Chapter 430: Mountain of Focus |
In the director’s office deep inside the Special Service headquarters in Boundary City, Bai Li Qing exhaled softly, then rubbed the thigh she had just banged against the desk as she rose and walked to the wide floor?to?ceiling window.
Outside, an intangible mist that seemed almost solid began to flow at once, and under her gaze it shifted into all manner of scenes. Most were images Xu Jiali had recorded at Garrison?3, including sampling work on the surface and, deep underground, the Heart of Crystal Remains. The rest were scenes reassembled from her subconscious—data on the Yanxing Entity and the intelligence that had just come in from the Featherwing sector converged, interwove, and were extrapolated and transformed in her mind into the planet’s upcoming “possibilities.”
Vast crystal structures surged up from the planet’s depths. Crystal clusters bloomed like flowers on the torn crust. A colossal Ascension body clawed its way out of the world. Uncontrolled crystalline matter, having lost its “core,” grew rampant. Cities were swallowed by crystal. Hundreds of millions drowned in a planet’s cocoon as it split open in a dream of awakening.
The flowing mist heaved and rolled, its images recombining over and over before erasing themselves again. At last the mist calmed, and a pair of light gray eyes surfaced in its depths.
Those eyes regarded Bai Li Qing and spoke with cool clarity: “Big sis, trying to infer infinite possibilities from limited intelligence about the Dark Angels is meaningless, and this time the variable is Yu Sheng.”
Bai Li Qing breathed out lightly, then said: “I know.”
The eyes asked evenly: “What are you thinking about now?”
Bai Li Qing was silent for a moment, then tugged at the corner of her mouth and answered with a wry edge: “Mainly that I’ve recovered a touch of the overtime grind from a while back.”
The eyes held. “What else?”
The eyes replied with the faintest hint of humor: “Then there’s nothing I can do. I don’t have hands right now.”
Bai Li Qing gave a tiny nod and said beneath her breath: “I know.”
…
Yu Sheng skimmed the files Bai Li Qing had sent to his phone and, in doing so, deepened his understanding of the Yanxing Entity.
As Bai Li Qing had said, the most bizarre and dangerous aspect of the Yanxing Entity was not its physical form but the cognitive interference that intensified as its parasitism deepened, along with the “reality reconstruction” built atop the accumulation of that interference.
Beneath the surface appearance of “everything is normal,” the entity’s crystallization had likely already covered the entire planet and saturated every corner of Mo City. The anomaly lay right under everyone’s eyelids, yet it remained fixed in the blind spot of everyone’s subconscious.
In theory, if the only source of cognitive interference were the entity itself, then this degree of “perception barrier” would not fool Immortal Yuan Hao, nor even evade Xuan Che’s probe of divine sense. But there were hundreds of millions of residents on this planet. The ordinary people affected by the interference, through their shared “observation,” had directly rewritten the reality structure of Sentinel Silence’s surface.
This reality?level “overlay” had surpassed the traditional sense of an “illusion,” to the point that even if someone as unusually gifted as Zheng Zhi could see through the entity’s cognitive screen for a brief moment, or even if, as when they encountered the Hermitage’s Great Sage, Yu Sheng had briefly torn open a “rift” above the city, they still could not truly pierce the entire curtain.
Because the collective cognition of the countless Dream Entry users on this planet would immediately repair any tear in the curtain, correcting the world back to the “normal” shape held in their subconscious.
The only good news now was that this seemingly impregnable “curtain” had clearly developed a fault. The “dream” founded on a planetwide perception barrier was colliding with reality. The two were pressing against each other and tearing, producing the grotesquely warped “Mo City” now before Yu Sheng. Within this twisted, absurd city there was a strong chance the rip that could tear the curtain open for good was hidden.
As for how this “collision” had come about, Yu Sheng did not know. Perhaps because of the battle at Garrison?3. Perhaps Zheng Zhi and Yuan Hao had done something on Sentinel Silence. Perhaps both. Either way, it was obviously an opportunity.
Yu Sheng put away his phone and looked toward the rain?shrouded depths ahead.
Crooked city buildings were heaped together like collapsed frosting at the far edge of his vision, then gathered and swelled along a shared vector. A mass of structures piled there into a monstrous “mountain.” The “mountain’s” surface rose and fell in the rain as if it were alive. Twisted neon and flickering projections flowed like water over its flanks. In the shimmer you could still vaguely pick out the outlines of certain landmarks and the city’s main thoroughfares.
Thunder without light rolled again from the direction of that “mountain,” grinding across the sky.
Ever since he had left the hotel room, similar peals had been coming from that direction.
Yu Sheng did not know where Immortal Yuan Hao and the others had gone, nor had he found any other trace near Huixianzhou, but the rolling thunder felt like a guide, pointing him forward.
From the materials Bai Li Qing had provided, Yu Sheng could now roughly judge Sentinel Silence’s state.
The Yanxing Entity’s parasitism on this planet had entered the late stage of eclosion, only a step away from becoming an Ascension body. At this stage, the cognitive interference it generated blanketed the entire planet, which meant that in theory the whole of Sentinel Silence was now in a warped state.
But this “warping” was not uniform. Its source might be the entity, yet what sustained it were the countless “ordinary people” under interference. The dream blanketing the planet therefore had a multitude of “support points.”
Every densely populated area was a support point.
Mo City was the largest city on this planet.
The densest districts of Mo City were the “support point of support points.”
That “mountain” should be one.
Foxy transformed again into a great nine?tailed silver fox. The protective aura around her body shook off the wind and rain. Yu Sheng and Irene sat on the silver fox’s back, while Luna’s figure flickered in and out like a ghost in the rain?soaked shadows, keeping tight watch all around. The hazy projections of twelve brass knights appeared now and then in the rain.
Within this “boundary” layer formed by the collision of dream and reality, the line between the unreal and the real had blurred, to the point that even projecting Luna’s knights into reality was much easier than usual.
Irene sat beside Yu Sheng, fingers digging into the fox fur as she frowned and said through gritted teeth: “There’s static everywhere around us. Did you notice those human silhouettes that flash by on the roadside now and then? And those colored shadows hanging midair… they’re all minds at the edge of a dream. My head is splitting.”
Yu Sheng nodded and answered in a low voice: “I noticed— the nearer we get to that ‘mountain,’ the more there are. Looks like we’re on the right heading… Mo City’s ‘reality?reconstruction focus’ is just ahead.”
Irene blinked, then suddenly looked as if she had spotted something. She lifted her head and stared straight at Yu Sheng. The little doll piped up in a crisp voice and said with unearned confidence: “You seem headed for bloodshed again.”
Yu Sheng had not expected her to stare only to say that. He could only smile wryly and reply: “You… fine, bloodshed it is. I’m used to it.”
The doll declared with relish: “You’ll bleed a lot this time.”
Yu Sheng muttered without mirth: “Thanks for the blessing.”
Irene hummed a sing?song “Mhm~,” and Yu Sheng fell silent: “…”
By then, Foxy had already crossed the final broken segment along the city’s central axis. The nine?tailed silver fox bounded over a plaza structure that hovered in midair and finally reached the foot of that “mountain.”
The mountain seemed to have grown again. The buildings fused across its surface had twisted into structures even harder to comprehend, even more chaotic. A broad span that looked like it had once been an aerial transit track lay across the mountainside, winding toward the peak.
Countless droning hums rose on all sides. Foxy slowed instinctively.
Yu Sheng saw shadows beyond counting—semi?transparent, multicolored human outlines, congregating at the mountain’s base like passersby from another dimension. Some were walking along the road. Some lounged at ease on serpentine benches. Some floated for no reason at all, their postures like people reading newspapers. Others sat cross?legged as if cultivating in meditation.
These were mind?forms loitering at the edge of the dream. Perhaps at this very moment they were still going about their usual routines in the real Mo City—chatting with family and friends, busy with work—yet their subconscious had begun to register the disharmony buried deep in perception. By instinct for self?preservation, a portion of their minds had “drifted” here and were converging, clustering by reflex toward other minds.
A giant outdoor display unit was jammed askew amid the buildings at the mountain’s foot, its intermittent hologram hovering above the chassis.
The projection stuttered with a sterile voice and broken captions as it said: “…sleepwalking incidents are spreading across the city, cases of qi deviation are spiking again… residents are advised not to approach the city outskirts at night…
“The shadows lingering around the old refinery tower have been confirmed as a collective hallucination. Residents who witness anomalous scenes need not panic…
“The storm has arrived on schedule. A new cold air mass is entering from the south… wind and rain in the city are expected to intensify further. Citizens who have not yet reached Qi Induction should avoid prolonged outdoor activity…
“This city is good, this planet is very #%@… everything is good, everything #? good, everything ?@#% good…”
Yu Sheng’s gaze fixed on that projection half?buried in concrete. He watched the text shiver and morph, and watched all manner of bizarre vistas—close yet not quite Mo City—flicker in and out between the sentences.
Up the steep “mountain,” more and more “billboards” were lighting, one after another. Their successive holograms rippled in the rainy night like a long row of welcoming pennants.
They declared brightly: “Welcome to Mo City, the most prosperous metropolis of the Frontier.”
“Today Mo City is peaceful and secure.”
“Today Sentinel Silence has nothing happening.”
“Welcome to Mo City, welcome to Mo City, welcome to…”
“Boom!”
A crash of thunder split the sky.
The hazy silhouettes gathered at the mountain’s foot seemed to sense something. Many lifted their heads blankly toward the heavens, and the chain of holograms strung up the mountainside shook violently. A great many of the words were driven away by that thunder and shredded into the air.
Yu Sheng raised his head toward the sound. With vision far beyond the norm, he saw a cool?faced woman in a black long dress standing on the peak. She held a sword in hand, her jet?black hair swept up into a high chignon, and she looked down toward the mountain’s base with a hint of chill reserve.
This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation