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled out that last remaining strong-dose stabilization agent from his inner lining pocket. The cold plastic tube lay quietly in his palm; it was his final trump card.
He thought of the illusions created by the Elder in the cavern, and of the fragmented human consciousness fragments mixed within the alien signals that Scholar Su had just mentioned. A vague guess slowly surfaced in his heart—those humans who had sunk into the illusion web, whose consciousness had been devoured, had they truly disappeared completely? Had their thoughts and memories been preserved by the Ancient Progeny, turned into materials for illusions, and nourishment for the psychic anchor points?
The guess was too chilling; he didn't want to think too deeply about it.
He lay down on the bed, closed his eyes, and circulated the breathing technique passed down by his master on time. This time, he deliberately withdrew all his psychic power, only nurturing his physical body, not daring to touch his Sea of Consciousness in the slightest.
The lights inside the bastion stretched endlessly, yet the shadows had already lurked beneath them. Outside the wasteland, deep in the rifts, the alien race was still lurking and gathering strength. The overt beast tide and the covert infiltration—two massive nets were simultaneously enveloping the Western Front.
He didn't know how much time had passed when a sudden, urgent alarm bell suddenly rang outside the window—short and distinct from the long red siren of a beast tide attack.
It was the warning from the psychic monitoring array.
Lin Yan's eyes snapped open, his heart tightening abruptly.
That alien anchor point signal, which had disappeared several times, had appeared once again. This time, the signal's intensity was clearer than ever before.
End of Chapter.
He strictly followed the healing instructor's orders, swallowing the yellowish-brown Sea of Consciousness nourishing agents on time. The medicine was gentle, capable only of smoothing out the restless origin on the surface bit by bit. It could not mend the innate fissure, nor could it erase the hidden damage sustained during the death match with the Elder. Whenever he focused his mind and tried to mobilize even a wisp of Sea of Consciousness power, a tearing, dull pain would immediately entangle him, reminding him of the price of overdrawing.
During these seven days, he rarely went out. When he did leave the dormitory, it was only to visit the healing center for routine scans or to pick up simple meals at the logistics canteen. The atmosphere inside the bastion remained tense. Whispers about the intelligence from Rift No. 79 flowed through the streets and alleys. Some were excited, feeling they had finally seized a source of the beast tide that could be actively uprooted; others were terrified, fearing that rashly venturing deep underground would provoke the deeper powers of the Ancient Progeny, triggering a catastrophic beast tide that would sweep across the Western Front.
Chen Ye accompanied him most of the time. His physical bruises healed quickly, and the bruises on his chest had mostly faded. Yet, every time the fallen team member was mentioned, his expression would darken. Of the two surviving team members, one remained in the medical cabin for ongoing rehabilitation for Sea of Consciousness oscillation, while the other, who had only minor injuries, was temporarily reassigned to assist with guard duty at the outpost. The special forces squad that had ventured deep into the rift was no longer intact.
On the last day of the recovery period, the review report meeting was scheduled as planned in the sealed conference hall of the War Zone Research Institute.
Unlike the frontline temporary command post, the walls here were lined with thick lead vibration-isolation panels, blocking out all external psychic fluctuations to prevent the Ancient Progeny's psychic hooks from infiltrating through the acoustic field. There were not many attendees: two high-ranking officials of the Western Front war zone, three senior scholars from the Sea of Consciousness Research Institute, the garrison commander, and Lin Yan and Chen Ye.
The entire meeting was recorded, and all oral testimonies would be archived as Grade A classified documents.
On the projection screen was still the three-dimensional topographical map of Rift No. 79, with far more supplementary annotations than when they had first brought back the intelligence.
The review was presided over by an elderly scholar named Su from the research institute. With his gray hair and a recording pen in his hand, his gaze fell on Lin Yan, his tone cautious: "You were the closest to the Ancient Progeny Elder, the only one who withstood its illusion impact head-on and completed the counter-kill. Recount every detail from the moment you encountered the Elder, from start to finish. Do not leave out any subtle psychic signal, the pattern of the illusions it released, or the sequence in which the curse-mark patterns glowed. This information is of immense value to our research on high-tier Ancient Progeny individuals."
Lin Yan nodded slowly and sat up straight.
He began to speak from the moment he stepped into the karst area and sensed that ancient psychic frequency, so different from the secondary priests, detailing it step by step: the logic of the Elder's illusions, precisely grasping the attachments and guilt deep in the human heart; the psychic impact prioritizing the wounds of those with damaged Seas of Consciousness; the curse-marked bone armor on the top of the skull being the psychic core, and the scale gaps on the side of the neck being secondary weak points; and the scene when the entire karst illusion web instantly lost command and scattered into chaos the moment the Elder died.
He spoke very slowly, restraining himself from mobilizing his Sea of Consciousness to recall those illusory images. Even just remembering them caused the fissure to begin burning faintly.
"There is one point I need to confirm." Scholar Su leaned forward slightly after Lin Yan finished. "When the Elder was controlling the illusions, did you capture any other fragments of consciousness mixed within its psychic signals? Not from the scaled beasts, nor from itself. Some fragmented, chaotic thoughts belonging to humans?"
Lin Yan paused slightly, carefully recalling the fierce battle in the cavern.
At that time, with the double doses of stabilization agents overlapping and the boundary between truth and falsehood blurred, countless phantoms had piled up. He had only focused on finding opportunities to attack and hadn't deliberately tried to distinguish them. He shook his head gently: "At that time, my Sea of Consciousness was suppressed by the agents, and my perception was distorted. I couldn't tell."
Scholar Su did not press further. He simply drew a heavy line in his notebook, his expression growing graver as he turned to the war zone commander beside him: "This matches up. In the past three days, the research institute's全域 (global) psychic monitoring array has captured a few wisps of faint alien psychic remnants. The signal source is not in the wasteland rifts, nor at the outer perimeter outposts. The signal's landing point is right inside the West Bastion city district."
In a single sentence, the conference hall instantly fell silent.
Chen Ye sat up abruptly, his brow furrowed tightly: "Inside the bastion? Impossible. All personnel returning from the rifts have undergone Sea of Consciousness screening; psychic hooks are cleared on the spot. Every checkpoint for the injured, supplies, and sheltered refugees has detection equipment."
"It is not a潜伏 (lurking) hook brought back by a person." Another young scholar brought up another set of spectrum images, projecting them onto the screen. The spectrum curves were fragmented and erratic, sharing the same source as the fluctuations of the secondary priests and the Elder, but at an extremely low intensity. "It is a scattered signal, like an anchor point for some kind of remote infiltration. We have tracked it three times, and every time we were about to lock onto the coordinates, the signal vanished into thin air, as if someone had actively cut it off."
The war zone commander's fingers tapped heavily on the desktop, his deep voice breaking the silence: "What step has the investigation reached?"
"A large-scale screening has been rolled out, but the bastion has a population of hundreds of thousands. Residential areas, academies, logistics zones, barracks, and factories are interwoven, and the coverage of the psychic monitoring array is limited," Scholar Su sighed. "We still don't fully understand the psychic methods of the Ancient Progeny. They don't necessarily intend to create immediate slaughter. These faint anchor points pre-embedded in the inner city can be used to eavesdrop, collect emotions, and mark important targets. When the beast tide launches its general offensive, they can detonate the illusions synchronously, collapsing the defense line from within."
Lin Yan listened quietly, a chill slowly rising in his heart.
They had risked their lives to infiltrate the underground and bring back the defense intelligence of the rift, thinking they had seized the initiative. They never expected that the enemy's tentacles had already quietly reached inside the high walls. The twenty-five-year war of attrition was never just about fighting in the wasteland and the rifts. The Ancient Progeny's attacks had two lines: overt and covert. The overt line was the endless tide of scaled beasts, consuming the flesh and blood of the defenders; the covert line was psychic infiltration, silent and invisible, taking root inside the bastion.
In the second half of the report meeting, the discussion returned to the assault plan for Rift No. 79.
The debate still had not subsided.
The radical faction insisted on taking advantage of the Elder's fall and the vacancy in the rift's illusion web command structure to deploy elite special operations squads,配合 (coordinating) with heavy artillery clusters to launch a surprise attack and destroy the priests' rock pedestal and incubation chambers in one fell swoop. The conservative faction argued that since unknown psychic anchor points had already been found in the inner city, the situation harbored hidden variables. Withdrawing a large number of elite troops from the bastion at this moment would create a massive void in internal defense, a risk that could not be borne.
In the end, the commander made the final decision, temporarily shelving the large-scale assault plan.
First, complete a carpet-style investigation of psychic signals across the entire bastion to lock down that hidden alien anchor point in the inner city; simultaneously, dispatch small-scale reconnaissance scouts to continuously monitor Rift No. 79 to confirm whether the underground Ancient Progeny had dispatched a new commander to fill the vacancy after the Elder's death.
"You two," the commander looked at Lin Yan and Chen Ye, "as those familiar with the rift's terrain, are listed as reserve assault guides. But before Lin Yan's hidden Sea of Consciousness injury stabilizes, you will not be conscripted for combat."
When the review meeting ended and they walked out of the research institute, the sky had already darkened. The searchlights on the bastion's outer wall lit up on time, their beams piercing through the thick gray fog outside.
The evening breeze carried the faint scent of disinfectant and gunpowder smoke.
"There are anchor points inside..." Chen Ye muttered in a low voice, his face grim. "The bastion we fought to the death to defend was never an absolutely safe place."
"They are in no rush," Lin Yan said slowly, his hand unconsciously pressing against his brow, the fissure in his Sea of Consciousness still throbbing faintly. "The Ancient Progeny are good at waiting. Twenty-five years—they can slowly drain us, slowly infiltrate, and grind away humanity's confidence bit by bit."
The two walked along the corridor toward the dormitories, passing the training grounds of the combat preparation university along the way.
In the night, young cadets were practicing Sea of Consciousness fortification under the guidance of instructors. Thin but resolute psychic barriers flashed and vanished in the mid-air of the training ground. These children had been learning how to counter illusions and resist alien psychic intrusion since their first day of enrollment; they were the future defenders of the bastion. Yet, no one knew if this training could protect their minds when the enemy's whispers sounded from within the high walls.
Before parting, Chen Ye patted Lin Yan's shoulder: "For the next few days, I'll be participating in the district psychic screening with the garrison team. Rest well, and don't forcibly catalyze your Sea of Consciousness again."
Lin Yan nodded and walked back to his dormitory alone.
Closing the door, only he was left in the small room. He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled out that last remaining strong-dose stabilization agent from his inner lining pocket. The cold plastic tube lay quietly in his palm; it was his final trump card.
He thought of the illusions created by the Elder in the cavern, and of the fragmented human consciousness fragments mixed within the alien signals that Scholar Su had just mentioned. A vague guess slowly surfaced in his heart—those humans who had sunk into the illusion web, whose consciousness had been devoured, had they truly disappeared completely? Had their thoughts and memories been preserved by the Ancient Progeny, turned into materials for illusions, and nourishment for the psychic anchor points?
The guess was too chilling; he didn't want to think too deeply about it.
He lay down on the bed, closed his eyes, and circulated the breathing technique passed down by his master on time. This time, he deliberately withdrew all his psychic power, only nurturing his physical body, not daring to touch his Sea of Consciousness in the slightest.
The lights inside the bastion stretched endlessly, yet the shadows had already lurked beneath them. Outside the wasteland, deep in the rifts, the alien race was still lurking and gathering strength. The overt beast tide and the covert infiltration—two massive nets were simultaneously enveloping the Western Front.
He didn't know how much time had passed when a sudden, urgent alarm bell suddenly rang outside the window—short and distinct from the long red siren of a beast tide attack.
It was the warning from the psychic monitoring array.
Lin Yan's eyes snapped open, his heart tightening abruptly.
That alien anchor point signal, which had disappeared several times, had appeared once again. This time, the signal's intensity was clearer than ever before.
End of Chapter.