Chapter 202: The Window of Respite
The battlefield finally welcomed a rare, fleeting peace.
There were no continuous, thunderous impacts from the beast tide, no streams of psychic blades tearing through the Sea of Consciousness, and even the faint, elusive whispers of the ancient beings in the gray fog had faded to the point of being almost inaudible. Yet, there was not a shred of true peace of mind in this tranquility. Everyone knew it was built upon the limited duration of the neutralizing serum; it was merely borrowed time.
In the frontline trenches, the engineer squads immediately sprang into action. Energy repair vehicles pulled up beside the oscillation pillars corresponding to the left flank breach. Cables were reconnected, and damaged energy modules were swiftly swapped out. Several technical engineers climbed the scaffolding to inspect the light membrane generators, replacing the circuits that had burned out from overloading one by one. The pale blue barrier membrane gradually unfurled. The dents and cracks slowly healed, and the wildly fluctuating load values on the instrument panels steadily dropped from a blinding red to yellow, finally settling into the safe zone.
Simultaneously, the second breach at the far northern end underwent parallel repairs. With fewer hands available, several soldiers kept watch toward the rift intersections while cooperating with the engineers to pour energy storage serum to reinforce the barrier's foundation. The parapets that had been smashed down by the scaled beasts were rebuilt with rubble and steel plates. Heavy piercing weapons were repositioned, and ammunition crates were carried box by box to the firing positions to replenish their depleted stocks.
Within the Sea of Consciousness defense group, the atmosphere was heavy.
The wounded made up the vast majority, and stretchers were lined up in a long row behind the cover. Many cultivators had suffered permanent, minute wounds inside their Seas of Consciousness. Even with calming agents, they could only halt the excruciating pain; there was no way they could redeploy the resonance defense line in the short term. Those who could still move gathered in a circle, sitting cross-legged in meditation with their eyes closed. They did their best to draw their consciousness inward and repair their wounds; every fraction of recovered strength was the capital they needed to survive the next wave of assault. Medical personnel rushed back and forth, stopping bleeding, stitching wounds, and injecting sedatives. The sharp scent of antiseptic mingled heavily with the smell of blood.
Qin Kai lay on a stretcher, half of his body wrapped in bandages. The shattered remnants of his helmet had been removed, and his face was covered in dust and dried black blood. He kept his eyes open, staring silently at the pitch-black rift within the gray fog. Of the seven-man squad, he was the only one who had returned, having stepped over the sacrifices of his comrades. The weight of that reality pressed heavily upon him. Old Zhou dragged his injured leg over and sat down beside him, handing him a small bottle of supply serum.
"Rest now. Leave the watching to us," Old Zhou said in a hoarse voice.
Qin Kai shook his head slightly. "I can still sense it. They haven't retreated. They're just temporarily suppressed."
The sweeping operations within the city were deployed simultaneously.
Taking advantage of the window where the Spiderweb Ancient Being's spore web was massively fractured and the anchor points had lost their stable drive, military police led serum squads to rush to the various locations that had previously triggered alarms. In old sewers, basement shantytowns, and abandoned warehouses, high-pressure nozzles sprayed diluted neutralizing serum. The liquid seeped into the underground through crevices, corroding the spore mycelia rooted deep in the soil. Many residents who had previously been restless slowly saw their symptoms of dizziness and auditory hallucinations fade.
However, the progress of the sweep was far from ideal. The underground pipe network was a tangled maze, and many hidden dead corners were completely inaccessible. The remaining spore mycelia were still buried deep beneath the earth; as soon as the Spiderweb Ancient Being finished repairing its links, it could ignite the anchor points once again. The captain in charge of the city operation reported back, his tone filled with helplessness: "We can only clear the visible nodes. The deep spore network is too vast; we simply don't have enough manpower or serum."
Inside the rocky hill observation shed, Lin Yan did not dare to relax for a moment.
The fine threads of his Sea of Consciousness pierced through the rock strata, firmly locking onto the movements of the five ancient beings in the cavern.
The suppressing effect of the neutralizing serum was slowly decaying. The spores corroded in the main channel would not regenerate immediately, but the deeper main trunk mycelia were slowly reviving. The Spiderweb Ancient Being was pouring all its power into repairing its consciousness web, reconnecting the broken threads one by one. It prioritized linking the main trunk lines near the core of the cavern, temporarily abandoning the repair of the far-end peripheral branches extending to the outer city to conserve strength.
The Beast Commander had recalled the scaled beast ambushers scattered in the shallow intersections, bringing them all back to the buffer rock hall to rest. Injured scaled beasts were squeezed into corners by their own kind; having lost their value for continued combat, they were directly torn apart and devoured by their peers, converted into nourishment for the other beast soldiers. This cold and cruel scene was the standard rule of survival for the beast herd under the control of the ancient beings. While reorganizing the herd, it marked the locations of the two breaches in the barrier, designating these two points as the breakthrough targets for the next main assault.
The Sharp-Sense Ancient Being was still digesting the damage caused by the backlash of the synchronization field. Its sharp stream of consciousness was withdrawn deeply, slowly accumulating power as it waited for the next opportunity to unleash an overlapping heavy strike. The Illusion Ancient Being no longer projected large-scale illusion domains; it merely maintained a few small, concealed illusion arrays near the rift entrance to serve as warning sentries, no longer rashly consuming its original source.
At the center, the supreme ruler's consciousness remained steady.
It did not participate in repairing the links. It merely observed the state of its four kin in silence, synchronously receiving the information streams regarding the frontline barrier repairs and the city sweeps, as if evaluating the upper limit of humanity's counterattack methods. Lin Yan even caught a faint trace of signal interaction; the supreme ruler was transmitting a new deployment plan to its four kin, adjusting the coordination sequence for the next round of attacks.
"Report to command," Lin Yan spoke into the communicator, his tone grave. "The suppressing effect of the neutralizing serum continues to decay, and the Spiderweb Ancient Being is repairing the core web links at high speed. Based on the current rate, they will be able to restore basic synchronization capabilities in approximately one and a half hours, at which point the beast herd can receive unified commands to launch an attack again. The Sharp-Sense Ancient Being's backlash damage will take longer to heal; it will be difficult to execute an overlapping psychic heavy strike of the same magnitude in the short term, but it can still release continuous, fragmented psychic cuts."
In the command hall, Scholar Su and several high-ranking officers gathered around the sand table, discussing in low voices.
"We only have one neutralizing bomb left in reserve," the logistics officer reported softly. "Manufacturing the serum requires scarce underground extraction materials. Resupply shipments from across the bastion will take at least two days to arrive. We cannot organize a second assault deployment like this in the short term."
A tactical officer frowned and spoke up: "Our current bottleneck is still the Sea of Consciousness cultivators. The casualties from the last impact were too severe. Even if we rush to meditate and recover, we will have less than half the personnel we had before the battle started. If we rely solely on the barrier to hold out, we still won't be able to stop it if both breaches are fiercely attacked simultaneously."
"Actively penetrating deep into the rift to assassinate the true bodies of the ancient beings carries too high a risk. The illusion traps and scaled beast ambushes are heavily fortified. The seven-man elite squad previously paid the price of near-total annihilation," Scholar Su said, his fingertips gently tapping the edge of the sand table. "We cannot pin all our hopes on counterattack raids."
After a round of discussion, there were very few viable options.
The final plan was established: First, seize this one-and-a-half-hour window to reinforce the barrier to its optimal state, fully replenishing all ammunition and heavy weapons. Second, rotate the Sea of Consciousness cultivators in groups to rest and recover in batches, ensuring a sustained rotating defense force once the battle resumes. Third, prioritize the sweeping operations in high-density residential anchor points within the city to reduce the pressure of rear harassment. Fourth, elevate the alert level at all observation posts; Lin Yan's ancient being signal warnings will serve as the primary priority alarm. Once the signal of them resynchronizing to launch an offensive is detected, the entire line will immediately enter a pre-combat state.
The news was relayed down to the frontline layer by layer.
The soldiers in the trenches seized the time to replace damaged armor, check their weapons, and replenish ammunition. The wounded were transported to the rear temporary medical station in batches, and an inescapable exhaustion hung in the air. Everyone knew that this brief peace was merely the lull before the storm.
Lin Yan closed his eyes, his Sea of Consciousness continuously tracking the progress of the five ancient beings repairing their links.
The threads of the spider web were reconnecting bit by bit. The beast herd lay dormant in the rock hall, their killing intent slowly accumulating beneath the shadows. The supreme ruler's consciousness was as calm as still water, quietly waiting for their designated moment in time.
The wind on the wasteland still swept across the barrier pillars, carrying sand and gravel, and the low, resonant hum of the barrier stabilized once again.
The time left for the West Bastion was ticking away, minute by minute.
End of Chapter.
There were no continuous, thunderous impacts from the beast tide, no streams of psychic blades tearing through the Sea of Consciousness, and even the faint, elusive whispers of the ancient beings in the gray fog had faded to the point of being almost inaudible. Yet, there was not a shred of true peace of mind in this tranquility. Everyone knew it was built upon the limited duration of the neutralizing serum; it was merely borrowed time.
In the frontline trenches, the engineer squads immediately sprang into action. Energy repair vehicles pulled up beside the oscillation pillars corresponding to the left flank breach. Cables were reconnected, and damaged energy modules were swiftly swapped out. Several technical engineers climbed the scaffolding to inspect the light membrane generators, replacing the circuits that had burned out from overloading one by one. The pale blue barrier membrane gradually unfurled. The dents and cracks slowly healed, and the wildly fluctuating load values on the instrument panels steadily dropped from a blinding red to yellow, finally settling into the safe zone.
Simultaneously, the second breach at the far northern end underwent parallel repairs. With fewer hands available, several soldiers kept watch toward the rift intersections while cooperating with the engineers to pour energy storage serum to reinforce the barrier's foundation. The parapets that had been smashed down by the scaled beasts were rebuilt with rubble and steel plates. Heavy piercing weapons were repositioned, and ammunition crates were carried box by box to the firing positions to replenish their depleted stocks.
Within the Sea of Consciousness defense group, the atmosphere was heavy.
The wounded made up the vast majority, and stretchers were lined up in a long row behind the cover. Many cultivators had suffered permanent, minute wounds inside their Seas of Consciousness. Even with calming agents, they could only halt the excruciating pain; there was no way they could redeploy the resonance defense line in the short term. Those who could still move gathered in a circle, sitting cross-legged in meditation with their eyes closed. They did their best to draw their consciousness inward and repair their wounds; every fraction of recovered strength was the capital they needed to survive the next wave of assault. Medical personnel rushed back and forth, stopping bleeding, stitching wounds, and injecting sedatives. The sharp scent of antiseptic mingled heavily with the smell of blood.
Qin Kai lay on a stretcher, half of his body wrapped in bandages. The shattered remnants of his helmet had been removed, and his face was covered in dust and dried black blood. He kept his eyes open, staring silently at the pitch-black rift within the gray fog. Of the seven-man squad, he was the only one who had returned, having stepped over the sacrifices of his comrades. The weight of that reality pressed heavily upon him. Old Zhou dragged his injured leg over and sat down beside him, handing him a small bottle of supply serum.
"Rest now. Leave the watching to us," Old Zhou said in a hoarse voice.
Qin Kai shook his head slightly. "I can still sense it. They haven't retreated. They're just temporarily suppressed."
The sweeping operations within the city were deployed simultaneously.
Taking advantage of the window where the Spiderweb Ancient Being's spore web was massively fractured and the anchor points had lost their stable drive, military police led serum squads to rush to the various locations that had previously triggered alarms. In old sewers, basement shantytowns, and abandoned warehouses, high-pressure nozzles sprayed diluted neutralizing serum. The liquid seeped into the underground through crevices, corroding the spore mycelia rooted deep in the soil. Many residents who had previously been restless slowly saw their symptoms of dizziness and auditory hallucinations fade.
However, the progress of the sweep was far from ideal. The underground pipe network was a tangled maze, and many hidden dead corners were completely inaccessible. The remaining spore mycelia were still buried deep beneath the earth; as soon as the Spiderweb Ancient Being finished repairing its links, it could ignite the anchor points once again. The captain in charge of the city operation reported back, his tone filled with helplessness: "We can only clear the visible nodes. The deep spore network is too vast; we simply don't have enough manpower or serum."
Inside the rocky hill observation shed, Lin Yan did not dare to relax for a moment.
The fine threads of his Sea of Consciousness pierced through the rock strata, firmly locking onto the movements of the five ancient beings in the cavern.
The suppressing effect of the neutralizing serum was slowly decaying. The spores corroded in the main channel would not regenerate immediately, but the deeper main trunk mycelia were slowly reviving. The Spiderweb Ancient Being was pouring all its power into repairing its consciousness web, reconnecting the broken threads one by one. It prioritized linking the main trunk lines near the core of the cavern, temporarily abandoning the repair of the far-end peripheral branches extending to the outer city to conserve strength.
The Beast Commander had recalled the scaled beast ambushers scattered in the shallow intersections, bringing them all back to the buffer rock hall to rest. Injured scaled beasts were squeezed into corners by their own kind; having lost their value for continued combat, they were directly torn apart and devoured by their peers, converted into nourishment for the other beast soldiers. This cold and cruel scene was the standard rule of survival for the beast herd under the control of the ancient beings. While reorganizing the herd, it marked the locations of the two breaches in the barrier, designating these two points as the breakthrough targets for the next main assault.
The Sharp-Sense Ancient Being was still digesting the damage caused by the backlash of the synchronization field. Its sharp stream of consciousness was withdrawn deeply, slowly accumulating power as it waited for the next opportunity to unleash an overlapping heavy strike. The Illusion Ancient Being no longer projected large-scale illusion domains; it merely maintained a few small, concealed illusion arrays near the rift entrance to serve as warning sentries, no longer rashly consuming its original source.
At the center, the supreme ruler's consciousness remained steady.
It did not participate in repairing the links. It merely observed the state of its four kin in silence, synchronously receiving the information streams regarding the frontline barrier repairs and the city sweeps, as if evaluating the upper limit of humanity's counterattack methods. Lin Yan even caught a faint trace of signal interaction; the supreme ruler was transmitting a new deployment plan to its four kin, adjusting the coordination sequence for the next round of attacks.
"Report to command," Lin Yan spoke into the communicator, his tone grave. "The suppressing effect of the neutralizing serum continues to decay, and the Spiderweb Ancient Being is repairing the core web links at high speed. Based on the current rate, they will be able to restore basic synchronization capabilities in approximately one and a half hours, at which point the beast herd can receive unified commands to launch an attack again. The Sharp-Sense Ancient Being's backlash damage will take longer to heal; it will be difficult to execute an overlapping psychic heavy strike of the same magnitude in the short term, but it can still release continuous, fragmented psychic cuts."
In the command hall, Scholar Su and several high-ranking officers gathered around the sand table, discussing in low voices.
"We only have one neutralizing bomb left in reserve," the logistics officer reported softly. "Manufacturing the serum requires scarce underground extraction materials. Resupply shipments from across the bastion will take at least two days to arrive. We cannot organize a second assault deployment like this in the short term."
A tactical officer frowned and spoke up: "Our current bottleneck is still the Sea of Consciousness cultivators. The casualties from the last impact were too severe. Even if we rush to meditate and recover, we will have less than half the personnel we had before the battle started. If we rely solely on the barrier to hold out, we still won't be able to stop it if both breaches are fiercely attacked simultaneously."
"Actively penetrating deep into the rift to assassinate the true bodies of the ancient beings carries too high a risk. The illusion traps and scaled beast ambushes are heavily fortified. The seven-man elite squad previously paid the price of near-total annihilation," Scholar Su said, his fingertips gently tapping the edge of the sand table. "We cannot pin all our hopes on counterattack raids."
After a round of discussion, there were very few viable options.
The final plan was established: First, seize this one-and-a-half-hour window to reinforce the barrier to its optimal state, fully replenishing all ammunition and heavy weapons. Second, rotate the Sea of Consciousness cultivators in groups to rest and recover in batches, ensuring a sustained rotating defense force once the battle resumes. Third, prioritize the sweeping operations in high-density residential anchor points within the city to reduce the pressure of rear harassment. Fourth, elevate the alert level at all observation posts; Lin Yan's ancient being signal warnings will serve as the primary priority alarm. Once the signal of them resynchronizing to launch an offensive is detected, the entire line will immediately enter a pre-combat state.
The news was relayed down to the frontline layer by layer.
The soldiers in the trenches seized the time to replace damaged armor, check their weapons, and replenish ammunition. The wounded were transported to the rear temporary medical station in batches, and an inescapable exhaustion hung in the air. Everyone knew that this brief peace was merely the lull before the storm.
Lin Yan closed his eyes, his Sea of Consciousness continuously tracking the progress of the five ancient beings repairing their links.
The threads of the spider web were reconnecting bit by bit. The beast herd lay dormant in the rock hall, their killing intent slowly accumulating beneath the shadows. The supreme ruler's consciousness was as calm as still water, quietly waiting for their designated moment in time.
The wind on the wasteland still swept across the barrier pillars, carrying sand and gravel, and the low, resonant hum of the barrier stabilized once again.
The time left for the West Bastion was ticking away, minute by minute.
End of Chapter.