Chapter 615 The Second Wave of Invasion

The border area, Dongcheng District, is located in a dark alley in the old street.

The gloomy twilight sky enveloped the alley, making the alienated street seem particularly cold and eerie. The shops along the street were lit with strange lights, and the light overflowing from the shop windows had a strange, almost viscous texture, as if it were about to flow onto the ground, vibrating and writhing in the air. Meanwhile, messy wires and ropes with colorful flags crisscrossed in the air, and the strings of lights on the wires crackled and shimmered with psychedelic colors.

Heavy footsteps broke the silence of the dark alley. Several tall figures in power armor slowly walked through the alley and finally stopped in front of the old bookstore, where they began to examine the traces in the vicinity.

Xu Jiali opened the power armor's visor, her brows furrowed as she looked at the several dents on the ground.

A slender figure stood beside him, wearing light power armor with a pair of pointed cat ears on her helmet—the psionic servant Bell was alertly watching the surroundings. In the dim ambient light, her vertical pupils widened, reflecting the omnipresent mist in the alley.

“Boss, my intuition is warning me, meow…” Jipro’s tail was bristling inside her power armor, and her voice sounded particularly tense. “This place is a bit unsafe.”

“Of course it’s not safe. The danger level here is already level 3, with two plus signs after it,” Xu Jiali said in a muffled voice. “Look at these marks—they shouldn’t be in an alley. It looks like something heavy has passed through here, as if someone has been carrying heavy objects here…maybe they were left by those ‘knights’.”

“These weren’t mentioned in the last report,” another deep-sea diver said. “These are likely traces left a few hours ago.”

Xu Jiali touched her chin and raised her hand to activate some detection devices on her power armor.

Bell, standing to the side, looked up, her cat-like eyes suddenly fixed on a shop diagonally across the street.

"Hey boss, that store looks like they sell jars!"

Xu Jiali looked up and said, "That's a pet store in a dark alley—the cat food there isn't for you, and besides, you're not a real cat. After you finish work, go back to your dorm and have some catnip."

Bell let out a meow, muttering something unintelligible. Just then, several dark figures emerged from the shadows of nearby buildings and came into the view of the cat-headed girl.

The shadowy figures, covered in a rubbery or plastic-like texture, like mud gushing out from the walls and ground, quickly took on the outline of a cat and formed pale, luminous eyes at the head.

The bell let out a "meow" and arched its entire body, the mechanical orb in its hand floating in mid-air and starting to buzz.

The other psionic servant beside him reacted almost simultaneously, shouting a warning the instant the mechanical orb was activated: "Watch out, meow, entity creation!"

The hissing sounds of guns being cocked and shields being charged filled the alleyway. The deep-sea divers immediately prepared to deal with the physical entities, but the "cats" that emerged from the opposite corner did not move towards them immediately. Instead, they lingered in the darkness, their pale, empty eyes occasionally glancing into the thin mist deep in the alley.

Bell's back arched high, several sharp claws popped out from her power armor gauntlets, bright arcs of electricity crackling between the alloy claws, and a threatening growl came from her throat: "Meow—"

However, Xu Jiali, who had extensive experience in alleyway operations, suddenly sensed something was amiss. He remained alert, placing one hand on the psionic servant's shoulder: "Wait a minute, something's not right—these cats aren't aggressive."

Bell was still grumbling in her throat, but she managed to resist the urge to rush up and scratch the local cat. While manipulating the floating mechanical orbs beside her to cast psionic shields on her boss, she nervously stared into the distance and then noticed... the alley seemed to be widening.

"Boss! The alley has widened! It was mentioned in the intelligence report!"

"I've noticed that too—everyone stay alert and check the 'umbilical cord' situation!"

Xu Jiali quickly gave the orders, while also noticing the "cats" pacing around in place. After a moment's hesitation, he boldly took two steps toward the other side.

“I am Yu Sheng’s friend,” he recalled the information he had received earlier, casually activating the projection device on his arm armor and projecting Yu Sheng’s image into the air. “Do you understand? Friend, one of us…”

Several deep-sea team members stared wide-eyed at their captain's actions. They had heard about the changes in the "cat" in the alley, but this was clearly the first time they had seen it with their own eyes. Bell was especially tense, her eyes filled with wariness of the "cat outside".

Then she realized that the intelligence was true.

The "cats" calmed down instantly after seeing Yu Sheng's holographic projection. They even huddled together and meowed a few times as if discussing something. Then they stretched and yawned at Xu Jiali, raised their front paws and waved them in the air while meowing.

Xu Jiali paused for a moment, then turned to look at her psionic servants: "What did they say?"

"...How should I know, meow!" Bell looked completely bewildered. "I'm not a real cat!"

Xu Jiali's face twitched. Just as she was about to ask something else, she suddenly saw the black kittens start jumping around anxiously, gesturing at him and meowing.

It was as if it were urgently issuing a warning.

A chill, originating from spiritual intuition, suddenly rose from the bottom of her heart, and Xu Jiali felt a sharp pain in her mind.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw more than a dozen black cats of various sizes dart out from some nook and cranny, running wildly across the street as if startled. The cats scattered all over the place amidst a series of chaotic cries, then scrambled together into a dark ball. A bunch of paws, tails, and ears scurried across the surface of the ball before it quickly rolled into the nearby used bookstore.

This bizarre scene raised alarm bells in all the deep-sea team members, and Xu Jiali felt a chill run down his spine as he sensed a clear killing intent. His years of combat instincts instantly overwhelmed his thoughts, and without hesitation, he activated the joint overload of his power armor and lunged to the side!

A loud noise came from the joints of the armor, and the power backpack behind him roared to life. The heavy steel body left afterimages in the air. As he lunged forward, Xu Jiali activated the extra combat gear on his arm guards. As soon as an extra-reinforced rigid shield opened, he caught the sudden distortion in the air.

Even with his superhuman dynamic vision, he could barely catch a glimpse of the figure darting out from the shadow rift—and then, several sharp fingertip blades shattered his first shield, and then tore out intense flashes of light from the overload on his second shield!

In the blink of an eye, several exchanges took place. The shields flickered violently, and during the intervals when the energy barriers were recharged, several sparking wounds had already been torn into the high-strength alloy power armor.

The tall, slender figure in black danced like a ghost in the air. The moment Xu Jiali landed, another deep-sea team member was kicked away with a scream—he didn't even see how the killing machine changed direction while attacking him, taking the opportunity to ambush the other team member.

At the same time, heavy footsteps reached everyone's ears, and tall brass armored figures tore through the thin mist, stepping into the dark alley in groups...

Xu Jiali sprang to her feet, casually drawing a beam dagger from the weapon rack at her waist. With her other hand, she raised her heavy particle rifle and unleashed a burst of fire at the brass-armored figures: "Bells! Prepare for the psionic shriek—all personnel, engage!"

...

“These are the stellar crystals transported from Shuji,” Yu Sheng explained to Baili Qing, pointing to a small mountain of pale crystals piled up on the platform beside him in a high-security laboratory at the Special Operations Bureau headquarters. “They were all dug out from the large cavities deep in the mantle—those cavities were originally ‘nutrient sacs’ for stellar bodies during their ascension preparation phase, and the supporting structure of their inner walls was this kind of crystal. It can be said that, apart from the ‘ascension bodies,’ these crystals are the substances closest to the ‘essence’ of stellar bodies.”

The technicians in the laboratory were on high alert, all wearing heavy protective suits. Although Baili Qing wasn't "fully armed" like them, she was also surrounded by a protective barrier powered by ancient dragon magic. She was very cautious when approaching the pale crystals: "Are you sure this thing is stable right now?"

“It’s perfectly stable,” Yu Sheng said casually, patting the things that looked like rocks to him. “Let me tell you, in a sense, these things are like my gallstones…”

He had barely finished speaking when he heard Baili Xue's voice (who was secretly hiding in a corner of the laboratory at the time) drift into his ears: "Well, your analogy is a bit painful..."

Yu Sheng: "It's equivalent to my relics..."

Baili Qing coughed twice, indicating that Yu Sheng's analogy was good, but there was no need to continue with it.

“I know most people are a bit paranoid about things left behind by dark angels, but the angelic relics I ‘transformed’ are indeed harmless, especially these crystals buried deep in the desolate land. They are essentially a special kind of recast mineral,” Yu Sheng explained patiently, touching the tip of his nose. “Correspondingly, with some ‘technical means,’ these things are also very suitable for creating ‘angelic catalysts’—firstly, they don’t belong to any known mineral, so this special characteristic is not easy to be exposed immediately; secondly, these things have a high affinity with ‘boundary bridges’…”

He glanced at Baili Qing as he said this, without saying anything explicitly, but the other party clearly understood the implication of his words.

Originally, Yu Sheng had no intention of using these crystal fragments from the underground of Shuji as bait. After all, these things had completely lost the characteristics of the Dark Angel and were no different from ordinary minerals. However, the affinity between the Star-Derived Giant Tree and the Boundary Bridge gave him a new idea after returning from the Cathedral.

In the cathedral of the Soul Wilderness, the Boundary Bridge has been regenerated on the "Astronomical Crystal Tree," which inspired Yu Sheng. He felt that whether it was making fake "Boundary Bridge fragments" or "adding ingredients" to fakes, these astronomical crystals from the Desolate Lands might be excellent base materials.

As for how to make the counterfeit goods appear more authentic, so that the finished products can deceive the eyes of those Hermit followers, this is obviously something that technical experts need to consider.

Baili Qing nodded gently.

“Let’s begin,” she said, looking at the lab staff in their heavy protective suits. “Remember, even without contamination, caution is still necessary.”

"Yes, Chief!"

(End of this chapter)