Chapter 430: Focus Mountain
In Jie City, in the director's office deep inside the Secret Service building, Baili Qing breathed a sigh of relief, then rubbed her thigh that had just hit the table, stood up, and walked to the large floor-to-ceiling window.
Outside the window, an invisible fog suddenly began to flow, and changed into various images as she watched. Most of them were scenes that Xu Jiali had taken at Garrison-3, including sampling operations on the surface and the "Crystal Heart" deep underground. The rest were many scenes reconstructed from the depths of her consciousness - various data about the "derivative star body" and the intelligence that had just come from the Feiyu Star Region were summarized, woven, deduced, and transformed into various "possibilities" for the planet in her mind.
Huge crystal structures emerged from the depths of the planet. Crystal clusters bloomed like flowers on the torn surface of the earth's crust. Huge ascending bodies drilled out of the planet. Out-of-control crystalline matter grew wantonly without its "core". Cities were swallowed by crystals. Hundreds of millions of people drowned in a dream of a planet breaking out of its cocoon and blooming...
The flowing fog rolled and rose, and the pictures presented in the fog were reorganized and eliminated again and again. After a long time, the fog calmed down, and a pair of light gray eyes emerged from the depths of the fog.
"Sister," those eyes looked at Baili Qing quietly, "It is meaningless to try to infer infinite possibilities from the limited information about the Dark Angel - especially since the variable this time is 'Yu Sheng'."
Baili Qing exhaled softly: "I know."
"What are you thinking about now?"
Baili Qing was silent for a moment, then curled her lips and said, "It's mainly because I got back a little bit of the feeling of working overtime a while ago."
"What else?"
"And my legs hurt."
"That can't be helped. I don't have any hands now."
"……I know."
…
Yu Sheng quickly browsed the information that Baili Qing sent to his mobile phone, and in the process gained some more understanding of "derivative stellar bodies".
Just as Baili Qing said, the most bizarre and dangerous thing about the Derivative Star Body is not its physical form, but its cognitive interference that increases as the degree of parasitism deepens, as well as the "reality reconstruction" based on the superposition of cognitive interference.
Under the appearance of "everything is normal", the crystals of the derived star body may have already covered the entire planet and filled every corner of Mo City. The abnormality is under everyone's eyes, but it is always in everyone's subconscious blind spot.
Theoretically, if it was only the "star-derived body" itself that released cognitive interference, then this degree of "knowledge barrier" could not be hidden from Yuan Hao Zhenren, or even from Xuan Che's spiritual sense. However, there were still hundreds of millions of residents on this planet - ordinary people who were affected by cognitive interference used their common "observations" to directly rewrite the reality structure of the Shuji surface.
This kind of "coverage" based on the reality has surpassed the "illusion" in the traditional sense, so that even if there are "gifted" people like Zheng Zhi who can see through the cognitive barrier created by the derived stars in a short time, or like the previous encounter with the great sage of the hermit order, who briefly tore open the "crack" above the city, they cannot really penetrate the entire curtain.
Because the common cognition of countless "dreamers" on this planet will immediately repair the damage to the curtain and correct the world to the "normal" appearance in their subconscious.
The only good news now is that this seemingly impeccable "curtain" is obviously problematic. The "dream" based on the collective cognitive impairment of all people on the planet is in conflict with reality. The two are squeezing and tearing each other apart, creating the weird and distorted "Mo City" in front of Yu Sheng at this moment. This distorted and absurd city is very likely to hide a crack that completely tears open the curtain.
As for how this "conflict" happened... Yu Sheng didn't know. Was it because of the battle in Weishu-3? Or was it because Zheng Zhi and Yuan Hao who stayed in Shuji did something? Or was it a combination of both? Anyway, this was clearly an opportunity.
Yu Sheng put away his phone and looked into the depths of the rain ahead.
The crooked city buildings piled up at the end of the field of vision like collapsed cream, and then gathered and bulged in a common direction. A large number of building structures piled up there to form a strange mountain. The surface of the "mountain" rose and fell slowly in the rain like a living thing. Various deformed and distorted neon lights and intermittent flickering projections flowed on the mountain like water. Among the flickering lights, some landmark buildings and main roads of the city could be vaguely distinguished.
Once again, there was a thunder without light coming from the direction of the "mountain", rolling across the sky.
Since leaving the hotel room, similar thunder has been heard coming from that direction.
Although Yu Sheng didn't know where Master Yuan Hao and the others had gone, and he didn't find any other clues or traces near Huixianzhou, the rumbling thunder was like some kind of guidance, reminding him the direction to go.
Based on the information provided by Baili Qing, Yu Sheng can now roughly judge the current state of "Shu Ji".
The star-derived body's parasitism on this planet has entered the late stage of metamorphosis, and it is only one step away from becoming an ascending body. At this stage, the cognitive interference it creates has covered the entire planet - so in theory, the entire "Shuji" is now in a distorted state.
But this "distortion" is not uniform - although its source is the derived star body, it is supported by countless "ordinary people" whose cognition is disturbed. Therefore, this dream covering the entire planet actually has a large number of "support points".
Every densely populated area is a support point.
Mo City is the largest city on the planet.
The most densely populated area in Melbourne is the "support point of the support point".
That "mountain"... should be it.
Hu Li transformed into a huge nine-tailed silver fox again. The protective spiritual energy around her shook away the wind and rain that fell from the sky. Yu Sheng and Irene sat on the back of the silver fox, while Luna's figure appeared and disappeared in the shadows of the rainy night like a ghost, following closely around.
The hazy shadows of another twelve bronze knights appeared in the rain from time to time.
In this "boundary" layer formed by the mutual squeeze and conflict between dreams and reality, the boundary between virtual and real becomes blurred, so that even the knights around Luna are projected into reality much easier than usual.
"There's a lot of noise all around here," Irene said, sitting next to Yu Sheng, clutching the fox fur tightly while frowning, "Did you notice the occasional human silhouettes flashing by on the side of the road? And those colorful shadows lingering in the air... They are all minds on the edge of dreams. I'm overwhelmed."
Yu Sheng nodded: "I noticed - the further we go towards that 'mountain', the more we see. It seems that our direction is correct... Mo City's 'reality reconstruction focus' is right in front of us."
Irene blinked, and then suddenly seemed to have discovered something, she looked up and stared at Yu Sheng.
"It seems like you're in bloody trouble again?" the little doll suddenly said.
Yu Sheng didn't expect that this guy would suddenly stare at him just to say this. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry for a moment: "You...Okay, bloody disaster is bloody disaster. I'm used to it."
"The amount of bleeding this time was huge."
Yu Sheng: "... Then I thank you for your good words."
Irene: “Hmm~”
Yu Sheng: “…”
At this time, Hu Li had already passed through the last broken main road on the city's central axis. The nine-tailed silver fox crossed a square structure floating in the air and finally arrived at the foot of the "mountain".
The mountain seemed to have increased in height once again, and the buildings covering its surface merged and twisted into an even more incomprehensible and chaotic structure. A wide structure that seemed to have once been an aerial track covered the surface of the mountain, winding its way towards the top of the mountain.
Countless buzzing and rumbling noises appeared all around, and Hu Li subconsciously slowed down his pace.
Yu Sheng saw countless shadows - translucent colorful human outlines, gathering at the foot of the mountain like passers-by from another dimension. Some of them were walking on the road, some were sitting comfortably on the winding benches, some were floating in the air, their postures looked as if they were reading books or newspapers, and some were sitting cross-legged as if they were practicing meditation.
These are the minds wandering on the edge of dreams - they may still be doing their daily activities in the real world of Mo City, or talking to relatives and friends, or busy at work, but their subconscious has begun to notice the disharmony deep in their cognition, and the self-preservation consciousness derived from the mind's instinct makes part of their mind "drift" here, and instinctively converge and move closer to other minds.
A huge outdoor display device was inserted crookedly into the building at the foot of the mountain, and intermittently flickering holographic projections floated above the device.
“…Sleepwalking is spreading throughout the city, and cases of possession have increased again…It is recommended not to go near the outskirts of the city at night…
"The shadows lingering around the old refinery tower have been confirmed to be a collective hallucination. Residents who see unusual sights need not panic...
"The storm has arrived as expected, and a new round of cold air is entering the south... The wind and rain in the city are expected to intensify further. Citizens who have not yet reached the point where the air enters the body should not engage in outdoor activities for a long time...
"This city is good, this planet is #%@... Everything is good, everything is #￥good, everything￥@#%good..."
Yu Sheng's eyes were fixed on the projection device that was half-buried in the building. He watched the words on it shaking and changing constantly, and watched all kinds of bizarre scenery that seemed to be similar to Mo City flash alternately between the words.
On the steep "mountain", more and more "billboards" were lit up, and the projection illusions that lit up one after another were like continuous welcoming flags shaking in the rainy night.
“Welcome to Mo City, the most prosperous city on the border.
“Today, Mo City is peaceful and sound.
“Nothing happened today.
"Welcome to Mo City, welcome to Mo City, welcome to..."
“Boom!”
There was a loud thunder and the sky roared.
The hazy figures gathered at the foot of the "mountain" seemed to sense something. Many of them looked up at the sky blankly, while the flickering holographic projections on the mountain began to tremble violently. Many words were dispersed by the thunder and disappeared into the air.
Yu Sheng raised his head following the sound, and with his vision far superior to that of an ordinary person, he saw a cold-looking woman in a black dress with long black hair tied up in a high bun standing on the top of the mountain. She was holding a sharp sword in her hand and looking down at the foot of the mountain with some indifference.
(The physical book of Embers of the Deep Sea is now available for pre-sale. It is available on various platforms and Dangdang stores. I hope everyone will support it. There are gifts and an interlude theater exclusive to the physical version～～) (End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
