Chapter 195: The Hidden Phantom Blade
The hum of the resonance barrier had shifted in pitch.
The originally stable, continuous resonance was now laced with sharp, strained tremors of exhaustion. Beneath the relentless, wave-after-wave charges of the scaled beasts, the pale blue energy membrane repeatedly caved inward and bounced back. With each rebound, spiderweb-like fractures multiplied across its surface. The third-tier scaled beasts in the center formed dense assault echelons; as soon as one fell, the next immediately stepped over its corpse to take its place. Their bone spurs scraped viciously against the energy layer, leaving foul-smelling black fluids that slowly corroded the resonance structure.
The left flank was the first to buckle.
The Sharp-Sense Ancient Being directed its waves of psychic cutting primarily toward this side. Invisible, razor-sharp blades of consciousness repeatedly hacked into the Sea of Consciousness defense lines laid out by the cultivators. A young cultivator suddenly shuddered violently, pale red blood trickling from his nose and mouth. Unable to maintain the resonance link, his body went limp and he collapsed backward. Two comrades immediately sidestepped to fill the gap, but that brief lapse had already caused the left flank's barrier load to spike dangerously close to the red line.
"The left flank is breaking! Fill the gap! Stabilize your Seas of Consciousness!" the captain of the psychic defense group roared.
Medical personnel quickly dragged the fallen cultivator away, plunging a calming agent forcefully into his arm. He curled up beside the cover, convulsing. The psychic cuts had left permanent, minute scars on his Sea of Consciousness; he would not be able to return to the fight anytime soon. In just a few minutes, four people had suffered the same fate.
The heavy piercing cannons in the trenches roared ceaselessly. Long-rod armor-piercing rounds tore through the gray fog, accurately pinning the thick, keratinous bodies of the scaled beasts. But there were simply too many of them. The fallen corpses quickly piled up into a low barricade in front of the barrier. The scaled beasts behind them used the mound of bodies as a springboard to leap, their impact points drawing ever closer to the trenches.
Old Zhou crouched in the secondary cover with his reserve squad. All five of them were fully armored, their oscillation stingers charged and primed, their eyes locked onto both flanks of the barrier.
"The moment the barrier is breached, we push forward immediately to plug the gap," Old Zhou said in a low voice. "Remember, do not chase into the rift. The Illusion Ancient Being's traps are still waiting inside."
Everyone remembered Lin Yan's repeated warnings.
Inside the rocky hill observation shed, Lin Yan's forehead was already beaded with cold sweat.
The threads of his perception were firmly anchored to the five ancient consciousnesses.
The Beast Commander's heavy consciousness continued to coordinate with ease, constantly diverting reserve scaled beasts to the left flank's weak point to continuously widen its advantage. The Sharp-Sense Ancient Being's cutting assaults grew stronger with each wave, specifically targeting the gaps during the cultivators' rotations and striking at those whose Seas of Consciousness were unstable. The Spiderweb Ancient Being would occasionally give the city's resonance chains a light pluck; sporadic anchor point restlessness alarms trickled in intermittently, like an unbreakable thin rope tying down the few remaining forces in the rear.
The most nerve-wracking of all was the Illusion Ancient Being.
Its elusive stream of consciousness had completely vanished since the beast tide began its charge.
It hadn't disappeared; it had simply condensed to the extreme, merging into the illusion array nodes pre-set in the shallow intersections. Lin Yan could only vaguely catch a faint, lingering echo, unable to lock onto its exact position or the timing of its strike. It was like a short blade hidden up a sleeve, refusing to join the frontal assault, waiting instead for the perfect moment to strike.
Meanwhile, the supreme ruler at the core maintained its eternal, unchanging baseline.
It did not exert force itself, nor did it adjust the tactics. It quietly integrated the information streams of its four kin, observing the rhythm of the barrier's damage, the rate of cultivator attrition, and the frontline's firepower deployment, absorbing all the data. It was judging—judging whether this round of the beast tide could tear open the defense line, judging whether to unleash the Illusion Ancient Being as a hidden trump card, and judging whether to escalate further.
"Cracks on the left flank barrier are spreading! Load at 92%, only a sliver away from the critical threshold!" an observer reported loudly, staring at the instruments. "The backup energy modules have been continuously supplying power, but they can't keep up with the rate of consumption!"
Lin Yan took a deep breath and spoke into the encrypted channel, "Scholar Su, the Illusion Ancient Being hasn't moved yet; it's waiting for the right moment. Most likely, it will unleash a large-scale illusion domain when the barrier breaches and our personnel are in chaos, to disrupt the reinforcement squads. The reserve squad must not rashly charge into the rift opening. Once they step into the illusion array's range, they will be isolated and picked off one by one."
"Received," Scholar Su replied heavily. "I've already notified Old Zhou. The reserve squad will only plug the gap on the inner side of the barrier. They will absolutely not cross the line."
The moment his words fell, a piercing explosion erupted from the left flank of the barrier.
A section of the energy membrane violently collapsed inward, and a breach over three meters wide was forcibly smashed open by the beast herd!
Through the gray fog, two third-tier scaled beasts roared as they burst through the barrier, their massive bodies landing heavily on the wasteland inside. A foul wind washed over them as they lunged straight for the nearest trench.
"The gap is breached! Left flank breach!"
Old Zhou sprang to his feet. "Follow me!"
The five-man reserve squad sprinted at full speed toward the left flank breach. Their oscillation stingers lit up with blue light simultaneously, firing directly at the two third-tier scaled beasts charging out. The oscillation energy detonated, causing the scaled beasts to roar in pain and stagger backward. Yet, more ordinary scaled beasts continued to pour out of the breach endlessly. The infantry in the trenches swiveled their guns, unleashing a torrent of piercing rounds. Black blood splattered, and corpses quickly piled up at the breach.
The defense line had plunged into its most perilous moment of attrition.
Just as everyone's attention was entirely captivated by the left flank breach, and all firepower and reserves were tilted toward the left...
Within Lin Yan's Sea of Consciousness, the long-vanished fluctuation of the Illusion Ancient Being erupted explosively!
It didn't appear outside the breach, nor did it pounce on the trenches. Instead, in the gray fog zone between the rift's exit and the left flank breach, it suddenly unfurled a vast illusion domain.
The grayish wasteland scenery instantly distorted.
The two infantrymen at the very front, who were trying to chase the scaled beasts out through the breach, saw their surroundings undergo a drastic transformation. The flat wasteland vanished, replaced by an endless, spiraling, intertwined tunnel. Their ears were filled with the low, ancient whispers. Their eyes glazed over, their movements froze, and their weapons slipped from their hands as they unconsciously walked deeper into the illusion array—the direction leading straight into the rift's trap.
"No! The Illusion Ancient Being has struck! It's deploying an illusion domain outside the breach!" Lin Yan shouted fiercely. "Don't look at the gray fog outside the breach! Don't pursue! Pull those two men back!"
The nearest military police reacted with lightning speed, lunging forward to grab the two dazed soldiers. They covered their eyes tightly and dragged them backward. However, a scaled beast that had just burst through the breach used the illusion array as cover, bypassed the frontal firepower, and silently crept toward the flank of the cultivator formation.
The Illusion Ancient Being's tactics were exceedingly vicious.
It didn't deal direct damage. Instead, it used the illusion array to create blind spots, split the formation, and lure the weak-willed into traps, coordinating with the beast herd's charge to amplify the chaos caused by the breach.
Seizing this opportunity, the Sharp-Sense Ancient Being's psychic cutting intensity surged once again!
Several cultivators who had just filled the gaps on the left flank screamed in unison, their Seas of Consciousness breached, and collapsed together. A massive void instantly opened up in the left flank's psychic defense.
Sensing the favorable turn of events, the Beast Commander immediately diverted a portion of the scaled beasts from the center to flow toward the left flank breach, intending to tear the opening even wider.
Inside the command hall, alarms flooded the screens.
"The breach is continuing to expand! Illusion array interference! Psychic defense group casualties are escalating!"
Lin Yan stared fixedly at the supreme ruler's signal deep within the cavern.
That gentle, original fluctuation finally lifted slightly upward.
It wasn't a signal to detonate the anchor points, nor a command for a new wave of beast reinforcements. It was more like a nod of approval, acknowledging the effectiveness of this round of coordinated attacks executed by its four kin. It was still weighing its options, still holding back contingencies.
Lin Yan's palms were soaked with cold sweat.
The barrier was breached, the illusion array had taken shape, cultivators were continuously falling, and the hidden anchor points within the city loomed like a thorn in the back. The five ancient beings, each fulfilling their role, operated in a flawless chain; not a single move was wasted.
Old Zhou and his squad were fighting a bloody battle to hold the breach. The oscillation stingers smashed repeatedly into the skulls of the scaled beasts, and his armor had already been torn with several deep, bone-grazing claw marks. While swinging his weapon to beat back the pouncing beasts, he shouted at the top of his lungs, "Hold steady! Guard the breach! Don't look at the fog outside!"
Above the wasteland, smoke and gunpowder churned together with the gray fog.
The cracks in the barrier continued to spread. The illusion domain lay quietly outside the breach, and the beast tide poured endlessly from the darkness of the rift.
Lin Yan pressed against his brow, which throbbed with agonizing pain. He knew this was not the end. As long as the supreme ruler's core consciousness had not issued the order to withdraw, this bloody battle would continue endlessly.
End of Chapter.
The originally stable, continuous resonance was now laced with sharp, strained tremors of exhaustion. Beneath the relentless, wave-after-wave charges of the scaled beasts, the pale blue energy membrane repeatedly caved inward and bounced back. With each rebound, spiderweb-like fractures multiplied across its surface. The third-tier scaled beasts in the center formed dense assault echelons; as soon as one fell, the next immediately stepped over its corpse to take its place. Their bone spurs scraped viciously against the energy layer, leaving foul-smelling black fluids that slowly corroded the resonance structure.
The left flank was the first to buckle.
The Sharp-Sense Ancient Being directed its waves of psychic cutting primarily toward this side. Invisible, razor-sharp blades of consciousness repeatedly hacked into the Sea of Consciousness defense lines laid out by the cultivators. A young cultivator suddenly shuddered violently, pale red blood trickling from his nose and mouth. Unable to maintain the resonance link, his body went limp and he collapsed backward. Two comrades immediately sidestepped to fill the gap, but that brief lapse had already caused the left flank's barrier load to spike dangerously close to the red line.
"The left flank is breaking! Fill the gap! Stabilize your Seas of Consciousness!" the captain of the psychic defense group roared.
Medical personnel quickly dragged the fallen cultivator away, plunging a calming agent forcefully into his arm. He curled up beside the cover, convulsing. The psychic cuts had left permanent, minute scars on his Sea of Consciousness; he would not be able to return to the fight anytime soon. In just a few minutes, four people had suffered the same fate.
The heavy piercing cannons in the trenches roared ceaselessly. Long-rod armor-piercing rounds tore through the gray fog, accurately pinning the thick, keratinous bodies of the scaled beasts. But there were simply too many of them. The fallen corpses quickly piled up into a low barricade in front of the barrier. The scaled beasts behind them used the mound of bodies as a springboard to leap, their impact points drawing ever closer to the trenches.
Old Zhou crouched in the secondary cover with his reserve squad. All five of them were fully armored, their oscillation stingers charged and primed, their eyes locked onto both flanks of the barrier.
"The moment the barrier is breached, we push forward immediately to plug the gap," Old Zhou said in a low voice. "Remember, do not chase into the rift. The Illusion Ancient Being's traps are still waiting inside."
Everyone remembered Lin Yan's repeated warnings.
Inside the rocky hill observation shed, Lin Yan's forehead was already beaded with cold sweat.
The threads of his perception were firmly anchored to the five ancient consciousnesses.
The Beast Commander's heavy consciousness continued to coordinate with ease, constantly diverting reserve scaled beasts to the left flank's weak point to continuously widen its advantage. The Sharp-Sense Ancient Being's cutting assaults grew stronger with each wave, specifically targeting the gaps during the cultivators' rotations and striking at those whose Seas of Consciousness were unstable. The Spiderweb Ancient Being would occasionally give the city's resonance chains a light pluck; sporadic anchor point restlessness alarms trickled in intermittently, like an unbreakable thin rope tying down the few remaining forces in the rear.
The most nerve-wracking of all was the Illusion Ancient Being.
Its elusive stream of consciousness had completely vanished since the beast tide began its charge.
It hadn't disappeared; it had simply condensed to the extreme, merging into the illusion array nodes pre-set in the shallow intersections. Lin Yan could only vaguely catch a faint, lingering echo, unable to lock onto its exact position or the timing of its strike. It was like a short blade hidden up a sleeve, refusing to join the frontal assault, waiting instead for the perfect moment to strike.
Meanwhile, the supreme ruler at the core maintained its eternal, unchanging baseline.
It did not exert force itself, nor did it adjust the tactics. It quietly integrated the information streams of its four kin, observing the rhythm of the barrier's damage, the rate of cultivator attrition, and the frontline's firepower deployment, absorbing all the data. It was judging—judging whether this round of the beast tide could tear open the defense line, judging whether to unleash the Illusion Ancient Being as a hidden trump card, and judging whether to escalate further.
"Cracks on the left flank barrier are spreading! Load at 92%, only a sliver away from the critical threshold!" an observer reported loudly, staring at the instruments. "The backup energy modules have been continuously supplying power, but they can't keep up with the rate of consumption!"
Lin Yan took a deep breath and spoke into the encrypted channel, "Scholar Su, the Illusion Ancient Being hasn't moved yet; it's waiting for the right moment. Most likely, it will unleash a large-scale illusion domain when the barrier breaches and our personnel are in chaos, to disrupt the reinforcement squads. The reserve squad must not rashly charge into the rift opening. Once they step into the illusion array's range, they will be isolated and picked off one by one."
"Received," Scholar Su replied heavily. "I've already notified Old Zhou. The reserve squad will only plug the gap on the inner side of the barrier. They will absolutely not cross the line."
The moment his words fell, a piercing explosion erupted from the left flank of the barrier.
A section of the energy membrane violently collapsed inward, and a breach over three meters wide was forcibly smashed open by the beast herd!
Through the gray fog, two third-tier scaled beasts roared as they burst through the barrier, their massive bodies landing heavily on the wasteland inside. A foul wind washed over them as they lunged straight for the nearest trench.
"The gap is breached! Left flank breach!"
Old Zhou sprang to his feet. "Follow me!"
The five-man reserve squad sprinted at full speed toward the left flank breach. Their oscillation stingers lit up with blue light simultaneously, firing directly at the two third-tier scaled beasts charging out. The oscillation energy detonated, causing the scaled beasts to roar in pain and stagger backward. Yet, more ordinary scaled beasts continued to pour out of the breach endlessly. The infantry in the trenches swiveled their guns, unleashing a torrent of piercing rounds. Black blood splattered, and corpses quickly piled up at the breach.
The defense line had plunged into its most perilous moment of attrition.
Just as everyone's attention was entirely captivated by the left flank breach, and all firepower and reserves were tilted toward the left...
Within Lin Yan's Sea of Consciousness, the long-vanished fluctuation of the Illusion Ancient Being erupted explosively!
It didn't appear outside the breach, nor did it pounce on the trenches. Instead, in the gray fog zone between the rift's exit and the left flank breach, it suddenly unfurled a vast illusion domain.
The grayish wasteland scenery instantly distorted.
The two infantrymen at the very front, who were trying to chase the scaled beasts out through the breach, saw their surroundings undergo a drastic transformation. The flat wasteland vanished, replaced by an endless, spiraling, intertwined tunnel. Their ears were filled with the low, ancient whispers. Their eyes glazed over, their movements froze, and their weapons slipped from their hands as they unconsciously walked deeper into the illusion array—the direction leading straight into the rift's trap.
"No! The Illusion Ancient Being has struck! It's deploying an illusion domain outside the breach!" Lin Yan shouted fiercely. "Don't look at the gray fog outside the breach! Don't pursue! Pull those two men back!"
The nearest military police reacted with lightning speed, lunging forward to grab the two dazed soldiers. They covered their eyes tightly and dragged them backward. However, a scaled beast that had just burst through the breach used the illusion array as cover, bypassed the frontal firepower, and silently crept toward the flank of the cultivator formation.
The Illusion Ancient Being's tactics were exceedingly vicious.
It didn't deal direct damage. Instead, it used the illusion array to create blind spots, split the formation, and lure the weak-willed into traps, coordinating with the beast herd's charge to amplify the chaos caused by the breach.
Seizing this opportunity, the Sharp-Sense Ancient Being's psychic cutting intensity surged once again!
Several cultivators who had just filled the gaps on the left flank screamed in unison, their Seas of Consciousness breached, and collapsed together. A massive void instantly opened up in the left flank's psychic defense.
Sensing the favorable turn of events, the Beast Commander immediately diverted a portion of the scaled beasts from the center to flow toward the left flank breach, intending to tear the opening even wider.
Inside the command hall, alarms flooded the screens.
"The breach is continuing to expand! Illusion array interference! Psychic defense group casualties are escalating!"
Lin Yan stared fixedly at the supreme ruler's signal deep within the cavern.
That gentle, original fluctuation finally lifted slightly upward.
It wasn't a signal to detonate the anchor points, nor a command for a new wave of beast reinforcements. It was more like a nod of approval, acknowledging the effectiveness of this round of coordinated attacks executed by its four kin. It was still weighing its options, still holding back contingencies.
Lin Yan's palms were soaked with cold sweat.
The barrier was breached, the illusion array had taken shape, cultivators were continuously falling, and the hidden anchor points within the city loomed like a thorn in the back. The five ancient beings, each fulfilling their role, operated in a flawless chain; not a single move was wasted.
Old Zhou and his squad were fighting a bloody battle to hold the breach. The oscillation stingers smashed repeatedly into the skulls of the scaled beasts, and his armor had already been torn with several deep, bone-grazing claw marks. While swinging his weapon to beat back the pouncing beasts, he shouted at the top of his lungs, "Hold steady! Guard the breach! Don't look at the fog outside!"
Above the wasteland, smoke and gunpowder churned together with the gray fog.
The cracks in the barrier continued to spread. The illusion domain lay quietly outside the breach, and the beast tide poured endlessly from the darkness of the rift.
Lin Yan pressed against his brow, which throbbed with agonizing pain. He knew this was not the end. As long as the supreme ruler's core consciousness had not issued the order to withdraw, this bloody battle would continue endlessly.
End of Chapter.