Chapter 178: Hidden Seeds Within the City
The external mission at the blockade array had concluded. As the squad rode the transport vehicle back to the main urban area of the West Bastion, dawn was approaching.
The gray-fog-shrouded wasteland was left far behind. The heavy city gates slowly slid inward, cutting off the corrosive breath and the icy, alien aura from the outside world. The lights within the city had not yet faded. Early-rising supply workers were already unloading goods, and the faint aroma of hot porridge from the canteens drifted through the alleys, forming a sharp contrast with the lingering, foul stench of rot on the wasteland.
After handing over the equipment, samples, and video records to Old Zhou and the others, Lin Yan received two days of rotation leave. He didn't return to his dorm first. As agreed, he headed to the barracks of the mobile support team to find Chen Ye.
Chen Ye had been on duty at the defense line last night. Having just taken off his dust-covered armor, his face bore the marks of exhaustion. Seeing Lin Yan approach, he waved him over and pulled him to a secluded stone step behind the barracks. Few people came here; it was suitable for low-voiced conversations.
"Judging by your complexion, you ran into some troublesome stuff on this external mission again," Chen Ye said, handing him a bottle of warm water, his brow furrowed. "The brief from the front lines says you found buoy wreckage on the outer perimeter of the rift and saw that unfamiliar spiral mark."
Lin Yan nodded and slowly recounted the entire process to him: the silently dissolving buoys, the patterns etched onto the alloy shells, the residual wave of that ancient consciousness following the squad at a moderate distance, and the moment the resonance barrier intercepted that aura. He omitted the glimpse of the abyss in the healing pod and the silent [The fissure is a very good vessel], but he concealed none of the other details.
Chen Ye listened quietly, his fingertips unconsciously tightening around the water bottle until the plastic slightly deformed.
"With Elders and priests, at least we could figure out their routines. They would charge, they would spread illusion tides; they had clear methods of attack. But the supreme ruler deep underground is completely different," Chen Ye said in a low voice. "It's in no rush to kill, in no rush to flatten the defense lines. It merely slowly clears our eyes and ears, leaves markers, and follows from afar to watch. An opponent like this is far more chilling to the heart than an overwhelming beast tide."
"It is patiently laying out its board," Lin Yan said, looking toward the distant dome of the academy. "All our countermeasures are exposed under its gaze. The blockade array, scout reconnaissance, the upper limits of Sea of Consciousness cultivators' abilities—it is collecting information on all of these bit by bit. In this war, we are playing with open cards, while it hides in the darkness."
The two fell silent for a moment. Suddenly, the urgent voice from the internal communications speaker in the barracks broke the quiet.
"Attention all squad leaders. A new case of psychic parasitism has been discovered in the East District residential area. The patient has no record of leaving the wasteland and no history of contact with frontline personnel. An isolation squad is to proceed to the scene immediately, and the research institute will dispatch personnel for support simultaneously. Repeat, a new case of parasitic anchor point infection in the East District residential area..."
Lin Yan and Chen Ye both froze.
The previously infected logistics worker had at least had the opportunity to transport supplies to the buffer zone, providing a channel to come into contact with the rift's aura. But this time, the patient had never stepped out of the bastion, had never been to the wasteland, and rarely even left the East District residential area.
This meant the seed of the anchor point had been silently hidden within the city long ago. It wasn't brought in by someone following from the outside; it had taken root deep within the bastion's interior.
"This is bad," Chen Ye said, standing up abruptly. "We thought we had cleared the hidden danger after the comprehensive screening earlier. It turns out we only found the one floating on the surface."
"It doesn't need to continuously dispatch priests into the city from the rift to personally enter," Lin Yan said, a dull ache rising in his brow as his thoughts raced. "That slowly rising ancient psychic flow has a permeation ability far beyond our estimates. Psychic particles can slip through the crevices in the rock strata, bypass the main city gates, bypass the blockade array, and quietly seep beneath the bastion's foundation through underground pipelines and groundwater veins, planting parasitic seeds within the urban area."
It was proceeding on two fronts simultaneously.
On the shallow level, the priests and scaled beasts created beast tides for feints and ambushed outposts to tie down troops. On the deep level, it released a long, continuous psychic flow to permeate the rock strata, quietly sowing seeds within this last sanctuary of humanity. Once there were enough seeds, there would be no need to breach the city walls; chaos would erupt from within the city itself.
Chen Ye immediately reported to the squad headquarters and departed with the isolation squad. Lin Yan didn't have the clearance to directly enter the quarantined area, so he turned and rushed to the research institute.
The atmosphere in the monitoring hall was tense. Scholar Su had already led his team to bring up the geological pipeline map of the East District. On the large screen, dense water supply, electrical, and sewage pipelines were spread out like a spider's web beneath the entire East District.
"The patient is an ordinary seamstress, thirty-five years old. She began experiencing auditory hallucinations last night, continuously hearing low hissing from underground. This morning, she lost control and attacked her neighbor before being subdued by patrolling military police," a researcher reported quickly. "Preliminary testing shows a micro-anchor point has taken root inside her Sea of Consciousness. It shares the same origin as the one in the logistics worker last time, but it is even smaller and more concealed. Conventional global psychic scans can easily miss it."
"How did it get in?" an officer asked in a deep voice. "All incoming materials and personnel must undergo Sea of Consciousness screening."
"The screening targets anchor points that carry strong fluctuations and are already fully formed," Scholar Su said, pointing at the underground pipeline map. "If it's merely an invisible psychic spore, before it is activated, its fluctuation is so faint that it blends almost entirely with environmental noise. The spores seep in through the groundwater, lie dormant beneath the city, and only take root and sprout on suitable hosts when the time is right."
Suitable hosts.
Lin Yan's heart stirred.
It didn't necessarily have to be cultivators with high cultivation bases, nor did it have to be those with weak willpower. Perhaps it was about matching spiritual characteristics. Just like him, who was born with a fissure in his Sea of Consciousness, making it easier to bear the psychic power of the alien race. The subterranean supreme ruler was screening for vessels, quietly searching within the bastion for carriers suitable to bear its will.
"The entire residential building is now under quarantine lockdown, and door-to-door Sea of Consciousness testing is underway," the researcher continued. "But the risk is high. The spores might not be limited to just this one location. The underground pipelines in the East District are highly interconnected; the spores can spread through the water system to the West and South Districts. Beneath the foundation of our bastion, it has already become a channel for the spread of psychic spores."
Previously, everyone's focus had been on the wasteland and the exit of Rift No. 79, desperately trying to seal off the shallow beast tide channels. No one had expected that the enemy was not obsessed with breaking down the front door. Instead, it was fighting a tunnel war, seeping in from beneath the city's very foundation. Walls could block the physical bodies of scaled beasts, but they could not block the invisible, intangible psychic spores.
"The blockade array can only stop the large-scale illusion tides and beast herds surging out from the main rift channel," Scholar Su said in a heavy voice. "It cannot stop this diffuse, molecular-like slow permeation of psychic particles. From the very beginning, our defense line design overlooked this route through the underground groundwater veins."
"Can we deploy oscillation devices along the underground pipelines to set up resonance and eradicate the spores?"
"We can try, but the risk is extremely high," Scholar Su shook his head. "If the resonance intensity is too low, it won't kill the spores; if it's too high, it will shatter the underground pipelines in the urban area, causing collapses and water outages, directly damaging the residential areas. Furthermore, we don't know the extent of the spores' spread. Blindly using resonance is a price we cannot afford to pay."
The meeting quickly finalized the plan:
First, implement a comprehensive lockdown in the East District, conduct door-to-door screening, and isolate all suspected infected individuals.
Second, mobilize Sea of Consciousness perception-type cultivators, divide them into small teams, and explore the underground pipe galleries in sections to track the source direction of the spore spread.
Third, have the research institute urgently develop a new type of perception agent specifically designed to capture faint psychic spores to improve screening accuracy.
Fourth, add a new requirement for all frontline scouts and defense line personnel: in addition to monitoring the rift, they must also pay attention to anomalies in the rock strata's water systems.
Lin Yan voluntarily raised his hand: "I will join the underground pipe gallery exploration team. My sensitivity to this kind of thin, deep-level Ancient Progeny psychic aura is higher."
Scholar Su looked at him, hesitating for a moment. He was well aware of Lin Yan's hidden Sea of Consciousness injuries; every perception of deep-level aura was a gamble. But with the current severe shortage of manpower, ordinary cultivators found it difficult to distinguish the faint fluctuations of spores from environmental noise.
"Approved. But remember the bottom line: the moment you directly perceive the aura of that supreme ruler's consciousness, evacuate the pipe gallery immediately and abandon the exploration. The pipe gallery is an enclosed space; once locked onto by it, it will be very difficult for us to rescue you."
After the meeting adjourned, Lin Yan collected his pipe gallery protective suit, portable spectrum analyzer, and headlamp.
The entrance to the underground pipe gallery was at a concealed maintenance shaft on the outer perimeter of the East District. Military police had set up a cordon, and medical staff stood by, waiting on standby.
Lifting the heavy manhole cover, a cold, damp aura surged up from the darkness, mixed with the smell of mud and stagnant water. Unlike the intense stench of rot in the rift, the chill here was much fainter, hidden within the moist air, silent and imperceptible.
Lin Yan descended the metal ladder, stepping into the dark pipe gallery one step at a time.
The passage was not tall; he could only move forward bent over. Thick water supply pipes lined both sides, and shallow sewage pooled on the ground, splashing with every step. Pipelines crisscrossed overhead, and the headlamp could only illuminate a few meters ahead; beyond that was nothing but thick, impenetrable darkness.
He slowed his mind, carefully releasing his perception.
The fissure in his Sea of Consciousness trembled slightly. Countless tiny, faint psychic spores, like dust floating in water, were scattered throughout the air. A faint, same-origin aura—all originating from that supreme ruler in the abyssal depths.
They floated quietly, in no rush to parasitize, merely drifting in the darkness, waiting to land on a suitable vessel.
Lin Yan slowly moved forward, the spectrum analyzer emitting a soft hum as it recorded the changes in spore density.
He discovered that the spore concentration was slowly spreading along the pipe gallery toward the central area of the bastion.
The wasteland rift outside the city walls was a battlefield, and at this moment, this crisscrossing network of underground pipelines beneath the bastion had become a second, invisible battlefield. The enemy didn't need to roar, didn't need sharp claws; it only needed countless invisible psychic spores to slowly erode this last sanctuary of humanity.
Lin Yan raised his hand and pressed against his brow. The fissure transmitted a familiar, dull ache.
Walking deep into the dark pipe gallery, entirely alone, he chased the invisible seeds beneath the city's foundation. And he knew clearly that the existence that had sown all of this was still quietly dormant in the endless darkness below Rift No. 79, calmly watching the spores take root and spread within the bastion.
End of Chapter.
The gray-fog-shrouded wasteland was left far behind. The heavy city gates slowly slid inward, cutting off the corrosive breath and the icy, alien aura from the outside world. The lights within the city had not yet faded. Early-rising supply workers were already unloading goods, and the faint aroma of hot porridge from the canteens drifted through the alleys, forming a sharp contrast with the lingering, foul stench of rot on the wasteland.
After handing over the equipment, samples, and video records to Old Zhou and the others, Lin Yan received two days of rotation leave. He didn't return to his dorm first. As agreed, he headed to the barracks of the mobile support team to find Chen Ye.
Chen Ye had been on duty at the defense line last night. Having just taken off his dust-covered armor, his face bore the marks of exhaustion. Seeing Lin Yan approach, he waved him over and pulled him to a secluded stone step behind the barracks. Few people came here; it was suitable for low-voiced conversations.
"Judging by your complexion, you ran into some troublesome stuff on this external mission again," Chen Ye said, handing him a bottle of warm water, his brow furrowed. "The brief from the front lines says you found buoy wreckage on the outer perimeter of the rift and saw that unfamiliar spiral mark."
Lin Yan nodded and slowly recounted the entire process to him: the silently dissolving buoys, the patterns etched onto the alloy shells, the residual wave of that ancient consciousness following the squad at a moderate distance, and the moment the resonance barrier intercepted that aura. He omitted the glimpse of the abyss in the healing pod and the silent [The fissure is a very good vessel], but he concealed none of the other details.
Chen Ye listened quietly, his fingertips unconsciously tightening around the water bottle until the plastic slightly deformed.
"With Elders and priests, at least we could figure out their routines. They would charge, they would spread illusion tides; they had clear methods of attack. But the supreme ruler deep underground is completely different," Chen Ye said in a low voice. "It's in no rush to kill, in no rush to flatten the defense lines. It merely slowly clears our eyes and ears, leaves markers, and follows from afar to watch. An opponent like this is far more chilling to the heart than an overwhelming beast tide."
"It is patiently laying out its board," Lin Yan said, looking toward the distant dome of the academy. "All our countermeasures are exposed under its gaze. The blockade array, scout reconnaissance, the upper limits of Sea of Consciousness cultivators' abilities—it is collecting information on all of these bit by bit. In this war, we are playing with open cards, while it hides in the darkness."
The two fell silent for a moment. Suddenly, the urgent voice from the internal communications speaker in the barracks broke the quiet.
"Attention all squad leaders. A new case of psychic parasitism has been discovered in the East District residential area. The patient has no record of leaving the wasteland and no history of contact with frontline personnel. An isolation squad is to proceed to the scene immediately, and the research institute will dispatch personnel for support simultaneously. Repeat, a new case of parasitic anchor point infection in the East District residential area..."
Lin Yan and Chen Ye both froze.
The previously infected logistics worker had at least had the opportunity to transport supplies to the buffer zone, providing a channel to come into contact with the rift's aura. But this time, the patient had never stepped out of the bastion, had never been to the wasteland, and rarely even left the East District residential area.
This meant the seed of the anchor point had been silently hidden within the city long ago. It wasn't brought in by someone following from the outside; it had taken root deep within the bastion's interior.
"This is bad," Chen Ye said, standing up abruptly. "We thought we had cleared the hidden danger after the comprehensive screening earlier. It turns out we only found the one floating on the surface."
"It doesn't need to continuously dispatch priests into the city from the rift to personally enter," Lin Yan said, a dull ache rising in his brow as his thoughts raced. "That slowly rising ancient psychic flow has a permeation ability far beyond our estimates. Psychic particles can slip through the crevices in the rock strata, bypass the main city gates, bypass the blockade array, and quietly seep beneath the bastion's foundation through underground pipelines and groundwater veins, planting parasitic seeds within the urban area."
It was proceeding on two fronts simultaneously.
On the shallow level, the priests and scaled beasts created beast tides for feints and ambushed outposts to tie down troops. On the deep level, it released a long, continuous psychic flow to permeate the rock strata, quietly sowing seeds within this last sanctuary of humanity. Once there were enough seeds, there would be no need to breach the city walls; chaos would erupt from within the city itself.
Chen Ye immediately reported to the squad headquarters and departed with the isolation squad. Lin Yan didn't have the clearance to directly enter the quarantined area, so he turned and rushed to the research institute.
The atmosphere in the monitoring hall was tense. Scholar Su had already led his team to bring up the geological pipeline map of the East District. On the large screen, dense water supply, electrical, and sewage pipelines were spread out like a spider's web beneath the entire East District.
"The patient is an ordinary seamstress, thirty-five years old. She began experiencing auditory hallucinations last night, continuously hearing low hissing from underground. This morning, she lost control and attacked her neighbor before being subdued by patrolling military police," a researcher reported quickly. "Preliminary testing shows a micro-anchor point has taken root inside her Sea of Consciousness. It shares the same origin as the one in the logistics worker last time, but it is even smaller and more concealed. Conventional global psychic scans can easily miss it."
"How did it get in?" an officer asked in a deep voice. "All incoming materials and personnel must undergo Sea of Consciousness screening."
"The screening targets anchor points that carry strong fluctuations and are already fully formed," Scholar Su said, pointing at the underground pipeline map. "If it's merely an invisible psychic spore, before it is activated, its fluctuation is so faint that it blends almost entirely with environmental noise. The spores seep in through the groundwater, lie dormant beneath the city, and only take root and sprout on suitable hosts when the time is right."
Suitable hosts.
Lin Yan's heart stirred.
It didn't necessarily have to be cultivators with high cultivation bases, nor did it have to be those with weak willpower. Perhaps it was about matching spiritual characteristics. Just like him, who was born with a fissure in his Sea of Consciousness, making it easier to bear the psychic power of the alien race. The subterranean supreme ruler was screening for vessels, quietly searching within the bastion for carriers suitable to bear its will.
"The entire residential building is now under quarantine lockdown, and door-to-door Sea of Consciousness testing is underway," the researcher continued. "But the risk is high. The spores might not be limited to just this one location. The underground pipelines in the East District are highly interconnected; the spores can spread through the water system to the West and South Districts. Beneath the foundation of our bastion, it has already become a channel for the spread of psychic spores."
Previously, everyone's focus had been on the wasteland and the exit of Rift No. 79, desperately trying to seal off the shallow beast tide channels. No one had expected that the enemy was not obsessed with breaking down the front door. Instead, it was fighting a tunnel war, seeping in from beneath the city's very foundation. Walls could block the physical bodies of scaled beasts, but they could not block the invisible, intangible psychic spores.
"The blockade array can only stop the large-scale illusion tides and beast herds surging out from the main rift channel," Scholar Su said in a heavy voice. "It cannot stop this diffuse, molecular-like slow permeation of psychic particles. From the very beginning, our defense line design overlooked this route through the underground groundwater veins."
"Can we deploy oscillation devices along the underground pipelines to set up resonance and eradicate the spores?"
"We can try, but the risk is extremely high," Scholar Su shook his head. "If the resonance intensity is too low, it won't kill the spores; if it's too high, it will shatter the underground pipelines in the urban area, causing collapses and water outages, directly damaging the residential areas. Furthermore, we don't know the extent of the spores' spread. Blindly using resonance is a price we cannot afford to pay."
The meeting quickly finalized the plan:
First, implement a comprehensive lockdown in the East District, conduct door-to-door screening, and isolate all suspected infected individuals.
Second, mobilize Sea of Consciousness perception-type cultivators, divide them into small teams, and explore the underground pipe galleries in sections to track the source direction of the spore spread.
Third, have the research institute urgently develop a new type of perception agent specifically designed to capture faint psychic spores to improve screening accuracy.
Fourth, add a new requirement for all frontline scouts and defense line personnel: in addition to monitoring the rift, they must also pay attention to anomalies in the rock strata's water systems.
Lin Yan voluntarily raised his hand: "I will join the underground pipe gallery exploration team. My sensitivity to this kind of thin, deep-level Ancient Progeny psychic aura is higher."
Scholar Su looked at him, hesitating for a moment. He was well aware of Lin Yan's hidden Sea of Consciousness injuries; every perception of deep-level aura was a gamble. But with the current severe shortage of manpower, ordinary cultivators found it difficult to distinguish the faint fluctuations of spores from environmental noise.
"Approved. But remember the bottom line: the moment you directly perceive the aura of that supreme ruler's consciousness, evacuate the pipe gallery immediately and abandon the exploration. The pipe gallery is an enclosed space; once locked onto by it, it will be very difficult for us to rescue you."
After the meeting adjourned, Lin Yan collected his pipe gallery protective suit, portable spectrum analyzer, and headlamp.
The entrance to the underground pipe gallery was at a concealed maintenance shaft on the outer perimeter of the East District. Military police had set up a cordon, and medical staff stood by, waiting on standby.
Lifting the heavy manhole cover, a cold, damp aura surged up from the darkness, mixed with the smell of mud and stagnant water. Unlike the intense stench of rot in the rift, the chill here was much fainter, hidden within the moist air, silent and imperceptible.
Lin Yan descended the metal ladder, stepping into the dark pipe gallery one step at a time.
The passage was not tall; he could only move forward bent over. Thick water supply pipes lined both sides, and shallow sewage pooled on the ground, splashing with every step. Pipelines crisscrossed overhead, and the headlamp could only illuminate a few meters ahead; beyond that was nothing but thick, impenetrable darkness.
He slowed his mind, carefully releasing his perception.
The fissure in his Sea of Consciousness trembled slightly. Countless tiny, faint psychic spores, like dust floating in water, were scattered throughout the air. A faint, same-origin aura—all originating from that supreme ruler in the abyssal depths.
They floated quietly, in no rush to parasitize, merely drifting in the darkness, waiting to land on a suitable vessel.
Lin Yan slowly moved forward, the spectrum analyzer emitting a soft hum as it recorded the changes in spore density.
He discovered that the spore concentration was slowly spreading along the pipe gallery toward the central area of the bastion.
The wasteland rift outside the city walls was a battlefield, and at this moment, this crisscrossing network of underground pipelines beneath the bastion had become a second, invisible battlefield. The enemy didn't need to roar, didn't need sharp claws; it only needed countless invisible psychic spores to slowly erode this last sanctuary of humanity.
Lin Yan raised his hand and pressed against his brow. The fissure transmitted a familiar, dull ache.
Walking deep into the dark pipe gallery, entirely alone, he chased the invisible seeds beneath the city's foundation. And he knew clearly that the existence that had sown all of this was still quietly dormant in the endless darkness below Rift No. 79, calmly watching the spores take root and spread within the bastion.
End of Chapter.