"They're here."
Lin Yi slowly stood up and stood at the entrance of the cave, his gaze as cold as a knife.
A series of hurried footsteps, accompanied by the clanging of metal, approached from the forest; Night Owl's men had finally caught up.
A fierce wind swept in, carrying murderous intent. Dust stung his face like knives, but Lin Yi remained unmoved.
A faint light rippled beneath his feet, and pale golden ripples of time spread through the air.
"Night Owl's trump card? Let's see who the ruthless guys are this time."
The next second, the shadows of the trees exploded in the depths of the forest, and a dark figure rushed out at an extremely fast speed, with the momentum of a mountain collapsing and a tsunami crashing. He punched through the void, as if he wanted to crush the air directly!
"It's a disgrace to let you escape once," the dark figure sneered, his entire body exuding an ominous aura.
His right arm was covered in black and red armor, making him look more ferocious than a wild beast. "Today, none of you are leaving."
"So noisy." Lin Yi casually dodged to the side, glancing at the people behind him out of the corner of his eye—Whitebeard gripped the axe handle tightly, Aizen squinted in thought, and Ryuu Wu activated his Dragon Blood state, his whole body surging with blue flames.
Lin Yi raised his hand, and a deep blue light blade condensed at his fingertips, like an inverted Milky Way. With a gentle slash, the spacetime blade pierced through the air.
The shadowy figure's expression changed drastically. He sensed that the slash carried not just pure power, but an invisible "conceptual cutting"!
Click—
The blade of time and space slashed through the sky, leaving a scorch mark on his protective armor.
He grunted and stepped back, but just as he regained his footing, time suddenly stopped!
"Time Stop Domain - Three Seconds"
Lin Yi's voice rang in his ears, but he couldn't resist it.
He seemed frozen in a painting, unable to move.
"Sorry, three seconds is enough time for me to do a lot of things."
Before he could finish speaking, Lin Yi had already circled behind him and thrust out three spacetime cones with his backhand, each one precisely sealing the opponent's vital points.
Time restarted!
The shadowy figure roared, forcibly activating the energy within its body, but it was too late.
The three cone-shaped shadows had already broken through his defenses and struck his central consciousness.
His body flew backward like a rag doll, crashing into four towering trees before barely coming to a stop.
Before he could even stand up, Whitebeard had already charged forward, his battle axe sweeping across Thunder.
The axe blade in his hand was engraved with vibration runes—the ultimate power of the Tremor-Tremor Fruit exploded at this moment!
The ground collapsed directly, and the forest was shaken as if by a small earthquake. The dark figure was shaken so badly that he coughed up blood, and even his internal organs were trembling violently.
"I'll finish the job."
Long Wu roared and activated "True Dragon Claws and Fangs," tearing through the air with a sweeping strike, his dragon roar deafening.
Aizen then transformed into afterimages and roamed around, using spiritual pressure to interfere with the enemy's senses, making it impossible for the expert to defend himself.
In just a few dozen seconds, the opponent's momentum collapsed like an avalanche.
"Leave no survivors?" the white-bearded man asked, carrying an axe.
Lin Yi shook his head, a cold glint flashing in his eyes, "He can bring such a strong energy reaction, there's no way he didn't plant intelligence on him."
As expected, Lin Yi raised his hand and released "Time Rewind," briefly reverting the black shadow's equipment. An encrypted metal box emerged from its spatial envelope and was locked tightly by a data barrier.
"I'll do it."
Blue light flowed from Aizen's eyes, and a burst of spiritual pressure activated from his fingertips, forcibly breaking the seal.
The metal box popped open with a snap, revealing several tattered maps, electronic chips, and a handwritten document that read: "Overview of the Forgotten City".
"I've made a profit." Long Wu rubbed his hands together.
Lin Yi picked up one of the documents, his eyes narrowing.
In the drawings, the "Forgotten City" is not a town in the traditional sense, but rather a spatial labyrinth that is constantly collapsing and reassembling.
Many of the danger zones marked on the sign are named "Brain Forbidden Zone," "Ruins of Consciousness," and "Memory Prison," names that exude an eerie atmosphere.
“This is not an ordinary instance.” Chu Yao quietly appeared, her voice soft yet clear, “These areas… are all constructed from spiritual domains.”
"A mental domain?" Whitebeard was taken aback. "Isn't this the legendary 'unreachable place'?"
Lin Yi said in a deep voice, "It's not a legend. Look at these numbers—"
He pointed to a string of code in the upper right corner of the drawing: "The frequency here matches the 'brainwave band.' In other words, this city reads the intruder's brain memories and projects them as traps."
"Damn, isn't this like going straight from a psychological horror movie into a game?" Long Wu couldn't help but complain.
Aizen fell silent, staring at another chip, a ripple appearing in his eyes: "This isn't all... This data is a leak of a portion of 'lost memories.' The truly dangerous places have probably not yet been exposed."
Lin Yi did not answer, but quietly and quickly scanned the documents into his personal terminal, then reached out and squeezed the metal box, forcibly "freezing time" and storing it in another dimension.
Sunlight streamed into the cave, the air thick with the acrid smell of burning vegetation, and the aftershocks of the energy collision still lingered on the ground.
The leaves in the distance trembled slightly, as if the battle was not truly over.
"Before we enter the 'Forgotten City'..." Lin Yi put away all the intelligence, his gaze deep, "there are still many preparations to be made."
The wind ruffled his long robes, but Aizen looked at him and suddenly said in a low voice, "Do you know who you look like now?"
Who does he look like?
Aizen smiled, but did not answer.
He simply lowered his head, raising his hand to stroke the cracked chip, as if lost in some kind of memory—
Outside the cave, a chilling wind blew again, and birds scattered and fled from the forest, as if some greater danger was quietly approaching.
Lin Yi stared at the outline of the blueprint on the terminal, his brows furrowing deeper and deeper.
“This space is not a simple copy…it is trying to think,” he said in a low voice, his tone more serious than ever before.
The atmosphere inside the cave suddenly became oppressive.
The air seemed to freeze, as if it would shatter at any moment.
Chu Yao's eyes flickered as she nervously switched between analysis dimensions, but the scene ahead remained blurry, and the data feedback was all "intelligent disturbance" and "unknown interference".
“I just detected a mental interference wave.” She paused, then added, “When we were flipping through the files just now… in the distance, some entity briefly ‘glanced at us.’”
"Look?" Long Wu felt a chill run down his spine and instinctively clenched the Dragon Fang in his hand. "Damn, they can even spy on us like this? Does that mean we're being used as target practice?"
“It’s not that we’re being spied on.” Aizen tapped the metal box lightly with his index finger, his eyes deep. “It’s the Forgotten City itself that’s recording us.”
"Records us?" The white-bearded man's eyebrows furrowed. "You mean, it's alive?"
No one answered, but the chill in the air grew even more pronounced.
An indescribable sense of oppression crept in from all around, as if I were entangled in an invisible spider web, and the more I struggled, the deeper I sank.
Lin Yi closed his eyes slightly and quickly activated the perception of the [Master of Time and Space].
The next second, he suddenly opened his eyes and said in a low voice, "We must clear the 'spy circuit' before we go in."
"Clear? How do you clear it?" Aizen frowned and pressed for an answer.
Lin Yi raised his finger, and a time-space imprint, resembling crystal, condensed at his fingertip.
He said coldly, "I'll plant a reverse interference anchor point, starting from the source, to counter-track."
After saying that, he suddenly waved his hand, and the spacetime imprint shot out like a shooting star, cutting through the mountains and forests, penetrating the air, and emitting a low, almost inaudible high-frequency hum.
In the distance, a faint cracking sound could be heard.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief; the oppressive atmosphere inside the cave seemed to have been suddenly torn open.
"But remember, it's watching us." Lin Yi casually put away the terminal, his voice low and cold, like a blade cutting through the wind. "Every move we make has already been exposed to its rules."
He turned and looked into the depths of the forest—a silent area shrouded in thick fog, where directions were disorienting and common sense failed.
"Prepare all the equipment, soul skills, and resistances by tomorrow," Lin Yi said decisively, leaving no room for discussion. "Once we're inside, we can't afford to make a mistake, not even when we're breathing."
As soon as the words were spoken, a damp, rotten breeze blew from the direction of the Forgotten City, mixed with the stench of broken plants and an eerily silent atmosphere, sending chills down everyone's spines.
Lin Yi slowly tightened his grip on the ring that sealed the [Eternal Zero] wheel mark, his eyes flashing coldly.
Aizen suddenly chuckled softly, his tone strange: "So, there are also wandering souls outside the labyrinth..."
Lin Yi turned around to look at him, narrowing his eyes.
"Did you just hear something?"
Aizen didn't answer, but gently tucked the cracked crystal back into his robes, his voice as soft as a whisper:
"They are calling someone's name."
Startled birds took flight from the woods, and in an instant, the entire forest fell silent.
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