Chapter 108: The Intelligence Dossier and the Unceasing Undercurrent
Retracing their steps along the interior of the rift, the squad encountered no further interceptions from scaled beasts. Having lost the psychic command of the lesser priest and the symbiotic moss nodes, the surviving low-tier scaled beasts scattered into the deeper rock crevices, not daring to approach the squad that had just slaughtered their leader.
The foul stench of decay in the passage remained heavy. The mottled, dark green moss on the rock walls was slowly withering. Deprived of the nourishment of resonance, they no longer emitted the low-frequency hum that eroded the Sea of Consciousness. Su Wan held her detector, continuously scanning their path. The radiation curve on the screen steadily dropped, leaving only sporadic, faint psychic residues that posed no threat.
"After the node was destroyed, the vitality of the symbiotic moss decayed very quickly," Su Wan said in a low voice as she recorded the data. "However, the detection results show that there are still a massive number of dormant spores deep within the rock strata of this rift. This explosion could only destroy the surface main node; it couldn't eradicate the spores. If the Ancient Progenitor comes back later to rebuild the resonance network, this area will quickly return to its original state."
Lin Yan walked at the very front of the squad, clutching a strand of silvery-white psychic vein he had taken from the corpse of the lesser priest. The vein felt soft and resilient, still retaining a faint, cold psychic fluctuation. He carefully wrapped it with his Sea of Consciousness to isolate its eroding influence.
"In other words, this time we only temporarily severed this single node; we didn't eradicate the hidden danger," Lin Yan spoke up, his gaze sweeping across the deep underground passage. "With so many secondary rifts across the six war zones, if each one hides a lesser priest and a moss resonance node, it would be impossible for us to clear them one by one. We are dismantling bombs, but the enemy's speed of planting them might not be any slower than our speed of dismantling them."
Carrying his demolition equipment, Xu Yang panted heavily, rock powder clinging to his forehead. "The higher-ups in the war zone should have guessed this situation long ago, right? But the previous battle reports we submitted rarely mentioned lesser priests or the domain-wide resonance contamination. The old dossiers in the archives only recorded that scaled beasts are uniformly dispatched by psychic power; they never detailed this system of nodes and priests."
Gripping his short knife, Shen Ke walked at the end of the squad to bring up the rear, constantly watching for movement in the dark rock crevices behind them. "It's not that there are no records. It's that a lot of critical intelligence gathered from the frontlines has been suppressed in top-secret high-level files. Ordinary war-preparedness high schools and field reconnaissance squads don't have the clearance to access the complete data."
The group continued to converse as they walked without stopping. About an hour and a half later, the squad finally emerged from the narrow underground entrance of the No. 3 Rift, stepping back onto the desolate, scorched surface of the Black Mountains.
The sky outside had already darkened. A gray, murky canopy hung low over the continuous withered forests. In the twilight, the massive silhouette of the human bastion's city wall was faintly visible in the distance. The war zone's off-road vehicle sent to pick them up was parked at the outer perimeter checkpoint. Two stationed sentries, seeing them emerge safely, immediately stepped forward to verify their identities.
"Mission accomplished?" one sentry asked.
"Destroyed the main resonance node of the No. 3 Rift, killed one lesser priest, and scattered the remaining scaled beasts." Lin Yan handed over the simplified mission receipt. "All collected samples and detection data have been brought back and need to be immediately transferred to the War Zone Intelligence Division."
The off-road vehicle's engine roared to life, carrying the squad speeding toward the bastion city. Inside the carriage, everyone briefly treated their wounds and cleaned the dried, dark green beast blood from their armor and clothing.
By the time they returned to the War Zone Field Operations Headquarters inside the bastion, night had completely fallen.
The office of the Intelligence Division was brightly lit. The supervisor in charge of receiving field intelligence took the chip containing Su Wan's detection data, as well as the silvery-white psychic vein sample Lin Yan had handed over. Upon seeing the sample, the supervisor's pupils contracted slightly. He immediately stood up and dialed an internal line.
"Field Squad 7 has brought back a live tissue sample of a lesser priest and complete scanning data of the resonance node. I am requesting to convene a Class-B Confidential Dossier Review Meeting."
Half an hour later, in a small, sealed conference room. Wall projections displayed the internal terrain of the No. 3 Rift, the moss resonance model, and the psychic link map of the lesser priest. Several intelligence officers and combat instructors from the war zone sat around the table, with all squad members in attendance.
A gray-haired intelligence supervisor lightly tapped the projected image, his voice heavy. "Fellow field operatives, the intelligence you brought back this time is far more valuable than the node destruction mission itself. We actually captured the domain-wide resonance signal from underground three years ago, but we have never been able to locate the signal's source, nor do we know the scale of the Ancient Progenitor's lesser priest distribution."
Xu Yang frowned. "Since you discovered the signal long ago, why wasn't the intelligence made public to all field squads? When we execute missions out there, we know absolutely nothing about this system, making it very easy to walk into a trap and be completely wiped out."
"It wasn't a deliberate cover-up; it was a matter of not daring to spread it widely," the supervisor slowly shook his head. "The Ancient Progenitor possesses the ability of psychic eavesdropping. Once the intelligence is distributed on a large scale, the lizardfolk Ancient Progenitor will immediately capture humanity's cognitive progress and adjust their deployment. We can only collect intelligence secretly on a small scale and restrict the number of people in the know."
Lin Yan lightly tapped the table with his fingertip and asked, "How many lesser priests are there in total? Is their sole task to maintain resonance nodes in the major rifts, continuously releasing psychic spores into the earth to slowly contaminate the entire continent?"
"Current estimates suggest there are at least a hundred lesser priests within the jurisdiction of the six war zones." The supervisor brought up an encrypted map. Hundreds of rifts of various sizes were densely marked on it, with dozens of red dots indicating suspected secondary nodes. "The main Ancient Progenitor is severely wounded and lying low, lacking the ability to launch a new large-scale general offensive. Therefore, it has changed its strategy. Instead of relying on beast tides to forcefully attack the bastions, it is relying on the moss resonance network spread across the underground to slowly and continuously erode the rock strata of the entire land."
Su Wan immediately grasped the key point. "Slow erosion? What is the ultimate goal?"
"To weaken the earth's own psychic barrier," the supervisor's voice dropped, carrying a hint of chill. "This land inherently possesses a native psychic barrier that prevents the Ancient Progenitor race from crawling out en masse from the deeper underground mother nest. The resonance network has been continuously resonating for decades, slowly wearing down the earth's barrier. Once the barrier weakens to the critical point, the gates of the underground mother nest will open completely. When that happens, what floods out will no longer be just scaled beasts and lesser priests."
The conference room fell into dead silence.
Everyone understood the terrifying implications. The previous beast tides were merely probing and diversionary tactics. The Ancient Progenitor's true plan was a decades-long, meticulous layout. All the slaughter, the rifts, and the beast tides were nothing but a smokescreen.
Shen Ke spoke up in a deep voice, "If the earth's barrier is breached, what will be the consequences?"
"All the bastions in the six war zones will be exposed directly to the main forces of the Ancient Progenitor's mother nest." The supervisor closed his eyes. "At that time, humanity will no longer be resisting sporadic beast tides, but will be facing a full-scale invasion by the Ancient Progenitor race."
The projection switched, displaying fragmented footage from the early days of the disaster decades ago. The blurry images recorded the ancient psychic fluctuations emanating from underground when the first rifts appeared.
Staring at the projection, Lin Yan recalled the lesser priest's dying will: Once it recovers and returns, thousands of rifts will resonate simultaneously, contaminating the entire land.
It turned out this wasn't just an empty threat. This was the true plan the Ancient Progenitor had been preparing for twenty-five years.
The supervisor looked at Lin Yan's squad, his expression serious. "Your squad now possesses first-hand combat intelligence regarding the resonance nodes. The war zone has decided to form a specialized Rift Task Force dedicated to searching for and destroying secondary resonance nodes across various locations. Lin Yan, you will serve as the squad leader. The mission carries extremely high risks. Every rift could be an ambush of lesser priests and beast swarms. There is no mandatory requirement; you may choose to refuse."
Lin Yan turned to look at his teammates beside him. Su Wan's eyes were resolute, Zhao Hu clenched his fists, Shen Ke nodded slightly, and Xu Yang weighed the demolition pack on his back.
He withdrew his gaze and looked at the intelligence supervisor, saying word by word, "We accept the mission."
The meeting ended, and they walked out of the building. Night shrouded the bastion city. Lights were sparse on the streets, and soldiers walked hurriedly. The city still maintained a calm facade under the apocalypse; the vast majority of ordinary people had no idea about the massive chess game that had been unfolding underground for twenty-five years.
Lin Yan raised his head and looked toward the distant Black Mountains. Beneath that desolate land, countless dormant moss spores lay in wait, and countless lesser priests continued to silently operate the resonance network in the dark rock caverns.
The battle was far from over. Their upcoming journey would take them to one underground rift after another, tearing apart the invisible net the lizardfolk Ancient Progenitor had spread beneath the earth.
End of Chapter.
The foul stench of decay in the passage remained heavy. The mottled, dark green moss on the rock walls was slowly withering. Deprived of the nourishment of resonance, they no longer emitted the low-frequency hum that eroded the Sea of Consciousness. Su Wan held her detector, continuously scanning their path. The radiation curve on the screen steadily dropped, leaving only sporadic, faint psychic residues that posed no threat.
"After the node was destroyed, the vitality of the symbiotic moss decayed very quickly," Su Wan said in a low voice as she recorded the data. "However, the detection results show that there are still a massive number of dormant spores deep within the rock strata of this rift. This explosion could only destroy the surface main node; it couldn't eradicate the spores. If the Ancient Progenitor comes back later to rebuild the resonance network, this area will quickly return to its original state."
Lin Yan walked at the very front of the squad, clutching a strand of silvery-white psychic vein he had taken from the corpse of the lesser priest. The vein felt soft and resilient, still retaining a faint, cold psychic fluctuation. He carefully wrapped it with his Sea of Consciousness to isolate its eroding influence.
"In other words, this time we only temporarily severed this single node; we didn't eradicate the hidden danger," Lin Yan spoke up, his gaze sweeping across the deep underground passage. "With so many secondary rifts across the six war zones, if each one hides a lesser priest and a moss resonance node, it would be impossible for us to clear them one by one. We are dismantling bombs, but the enemy's speed of planting them might not be any slower than our speed of dismantling them."
Carrying his demolition equipment, Xu Yang panted heavily, rock powder clinging to his forehead. "The higher-ups in the war zone should have guessed this situation long ago, right? But the previous battle reports we submitted rarely mentioned lesser priests or the domain-wide resonance contamination. The old dossiers in the archives only recorded that scaled beasts are uniformly dispatched by psychic power; they never detailed this system of nodes and priests."
Gripping his short knife, Shen Ke walked at the end of the squad to bring up the rear, constantly watching for movement in the dark rock crevices behind them. "It's not that there are no records. It's that a lot of critical intelligence gathered from the frontlines has been suppressed in top-secret high-level files. Ordinary war-preparedness high schools and field reconnaissance squads don't have the clearance to access the complete data."
The group continued to converse as they walked without stopping. About an hour and a half later, the squad finally emerged from the narrow underground entrance of the No. 3 Rift, stepping back onto the desolate, scorched surface of the Black Mountains.
The sky outside had already darkened. A gray, murky canopy hung low over the continuous withered forests. In the twilight, the massive silhouette of the human bastion's city wall was faintly visible in the distance. The war zone's off-road vehicle sent to pick them up was parked at the outer perimeter checkpoint. Two stationed sentries, seeing them emerge safely, immediately stepped forward to verify their identities.
"Mission accomplished?" one sentry asked.
"Destroyed the main resonance node of the No. 3 Rift, killed one lesser priest, and scattered the remaining scaled beasts." Lin Yan handed over the simplified mission receipt. "All collected samples and detection data have been brought back and need to be immediately transferred to the War Zone Intelligence Division."
The off-road vehicle's engine roared to life, carrying the squad speeding toward the bastion city. Inside the carriage, everyone briefly treated their wounds and cleaned the dried, dark green beast blood from their armor and clothing.
By the time they returned to the War Zone Field Operations Headquarters inside the bastion, night had completely fallen.
The office of the Intelligence Division was brightly lit. The supervisor in charge of receiving field intelligence took the chip containing Su Wan's detection data, as well as the silvery-white psychic vein sample Lin Yan had handed over. Upon seeing the sample, the supervisor's pupils contracted slightly. He immediately stood up and dialed an internal line.
"Field Squad 7 has brought back a live tissue sample of a lesser priest and complete scanning data of the resonance node. I am requesting to convene a Class-B Confidential Dossier Review Meeting."
Half an hour later, in a small, sealed conference room. Wall projections displayed the internal terrain of the No. 3 Rift, the moss resonance model, and the psychic link map of the lesser priest. Several intelligence officers and combat instructors from the war zone sat around the table, with all squad members in attendance.
A gray-haired intelligence supervisor lightly tapped the projected image, his voice heavy. "Fellow field operatives, the intelligence you brought back this time is far more valuable than the node destruction mission itself. We actually captured the domain-wide resonance signal from underground three years ago, but we have never been able to locate the signal's source, nor do we know the scale of the Ancient Progenitor's lesser priest distribution."
Xu Yang frowned. "Since you discovered the signal long ago, why wasn't the intelligence made public to all field squads? When we execute missions out there, we know absolutely nothing about this system, making it very easy to walk into a trap and be completely wiped out."
"It wasn't a deliberate cover-up; it was a matter of not daring to spread it widely," the supervisor slowly shook his head. "The Ancient Progenitor possesses the ability of psychic eavesdropping. Once the intelligence is distributed on a large scale, the lizardfolk Ancient Progenitor will immediately capture humanity's cognitive progress and adjust their deployment. We can only collect intelligence secretly on a small scale and restrict the number of people in the know."
Lin Yan lightly tapped the table with his fingertip and asked, "How many lesser priests are there in total? Is their sole task to maintain resonance nodes in the major rifts, continuously releasing psychic spores into the earth to slowly contaminate the entire continent?"
"Current estimates suggest there are at least a hundred lesser priests within the jurisdiction of the six war zones." The supervisor brought up an encrypted map. Hundreds of rifts of various sizes were densely marked on it, with dozens of red dots indicating suspected secondary nodes. "The main Ancient Progenitor is severely wounded and lying low, lacking the ability to launch a new large-scale general offensive. Therefore, it has changed its strategy. Instead of relying on beast tides to forcefully attack the bastions, it is relying on the moss resonance network spread across the underground to slowly and continuously erode the rock strata of the entire land."
Su Wan immediately grasped the key point. "Slow erosion? What is the ultimate goal?"
"To weaken the earth's own psychic barrier," the supervisor's voice dropped, carrying a hint of chill. "This land inherently possesses a native psychic barrier that prevents the Ancient Progenitor race from crawling out en masse from the deeper underground mother nest. The resonance network has been continuously resonating for decades, slowly wearing down the earth's barrier. Once the barrier weakens to the critical point, the gates of the underground mother nest will open completely. When that happens, what floods out will no longer be just scaled beasts and lesser priests."
The conference room fell into dead silence.
Everyone understood the terrifying implications. The previous beast tides were merely probing and diversionary tactics. The Ancient Progenitor's true plan was a decades-long, meticulous layout. All the slaughter, the rifts, and the beast tides were nothing but a smokescreen.
Shen Ke spoke up in a deep voice, "If the earth's barrier is breached, what will be the consequences?"
"All the bastions in the six war zones will be exposed directly to the main forces of the Ancient Progenitor's mother nest." The supervisor closed his eyes. "At that time, humanity will no longer be resisting sporadic beast tides, but will be facing a full-scale invasion by the Ancient Progenitor race."
The projection switched, displaying fragmented footage from the early days of the disaster decades ago. The blurry images recorded the ancient psychic fluctuations emanating from underground when the first rifts appeared.
Staring at the projection, Lin Yan recalled the lesser priest's dying will: Once it recovers and returns, thousands of rifts will resonate simultaneously, contaminating the entire land.
It turned out this wasn't just an empty threat. This was the true plan the Ancient Progenitor had been preparing for twenty-five years.
The supervisor looked at Lin Yan's squad, his expression serious. "Your squad now possesses first-hand combat intelligence regarding the resonance nodes. The war zone has decided to form a specialized Rift Task Force dedicated to searching for and destroying secondary resonance nodes across various locations. Lin Yan, you will serve as the squad leader. The mission carries extremely high risks. Every rift could be an ambush of lesser priests and beast swarms. There is no mandatory requirement; you may choose to refuse."
Lin Yan turned to look at his teammates beside him. Su Wan's eyes were resolute, Zhao Hu clenched his fists, Shen Ke nodded slightly, and Xu Yang weighed the demolition pack on his back.
He withdrew his gaze and looked at the intelligence supervisor, saying word by word, "We accept the mission."
The meeting ended, and they walked out of the building. Night shrouded the bastion city. Lights were sparse on the streets, and soldiers walked hurriedly. The city still maintained a calm facade under the apocalypse; the vast majority of ordinary people had no idea about the massive chess game that had been unfolding underground for twenty-five years.
Lin Yan raised his head and looked toward the distant Black Mountains. Beneath that desolate land, countless dormant moss spores lay in wait, and countless lesser priests continued to silently operate the resonance network in the dark rock caverns.
The battle was far from over. Their upcoming journey would take them to one underground rift after another, tearing apart the invisible net the lizardfolk Ancient Progenitor had spread beneath the earth.
End of Chapter.
