Chapter 107: The Lesser Priest and the Deadly Battle in the Rock Cavern
The cold will echoed within the cramped rock cavern. It lacked overwhelming oppressive might, yet it was insidiously bone-chilling, continuously burrowing and gnawing through the cracks in everyone's Sea of Consciousness.
The dozen or so scaled beasts that had been dormant instantly rose to their feet. Their bodies tensed, and their shells rubbed together with a piercing rustle. They slowly converged in a fan shape, sealing off the squad's path for both advance and retreat. They were no longer sluggish and blindly obedient; their eyes were filled with bloodthirsty ferocity. Every single step they took precisely exploited the blind spots of the cavern's terrain, clearly indicating that someone was secretly coordinating and commanding them.
From the dark passage behind the cavern, a slender black shadow slowly stepped out.
Unlike the massive high-tier scaled beasts, its figure was roughly humanoid. Its body was covered in fine, gray-black soft scales, lacking a thick carapace. Countless fine psychic veins were wrapped around its neck and wrists. Its head was narrow and elongated, with turbid, gray-white vertical pupils and no whites to its eyes. A faint, rotting green mist lingered around its entire body.
It was a Lesser Priest under the command of the lizardfolk Ancient Progenitor.
Though its physical combat power was inferior to that of a fourth-tier behemoth, it specialized in psychic control, node maintenance, and beast swarm deployment. It was the eyes and contingency plan the Ancient Progenitor had stationed in major secondary rifts.
"It really is the priest guarding the node," Shen Ke roared in a low voice, instantly locking onto the enemy's core. "It doesn't rely on physical combat. It will control the scaled beasts throughout and use the bewildering chant to exhaust us to death!"
The Lesser Priest stopped ten meters away. Its gray-white vertical pupils swept indifferently over the squad, and its cold will invaded their Sea of Consciousness once again: "The Master was severely wounded and fled, and you humans think the situation is already settled? Ridiculous. Although the main domain-wide network is broken, tens of thousands of secondary nodes remain. The contamination of this land has never ceased."
It gently raised its hand and waved.
The vast patches of gray moss on the rock platform trembled violently, and the low-frequency bewildering chant suddenly amplified several times over. The originally mild psychic resonance instantly transformed into sharp ripples, fiercely impacting everyone's Sea of Consciousness.
Xu Yang, having the weakest Sea of Consciousness cultivation, immediately felt his head grow heavy. He stumbled, nearly dropping the sampling test tube in his hand. "Such intense contamination... This resonance is far stronger than outside!"
"Hold the formation steady!" Lin Yan commanded in a deep voice. His fourth-tier Sea of Consciousness deployed at full capacity, instantly enveloping the entire squad with a thick psychic barrier. "Su Wan, lock onto the priest's psychic frequency and disrupt its control! Zhao Hu, intercept the scaled beast swarm head-on! Shen Ke, guard the flanks to prevent sneak attacks! Xu Yang, prepare to detonate the node!"
The commands were clear and decisive, and the new squad instantly entered combat status. Having gone through pre-battle integration and tactical briefings, the four of them performed their respective duties without the slightest hint of panic.
Su Wan immediately shifted her detector's frequency, releasing counter-interference waves. Fine psychic interference signals rushed straight into the Lesser Priest's Sea of Consciousness, forcibly severing part of its link with the scaled beasts and the moss nodes. "Captain! Thirty percent of its control link is disrupted! Its commands will experience a delay!"
It was precisely this momentary delay!
The dozen or so scaled beasts missed their pounces simultaneously. Their charging rhythm fell into disarray, and their formation collapsed.
Zhao Hu stepped forward, his heavy alloy short spear sweeping out with a howling gale. The leading two scaled beasts were struck hard in the chest by the spear shaft. Their shells shattered, dark green blood sprayed, and their bodies tumbled to the ground.
"Leave the close-range ones to me!" Zhao Hu roared in a deep voice. Wielding his short spear with sweeping, broad movements, he firmly held back the frontal beast tide, not letting a single scaled beast break through the defensive line.
Seeing this, the Lesser Priest's gray-white pupils flashed with a cold light. No longer insisting on unified control, it switched to precise, point-to-point beast manipulation. Several agile scaled beasts instantly changed their routes, abandoning the frontal charge. Instead, they scaled the rock walls at high speed, flanking toward both sides of the squad to attempt a sneak attack on their weak points.
Shen Ke had anticipated this. He shifted his body sideways, his short knife unsheathed in a flash of cold light.
Two short, stifled hisses rang out. Two scaled beasts attempting the rock-climbing sneak attack fell to the ground, their vital points precisely pierced. His tactical experience was extremely seasoned, perfectly sealing off all vulnerabilities on the flanks.
Within the rock cavern, the slaughter erupted instantly.
However, the Lesser Priest remained at the rear of the battlefield. It neither closed in nor fought head-on. Instead, it continuously amplified the moss's bewildering chant to叠加 (stack) psychic erosion, while subtly adjusting its commands to drive the scaled beasts into fearless, relentless waves of charges.
It clearly understood the squad's weaknesses and intended to use a war of attrition to drain everyone's Sea of Consciousness and stamina.
"We can't keep dragging this out!" Su Wan warned urgently while continuing to interfere. "It keeps stacking the resonance frequency. The bewildering chant is getting stronger and stronger. My interference equipment won't last another five minutes, and everyone's Sea of Consciousness will be continuously drained!"
Lin Yan's gaze was deep and focused, staring fixedly at the Lesser Priest in the rear. His fourth-tier Sea of Consciousness meticulously captured the trajectory of the opponent's psychic flow, and he instantly saw through the flaw. "Its power relies entirely on the rock platform's node; its own Sea of Consciousness isn't strong. Xu Yang, wait for an opportunity to detonate the main moss node. I will go distract the priest!"
Before his words had even faded, Lin Yan's figure suddenly flashed out of the formation.
He no longer held a defensive position. Unleashing his ancient martial arts footwork to the extreme, his figure became as elusive as a ghost. Dodging the pounces of the scaled beasts along the way, he cut straight across the battlefield and lunged directly at the Lesser Priest in the rear!
The Lesser Priest's expression shifted slightly, not expecting the human youth to dare to advance alone. It immediately unleashed several psychic spikes, silently piercing toward Lin Yan's Sea of Consciousness, while simultaneously commanding the two strongest heavy-armored scaled beasts to turn back and block him.
The instant the psychic spikes approached, Lin Yan's Sea of Consciousness barrier trembled slightly, but he steadfastly withstood the attack.
With the current enhancement of his fourth-tier Sea of Consciousness, this type of single-target psychic assassination could no longer severely damage his mind.
Facing the charging collision of the two heavy-armored scaled beasts, Lin Yan neither dodged nor evaded. Reversing his grip on his short blade, he thrust out two streaks of cold light, precisely piercing the eye-socket weak points of the two behemoths.
Puchi! Puchi!
Two soft sounds rang out. The two heavy-armored scaled beasts collapsed heavily to the ground, dying instantly.
The Lesser Priest panicked completely. Turning around, it tried to retreat into the narrow passage behind, relying on the terrain to evade close combat and continue its long-range attrition.
"You want to run?"
Lin Yan stepped forward, his figure instantly catching up. Psychic threads suddenly extended, firmly locking onto the Sea of Consciousness of the opponent's four limbs.
The禁锢 (imprisonment) formed instantly!
The Lesser Priest's body suddenly froze. Its psychic link was forcibly locked, unable to mobilize any power. The resonance of the moss on the rock platform and the control over the frontline scaled beasts were completely severed.
The leaderless scaled beast swarm instantly descended into chaos, crashing around randomly. Their offensive completely collapsed.
"Now!" Lin Yan roared in a low voice.
Xu Yang, having been poised and ready, immediately rushed to the base of the rock platform. He quickly planted high-explosive micro-charges, precisely attaching them to the roots of the entire main moss node, before swiftly retreating. "Explosives set! Ready to detonate at any time!"
Lin Yan's eyes turned cold. Pressing his short blade against the head of the imprisoned Lesser Priest, he spoke in a deep voice: "You've set up resonance nodes in all the secondary rifts. What is your purpose?"
The Lesser Priest's body trembled, its eyes filled with venomous hatred. Enduring the Sea of Consciousness imprisonment, it squeezed out a cold will: "The Master is severely wounded and lying low... the expansion of the domain-wide nodes is temporarily suspended... Once it recovers and returns, thousands of rifts will resonate simultaneously, contaminating the entire land... Your human bastions will eventually all collapse..."
No more intelligence could be extracted.
Lin Yan hesitated no longer. With a flick of his wrist, his short blade cleanly harvested the enemy's life.
The Lesser Priest's will was instantly annihilated, and its body collapsed softly to the ground.
"Detonate!"
Xu Yang pressed the remote control.
Rumble!
A muffled explosion sounded in the center of the rock cavern, and flames suddenly burst forth. The main node of symbiotic moss covering the rock platform was instantly blown to smithereens, dark green fluid splashing out mixed with碎石 (shattered rocks).
That underground bewildering chant, which had lingered around their ears and eroded their minds, suddenly, completely, and entirely dissipated.
Within the rock cavern, all remaining psychic tremors vanished without a trace. The chaotic scaled beasts completely lost their commands, standing motionless in place, utterly reduced to masterless beasts.
"Eradicate the remaining beasts and evacuate the rift immediately!" Lin Yan commanded in a deep voice.
Zhao Hu and Shen Ke quickly stepped forward, efficiently harvesting the stunned remaining scaled beasts. In just a few dozen seconds, the rock cavern returned to complete silence.
Su Wan reopened her detector. The chaotic ripples on the screen had completely flattened, leaving only a pure baseline. "Captain! The resonance signal has completely disappeared, and the node is thoroughly destroyed! There is no residual psychic radiation!"
Everyone let out a sigh of relief, their backs already soaked with cold sweat.
It seemed like a mere cleanup of a secondary rift, yet it made everyone acutely realize that even though the Ancient Progenitor had fled with severe injuries, it had still buried contingencies underground that were capable of eroding humanity's defense lines.
In the deep darkness of the cavern, the lingering cold underground air slowly dissipated, but it could not dispel the heavy weight in everyone's hearts.
The node here was destroyed, but in the other dozens or hundreds of secondary rifts, countless identical contingencies were undoubtedly still operating silently.
The undercurrents beneath the earth had never ceased.
End of Chapter.
The dozen or so scaled beasts that had been dormant instantly rose to their feet. Their bodies tensed, and their shells rubbed together with a piercing rustle. They slowly converged in a fan shape, sealing off the squad's path for both advance and retreat. They were no longer sluggish and blindly obedient; their eyes were filled with bloodthirsty ferocity. Every single step they took precisely exploited the blind spots of the cavern's terrain, clearly indicating that someone was secretly coordinating and commanding them.
From the dark passage behind the cavern, a slender black shadow slowly stepped out.
Unlike the massive high-tier scaled beasts, its figure was roughly humanoid. Its body was covered in fine, gray-black soft scales, lacking a thick carapace. Countless fine psychic veins were wrapped around its neck and wrists. Its head was narrow and elongated, with turbid, gray-white vertical pupils and no whites to its eyes. A faint, rotting green mist lingered around its entire body.
It was a Lesser Priest under the command of the lizardfolk Ancient Progenitor.
Though its physical combat power was inferior to that of a fourth-tier behemoth, it specialized in psychic control, node maintenance, and beast swarm deployment. It was the eyes and contingency plan the Ancient Progenitor had stationed in major secondary rifts.
"It really is the priest guarding the node," Shen Ke roared in a low voice, instantly locking onto the enemy's core. "It doesn't rely on physical combat. It will control the scaled beasts throughout and use the bewildering chant to exhaust us to death!"
The Lesser Priest stopped ten meters away. Its gray-white vertical pupils swept indifferently over the squad, and its cold will invaded their Sea of Consciousness once again: "The Master was severely wounded and fled, and you humans think the situation is already settled? Ridiculous. Although the main domain-wide network is broken, tens of thousands of secondary nodes remain. The contamination of this land has never ceased."
It gently raised its hand and waved.
The vast patches of gray moss on the rock platform trembled violently, and the low-frequency bewildering chant suddenly amplified several times over. The originally mild psychic resonance instantly transformed into sharp ripples, fiercely impacting everyone's Sea of Consciousness.
Xu Yang, having the weakest Sea of Consciousness cultivation, immediately felt his head grow heavy. He stumbled, nearly dropping the sampling test tube in his hand. "Such intense contamination... This resonance is far stronger than outside!"
"Hold the formation steady!" Lin Yan commanded in a deep voice. His fourth-tier Sea of Consciousness deployed at full capacity, instantly enveloping the entire squad with a thick psychic barrier. "Su Wan, lock onto the priest's psychic frequency and disrupt its control! Zhao Hu, intercept the scaled beast swarm head-on! Shen Ke, guard the flanks to prevent sneak attacks! Xu Yang, prepare to detonate the node!"
The commands were clear and decisive, and the new squad instantly entered combat status. Having gone through pre-battle integration and tactical briefings, the four of them performed their respective duties without the slightest hint of panic.
Su Wan immediately shifted her detector's frequency, releasing counter-interference waves. Fine psychic interference signals rushed straight into the Lesser Priest's Sea of Consciousness, forcibly severing part of its link with the scaled beasts and the moss nodes. "Captain! Thirty percent of its control link is disrupted! Its commands will experience a delay!"
It was precisely this momentary delay!
The dozen or so scaled beasts missed their pounces simultaneously. Their charging rhythm fell into disarray, and their formation collapsed.
Zhao Hu stepped forward, his heavy alloy short spear sweeping out with a howling gale. The leading two scaled beasts were struck hard in the chest by the spear shaft. Their shells shattered, dark green blood sprayed, and their bodies tumbled to the ground.
"Leave the close-range ones to me!" Zhao Hu roared in a deep voice. Wielding his short spear with sweeping, broad movements, he firmly held back the frontal beast tide, not letting a single scaled beast break through the defensive line.
Seeing this, the Lesser Priest's gray-white pupils flashed with a cold light. No longer insisting on unified control, it switched to precise, point-to-point beast manipulation. Several agile scaled beasts instantly changed their routes, abandoning the frontal charge. Instead, they scaled the rock walls at high speed, flanking toward both sides of the squad to attempt a sneak attack on their weak points.
Shen Ke had anticipated this. He shifted his body sideways, his short knife unsheathed in a flash of cold light.
Two short, stifled hisses rang out. Two scaled beasts attempting the rock-climbing sneak attack fell to the ground, their vital points precisely pierced. His tactical experience was extremely seasoned, perfectly sealing off all vulnerabilities on the flanks.
Within the rock cavern, the slaughter erupted instantly.
However, the Lesser Priest remained at the rear of the battlefield. It neither closed in nor fought head-on. Instead, it continuously amplified the moss's bewildering chant to叠加 (stack) psychic erosion, while subtly adjusting its commands to drive the scaled beasts into fearless, relentless waves of charges.
It clearly understood the squad's weaknesses and intended to use a war of attrition to drain everyone's Sea of Consciousness and stamina.
"We can't keep dragging this out!" Su Wan warned urgently while continuing to interfere. "It keeps stacking the resonance frequency. The bewildering chant is getting stronger and stronger. My interference equipment won't last another five minutes, and everyone's Sea of Consciousness will be continuously drained!"
Lin Yan's gaze was deep and focused, staring fixedly at the Lesser Priest in the rear. His fourth-tier Sea of Consciousness meticulously captured the trajectory of the opponent's psychic flow, and he instantly saw through the flaw. "Its power relies entirely on the rock platform's node; its own Sea of Consciousness isn't strong. Xu Yang, wait for an opportunity to detonate the main moss node. I will go distract the priest!"
Before his words had even faded, Lin Yan's figure suddenly flashed out of the formation.
He no longer held a defensive position. Unleashing his ancient martial arts footwork to the extreme, his figure became as elusive as a ghost. Dodging the pounces of the scaled beasts along the way, he cut straight across the battlefield and lunged directly at the Lesser Priest in the rear!
The Lesser Priest's expression shifted slightly, not expecting the human youth to dare to advance alone. It immediately unleashed several psychic spikes, silently piercing toward Lin Yan's Sea of Consciousness, while simultaneously commanding the two strongest heavy-armored scaled beasts to turn back and block him.
The instant the psychic spikes approached, Lin Yan's Sea of Consciousness barrier trembled slightly, but he steadfastly withstood the attack.
With the current enhancement of his fourth-tier Sea of Consciousness, this type of single-target psychic assassination could no longer severely damage his mind.
Facing the charging collision of the two heavy-armored scaled beasts, Lin Yan neither dodged nor evaded. Reversing his grip on his short blade, he thrust out two streaks of cold light, precisely piercing the eye-socket weak points of the two behemoths.
Puchi! Puchi!
Two soft sounds rang out. The two heavy-armored scaled beasts collapsed heavily to the ground, dying instantly.
The Lesser Priest panicked completely. Turning around, it tried to retreat into the narrow passage behind, relying on the terrain to evade close combat and continue its long-range attrition.
"You want to run?"
Lin Yan stepped forward, his figure instantly catching up. Psychic threads suddenly extended, firmly locking onto the Sea of Consciousness of the opponent's four limbs.
The禁锢 (imprisonment) formed instantly!
The Lesser Priest's body suddenly froze. Its psychic link was forcibly locked, unable to mobilize any power. The resonance of the moss on the rock platform and the control over the frontline scaled beasts were completely severed.
The leaderless scaled beast swarm instantly descended into chaos, crashing around randomly. Their offensive completely collapsed.
"Now!" Lin Yan roared in a low voice.
Xu Yang, having been poised and ready, immediately rushed to the base of the rock platform. He quickly planted high-explosive micro-charges, precisely attaching them to the roots of the entire main moss node, before swiftly retreating. "Explosives set! Ready to detonate at any time!"
Lin Yan's eyes turned cold. Pressing his short blade against the head of the imprisoned Lesser Priest, he spoke in a deep voice: "You've set up resonance nodes in all the secondary rifts. What is your purpose?"
The Lesser Priest's body trembled, its eyes filled with venomous hatred. Enduring the Sea of Consciousness imprisonment, it squeezed out a cold will: "The Master is severely wounded and lying low... the expansion of the domain-wide nodes is temporarily suspended... Once it recovers and returns, thousands of rifts will resonate simultaneously, contaminating the entire land... Your human bastions will eventually all collapse..."
No more intelligence could be extracted.
Lin Yan hesitated no longer. With a flick of his wrist, his short blade cleanly harvested the enemy's life.
The Lesser Priest's will was instantly annihilated, and its body collapsed softly to the ground.
"Detonate!"
Xu Yang pressed the remote control.
Rumble!
A muffled explosion sounded in the center of the rock cavern, and flames suddenly burst forth. The main node of symbiotic moss covering the rock platform was instantly blown to smithereens, dark green fluid splashing out mixed with碎石 (shattered rocks).
That underground bewildering chant, which had lingered around their ears and eroded their minds, suddenly, completely, and entirely dissipated.
Within the rock cavern, all remaining psychic tremors vanished without a trace. The chaotic scaled beasts completely lost their commands, standing motionless in place, utterly reduced to masterless beasts.
"Eradicate the remaining beasts and evacuate the rift immediately!" Lin Yan commanded in a deep voice.
Zhao Hu and Shen Ke quickly stepped forward, efficiently harvesting the stunned remaining scaled beasts. In just a few dozen seconds, the rock cavern returned to complete silence.
Su Wan reopened her detector. The chaotic ripples on the screen had completely flattened, leaving only a pure baseline. "Captain! The resonance signal has completely disappeared, and the node is thoroughly destroyed! There is no residual psychic radiation!"
Everyone let out a sigh of relief, their backs already soaked with cold sweat.
It seemed like a mere cleanup of a secondary rift, yet it made everyone acutely realize that even though the Ancient Progenitor had fled with severe injuries, it had still buried contingencies underground that were capable of eroding humanity's defense lines.
In the deep darkness of the cavern, the lingering cold underground air slowly dissipated, but it could not dispel the heavy weight in everyone's hearts.
The node here was destroyed, but in the other dozens or hundreds of secondary rifts, countless identical contingencies were undoubtedly still operating silently.
The undercurrents beneath the earth had never ceased.
End of Chapter.
