Chapter 186: Pulsing at the Gates
The gray fog over the wasteland had not dispersed all day. It hung like a coarse cloth soaked in ink, pressing heavily over Rift No. 79.
The rock cavity where the high-tier priest was hiding remained completely still. The six guard scaled beasts curled up in the shadows, their breathing suppressed to the absolute minimum, their thermal signals almost indistinguishable from the surrounding rock wall. Everyone assumed it would continue to lurk quietly, silently acting as a signal repeater. That was, until 1:17 PM, when the spectrum array suddenly jumped violently.
A short, sharp, yet not frenzied psychic pulse exploded from inside the rift's opening.
It wasn't a blanketing illusion tide, nor was it the large-scale bewitching wave that the priest usually used to erode the Sea of Consciousness. It was merely a momentary oscillation, like someone using a heavy hammer to gently tap the resonance barrier of the blockade array through the rock strata.
Hum—
An invisible barrier composed of dozens of oscillation pillars rippled with a faint halo. Though invisible to the naked eye, it was precisely captured by all monitoring instruments.
"Pulse impact! Originating from the priest's rock cavity! Medium intensity, single release, already dissipating," the maintenance operator shouted in alarm, his fingers flying as he locked onto the waveform.
Lin Yan, standing guard beside the observation terminal, immediately traced the signal back to its source.
The source of this pulse was precisely the high-tier priest wearing the spiral bone crown. It hadn't rushed out of the rock cavity, nor had it even moved. It had simply activated the bone spiral crown on its head, directing a short pulse outward.
Before anyone could catch their breath, feedback from within the city followed closely into the communication channel.
"A total of nine isolated sleepers in the East and South Districts are experiencing auditory hallucinations simultaneously! Headaches, dazed consciousness, and short-term spikes in anchor point activity! Furthermore, residents in three unscreened residential areas have reported hearing a muffled hum coming from underground!"
One pulse, linked at both ends.
Externally, it knocked against the defense line's barrier, testing the tolerance limit of the resonance array; internally, it traveled along the spore resonance link to disturb the fuses buried beneath the city. One knock, two echoes. The cost was extremely low, yet it simultaneously obtained two sets of data: whether the barrier could withstand it, and how sensitive the city's anchor points were to the signal.
Scholar Su stared at the two sets of curves jumping synchronously on the screen, his face as grim as water: "It's conducting a stress test. A single pulse to simultaneously probe the upper limits of both the outer defense line and the inner spore network."
Old Zhou grabbed the intercom and instructed the guards at the rocky hill observation point in a deep voice: "Keep a close watch on it. Note the pulse intervals and intensity changes, and record the exact time of each release. Do not adjust the barrier's power to counterattack. Maintain the current output."
"Understood."
No sooner had the words been spoken than the second pulse arrived in quick succession.
The interval was a mere eight minutes and forty-two seconds.
It was still short, but the force was slightly higher than the previous one. It slammed into the resonance barrier, triggering a more obvious fluctuation than before. The pillars emitted a low hum, and the engineer in charge of the barrier immediately reported: "Barrier load has increased by seven percent. Still within the safe threshold."
The alarms within the city sounded once again.
This time, the scope of the restlessness was larger. Thirteen additional isolated sleepers fell into anxiety. Even in a household that hadn't been screened yet, a child was crying and holding his head, claiming there were bugs spinning in his brain. Fortunately, it was only a brief disturbance, and the anchor points hadn't crossed the activation red line. Healing cultivators rushed to the district to soothe and suppress the situation.
Lin Yan focused his mind to distinguish the layers of the signal.
The essence of the pulse released by the priest was intercepting the original stream of consciousness from the supreme ruler in the middle of the rift, compressing it, and sending it out directionally. The pulse was merely a tributary; the source was still firmly held by that indifferent will deep below. The priest was merely the executor, a disposable battering ram.
"It won't max out the intensity in one go," Lin Yan said slowly. "It will increase it bit by bit. Extending the observation period will reveal the pattern: the intervals will slowly shorten, and the strength of each individual pulse will steadily rise. It will grind away at the barrier bit by bit, and stimulate the anchor points bit by bit."
Boiling a frog in warm water.
It wasn't launching a decisive, battle-ending offensive. It was using these intermittent pulses to continuously knock. The durability of the barrier, the energy of the engineers, the manpower of the healing cultivators in the city, and the tolerance of the sleeper anchor points were all being continuously drained by these unceasing, minor impacts.
Humanity couldn't launch a proactive counterattack. Once the oscillation cannons fired at the priest in the rock cavity, it would be actively tearing this fragile balance. The abyssal supreme ruler could seize the opportunity to detonate all the anchor points in the city, attacking from both inside and outside simultaneously.
The third pulse arrived with the interval shortened to six minutes.
The barrier's ripples spread wider. The indicator lights on several distant pillars turned slightly yellow, their load approaching the warning line. The command center had no choice but to fine-tune two spare pillars into the main array to share the pressure, not daring to significantly increase the total power for fear of provoking the supreme ruler deep in the rift.
Within the city, near a pipe gallery node, the Seas of Consciousness of two sleepers had already developed mild visual illusions; tiny spiral shadows constantly floated before their eyes. The healing cultivators could only stand by, continuously releasing a gentle, calming psychic field to slowly push the restless anchor points back down, consuming their mental power at an alarming rate.
"If this continues, our healing cultivators won't be able to hold out," the physician in charge of Sea of Consciousness healing said wearily over the channel. "We only have so many people, and every time a pulse hits, we have to scatter our focus to stabilize the restless sleepers."
Scholar Su quickly weighed the situation and issued orders: "Allocate the reserve calming agents and rush them to each isolation pod and high-risk district. The water supply stations must increase the dosage of neutralizing agents to reduce the spores' sensitivity to receiving pulse signals. As for the defense line, keep the spare pillars on standby. Without my command, absolutely no proactive firing is allowed."
At the wasteland rift entrance, the priest in the darkness remained motionless.
Hidden in the shadows of the rock cavity, it was like a signal generator fixed at the front line. The spiral bone crown on its head would flash with an extremely faint cold light at intervals, accumulating power before unleashing a pulse. The six scaled beast guards lay quietly around it, motionless, as if they had grown into the rock itself. They did not participate in releasing the pulses; they were only responsible for guarding and ambushing, waiting for whichever scout squad couldn't resist the urge to approach rashly.
Lin Yan tried to release a wisp of extremely faint perception tentacles, touching this pulse signal from afar through the array antenna.
He clearly felt that before each pulse was sent out, a gentle stream of consciousness from the middle of the rift would first fall upon the priest, completing a brief "authorization." The supreme ruler controlled the upper limit from behind, while the priest executed the knocking at the front. The supreme ruler held the ultimate switch; the priest did not have the authority to privately detonate all the anchor points.
"The control is still deep below," Lin Yan explained this discovery to Scholar Su. "The priest is merely a forwarder; it doesn't have the authority to trigger a large-scale activation on its own. As long as the supreme ruler doesn't issue the final command, the pulses can at most cause restlessness and auditory hallucinations. It's very difficult for it to independently complete a city-wide detonation."
This piece of news slightly alleviated the suffocating despair in the command center.
But it didn't mean they were safe.
The supreme ruler could change the authorization at any time. It could open up the permissions at any moment, allowing the priest to raise the pulse intensity to the detonation threshold. The current restraint was merely the rhythm it had chosen.
The fourth and fifth pulses fell one after another.
The interval was compressed to once every four minutes, with the intensity steadily rising. The resonance barrier trembled continuously, and the engineers stared at the jumping load meters, their palms sweating. The list of restless sleepers in the city grew longer and longer. Many residents, panicked by the repeatedly occurring auditory hallucinations, secretly gathered on the streets to ask about the situation. The military police had to discreetly guide and soothe them to prevent the panic from fermenting on its own.
Within the bastion, the surface order was still being maintained, but the undercurrents were growing increasingly turbulent.
As the sun set toward the west of the wasteland, the gray fog was dyed a murky orange-red.
The high-tier priest had already released seventeen consecutive pulses, its rhythm stable and pressing closer with every step. The safety margin of the resonance barrier was shrinking, and the healing cultivators in the city had already rotated through two batches, each one exhausted.
Lin Yan looked at the thermal imaging of the priest's rock cavity on the large screen. The dark shadow was still quietly dormant. It hadn't attacked, hadn't moved. It was merely using these short, successive knocks to stretch the nerves of the entire bastion.
It wasn't here to win a battle.
Its mission was to continuously apply pressure, continuously test, and continuously drain.
Lin Yan pressed against his brow. The fissure resonated gently with each incoming pulse, sending waves of fine numbness. Following the pulses, he could clearly trace that invisible long line connecting the priest to the supreme ruler deep in the rift.
The chess player sat deep within the chessboard, sending out its pieces to knock against humanity's defense line, strike by strike.
The knocking hadn't stopped. The accumulation of the next pulse had already quietly begun in the darkness of the rock cavity.
End of Chapter.
The rock cavity where the high-tier priest was hiding remained completely still. The six guard scaled beasts curled up in the shadows, their breathing suppressed to the absolute minimum, their thermal signals almost indistinguishable from the surrounding rock wall. Everyone assumed it would continue to lurk quietly, silently acting as a signal repeater. That was, until 1:17 PM, when the spectrum array suddenly jumped violently.
A short, sharp, yet not frenzied psychic pulse exploded from inside the rift's opening.
It wasn't a blanketing illusion tide, nor was it the large-scale bewitching wave that the priest usually used to erode the Sea of Consciousness. It was merely a momentary oscillation, like someone using a heavy hammer to gently tap the resonance barrier of the blockade array through the rock strata.
Hum—
An invisible barrier composed of dozens of oscillation pillars rippled with a faint halo. Though invisible to the naked eye, it was precisely captured by all monitoring instruments.
"Pulse impact! Originating from the priest's rock cavity! Medium intensity, single release, already dissipating," the maintenance operator shouted in alarm, his fingers flying as he locked onto the waveform.
Lin Yan, standing guard beside the observation terminal, immediately traced the signal back to its source.
The source of this pulse was precisely the high-tier priest wearing the spiral bone crown. It hadn't rushed out of the rock cavity, nor had it even moved. It had simply activated the bone spiral crown on its head, directing a short pulse outward.
Before anyone could catch their breath, feedback from within the city followed closely into the communication channel.
"A total of nine isolated sleepers in the East and South Districts are experiencing auditory hallucinations simultaneously! Headaches, dazed consciousness, and short-term spikes in anchor point activity! Furthermore, residents in three unscreened residential areas have reported hearing a muffled hum coming from underground!"
One pulse, linked at both ends.
Externally, it knocked against the defense line's barrier, testing the tolerance limit of the resonance array; internally, it traveled along the spore resonance link to disturb the fuses buried beneath the city. One knock, two echoes. The cost was extremely low, yet it simultaneously obtained two sets of data: whether the barrier could withstand it, and how sensitive the city's anchor points were to the signal.
Scholar Su stared at the two sets of curves jumping synchronously on the screen, his face as grim as water: "It's conducting a stress test. A single pulse to simultaneously probe the upper limits of both the outer defense line and the inner spore network."
Old Zhou grabbed the intercom and instructed the guards at the rocky hill observation point in a deep voice: "Keep a close watch on it. Note the pulse intervals and intensity changes, and record the exact time of each release. Do not adjust the barrier's power to counterattack. Maintain the current output."
"Understood."
No sooner had the words been spoken than the second pulse arrived in quick succession.
The interval was a mere eight minutes and forty-two seconds.
It was still short, but the force was slightly higher than the previous one. It slammed into the resonance barrier, triggering a more obvious fluctuation than before. The pillars emitted a low hum, and the engineer in charge of the barrier immediately reported: "Barrier load has increased by seven percent. Still within the safe threshold."
The alarms within the city sounded once again.
This time, the scope of the restlessness was larger. Thirteen additional isolated sleepers fell into anxiety. Even in a household that hadn't been screened yet, a child was crying and holding his head, claiming there were bugs spinning in his brain. Fortunately, it was only a brief disturbance, and the anchor points hadn't crossed the activation red line. Healing cultivators rushed to the district to soothe and suppress the situation.
Lin Yan focused his mind to distinguish the layers of the signal.
The essence of the pulse released by the priest was intercepting the original stream of consciousness from the supreme ruler in the middle of the rift, compressing it, and sending it out directionally. The pulse was merely a tributary; the source was still firmly held by that indifferent will deep below. The priest was merely the executor, a disposable battering ram.
"It won't max out the intensity in one go," Lin Yan said slowly. "It will increase it bit by bit. Extending the observation period will reveal the pattern: the intervals will slowly shorten, and the strength of each individual pulse will steadily rise. It will grind away at the barrier bit by bit, and stimulate the anchor points bit by bit."
Boiling a frog in warm water.
It wasn't launching a decisive, battle-ending offensive. It was using these intermittent pulses to continuously knock. The durability of the barrier, the energy of the engineers, the manpower of the healing cultivators in the city, and the tolerance of the sleeper anchor points were all being continuously drained by these unceasing, minor impacts.
Humanity couldn't launch a proactive counterattack. Once the oscillation cannons fired at the priest in the rock cavity, it would be actively tearing this fragile balance. The abyssal supreme ruler could seize the opportunity to detonate all the anchor points in the city, attacking from both inside and outside simultaneously.
The third pulse arrived with the interval shortened to six minutes.
The barrier's ripples spread wider. The indicator lights on several distant pillars turned slightly yellow, their load approaching the warning line. The command center had no choice but to fine-tune two spare pillars into the main array to share the pressure, not daring to significantly increase the total power for fear of provoking the supreme ruler deep in the rift.
Within the city, near a pipe gallery node, the Seas of Consciousness of two sleepers had already developed mild visual illusions; tiny spiral shadows constantly floated before their eyes. The healing cultivators could only stand by, continuously releasing a gentle, calming psychic field to slowly push the restless anchor points back down, consuming their mental power at an alarming rate.
"If this continues, our healing cultivators won't be able to hold out," the physician in charge of Sea of Consciousness healing said wearily over the channel. "We only have so many people, and every time a pulse hits, we have to scatter our focus to stabilize the restless sleepers."
Scholar Su quickly weighed the situation and issued orders: "Allocate the reserve calming agents and rush them to each isolation pod and high-risk district. The water supply stations must increase the dosage of neutralizing agents to reduce the spores' sensitivity to receiving pulse signals. As for the defense line, keep the spare pillars on standby. Without my command, absolutely no proactive firing is allowed."
At the wasteland rift entrance, the priest in the darkness remained motionless.
Hidden in the shadows of the rock cavity, it was like a signal generator fixed at the front line. The spiral bone crown on its head would flash with an extremely faint cold light at intervals, accumulating power before unleashing a pulse. The six scaled beast guards lay quietly around it, motionless, as if they had grown into the rock itself. They did not participate in releasing the pulses; they were only responsible for guarding and ambushing, waiting for whichever scout squad couldn't resist the urge to approach rashly.
Lin Yan tried to release a wisp of extremely faint perception tentacles, touching this pulse signal from afar through the array antenna.
He clearly felt that before each pulse was sent out, a gentle stream of consciousness from the middle of the rift would first fall upon the priest, completing a brief "authorization." The supreme ruler controlled the upper limit from behind, while the priest executed the knocking at the front. The supreme ruler held the ultimate switch; the priest did not have the authority to privately detonate all the anchor points.
"The control is still deep below," Lin Yan explained this discovery to Scholar Su. "The priest is merely a forwarder; it doesn't have the authority to trigger a large-scale activation on its own. As long as the supreme ruler doesn't issue the final command, the pulses can at most cause restlessness and auditory hallucinations. It's very difficult for it to independently complete a city-wide detonation."
This piece of news slightly alleviated the suffocating despair in the command center.
But it didn't mean they were safe.
The supreme ruler could change the authorization at any time. It could open up the permissions at any moment, allowing the priest to raise the pulse intensity to the detonation threshold. The current restraint was merely the rhythm it had chosen.
The fourth and fifth pulses fell one after another.
The interval was compressed to once every four minutes, with the intensity steadily rising. The resonance barrier trembled continuously, and the engineers stared at the jumping load meters, their palms sweating. The list of restless sleepers in the city grew longer and longer. Many residents, panicked by the repeatedly occurring auditory hallucinations, secretly gathered on the streets to ask about the situation. The military police had to discreetly guide and soothe them to prevent the panic from fermenting on its own.
Within the bastion, the surface order was still being maintained, but the undercurrents were growing increasingly turbulent.
As the sun set toward the west of the wasteland, the gray fog was dyed a murky orange-red.
The high-tier priest had already released seventeen consecutive pulses, its rhythm stable and pressing closer with every step. The safety margin of the resonance barrier was shrinking, and the healing cultivators in the city had already rotated through two batches, each one exhausted.
Lin Yan looked at the thermal imaging of the priest's rock cavity on the large screen. The dark shadow was still quietly dormant. It hadn't attacked, hadn't moved. It was merely using these short, successive knocks to stretch the nerves of the entire bastion.
It wasn't here to win a battle.
Its mission was to continuously apply pressure, continuously test, and continuously drain.
Lin Yan pressed against his brow. The fissure resonated gently with each incoming pulse, sending waves of fine numbness. Following the pulses, he could clearly trace that invisible long line connecting the priest to the supreme ruler deep in the rift.
The chess player sat deep within the chessboard, sending out its pieces to knock against humanity's defense line, strike by strike.
The knocking hadn't stopped. The accumulation of the next pulse had already quietly begun in the darkness of the rock cavity.
End of Chapter.