As the night breeze, carrying the warm, humid air unique to the city, filled his nostrils, Lin Yi was kneeling on the concrete ground of the rooftop.
The tactical pants at the knees were chafing painfully, but that was nothing compared to the surging heat in my chest—the residual power of faith from the collapse of the mirror space, coursing through my veins like a swarm of bees whose hive had been disturbed.
"Cough." He propped himself up on his knees, his fingertips unconsciously rubbing the tactical knife at his waist.
This was forced upon him by Long Wu; the scabbard still retained the warmth of the other's palm.
When I looked up, the neon lights shattered into spots of light in my pupils, while the night sky in the distance was slowly closing its last silver crack, like a tattered cloth that had been barely patched up with needle and thread.
The communicator was vibrating so hard in my pocket it was getting hot.
He pulled out his phone and saw it was a message from Long Wu. The handwriting was messy and scribbled, clearly sent while running: [Just landed. The entire assault team is assembling at the usual spot. The equipment depot's spatial anchor point is stable. Awaiting your orders.]
"This kid." Lin Yi chuckled softly, his fingertip lightly tracing across the screen.
He could imagine what Long Wu looked like at this moment—his combat uniform stained with scorch marks from the spatial turbulence, his military boots crushed over the base's rubble, and his hair dripping with the eerie blue liquid unique to the mirror space, yet he was already checking the magazines of his assault rifle.
The alarm in the laboratory was beating faster than Chu Yao's heartbeat.
She sat up from the solidification pod, rubbing the back of her neck. Static electricity from the data transmission still clung to her forehead, and the ends of her hair curled up into small curls.
The red warning on the screen resembled a flickering flame: [Abnormal spatial fluctuation intensity 0.7, it is recommended to activate level 2 defense].
She placed her hand on the control panel, her fingertips flying across the holographic keyboard, her pupils reflecting the constantly refreshing data stream: "Remnants of spatial laws?"
No, it's more like... a kind of resonance.
Meanwhile, in an apartment three kilometers away, Su Qing was clutching her smart bracelet.
After the blurry voice disappeared, the bracelet screen was still flashing static. She bit her lower lip and brought up the sound wave spectrum, her hair falling down to cover half of her face: "Frequency... 217 Hz?"
This is the encrypted band for interdimensional communication. She suddenly looked up; the moonlight from the window fell directly on her bracelet, reflecting the sharp glint in her eyes. "The lingering regret of the Night Owl?"
The wind on the rooftop suddenly changed direction.
Lin Yi's hands, which were hanging by his sides, suddenly tightened—something in his palms was burning hot.
He opened his hand, and a starlight lay in the lines of his palm, silver with a hint of gold, like a crushed star.
What made him frown even more was that the starlight resonated with the Hōgyoku on his wrist, and the golden light marks under his skin faintly glowed, as if responding to some kind of summons.
"Is it the core of the order of the mirror space?" he murmured to himself, his fingertip lightly touching the starlight.
A stinging sensation shot up along my nerves, yet it carried a familiar warmth, like... the hope of new life?
"Lin Yi!"
A familiar spiritual pressure fluctuation came from behind me.
Aizen's figure emerged from the shadows, his black trench coat fluttering in the wind, and the Hogyoku pendant on his left wrist glowing with an unusual, eerie purple.
He condensed a wisp of bluish-gray spiritual pressure at his fingertips and pressed it against the Hōgyō on Lin Yi's wrist, his brows instantly furrowing: "Residual Resentment Erosion."
Lin Yi could feel Aizen's spiritual pressure like a thin sword piercing through the patterns of the Hogyoku.
Spiderweb-like dark patterns appeared on the surface of the Hogyoku, each line writhing as if countless tiny consciousnesses were gnawing at it: "Night Owl's?"
"Not entirely." Aizen withdrew his hand, his spiritual pressure condensing into fragments at his fingertips. "There's also Xuanmingzi's encrypted code."
When the mirror space collapsed, the two became entangled in a deadly knot within the dimensional turbulence. He stared at the Hogyoku, his Adam's apple bobbing. "If we delay another three days, the Hogyoku's faith link will backfire on you—it will treat you as its new host."
Suddenly, a video call started on the communicator.
Su Qing's face appeared on the screen, behind her a desktop covered in holographic projections. "I hacked into the game's mainframe's residual data chain." She pushed up her non-existent glasses (a habitual gesture when she was thinking). "Night Owl's core consciousness was expelled, but his lingering spirit is attached to Xuan Mingzi's code fragments, forming a new dark web node deep within the system." She pulled up a GIF; countless points of light converged into a vortex on a virtual map. "Location... three kilometers below the ruins of the Mother Nest."
Lin Yi tapped the communicator casing lightly with his fingers, his gaze shifting between Aizen's Hogyoku, Su Qing's hologram, and the starlight in his palm.
The night wind lifted the hem of his clothes, revealing the hilt of the tactical knife at his waist—it was Long Wu's mark, and also his most trusted battle flag.
"Chu Yao," he said to the air.
Chu Yao's face immediately popped up on the lab's screen; she was biting her pen. "Space defense system upgraded to level three, focusing on monitoring dimensional fluctuations in the Mother Nest ruins."
"Understood." Chu Yao's fingers flew across the keyboard, leaving afterimages. "Finish within ten minutes."
"Aizen." Lin Yi turned to the man behind him. "Come with me to the underground laboratory tonight. Use your spiritual pressure to purify the Hogyoku."
Aizen nodded, his fingertips lightly touching his Hogyoku: "I brought the latest concoction of spiritual pressure purification fluid, enough to suppress it for three days."
"Su Qing." Lin Yi's gaze returned to the communicator. "Locate the exact coordinates of the dark web node and give it to me before dawn."
Su Qing's fingertips paused for half a second on the holographic keyboard, then she looked up, her eyes gleaming: "It's already underway."
Finally, he sent Long Wu a message: [Wait for me at the usual place. Take the assault team to inspect the outer defenses of the Mother Nest ruins.]
After sending the message, he looked down at the starlight in his palm.
The starlight was still burning hot, but he had temporarily suppressed the restless power of faith using the laws of time and space.
The sky in the distance darkened completely, with only a faint purple light piercing through the clouds from the direction of the Mother Nest ruins—proof that the Dark Web nodes were gathering power.
"The war has only just begun," he said softly, the hilt of his tactical knife leaving a red mark on his palm.
Meanwhile, in an old warehouse on the other side of the city, Long Wu was loading the last armor-piercing round into the magazine when he heard the communicator beep. He looked up and grinned at his team: "The boss said, to the Mother Nest ruins."
The night wind swept across the rooftop, carrying fine stardust, and Lin Yi turned and headed towards the stairwell.
He knew he was destined to be sleepless tonight—but every step he took was laying the sharpest foreshadowing for the final battle.
As Long Wu's combat boots rolled over the scorched earth of the Mother Nest ruins, the white light of his tactical flashlight cast long, thin shadows on the broken walls.
The assault team advanced in a triangular formation, the infrared sights on their gun barrels like a swarm of red fireflies leaping among the ruins.
"Seventh Brother, watch out for the pile of steel bars at three o'clock." Long Wu lowered his voice and tapped his thumb twice on the throat communicator.
His combat uniform still had a few blue droplets of liquid from the mirror space on the left shoulder, which were now glowing slightly with his breath—marks left by spatial turbulence, and his proudest "medal".
The team member called "Seventh Brother" knelt on one knee, his gun barrel protruding from half a concrete slab. "Boss!" he suddenly growled, his flashlight beam sweeping across a waist-high crack in the corner of the wall. "There's a hidden door here!"
Long Wu took two steps across.
The hidden door was embedded in the load-bearing wall of the ruins, and its surface was covered with a nano-coating that matched the color of the wall. If it weren't for the scraping sound of metal being scraped by Lao Qi's tactical knife, it would have been difficult to detect.
He put on his tactical gloves and pressed them against the doorknob, feeling a slight electric shock at his fingertips—it was a defensive biometric lock.
"Fingerprint matching in progress." A green light flashed on Long Wu's tactical terminal. "Night Owl's old men?" He turned and raised an eyebrow at his teammates behind him. "Looks like we missed something good during our cleanup."
The hidden door popped open with a "click".
A musty smell mixed with the burnt smell of electronic components wafted out, and Long Wu was the first to raise his gun and enter.
The passageway was only wide enough for two people to walk side by side, with eerie blue emergency lights embedded in the walls and a surveillance camera every five meters—but at this moment all the cameras were turned to the ground, like sentinels with their heads bowed.
"Boss, over here." Technician Xiao Tang, at the back of the line, suddenly crouched down, tracing the marks on the ground with his fingertips. "Fresh oil stains, no more than three hours old." He pulled out a miniature scanner, its blue light sweeping across the ground. "They're the track markings of an anti-gravity device, load capacity... at least five tons."
Long Wu's pupils contracted slightly.
A five-ton anti-gravity device, in a place like the Brood Ruins eroded by spatial turbulence, would require special stabilizers—and in the entire Alliance, only Night Owl's technology could achieve that.
At the end of the passage was a circular cabin.
In the very center stood a machine about the height of a person, its metal casing covered with purple patterns, and the crystal array at the top was still trembling slightly.
On the control panel next to the instrument, the holographic projection still had some data streams that had not completely dissipated, like purple smoke blown away by the wind.
"A consciousness projector." Xiao Tang's voice trembled as he adjusted his anti-radiation glasses. "This is the core device that Night Owl uses to project consciousness!"
I've seen the blueprints in the intelligence database—crystal arrays can directly connect to brainwaves from other dimensions!
Long Wu's finger hovered above the start button on the control panel.
He could feel the skin on his fingertips burning, a soldier's instinct for danger. "Record all the data," he said, turning to Xiao Tang. "Seventh Brother, guard the door; A-Jie, check the ventilation ducts."
The moment the start button was pressed, the crystal array burst forth with a dazzling purple light.
Long Wu instinctively raised his hand to cover his eyes, and when he opened them again, the image of Night Owl was already hovering above the instrument.
It was a semi-transparent humanoid figure composed of purple light spots, with black holes in its eye sockets slowly rotating, like vortexes swallowing light.
"...Coordinate correction complete, signal source location in progress." The owl's voice was distorted with a mechanical tone. "Hive resonance frequency 217 Hz, resonating with the power of faith in Earth's civilization..." His image suddenly froze, and the light spots began to shatter. "Warning!"
The mainframe code has been tampered with, Xuanmingzi... how dare you...
"You think you've won?"
Another voice suddenly cut in, like rusty gears turning in the ear canal.
Long Wu's neck stiffened instantly—it was Xuan Mingzi's voice, but it was hoarseer than ever before, as if it had been torn to shreds and forcibly glued back together. "This is just the beginning... the true mother nest has not yet appeared."
The purple light suddenly surged.
Long Wu's tactical terminal emitted a piercing beep, and all screens went black simultaneously.
He instinctively reached for the tactical knife at his waist, but the instant his fingertips touched the hilt, he heard a shrill whistling sound as if the air was being torn apart—a black light pierced through the dome of the cabin, like an invisible arrow, pointing straight at the underground laboratory three kilometers away.
In the underground laboratory, Aizen's spiritual pressure purification fluid was flowing along the patterns of the Hogyoku.
Lin Yi sat in a specially made energy cabin, the Bengyu on his wrist glowing with a dark red light, like a drop of congealed blood.
Aizen stood in front of the control panel, his fingertips condensing bluish-gray spiritual pressure, which he was importing into the purification program via a data cable.
Suddenly, the dark patterns on the surface of the Hōgyoku began to writhe violently, and the red light stung the eyes of the two people.
"Watch out!" Aizen lunged forward to sever the connection, only to see the black light penetrate the laboratory's defensive barrier and strike Lin Yi precisely between the eyebrows.
Lin Yi's pupils instantly contracted to pinpoints.
He could feel the black light like a red-hot iron rod, piercing straight into his brain along his nerves.
Consciousness was instantly detached, and the Aizen, the instruments, and the dark blue spiritual pressure before him all turned into slow-motion fragments.
My last thought was: "An attack by the owl?"
No, this fluctuation... it's Xuanmingzi's code!
The darkness came without warning.
When he regained consciousness, the first sound he heard was Aizen's low growl: "Heart rate 42, breathing disorder, pupils with sluggish light reflex!" A cool liquid dripped onto the back of his hand—a sedative from the medical robot.
He tried to raise his hand, but found that his arm felt as heavy as if it were filled with lead, and every nerve was throbbing with a dull, painful beat.
"Lin...Yi?" Aizen's face drew closer, his brows furrowing into sharp lines. "Can you hear me?"
Lin Yi opened his mouth, but found that his voice was a beat slower than usual: "I...I'm fine." He looked up at the digital clock on the wall—the second hand was moving at a speed visible to the naked eye, like a video being played at 0.5x speed.
The sound of wind coming from the laboratory's ventilation vents was muffled and echoing, as if it were coming through frosted glass.
"Time rewind..." he said hoarsely, pressing his fingertips to his temples.
As the master of space and time, his perception of time should be accurate to the nanosecond, but at this moment, he could not tell whether he was before or after breathing.
As the medical robot in the corner moved, it left a pale blue trail, like watercolor paint that hadn't been wiped clean.
Aizen pressed his fingers against the Hogyoku on Aizen's wrist, his expression changing drastically: "The faith link is in disarray!"
That attack just now…” He paused, “was like it used your Hogyoku as an anchor point, directly impacting the very essence of your time laws.”
Lin Yi closed his eyes.
He could feel the spacetime laws within his body like a crumpled piece of silk, the originally smooth flow of power becoming bumpy and uneven.
What unsettled him even more was that the temperature of the starlight in his palm was dropping, and the once restless power of faith was now frozen solid, without any further fluctuation.
"Xuanmingzi..." he muttered to himself, his voice icy, "What exactly do you want?"
The laboratory alarm suddenly went off.
Chu Yao's holographic projection appeared above the control panel, her hair still spiking with static electricity from data transmission: "The dark web nodes of the Mother Nest Ruins are experiencing a surge in energy!"
The Dragon Five Squad transmitted video recordings of Night Owl's consciousness projection...
Lin Yi used the edge of the energy capsule to stand up.
Although his perception of time was still confused, his eyes were like a quenched blade.
He reached for the tactical knife at his waist; the warmth of Long Wu was still on the hilt—it was the most reliable anchor point.
"Notify Long Wu to immediately return to base with the projector," he said, his voice barely audible. "Aizen, prepare the spiritual pressure amplifier; Su Qing, analyze Night Owl's image data." He looked at his reflection in the mirror, the golden light in his pupils flickering faintly. "I want to see just how much trouble this so-called 'true mother hive' can stir up."
Unseen by him, deep within the dark patterns of the jade pendant on his wrist, a faint black light was traveling along his veins, like a snake poised to strike.
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