Chapter 185: The Shadow Emissary Emerges
The dormitory room was small and minimalist. The walls had been treated with a basic Sea of Consciousness shielding coating, capable of isolating the interference from scattered spore signals outside.
Lin Yan closed the door and pulled the blackout curtains. The room was left with only a low-brightness lamp on the corner of the desk. He sat cross-legged on the bed, slowly regulating his breathing according to the ancient martial arts qi-nurturing methods, pressing down the dull ache in his Sea of Consciousness accumulated from the previous external mission. The nourishing agent given by Scholar Su had already been consumed, and its gentle medicinal power slowly permeated the fissure that ran through the edge of his Sea of Consciousness, gradually calming the restless origin.
He didn't rashly spread out his perception over a large area.
Scholar Su's warning still echoed in his ears: his perception channel was two-way. He could see the darkness, and the darkness could equally see him. Today, he only wanted to make a controlled attempt. In a safe position within the bastion, far away from the spore pipe network and the main rift channel, he would gently release a wisp of extremely fine perception tentacles, trying to distinguish the supreme ruler's original stream of consciousness from the derived fluctuations of the spores, nodes, and priests within the overlapping layers of secondary signals.
The Sea of Consciousness slowly released a tentacle as thin as a hair.
Countless tiny signals drifted over through dozens of kilometers of rock strata, layered upon layered, like ripples mixed together on the surface of the water.
The outermost layer was the hum of countless spores—fine, chaotic, and interconnected into resonance chains. It was the noise diffusing outward from the pipe gallery nodes throughout the East and South Districts. The layer below that was the steady rhythm of the scattered spiral nodes inhaling and exhaling—regular and monotonous, like the ceaseless beating of a swarm of bees. And beneath that lay the main signal buried at the bottom of all the noise—gentle, constant, devoid of anger or murderous intent, possessing only a boundless indifference, like the rock strata themselves that had been silent for millennia.
Lin Yan focused intently, carefully distinguishing the layers.
The spore signals were scattered, and the node signals were repetitive cycles. Even the psychic waves of high-tier priests carried a strong sense of purpose, laced with emotions of bewitchment, erosion, and intimidation. Only the original signal of the supreme ruler had no emotional fluctuations. It didn't deliberately bewitch or create auditory hallucinations; it simply "existed." All other signals were merely tributaries branching off from it.
The moment he focused on peeling back the layers of signals, that deeply buried, indifferent stream of consciousness trembled ever so slightly.
It wasn't an attack, nor was it a lock-on. It was more like it had sensed a familiar perception tentacle quietly observing it from afar.
Lin Yan's heart tightened. He immediately gathered the tentacles in his Sea of Consciousness. The fissure tingled, and he swiftly severed the perception link. A thin layer of sweat had already soaked his back. Even from such a great distance, with just a brief glimpse, it had still managed to capture him.
The two-way channel was indeed worthy of its reputation.
He calmed his breathing for a long while before suppressing the trembling in his heart. He had figured out how to distinguish the signals, but the cost was marking his position once again in front of that existence.
The communicator on the desk suddenly vibrated lightly. It was an encrypted message from Old Zhou, the text brief and solemn: The remote observation array at the rift has captured an anomaly. A target is floating up from the lower channel. It's not an ordinary scaled beast. The command center notifies all perception cultivators on standby to keep their communicators open.
Lin Yan stood up immediately, quickly tidied his clothes, and hurried to the monitoring hall of the research institute.
The atmosphere in the hall was tense once again. The main screen displayed the infrared thermal imaging playback of the shallow channel of the rift. In the footage, a dark silhouette with a taller outline, completely different from a scaled beast, was accompanied by six robust high-tier scaled beasts. Using the shadows of the channel, they were silently lurking in the recessed rock cavity inside the shallow rift entrance. They hadn't stepped out of the rift; they lay dormant quietly, their thermal signals suppressed to the lowest level, almost blending entirely with the temperature of the rock wall.
"It's a high-tier priest," Scholar Su said, pointing at the human-shaped dark shadow on the screen, his face grim. "Its rank is higher than any priest we've encountered before. Its body is covered in thick keratin armor plates, and a bundle of spiral-shaped bone crowns grows from its head. That is an organ specifically used to amplify and relay the supreme ruler's psychic signals."
Lin Yan stared at the dark shadow and carefully released his perception. This time, he controlled the scale precisely, relying only on the remote antenna set up by the research institute to receive the signal, no longer directly staring at the origin from afar.
The fluctuations belonging to this high-tier priest became clear. Its signal was attached to the supreme ruler's main signal, acting like a signal repeater. The supreme ruler's original stream of consciousness, stopped in the middle of the channel, was transmitted to this priest, amplified a second time, and then diffused toward both the wasteland and the bastion.
"It's not here to launch a frontal assault on the blockade array," Lin Yan said slowly. "It is a mobile signal node sent up by the supreme ruler."
The previous nodes were spiral patterns fixed to the pipe gallery walls and the rift rocks; their positions were fixed, and their signal propagation paths were rigid. But this high-tier priest could move. Lurking at the shallow rift entrance, it could adjust its orientation, optimize the signal conduction efficiency, and strengthen the connection between the spore networks outside and inside the city. At the same time, it was guarded by six elite scaled beasts. Once a scout squad rashly approached to investigate, they could instantly launch an ambush.
"We speculate that this is a coordinated move," Scholar Su said, bringing up the spectrum timeline. "The supreme ruler stops in the middle of the channel to stabilize the main signal and dispatches a high-tier priest to float up to the shallow front, pushing the signal link one step further. The signal strength of the resonance chain within the city will therefore reach a new level. The restlessness threshold of the dormant anchor points will become lower, making them easier to trigger."
In other words, in the future, the supreme ruler wouldn't need to personally pluck the main thread. This priest could take over the commands, igniting fuses on a small scale to create localized disturbances like those in Alley C-17. The supreme ruler wouldn't have to exert its strength every time; it could delegate the tedious tasks of testing and harassing to this shadow emissary.
"Can we mobilize the remote oscillation cannons of the blockade array to snipe this priest from a safe distance?" a garrison officer suggested.
"The risk is too high," Scholar Su shook his head. "First, it's hiding in the blind spot of the rock cavity inside the rift. The oscillation cannon bombardment will be blocked by the rock strata, making it hard to hit accurately. Second, once we fire at the priest, it's equivalent to launching a direct frontal assault, provoking the supreme ruler behind it. It could seize this opportunity to detonate all the dormant anchor points in the city at any time."
Once again, it was a familiar dilemma.
A visible enemy was positioned inside the rift entrance, yet they couldn't easily strike. If they killed it, they risked city-wide chaos; if they did nothing, it would continuously strengthen the signal link, and the probability of the city's sleepers losing control would grow higher day by day.
Lin Yan looked at the silently dormant priest in the infrared image.
It remained motionless, merging with the darkness. That bundle of bone spiral crowns faintly reflected light in the dimness, continuously relaying the consciousness from the depths. It was like a signal amplifier buried at the doorstep, operating quietly and continuously supplying power to the spore network within the bastion.
"It has another function," Lin Yan suddenly realized. "Bait. It's guarding the shallow level, waiting for our perception cultivators and scouts to lose patience and approach to investigate. As soon as someone gets close, it and the guard scaled beasts will ambush immediately. It knows we want to figure out the rift's movements, so it's using itself as bait."
Old Zhou had also arrived at the hall by this time. He added, "So, we're adding another rule to the external observation regulations: No squad is allowed to approach within one kilometer of the rift. All monitoring must rely entirely on camera platforms and remote spectrum arrays. No one is permitted to attempt to infiltrate the shallow channel to search for this priest."
The command center quickly finalized the plan:
First, all remote observation equipment must prioritize locking onto the rock cavity where the priest is hiding, continuously recording its signal output intensity and positional changes.
Second, continue to increase the dosage of neutralizing agents in the city's water supply to counteract the increased spore activity caused by the enhanced signal.
Third, the screening squads must accelerate their pace, prioritizing the investigation of high-risk residents on the resonance chain.
Fourth, all oscillation cannons on the defense line must remain on silent standby. Without the highest command, absolutely no proactive firing is allowed.
Lin Yan stood in front of the large screen, looking at the silent dark shadow in the rock cavity.
The layers of the abyssal supreme ruler's layout were becoming increasingly clear: the true body sat in the middle of the channel, commanding the overall situation; the high-tier priest floated up to the front, acting as a mobile relay and bait; countless fixed spiral nodes within the city formed a network, with tens of thousands of ordinary people serving as dormant vessels; and the scaled beasts acted as armed weapons, ready to be deployed at any time.
A net with a central hub, relays, extremities, and a blade.
After the meeting adjourned, Lin Yan didn't go back to rest immediately. He walked alone to the terrace outside the research institute, gazing far into the gray, hazy wasteland beyond the bastion. The rift was hidden at the end of the gray fog, and that high-tier priest was concealed in the darkness inside the fissure, silently relaying the will from the abyss.
He raised his hand and pressed against his brow, the fissure pulsing gently.
He was the only pair of eyes capable of penetrating the layers of tributaries to see the chess player behind the scenes, yet those very eyes were always firmly watched by the chess player.
The priest lurked in the shadows, the fuses were buried within the city, and the mastermind sat quietly in the deeper darkness. In this game, every move by the opponent was meticulously calculated. All of humanity's countermeasures had to be cautiously explored within the narrow gap of risking a city-wide detonation.
The wind from the wasteland drifted through the heavy city gate, carrying a faint trace of coldness.
The shadow emissary in the rift had taken its position, the signal link was reinforced once again, and every sleeping anchor point within the city was silently receiving a stronger whisper.
End of Chapter.
Lin Yan closed the door and pulled the blackout curtains. The room was left with only a low-brightness lamp on the corner of the desk. He sat cross-legged on the bed, slowly regulating his breathing according to the ancient martial arts qi-nurturing methods, pressing down the dull ache in his Sea of Consciousness accumulated from the previous external mission. The nourishing agent given by Scholar Su had already been consumed, and its gentle medicinal power slowly permeated the fissure that ran through the edge of his Sea of Consciousness, gradually calming the restless origin.
He didn't rashly spread out his perception over a large area.
Scholar Su's warning still echoed in his ears: his perception channel was two-way. He could see the darkness, and the darkness could equally see him. Today, he only wanted to make a controlled attempt. In a safe position within the bastion, far away from the spore pipe network and the main rift channel, he would gently release a wisp of extremely fine perception tentacles, trying to distinguish the supreme ruler's original stream of consciousness from the derived fluctuations of the spores, nodes, and priests within the overlapping layers of secondary signals.
The Sea of Consciousness slowly released a tentacle as thin as a hair.
Countless tiny signals drifted over through dozens of kilometers of rock strata, layered upon layered, like ripples mixed together on the surface of the water.
The outermost layer was the hum of countless spores—fine, chaotic, and interconnected into resonance chains. It was the noise diffusing outward from the pipe gallery nodes throughout the East and South Districts. The layer below that was the steady rhythm of the scattered spiral nodes inhaling and exhaling—regular and monotonous, like the ceaseless beating of a swarm of bees. And beneath that lay the main signal buried at the bottom of all the noise—gentle, constant, devoid of anger or murderous intent, possessing only a boundless indifference, like the rock strata themselves that had been silent for millennia.
Lin Yan focused intently, carefully distinguishing the layers.
The spore signals were scattered, and the node signals were repetitive cycles. Even the psychic waves of high-tier priests carried a strong sense of purpose, laced with emotions of bewitchment, erosion, and intimidation. Only the original signal of the supreme ruler had no emotional fluctuations. It didn't deliberately bewitch or create auditory hallucinations; it simply "existed." All other signals were merely tributaries branching off from it.
The moment he focused on peeling back the layers of signals, that deeply buried, indifferent stream of consciousness trembled ever so slightly.
It wasn't an attack, nor was it a lock-on. It was more like it had sensed a familiar perception tentacle quietly observing it from afar.
Lin Yan's heart tightened. He immediately gathered the tentacles in his Sea of Consciousness. The fissure tingled, and he swiftly severed the perception link. A thin layer of sweat had already soaked his back. Even from such a great distance, with just a brief glimpse, it had still managed to capture him.
The two-way channel was indeed worthy of its reputation.
He calmed his breathing for a long while before suppressing the trembling in his heart. He had figured out how to distinguish the signals, but the cost was marking his position once again in front of that existence.
The communicator on the desk suddenly vibrated lightly. It was an encrypted message from Old Zhou, the text brief and solemn: The remote observation array at the rift has captured an anomaly. A target is floating up from the lower channel. It's not an ordinary scaled beast. The command center notifies all perception cultivators on standby to keep their communicators open.
Lin Yan stood up immediately, quickly tidied his clothes, and hurried to the monitoring hall of the research institute.
The atmosphere in the hall was tense once again. The main screen displayed the infrared thermal imaging playback of the shallow channel of the rift. In the footage, a dark silhouette with a taller outline, completely different from a scaled beast, was accompanied by six robust high-tier scaled beasts. Using the shadows of the channel, they were silently lurking in the recessed rock cavity inside the shallow rift entrance. They hadn't stepped out of the rift; they lay dormant quietly, their thermal signals suppressed to the lowest level, almost blending entirely with the temperature of the rock wall.
"It's a high-tier priest," Scholar Su said, pointing at the human-shaped dark shadow on the screen, his face grim. "Its rank is higher than any priest we've encountered before. Its body is covered in thick keratin armor plates, and a bundle of spiral-shaped bone crowns grows from its head. That is an organ specifically used to amplify and relay the supreme ruler's psychic signals."
Lin Yan stared at the dark shadow and carefully released his perception. This time, he controlled the scale precisely, relying only on the remote antenna set up by the research institute to receive the signal, no longer directly staring at the origin from afar.
The fluctuations belonging to this high-tier priest became clear. Its signal was attached to the supreme ruler's main signal, acting like a signal repeater. The supreme ruler's original stream of consciousness, stopped in the middle of the channel, was transmitted to this priest, amplified a second time, and then diffused toward both the wasteland and the bastion.
"It's not here to launch a frontal assault on the blockade array," Lin Yan said slowly. "It is a mobile signal node sent up by the supreme ruler."
The previous nodes were spiral patterns fixed to the pipe gallery walls and the rift rocks; their positions were fixed, and their signal propagation paths were rigid. But this high-tier priest could move. Lurking at the shallow rift entrance, it could adjust its orientation, optimize the signal conduction efficiency, and strengthen the connection between the spore networks outside and inside the city. At the same time, it was guarded by six elite scaled beasts. Once a scout squad rashly approached to investigate, they could instantly launch an ambush.
"We speculate that this is a coordinated move," Scholar Su said, bringing up the spectrum timeline. "The supreme ruler stops in the middle of the channel to stabilize the main signal and dispatches a high-tier priest to float up to the shallow front, pushing the signal link one step further. The signal strength of the resonance chain within the city will therefore reach a new level. The restlessness threshold of the dormant anchor points will become lower, making them easier to trigger."
In other words, in the future, the supreme ruler wouldn't need to personally pluck the main thread. This priest could take over the commands, igniting fuses on a small scale to create localized disturbances like those in Alley C-17. The supreme ruler wouldn't have to exert its strength every time; it could delegate the tedious tasks of testing and harassing to this shadow emissary.
"Can we mobilize the remote oscillation cannons of the blockade array to snipe this priest from a safe distance?" a garrison officer suggested.
"The risk is too high," Scholar Su shook his head. "First, it's hiding in the blind spot of the rock cavity inside the rift. The oscillation cannon bombardment will be blocked by the rock strata, making it hard to hit accurately. Second, once we fire at the priest, it's equivalent to launching a direct frontal assault, provoking the supreme ruler behind it. It could seize this opportunity to detonate all the dormant anchor points in the city at any time."
Once again, it was a familiar dilemma.
A visible enemy was positioned inside the rift entrance, yet they couldn't easily strike. If they killed it, they risked city-wide chaos; if they did nothing, it would continuously strengthen the signal link, and the probability of the city's sleepers losing control would grow higher day by day.
Lin Yan looked at the silently dormant priest in the infrared image.
It remained motionless, merging with the darkness. That bundle of bone spiral crowns faintly reflected light in the dimness, continuously relaying the consciousness from the depths. It was like a signal amplifier buried at the doorstep, operating quietly and continuously supplying power to the spore network within the bastion.
"It has another function," Lin Yan suddenly realized. "Bait. It's guarding the shallow level, waiting for our perception cultivators and scouts to lose patience and approach to investigate. As soon as someone gets close, it and the guard scaled beasts will ambush immediately. It knows we want to figure out the rift's movements, so it's using itself as bait."
Old Zhou had also arrived at the hall by this time. He added, "So, we're adding another rule to the external observation regulations: No squad is allowed to approach within one kilometer of the rift. All monitoring must rely entirely on camera platforms and remote spectrum arrays. No one is permitted to attempt to infiltrate the shallow channel to search for this priest."
The command center quickly finalized the plan:
First, all remote observation equipment must prioritize locking onto the rock cavity where the priest is hiding, continuously recording its signal output intensity and positional changes.
Second, continue to increase the dosage of neutralizing agents in the city's water supply to counteract the increased spore activity caused by the enhanced signal.
Third, the screening squads must accelerate their pace, prioritizing the investigation of high-risk residents on the resonance chain.
Fourth, all oscillation cannons on the defense line must remain on silent standby. Without the highest command, absolutely no proactive firing is allowed.
Lin Yan stood in front of the large screen, looking at the silent dark shadow in the rock cavity.
The layers of the abyssal supreme ruler's layout were becoming increasingly clear: the true body sat in the middle of the channel, commanding the overall situation; the high-tier priest floated up to the front, acting as a mobile relay and bait; countless fixed spiral nodes within the city formed a network, with tens of thousands of ordinary people serving as dormant vessels; and the scaled beasts acted as armed weapons, ready to be deployed at any time.
A net with a central hub, relays, extremities, and a blade.
After the meeting adjourned, Lin Yan didn't go back to rest immediately. He walked alone to the terrace outside the research institute, gazing far into the gray, hazy wasteland beyond the bastion. The rift was hidden at the end of the gray fog, and that high-tier priest was concealed in the darkness inside the fissure, silently relaying the will from the abyss.
He raised his hand and pressed against his brow, the fissure pulsing gently.
He was the only pair of eyes capable of penetrating the layers of tributaries to see the chess player behind the scenes, yet those very eyes were always firmly watched by the chess player.
The priest lurked in the shadows, the fuses were buried within the city, and the mastermind sat quietly in the deeper darkness. In this game, every move by the opponent was meticulously calculated. All of humanity's countermeasures had to be cautiously explored within the narrow gap of risking a city-wide detonation.
The wind from the wasteland drifted through the heavy city gate, carrying a faint trace of coldness.
The shadow emissary in the rift had taken its position, the signal link was reinforced once again, and every sleeping anchor point within the city was silently receiving a stronger whisper.
End of Chapter.