Chapter 223: Shadows at the Back Door
After that single, heavy ram against the backup escape hatch, a long, oppressive silence descended.
That isolated, muffled thud was far more torturous to the mind than continuous, unending pounding. The scaled beasts at the main gate continued their intermittent ramming, the thud sounds arriving at intervals. The two impact points, front and rear, echoed each other, leaving everyone inside the cabin unable to tell which direction the next assault would come from.
The eight soldiers ordered to reinforce the rear exit moved quickly through the narrow maintenance tunnel. The passage was lined with dense cables and water supply pipes, and emergency lights were spaced far apart, leaving large areas submerged in heavy shadows. They held only two flashlights, their beams swaying, casting twisted, jumping shadows against the pipe walls. The dull ache in everyone's Sea of Consciousness was ceaseless, and illusions popped up from time to time to disrupt their judgment: some saw fallen comrades standing ahead in the passage, while others heard the cries of children from behind. They could only rely on biting their tongues and repeating code words in low voices to forcibly stabilize their minds.
"Maintain spacing, do not fall behind," the squad leader whispered, holding his short blade in front of him. "The backup door is only a simple blast-proof structure, less than a third the thickness of the main gate. It lacks a multi-layer hydraulic locking system and relies entirely on mechanical latches. If a third-tier scaled beast rams it open, this passage leads directly to the rear flank of the civilian resettlement area, and the entire defensive line will be torn apart."
Everyone nodded, making their footsteps even lighter.
Before long, the group reached the inside of the backup exit. The heavy gray blast-proof door panel was pressed tightly against the frame, with an extremely narrow gap. Outside the door was a narrow natural tunnel between the rock layers of the mountain, an escape passage reserved during the original construction. The squad split up: four piled up scrapped steel frames and sandbags behind the door to build a temporary barricade, while the remaining four dismantled the last three sets of explosives and carefully secured them to the load-bearing nodes around the door frame. The detonator wires were gathered to a safe position on the inside, leaving only one person to guard the switch.
"The explosives can only collapse the rock layer around the door frame, sealing off this tunnel," the soldier responsible for planting the explosives said, his fingertips brushing against the cold door panel. "It won't stop a third-tier scaled beast from ramming hard, but it can destroy this passage. Once we detonate, we won't be able to get out this way ourselves."
The squad leader pressed his ear against the door panel and listened intently. Outside, it was completely silent; there were no beast roars or sounds of movement. Yet, the thermal signatures transmitted by Lin Yan clearly showed that the third-tier scaled beast that had moved over was parked in the shadows just a few meters outside the door. It hadn't left; it was simply waiting quietly.
"It's waiting. Waiting for us to let our guard down," the squad leader replied to the command area in a low voice over the communicator.
At the command area, Scholar Su stood in front of Lin Yan's terminal screen, his brows furrowed. On the screen, the thermal signatures of the encirclement had been rearranged: one third-tier scaled beast remained outside the backup exit, while the other two returned to the main gate to continue their rotation of ramming. The remaining ordinary scaled beasts split into multiple groups, slowly patrolling and searching along all exposed structures on the outer walls of the shelter pod, not missing any weak points.
"The Beast Commander is no longer fixated on single-point assaults; it has switched to multi-point containment," Lin Yan reported steadily, his voice carrying a trace of exhaustion from the prolonged overuse of his Sea of Consciousness. "Underground, the Spiderweb Ancient Being is still scattering spores in the micro-crevices of the rock layer. The spore signals are extremely fragmented, everywhere, and at very low concentrations, making it difficult to eradicate them all at once. The Sharp-Sense Ancient Being is maintaining a constant intensity of Sea of Consciousness erosion without escalating. Recently, the illusions cast by the Illusion Ancient Being have leaned toward enticement, constantly suggesting that 'the backup door is an escape route.'"
Scholar Su's heart sank.
The Illusion Ancient Being's goal was very clear: it wanted to lure the people inside the cabin into actively opening this back door.
The despair and desire to escape within the shelter pod had already accumulated to a breaking point. Once someone was bewitched by the illusion and privately pulled open the backup blast-proof door, the third-tier scaled beast waiting outside for so long would instantly rush in, and everything would collapse in an instant.
"Order the squad guarding the back door to remain highly vigilant. At the same time, notify all military police to pay special attention to anyone in the crowd trying to move toward the rear-side passage. If anyone is found to be induced by illusions, take control immediately, but do not escalate the conflict," Scholar Su quickly added to his orders.
The message was transmitted to various locations through the communication channel.
Most areas inside the cabin were still illuminated by low-brightness emergency lights, the dim yellow light amplifying the sense of oppression. Material rations had been pushed to the absolute limit, with only a thin, small piece of compressed rations and a few sips of drinking water per day. Hunger bred irritability, thirst eroded patience, and with their spirits continuously battered day and night, more and more people lost the energy to communicate. They merely sat numbly against the cabin walls, their eyes empty.
Arguments were no longer isolated incidents.
In the afternoon, two adult men erupted into conflict over a small bottle of backup purified water, wrestling to the ground. The military police spent a great deal of effort to separate them. The person who had been robbed roared with red eyes, saying he could barely hold on; the one who had fought kept his head down, speechless, but his whole body was trembling. No one was born vicious; they had just been trapped in this iron box for too long, and the instinct to survive was beginning to override reason.
The situation on the medical front was equally dire.
The painkillers were completely exhausted. The severely wounded could only endure the tearing pain, and their suppressed groans came intermittently at night, making everyone's heart tighten. Anti-inflammatory drugs were also running out. The wounds of several soldiers had begun to fester and swell, accompanied by persistent low-grade fevers. The military doctor could only repeatedly clean the wounds with sterile gauze; there was nothing else he could do. Death was quietly spreading through the wounded area.
Deep within the cavern, the consciousness of the five ancient beings resonated quietly.
The Beast Commander patiently dispatched the scaled beasts, applying pressure on both the front and back doors, while the roaming squads patrolled the outer walls, continuously creating an omnipresent sense of crisis. The Sharp-Sense Ancient Being was like a frog being boiled in warm water, continuously and slowly consuming everyone's Sea of Consciousness endurance. The Illusion Ancient Being seized on the soft spot of "escape," repeatedly targeting individuals with weak wills and projecting illusions of a path through the back door. The Spiderweb Ancient Being was not in a rush to send spores into the cabin; it merely allowed the spores to take root continuously in the seams of the rock layer, slowly polluting the geology of the area. Even if this siege failed, this mountain would become a spore-polluted zone, and humans would never be able to safely use it again.
The supreme ruler's consciousness always hovered above the entire shelter pod.
It watched the order loosen bit by bit, watched the goodwill between people be slowly eroded by hunger, thirst, and fear, and watched hostility breed within the crowd that had originally banded together to resist. It had witnessed this process countless times. Sturdy defensive lines were never torn apart by the claws of alien beasts; more often, they rotted from within first. It still did not order a general offensive. The current rhythm was exactly what it wanted. Rushing to kill would only provoke a desperate counterattack; slow disintegration was the most efficient harvest.
Time slowly slipped into the night cycle.
There was no true day or night inside the shelter pod; routines were divided solely by the shift rotation schedule. Most people curled up on the floor for shallow sleep, but almost no one could truly sink into a restful slumber. The continuous dull ache in the Sea of Consciousness, the occasional flashing illusions, and the irregular ramming sounds from the outer walls would always pull them back from the haze into the cold reality.
At the back door, the guard squad took turns staring intently at the door panel.
The first half of the night was relatively peaceful, until right before the shift change, movement finally came from outside.
Thud—
A muffled ram struck the center of the blast-proof door panel.
The door panel trembled, the latches emitted a faint creak, and a little rock dust fell from the gap in the door frame. The third-tier scaled beast outside retreated to gather momentum, paused briefly, and rammed again.
Thud!
Three consecutive rams followed in quick succession. The frame of the simple blast-proof door visibly deformed, and several fine cracks spread outward along the steel plate.
"The door frame is cracking! The load-bearing capacity of the latches is insufficient! It can withstand at most four or five more rounds of ramming!" the guard reported urgently, his hand already resting on the safety lock of the detonator.
The atmosphere in the command channel instantly tensed.
Scholar Su looked at Lin Yan: "Are any other scaled beasts moving toward the back door to support?"
Lin Yan quickly scanned the thermal map: "Not for now. Only this single third-tier scaled beast is assaulting the back door. The Beast Commander is probing. It wants to see the limits of this door, and it also wants to see whether we will detonate the explosives here, prematurely exhausting our last set of blast-blocking measures."
The Beast Commander was gambling.
It was betting that humans would be reluctant to blow up this only backup escape route, betting that the defenders would endure the rams to keep a way out, right up until the door panel shattered.
The ramming sounds rang out again, heavier with each strike.
The cracks on the blast-proof door grew denser. One of the metal latches fixing the door panel had snapped. The door panel bulged slightly inward, the gap widened, and a trace of cold wind carrying the stench of spores drilled in through the seam.
The defensive line at the back door had reached its breaking point. Meanwhile, in the direction of the main gate, the other scaled beasts simultaneously increased their ramming frequency. The sounds from both sides intertwined, echoing back and forth in the sealed shelter pod.
The iron cage prison was in critical condition at both the front and the rear. In the darkness, the noose of the ancient beings was pulled even tighter.
End of Chapter.
That isolated, muffled thud was far more torturous to the mind than continuous, unending pounding. The scaled beasts at the main gate continued their intermittent ramming, the thud sounds arriving at intervals. The two impact points, front and rear, echoed each other, leaving everyone inside the cabin unable to tell which direction the next assault would come from.
The eight soldiers ordered to reinforce the rear exit moved quickly through the narrow maintenance tunnel. The passage was lined with dense cables and water supply pipes, and emergency lights were spaced far apart, leaving large areas submerged in heavy shadows. They held only two flashlights, their beams swaying, casting twisted, jumping shadows against the pipe walls. The dull ache in everyone's Sea of Consciousness was ceaseless, and illusions popped up from time to time to disrupt their judgment: some saw fallen comrades standing ahead in the passage, while others heard the cries of children from behind. They could only rely on biting their tongues and repeating code words in low voices to forcibly stabilize their minds.
"Maintain spacing, do not fall behind," the squad leader whispered, holding his short blade in front of him. "The backup door is only a simple blast-proof structure, less than a third the thickness of the main gate. It lacks a multi-layer hydraulic locking system and relies entirely on mechanical latches. If a third-tier scaled beast rams it open, this passage leads directly to the rear flank of the civilian resettlement area, and the entire defensive line will be torn apart."
Everyone nodded, making their footsteps even lighter.
Before long, the group reached the inside of the backup exit. The heavy gray blast-proof door panel was pressed tightly against the frame, with an extremely narrow gap. Outside the door was a narrow natural tunnel between the rock layers of the mountain, an escape passage reserved during the original construction. The squad split up: four piled up scrapped steel frames and sandbags behind the door to build a temporary barricade, while the remaining four dismantled the last three sets of explosives and carefully secured them to the load-bearing nodes around the door frame. The detonator wires were gathered to a safe position on the inside, leaving only one person to guard the switch.
"The explosives can only collapse the rock layer around the door frame, sealing off this tunnel," the soldier responsible for planting the explosives said, his fingertips brushing against the cold door panel. "It won't stop a third-tier scaled beast from ramming hard, but it can destroy this passage. Once we detonate, we won't be able to get out this way ourselves."
The squad leader pressed his ear against the door panel and listened intently. Outside, it was completely silent; there were no beast roars or sounds of movement. Yet, the thermal signatures transmitted by Lin Yan clearly showed that the third-tier scaled beast that had moved over was parked in the shadows just a few meters outside the door. It hadn't left; it was simply waiting quietly.
"It's waiting. Waiting for us to let our guard down," the squad leader replied to the command area in a low voice over the communicator.
At the command area, Scholar Su stood in front of Lin Yan's terminal screen, his brows furrowed. On the screen, the thermal signatures of the encirclement had been rearranged: one third-tier scaled beast remained outside the backup exit, while the other two returned to the main gate to continue their rotation of ramming. The remaining ordinary scaled beasts split into multiple groups, slowly patrolling and searching along all exposed structures on the outer walls of the shelter pod, not missing any weak points.
"The Beast Commander is no longer fixated on single-point assaults; it has switched to multi-point containment," Lin Yan reported steadily, his voice carrying a trace of exhaustion from the prolonged overuse of his Sea of Consciousness. "Underground, the Spiderweb Ancient Being is still scattering spores in the micro-crevices of the rock layer. The spore signals are extremely fragmented, everywhere, and at very low concentrations, making it difficult to eradicate them all at once. The Sharp-Sense Ancient Being is maintaining a constant intensity of Sea of Consciousness erosion without escalating. Recently, the illusions cast by the Illusion Ancient Being have leaned toward enticement, constantly suggesting that 'the backup door is an escape route.'"
Scholar Su's heart sank.
The Illusion Ancient Being's goal was very clear: it wanted to lure the people inside the cabin into actively opening this back door.
The despair and desire to escape within the shelter pod had already accumulated to a breaking point. Once someone was bewitched by the illusion and privately pulled open the backup blast-proof door, the third-tier scaled beast waiting outside for so long would instantly rush in, and everything would collapse in an instant.
"Order the squad guarding the back door to remain highly vigilant. At the same time, notify all military police to pay special attention to anyone in the crowd trying to move toward the rear-side passage. If anyone is found to be induced by illusions, take control immediately, but do not escalate the conflict," Scholar Su quickly added to his orders.
The message was transmitted to various locations through the communication channel.
Most areas inside the cabin were still illuminated by low-brightness emergency lights, the dim yellow light amplifying the sense of oppression. Material rations had been pushed to the absolute limit, with only a thin, small piece of compressed rations and a few sips of drinking water per day. Hunger bred irritability, thirst eroded patience, and with their spirits continuously battered day and night, more and more people lost the energy to communicate. They merely sat numbly against the cabin walls, their eyes empty.
Arguments were no longer isolated incidents.
In the afternoon, two adult men erupted into conflict over a small bottle of backup purified water, wrestling to the ground. The military police spent a great deal of effort to separate them. The person who had been robbed roared with red eyes, saying he could barely hold on; the one who had fought kept his head down, speechless, but his whole body was trembling. No one was born vicious; they had just been trapped in this iron box for too long, and the instinct to survive was beginning to override reason.
The situation on the medical front was equally dire.
The painkillers were completely exhausted. The severely wounded could only endure the tearing pain, and their suppressed groans came intermittently at night, making everyone's heart tighten. Anti-inflammatory drugs were also running out. The wounds of several soldiers had begun to fester and swell, accompanied by persistent low-grade fevers. The military doctor could only repeatedly clean the wounds with sterile gauze; there was nothing else he could do. Death was quietly spreading through the wounded area.
Deep within the cavern, the consciousness of the five ancient beings resonated quietly.
The Beast Commander patiently dispatched the scaled beasts, applying pressure on both the front and back doors, while the roaming squads patrolled the outer walls, continuously creating an omnipresent sense of crisis. The Sharp-Sense Ancient Being was like a frog being boiled in warm water, continuously and slowly consuming everyone's Sea of Consciousness endurance. The Illusion Ancient Being seized on the soft spot of "escape," repeatedly targeting individuals with weak wills and projecting illusions of a path through the back door. The Spiderweb Ancient Being was not in a rush to send spores into the cabin; it merely allowed the spores to take root continuously in the seams of the rock layer, slowly polluting the geology of the area. Even if this siege failed, this mountain would become a spore-polluted zone, and humans would never be able to safely use it again.
The supreme ruler's consciousness always hovered above the entire shelter pod.
It watched the order loosen bit by bit, watched the goodwill between people be slowly eroded by hunger, thirst, and fear, and watched hostility breed within the crowd that had originally banded together to resist. It had witnessed this process countless times. Sturdy defensive lines were never torn apart by the claws of alien beasts; more often, they rotted from within first. It still did not order a general offensive. The current rhythm was exactly what it wanted. Rushing to kill would only provoke a desperate counterattack; slow disintegration was the most efficient harvest.
Time slowly slipped into the night cycle.
There was no true day or night inside the shelter pod; routines were divided solely by the shift rotation schedule. Most people curled up on the floor for shallow sleep, but almost no one could truly sink into a restful slumber. The continuous dull ache in the Sea of Consciousness, the occasional flashing illusions, and the irregular ramming sounds from the outer walls would always pull them back from the haze into the cold reality.
At the back door, the guard squad took turns staring intently at the door panel.
The first half of the night was relatively peaceful, until right before the shift change, movement finally came from outside.
Thud—
A muffled ram struck the center of the blast-proof door panel.
The door panel trembled, the latches emitted a faint creak, and a little rock dust fell from the gap in the door frame. The third-tier scaled beast outside retreated to gather momentum, paused briefly, and rammed again.
Thud!
Three consecutive rams followed in quick succession. The frame of the simple blast-proof door visibly deformed, and several fine cracks spread outward along the steel plate.
"The door frame is cracking! The load-bearing capacity of the latches is insufficient! It can withstand at most four or five more rounds of ramming!" the guard reported urgently, his hand already resting on the safety lock of the detonator.
The atmosphere in the command channel instantly tensed.
Scholar Su looked at Lin Yan: "Are any other scaled beasts moving toward the back door to support?"
Lin Yan quickly scanned the thermal map: "Not for now. Only this single third-tier scaled beast is assaulting the back door. The Beast Commander is probing. It wants to see the limits of this door, and it also wants to see whether we will detonate the explosives here, prematurely exhausting our last set of blast-blocking measures."
The Beast Commander was gambling.
It was betting that humans would be reluctant to blow up this only backup escape route, betting that the defenders would endure the rams to keep a way out, right up until the door panel shattered.
The ramming sounds rang out again, heavier with each strike.
The cracks on the blast-proof door grew denser. One of the metal latches fixing the door panel had snapped. The door panel bulged slightly inward, the gap widened, and a trace of cold wind carrying the stench of spores drilled in through the seam.
The defensive line at the back door had reached its breaking point. Meanwhile, in the direction of the main gate, the other scaled beasts simultaneously increased their ramming frequency. The sounds from both sides intertwined, echoing back and forth in the sealed shelter pod.
The iron cage prison was in critical condition at both the front and the rear. In the darkness, the noose of the ancient beings was pulled even tighter.
End of Chapter.