Chapter 29
The time has come.
The team had just killed a large number of crustacean pollution beasts together, and was excitedly surrounding them, carefully using special tools to pry out the energy crystal cores that were embedded in the cracks of the hard shells and were shining with ochre light.
The joy of harvest temporarily diluted the fear of darkness, and the conversation became slightly louder.
“This piece is really good!”
"Be careful when prying! Don't break the core."
"This harvest is equivalent to half a month's work outside."
In this brief moment of relaxation, filled with the joy of harvest.
Lin Yao's figure, as if gently sucked away by the darkness itself, silently retreated one step, two steps... and completely merged into the narrow branch behind him that no one noticed and was completely covered by the shadow of the huge twisted pipe.
There were no footsteps, no energy fluctuations, not even a trace of air movement.
Like a drop of water, merging into the boundless sea of ink.
Qin Feng was bending over to examine a crystal core he had just pried off when his heart suddenly skipped a beat. An indescribable feeling of emptiness came over him without warning.
He stood up suddenly and glanced behind him with sharp eyes - the team was still gathered around the corpse of the filthy beast, busy and excited.
That familiar, thin figure... is gone?
"Yaoyao?" Qin Feng's voice, with a hint of barely perceptible panic, rang out in the dim light.
The team members looked up when they heard the sound and looked around in confusion.
"Huh? Where's Lin Yao?"
"Were you just behind Captain Qin?"
"Did you go to the side to investigate?"
Qin Feng's heart sank instantly, a chill gripping him. He pushed aside the team members blocking his way and rushed to the spot where Lin Yao had just disappeared.
There was only the cold, slippery walls of the pipe, emitting a dim phosphorescent glow, and no one was there. It was as if Lin Yao had never existed.
"Yaoyao!"
Qin Feng's cry echoed in the deadly silent passage, carrying a hint of fear and despair that he himself had not yet realized, and was eventually completely swallowed up by the boundless darkness.
…
Darkness is no longer an obstacle, but the most obedient servant.
Lin Yao moved silently through the maze-like corridors. His pace wasn't fast, but it held a strange rhythm. Each step he took landed precisely on the point where the spatial structure was most stable and the energy flow was most gentle, as if he were walking on an invisible staircase.
The darkness around him seemed to come alive, obediently making way for him and then closing silently behind him.
The thick polluting energy that was enough to cause a mental breakdown for an ordinary psychic was nothing more than a breeze passing through his fingertips.
Those spatial folds that were powerful enough to twist steel and tear alloys were like docile flowing water in front of him. With just a slight movement of his mind, the invisible spiritual threads would gently smooth them out, creating an absolutely smooth path.
At the corner of the passage ahead, shadows began to move violently.
A giant monster, which looked like countless pieces of rotten flesh stitched together, blocked the way.
It has no eyes, only a huge mouth full of spiral teeth that almost takes up its entire front and emits a disgusting stench.
It seemed to sense the presence of the intruder, and its huge body suddenly turned towards Lin Yao. Its huge mouth let out a silent roar, and sticky saliva dripped, corroding the ground.
Ugly, inefficient, and a waste of energy.
Lin Yao didn't even pause. He raised his right hand, pointed his index finger at the roaring monster, and casually swiped it downwards.
There was no earth-shattering burst of energy, no dazzling light.
Buzz——
There was an extremely faint sound in the air, like the trembling of a plucked string.
The huge body of the stitched monster that exuded terrifying pressure suddenly stiffened.
The next second, it seemed as if countless invisible bombs were thrown into its body, which was made up of countless pieces of rotten flesh.
Puff! Puff! Puff!
Dull, crackling sounds echoed continuously from within its body! The squirming pieces of flesh that made up its body instantly lost all vitality, like mud drained of moisture, one after another, silently collapsing and disintegrating! There was no wailing, no struggling, only a sticky dark liquid and shattered tissue flowing to the ground, quickly absorbed by the cold earth, failing to stir up even the slightest scent of blood.
The whole process was so quiet that it was creepy.
Lin Yao didn't even pause as he stepped directly over the quickly disappearing filth. There was not a single ripple in the depths of his blue eyes.
It was as if what had just been crushed was just an annoying flying insect.
Soul-level annihilation, efficient, clean, leaving no trace. This is his power.
What Qin Feng and the others saw was just a tiny tip of the iceberg.
The maze completely lost its meaning in front of him.
The perception network woven by spiritual threads has already clearly analyzed the three-dimensional structure of the entire abyss corridor.
Which road is a trap, which road is full of nests of high-level pollution beasts, which road can reach the core the fastest... all are under your control.
He chose the most direct and cleanest path, and headed straight towards the deepest part of the maze, the point where the energy reaction was most concentrated - the location of the Void Star Marrow.
I don’t know how long I have been walking, time has lost its meaning here.
The surrounding passage walls grew larger and more twisted, the sticky moss covering them emitting an even stronger, darker phosphorescence. The air also became sticky and cold, like solidified colloid. Finally, Lin Yao's footsteps stopped in front of an extremely large wall.
This wall is not a pipe or a cavity, but more like a huge, inky black strange crystal.
It was embedded deep within the maze, its surface impossibly smooth, yet it gave the illusion of constantly collapsing inward, swallowing up light. Compared to the twisting, wriggling surroundings, it appeared unusually orderly, even possessing a cold, unnatural sense of "order."
A huge and obscure energy fluctuation, like the heartbeat of a sleeping giant beast, faintly came from the depths of the crystal.
Void Star Essence? No, not yet.
Lin Yao's gaze didn't linger on the crystal that held immense energy. Instead, his sight penetrated the mist of energy and landed on an inconspicuous corner to the side and rear of the giant crystal.
There, the folds of space twisted in an extremely subtle, almost perfect pattern, forming a point that was extremely difficult to detect with the naked eye or conventional mental scanning.
A cleverly woven space seal, like the most sophisticated lock, locks something tightly outside of reality.
The energy fluctuations of the seal were extremely weak, and compared with the vast void star marrow energy around it, it was like a drop in the ocean.
But in Lin Yao's blue eyes that can see through the essence of the soul and analyze the emotions and energy core of all things, this seemingly seamless seal, its complex energy circuits and core nodes, are clearly visible.
He walked slowly to the corner. Against the backdrop of the huge black crystal, his figure was as small as dust.
He extended his right hand, and the tip of his index finger shone with a faint glow, cooler than moonlight, deeper than the stars. It wasn't the radiance of energy, but rather the phenomenon produced when spiritual power, concentrated to its utmost, touched the very essence of space.
His fingertips lightly touched the seemingly empty air.
Buzz...
A long, trembling sound was heard, much clearer than the previous one when the giant was wiped out.
Where the fingertips landed, the space was like the surface of water with a stone thrown into it, rippling out circles of light silver ripples visible to the naked eye.
Wherever the ripples passed, the sophisticated, invisible space seal was like a spider web thrown into strong acid, emitting a silent whine, and its complex energy circuits quickly twisted, broke, and annihilated.
Snap!
There was an extremely slight sound, like the crisp sound of glass breaking.
The space before him seemed to be torn open. An entrance, barely wide enough for one person to pass through and emitting a faint white light, silently appeared before Lin Yao.
Inside the entrance, the scene was completely different from the corridor outside - a small, square, cold room made entirely of some kind of silver-white metal.
There were no doors or windows, only an old, dusty rectangular metal instrument embedded in the wall facing the entrance.
Lin Yao stepped in without any hesitation.
The entrance to the space behind him silently closed and disappeared the moment he stepped in, as if it had never appeared. The room was dead silent, with only the sound of his light footsteps echoing off the metal walls.
He walked straight towards the metal instrument. The surface of the instrument was covered with thick dust, but the circular area in the center, which seemed to be a sensing area, was unusually clean.
Lin Yao stretched out his equally clean fingers and gently pressed them on the sensing area.
Buzz...
A low, audible start-up sound echoed from within the instrument, and the dust on its surface was shaken off by the faint vibrations of energy. A soft, yet completely cold, white light emanated from the center of the instrument, forming a steady curtain of light on the cold metal wall.
The light curtain flickered a few times, the snowflakes danced, and finally stabilized.
The screen appears.
It was a sunny afternoon, and light filtered through the tall glass windows, casting warm patches of light on the floor. The windows were clean and bright, and the walls were painted a soft light yellow. A small wooden table and chairs were neatly arranged, and some colorful building blocks were piled in the corner.
This is a room full of childlike fun - the orphanage's playroom.
The camera panned slightly, focusing on the center of the room. A small figure sat beside a pile of building blocks, its back to the camera.
His silver hair lay softly on his little head, and he was wearing a pair of blue overalls that had been washed out so much that they looked pale. He looked only three or four years old, and his shoulders were pitifully thin.
The screen was silent. But Lin Yao's blue eyes suddenly narrowed. A chill, originating from the depths of his soul, crept up his spine without warning.
That small figure...is himself.
Suddenly, Xiao Linyao in the picture turned his head abruptly! A face as delicate as a porcelain doll, but without a trace of blood, filled the entire screen.
Those big eyes that belonged to a young child were now frighteningly empty. There was no childish innocence or curiosity in them, only a blank, dead silence torn by great fear and chaos.
His lips were slightly open, as if he was shouting silently, and his small body was shaking violently and uncontrollably.
The camera slowly panned, following Xiao Lin Yao's terrified, desperate gaze. Near a nearby window, against the light, stood several figures. Clad in spotless white coats, they stood like icy symbols suddenly intruding into a fairytale world.
One of them leaned forward slightly, staring intently at the trembling child. His profile was defined by sharp lines, his nose was high, and there was even a gentle smile at the corner of his mouth, as if he were enjoying some amusing performance.
However, when the camera captures his slightly narrowed eyes, an extremely uncomfortable, almost morbid enthusiasm and joy, like an ice-cold poisonous snake, instantly penetrates the barrier of the image and pierces the viewer's heart.
That face!
Lin Yao's fingertips suddenly felt cold.
He was so familiar with this face, so familiar that it was engraved into his bones.
The guide who first reached out to him after he awakened his superpowers, teaching him how to use the terrifying power of mind reading, how to disguise himself and survive in this cruel world. The mentor who gave him false warmth and guidance when he was weakest and helpless.
It was also the one who, when he finally came to prominence and earned generous points, could no longer conceal the greed in his eyes, and who ultimately stabbed him in the back with a poisoned dagger, grinning grimly—the traitor.
In the end, he twisted the neck of the dead person with his own hands, and the body sank into the cold and dirty sewer of the ruins of the old world...
How could he be here? Appearing at the moment his powers awakened? Appearing in the images of this orphanage? That look... that look, as if looking at the most perfect experimental subject, filled with possessiveness and ecstasy.
boom……!
An invisible storm exploded deep within Lin Yao's mind. The false warmth of the orphanage, the filthy thoughts he'd heard when his powers awakened, the despair of being hated and rejected by everyone... the false care and ultimate betrayal of his mentor... the cold codename GOD in the lab... the Purifier's so-called Ark Project... the eye of the storm brewing in City A...
Countless broken, seemingly unrelated fragments of clues were now forcibly linked together by this face that appeared at the first chaotic moment of life.
An invisible net has enveloped him since he was a naive seed. His struggle, growth, revenge, control... were every step he took under the watchful eye and planning of a cold will?
The thick fog shrouding the so-called truth seemed to be torn open by this sudden image.
But what was revealed behind the hole was not the answer, but a larger, darker, and more suffocating abyss.
GOD? Looking down upon all living things? Or... from the beginning to the end, was he just a test subject, carefully nurtured, guided by countless hands to his predetermined location...?
The cold, fooled anger, like a poisonous vine, instantly wrapped around Lin Yao's heart, strangling him so that he could hardly breathe.
He stared intently at the face with a fanatical smile on the screen. Beneath the frozen sea of ice in the depths of his blue eyes was a roiling black flame that was powerful enough to burn everything.
The room was dead silent, with only the images silently looping, showing the fear of young Lin Yao and the cold figures of the men in white coats outside the window.
The air seemed to solidify into a heavy block of lead.
At this moment, in the corner of the room, on the metal wall that he had violently broken the seal on and entered, a faint blue light suddenly lit up.
The light flowed and converged like a living being, outlining a complex and mysterious runic pattern. At the core of the pattern, a ball of dark blue matter, as deep as the starry sky, slowly swirled and condensed.
The energy fluctuations it exuded were pure, vast, and cold, carrying an aura of emptiness that transcended the mundane, instantly overwhelming the mental impact brought by the image.
Void Star Marrow!
Lin Yao's gaze finally shifted away from the disgusting face on the light screen and fell on the slowly condensing dark blue light.
The dark flames raging within his frozen blue eyes were forcibly suppressed, transforming once again into a bottomless pool of cold. Rage, doubt, and the chilling feeling of being fooled still burned deep within his soul, but they were all suppressed by a stronger will.
He needed power. Overwhelming power, enough to crush all conspiracies and shackles.
No matter how dark the abyss of truth is, no matter whether he is ultimately a god or a pawn, he must step in, tear off all disguises with his own hands, and hold the answer in his own hands.
Now, get it!
Lin Yao raised his hand, and his fingertips once again condensed the cool light that was enough to analyze space and obliterate souls. Without hesitation, he stretched out his hand towards the ball of original matter sealed by the dark blue runes, which contained the ultimate emptiness - the Void Star Marrow.
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