Chapter 188: The Fifteen-Second Window
A dead silence filled the earpieces, broken only by the faint electrical hum of the instruments.
Lin Yan's perception tentacles were stretched into a thread so fine it was at its absolute limit. One end was tied to the spiral bone crown in the rock cavity, while the other reached far into the middle of the rift, clinging firmly to that vast, indifferent stream of original consciousness.
On the screen, the pale purple pulse curve arched upward bit by bit. The eerie light flowed through the grooves of the bone crown atop the priest's head as the energy rapidly compressed within. The six scaled beasts still lay prostrate around the priest, their muscles relaxed in a dormant, standby posture. All their attention was focused toward the rift's exit, vigilant against large-scale movements on the wasteland. For now, they hadn't detected the assault squad holding its breath, hidden behind the rocky hill.
"Energy accumulation has reached its peak," Lin Yan murmured, his voice audible only to Old Zhou and the four others on the encrypted channel. "Prepare."
Old Zhou pressed his earpiece and raised a hand, signaling the four team members to lower their centers of gravity. The energy modules of their oscillation stingers were set to the lowest output gear, wrapped in a layer of shielding film to suppress their own Sea of Consciousness fluctuations as much as possible. Everyone's breathing was shallow and controlled. The shielding patches were affixed to the napes of their necks, isolating their origin aura from leaking outward.
The gray fog flowed slowly at the rift's entrance, making the shadows of the rock cavity appear even deeper.
The next second, the pulse was released with a resounding boom.
Hum!
The invisible psychic shock slammed into the blockade array's barrier, triggering expanding ripples. The load values on the monitoring panel jumped violently. At the same time, the warning alerts from within the city flashed by; the Seas of Consciousness of countless sleepers trembled briefly, and the auditory hallucinations arrived as expected.
Inside the rock cavity, the eerie light of the spiral bone crown instantly extinguished.
Depleted of energy.
The window of energy depletion had arrived.
"Gap opened! Advance!"
The instant Lin Yan's command fell, Old Zhou gave a low shout. Five dark shadows shot out from behind the hidden dirt slope like arrows leaving a bow. Racing along the shadows of the rock strata at the rift's edge, they sprinted straight for the rock cavity over a hundred meters inside the opening. They pushed their speed to the absolute limit, their footsteps making almost no sound against the gravel, their lightweight armor having stripped away any unnecessary clattering.
The high-tier priest in the rock cavity clearly froze for a moment.
Having just released a pulse, its bone crown had entered a brief cooling window and couldn't immediately recharge. The organ normally used to relay signals was temporarily disabled, causing its sensitivity to the outside world to drop significantly. By the time it smelled the scent of living beings and turned its head, covered in keratin wrinkles, toward the entrance, the assault squad had already burst into the doorway of the rock cavity.
"Target's head! Only hit the bone crown!" Old Zhou roared.
Three oscillation stingers lit up with a pale blue glow simultaneously, striking precisely at the spiraling bone crown atop the priest's head. The other two team members stepped sideways to block the flank, sweeping their stingers to hold back the two guard scaled beasts that reacted first. The scaled beasts roared and pounced, their sharp claws and fangs scraping against the team members' armor. The piercing sound of metal grinding exploded within the narrow rock cavity.
Sitting at the observation terminal on the rocky hill, Lin Yan's heart clenched tightly.
He diverted the majority of his perception to stare fixedly at the original signal in the middle of the rift.
That indifferent stream of consciousness, which had always been as steady as the ancient rock strata, rippled slightly.
It wasn't an explosive, frenzied surge, nor was there a frenzied warning signal indicating an imminent city-wide detonation of anchor points. It was simply a sudden, unexpected focus. It was like a chess player who had been sitting quietly, suddenly raising their eyes to look at a piece that had unexpectedly jumped on the board.
"The supreme ruler's signal has fluctuated, but it hasn't reached the detonation threshold yet. Continue!" Lin Yan reported rapidly.
This sentence allowed Old Zhou in the rock cavity to breathe a slight sigh of relief, but he didn't dare to slow his movements in the slightest.
Bang—
The energy from the three oscillation stingers struck the spiral bone crown.
The hard, bone-like surface cracked with a fine, spiderweb-like pattern. Eerie blue energy leaked out through the fissures, and the spiraling crown trembled violently. The signal patterns flowing across it dimmed in large patches. The priest let out a hoarse, low hiss. Its massive, keratin-covered body violently shrank backward, its forelimbs guarding the damaged bone crown atop its head as foul-smelling mucus seeped from the cracks.
The first strike was effective.
But it hadn't shattered the crown completely.
The bone crown's structure was sturdier than anticipated. It was severely damaged, but its relay function wasn't completely disabled.
"Missed by a fraction! Follow up with another strike!" Old Zhou gritted his teeth, preparing to activate his oscillation stinger again.
Deep within the rock cavity, the remaining four scaled beasts had fully awakened. Fanning out in a pincer movement, they blocked the squad's retreat path. Their rough tongues lashed out, and foul-smelling saliva dripped onto the rocks as six vertical pupils locked onto the intruders. The priest itself raised its thick forelimbs, its fist, covered in heavy keratin armor plates, smashing fiercely toward the nearest team member.
"Time's up! Prepare to withdraw!" Lin Yan's voice suddenly grew taut.
He perceived the original signal deep in the rift experiencing a second fluctuation. This time, the upward amplitude was significantly larger. Beneath that indifference, a cold, commanding intent began to breed, and the signal link rapidly transmitted toward the tens of thousands of anchor points within the city.
The supreme ruler's patience was fading.
It had clearly seen through the squad's objective. Since the result of severely damaging the bone crown had been achieved, staying any longer would cause the gamble to spiral out of control.
"Retreat!" Old Zhou no longer coveted further success.
Feinting with an oscillation stinger to force the priest back, the five squad members immediately turned around and sprinted outward at full speed along their entry route. The scaled beasts pursued relentlessly from behind, their roars echoing through the channel as the foul stench washed over them. One scaled beast leaped into the air, its claws swiping toward the back of the last team member. Old Zhou spun around and thrust his oscillation stinger, barely forcing it back half a step.
"It's chasing us out!" a team member gasped urgently.
"Don't look back! Rush for the exit!"
Lin Yan didn't dare to relax his perception for a moment.
While tracking the sprinting squad, he kept a death grip on the supreme ruler's signal in the middle of the rift. That pale purple curve continued to climb, drawing closer and closer to the red line for city-wide anchor point activation. Alarms within the city popped up like a scrolling screen. The Seas of Consciousness of a massive number of sleepers were simultaneously thrown into violent restlessness. Many people in the isolation pods began to struggle frantically, and the healing cultivators went all out, releasing calming fields to suppress them.
Every second felt infinitely stretched.
The fifteen-second window had long been exhausted.
The instant the squad burst out of the rift's opening, the two short-range oscillation emitters on standby outside the blockade array immediately activated. They fired two horizontal shockwaves toward the cave entrance, intercepting the pursuing scaled beasts. The shockwaves blew away gravel, forcing the scaled beasts that had rushed out of the cave to halt abruptly, not daring to continue chasing into the barrier's suppression range.
Old Zhou led the team in a staggered dive back into the cover behind the rocky hill. Everyone was covered in dust, their armor riddled with claw marks. One team member had a deep gash on his arm from a scaled beast's claw, blood soaking through his protective suit.
"All personnel have evacuated the rock cavity!" Old Zhou reported, panting heavily.
Lin Yan stared fixedly at the spectrum curve.
The original signal that had been continuously rising halted its upward momentum the instant the squad cleared the rift's range.
It stopped right before the detonation red line.
After several agonizing seconds, the curve slowly fell back, returning to that eternal, unchanging, gentle baseline.
In the end, it hadn't flipped the chessboard.
Lin Yan let out a long breath. His back was soaked with cold sweat, and the fissure at his brow sent waves of throbbing pain. In that brief moment, he had even prepared to issue the highest alert and order a city-wide lockdown to suppress the anchor points.
The communication channel was silent as everyone processed the fifteen seconds of life-and-death they had just experienced.
After a moment, Scholar Su's voice came through, carrying a suppressed tremor: "Thermal imaging from the rock cavity confirms that the priest's spiral bone crown has cracked extensively, and its signal relay efficiency has plummeted. The intensity of the pulse just now dropped by nearly sixty percent. We... we've won half the gamble."
The relay node hadn't been completely killed, but its capabilities had been severely crippled. From now on, it would never be able to unleash those stable, high-intensity pulsing knocks again. The pressure on the outer barrier would drastically decrease, and the signal stimulation received by the spore network within the city would also lessen.
The cost was that the abyssal supreme ruler had clearly witnessed this raid.
Just because it had passed up the opportunity to detonate the entire city didn't mean this matter was over.
Lin Yan looked at the dark shadow curled up in the rock cavity on the screen. The priest was rubbing its damaged bone crown with its forelimbs. The eerie light was faint, no longer resembling the endless outward flow of pulses from before. The six scaled beasts circled it, pacing back and forth anxiously.
The hunter had been wounded, lurking in the darkness. Hatred and vigilance had now taken root.
Old Zhou squatted in the cover, letting the medics treat the injured team member's wound. He raised his eyes toward the rift and said in a low voice, "It held back this time. Next time, it might not."
The wind on the wasteland swept over the rocky hill, carrying black sand.
The window had closed. The desperate gamble had been settled, and they had secured precious breathing room. But Lin Yan knew clearly that the indifferent will deep in the rift had etched this squad—and him, the perceiver who stared into the darkness—even deeper into its memory.
The game continued. Only now, both sides on the chessboard had added new scars and grudges.
End of Chapter.
Lin Yan's perception tentacles were stretched into a thread so fine it was at its absolute limit. One end was tied to the spiral bone crown in the rock cavity, while the other reached far into the middle of the rift, clinging firmly to that vast, indifferent stream of original consciousness.
On the screen, the pale purple pulse curve arched upward bit by bit. The eerie light flowed through the grooves of the bone crown atop the priest's head as the energy rapidly compressed within. The six scaled beasts still lay prostrate around the priest, their muscles relaxed in a dormant, standby posture. All their attention was focused toward the rift's exit, vigilant against large-scale movements on the wasteland. For now, they hadn't detected the assault squad holding its breath, hidden behind the rocky hill.
"Energy accumulation has reached its peak," Lin Yan murmured, his voice audible only to Old Zhou and the four others on the encrypted channel. "Prepare."
Old Zhou pressed his earpiece and raised a hand, signaling the four team members to lower their centers of gravity. The energy modules of their oscillation stingers were set to the lowest output gear, wrapped in a layer of shielding film to suppress their own Sea of Consciousness fluctuations as much as possible. Everyone's breathing was shallow and controlled. The shielding patches were affixed to the napes of their necks, isolating their origin aura from leaking outward.
The gray fog flowed slowly at the rift's entrance, making the shadows of the rock cavity appear even deeper.
The next second, the pulse was released with a resounding boom.
Hum!
The invisible psychic shock slammed into the blockade array's barrier, triggering expanding ripples. The load values on the monitoring panel jumped violently. At the same time, the warning alerts from within the city flashed by; the Seas of Consciousness of countless sleepers trembled briefly, and the auditory hallucinations arrived as expected.
Inside the rock cavity, the eerie light of the spiral bone crown instantly extinguished.
Depleted of energy.
The window of energy depletion had arrived.
"Gap opened! Advance!"
The instant Lin Yan's command fell, Old Zhou gave a low shout. Five dark shadows shot out from behind the hidden dirt slope like arrows leaving a bow. Racing along the shadows of the rock strata at the rift's edge, they sprinted straight for the rock cavity over a hundred meters inside the opening. They pushed their speed to the absolute limit, their footsteps making almost no sound against the gravel, their lightweight armor having stripped away any unnecessary clattering.
The high-tier priest in the rock cavity clearly froze for a moment.
Having just released a pulse, its bone crown had entered a brief cooling window and couldn't immediately recharge. The organ normally used to relay signals was temporarily disabled, causing its sensitivity to the outside world to drop significantly. By the time it smelled the scent of living beings and turned its head, covered in keratin wrinkles, toward the entrance, the assault squad had already burst into the doorway of the rock cavity.
"Target's head! Only hit the bone crown!" Old Zhou roared.
Three oscillation stingers lit up with a pale blue glow simultaneously, striking precisely at the spiraling bone crown atop the priest's head. The other two team members stepped sideways to block the flank, sweeping their stingers to hold back the two guard scaled beasts that reacted first. The scaled beasts roared and pounced, their sharp claws and fangs scraping against the team members' armor. The piercing sound of metal grinding exploded within the narrow rock cavity.
Sitting at the observation terminal on the rocky hill, Lin Yan's heart clenched tightly.
He diverted the majority of his perception to stare fixedly at the original signal in the middle of the rift.
That indifferent stream of consciousness, which had always been as steady as the ancient rock strata, rippled slightly.
It wasn't an explosive, frenzied surge, nor was there a frenzied warning signal indicating an imminent city-wide detonation of anchor points. It was simply a sudden, unexpected focus. It was like a chess player who had been sitting quietly, suddenly raising their eyes to look at a piece that had unexpectedly jumped on the board.
"The supreme ruler's signal has fluctuated, but it hasn't reached the detonation threshold yet. Continue!" Lin Yan reported rapidly.
This sentence allowed Old Zhou in the rock cavity to breathe a slight sigh of relief, but he didn't dare to slow his movements in the slightest.
Bang—
The energy from the three oscillation stingers struck the spiral bone crown.
The hard, bone-like surface cracked with a fine, spiderweb-like pattern. Eerie blue energy leaked out through the fissures, and the spiraling crown trembled violently. The signal patterns flowing across it dimmed in large patches. The priest let out a hoarse, low hiss. Its massive, keratin-covered body violently shrank backward, its forelimbs guarding the damaged bone crown atop its head as foul-smelling mucus seeped from the cracks.
The first strike was effective.
But it hadn't shattered the crown completely.
The bone crown's structure was sturdier than anticipated. It was severely damaged, but its relay function wasn't completely disabled.
"Missed by a fraction! Follow up with another strike!" Old Zhou gritted his teeth, preparing to activate his oscillation stinger again.
Deep within the rock cavity, the remaining four scaled beasts had fully awakened. Fanning out in a pincer movement, they blocked the squad's retreat path. Their rough tongues lashed out, and foul-smelling saliva dripped onto the rocks as six vertical pupils locked onto the intruders. The priest itself raised its thick forelimbs, its fist, covered in heavy keratin armor plates, smashing fiercely toward the nearest team member.
"Time's up! Prepare to withdraw!" Lin Yan's voice suddenly grew taut.
He perceived the original signal deep in the rift experiencing a second fluctuation. This time, the upward amplitude was significantly larger. Beneath that indifference, a cold, commanding intent began to breed, and the signal link rapidly transmitted toward the tens of thousands of anchor points within the city.
The supreme ruler's patience was fading.
It had clearly seen through the squad's objective. Since the result of severely damaging the bone crown had been achieved, staying any longer would cause the gamble to spiral out of control.
"Retreat!" Old Zhou no longer coveted further success.
Feinting with an oscillation stinger to force the priest back, the five squad members immediately turned around and sprinted outward at full speed along their entry route. The scaled beasts pursued relentlessly from behind, their roars echoing through the channel as the foul stench washed over them. One scaled beast leaped into the air, its claws swiping toward the back of the last team member. Old Zhou spun around and thrust his oscillation stinger, barely forcing it back half a step.
"It's chasing us out!" a team member gasped urgently.
"Don't look back! Rush for the exit!"
Lin Yan didn't dare to relax his perception for a moment.
While tracking the sprinting squad, he kept a death grip on the supreme ruler's signal in the middle of the rift. That pale purple curve continued to climb, drawing closer and closer to the red line for city-wide anchor point activation. Alarms within the city popped up like a scrolling screen. The Seas of Consciousness of a massive number of sleepers were simultaneously thrown into violent restlessness. Many people in the isolation pods began to struggle frantically, and the healing cultivators went all out, releasing calming fields to suppress them.
Every second felt infinitely stretched.
The fifteen-second window had long been exhausted.
The instant the squad burst out of the rift's opening, the two short-range oscillation emitters on standby outside the blockade array immediately activated. They fired two horizontal shockwaves toward the cave entrance, intercepting the pursuing scaled beasts. The shockwaves blew away gravel, forcing the scaled beasts that had rushed out of the cave to halt abruptly, not daring to continue chasing into the barrier's suppression range.
Old Zhou led the team in a staggered dive back into the cover behind the rocky hill. Everyone was covered in dust, their armor riddled with claw marks. One team member had a deep gash on his arm from a scaled beast's claw, blood soaking through his protective suit.
"All personnel have evacuated the rock cavity!" Old Zhou reported, panting heavily.
Lin Yan stared fixedly at the spectrum curve.
The original signal that had been continuously rising halted its upward momentum the instant the squad cleared the rift's range.
It stopped right before the detonation red line.
After several agonizing seconds, the curve slowly fell back, returning to that eternal, unchanging, gentle baseline.
In the end, it hadn't flipped the chessboard.
Lin Yan let out a long breath. His back was soaked with cold sweat, and the fissure at his brow sent waves of throbbing pain. In that brief moment, he had even prepared to issue the highest alert and order a city-wide lockdown to suppress the anchor points.
The communication channel was silent as everyone processed the fifteen seconds of life-and-death they had just experienced.
After a moment, Scholar Su's voice came through, carrying a suppressed tremor: "Thermal imaging from the rock cavity confirms that the priest's spiral bone crown has cracked extensively, and its signal relay efficiency has plummeted. The intensity of the pulse just now dropped by nearly sixty percent. We... we've won half the gamble."
The relay node hadn't been completely killed, but its capabilities had been severely crippled. From now on, it would never be able to unleash those stable, high-intensity pulsing knocks again. The pressure on the outer barrier would drastically decrease, and the signal stimulation received by the spore network within the city would also lessen.
The cost was that the abyssal supreme ruler had clearly witnessed this raid.
Just because it had passed up the opportunity to detonate the entire city didn't mean this matter was over.
Lin Yan looked at the dark shadow curled up in the rock cavity on the screen. The priest was rubbing its damaged bone crown with its forelimbs. The eerie light was faint, no longer resembling the endless outward flow of pulses from before. The six scaled beasts circled it, pacing back and forth anxiously.
The hunter had been wounded, lurking in the darkness. Hatred and vigilance had now taken root.
Old Zhou squatted in the cover, letting the medics treat the injured team member's wound. He raised his eyes toward the rift and said in a low voice, "It held back this time. Next time, it might not."
The wind on the wasteland swept over the rocky hill, carrying black sand.
The window had closed. The desperate gamble had been settled, and they had secured precious breathing room. But Lin Yan knew clearly that the indifferent will deep in the rift had etched this squad—and him, the perceiver who stared into the darkness—even deeper into its memory.
The game continued. Only now, both sides on the chessboard had added new scars and grudges.
End of Chapter.