Chapter 287: Ghostly Light at the Crossroads

"Hold on!" Lin Yu tore a relatively clean strip of cloth from his own body, attempting to reinforce her wound again, though his movements appeared clumsy due to the cramped space and dim light. The beam of the searchlight swayed against the damp walls, illuminating circles of rusted bolts and blurry pipe markings.

The effects of the adrenaline were fading rapidly; Xuanyuan Qing's body began to tremble violently, her teeth chattering uncontrollably and making a faint "clack-clack" sound, like a machine about to fall apart. Lin Yu quickly checked the two of them's remaining supplies: half a pack of crushed compressed biscuits, less than a third of a canteen of water, and in the medical kit, only a few lonely painkillers and a roll of new bandages remained. Antibiotics and potent hemostatic agents had been exhausted during the previous chaos and struggle.

"Damn it..." Lin Yu cursed under his breath, his heart sinking to the bottom. In Xuanyuan Qing's current state, let alone continuing to fight, whether she could hold on until they found Xiao Ya's Maintenance Chamber was an unknown. He could even feel her life force slipping away bit by bit along with her blood, like sand in an hourglass.

Just then, an old loudspeaker embedded in the channel wall suddenly emitted a burst of sharp electrical noise, harsher than any time before, making one's eardrums buzz. After the noise, a clear, stable, yet still electronically synthesized girl's voice sounded, echoing in the narrow channel.

"Lin Shu, Xuanyuan Qing, you have safely entered the B3 Channel."

It was Xiao Ya's voice, unusually clear this time, without the previous stuttering and interference, as if the explosion just now and Xu Xiaochuan's desperate move had temporarily stabilized her signal source.

"The explosion at B2 triggered the backup power; the 'Scavenger' is clearing the scene. They will discover the secret door soon, in fifteen minutes at most."

Lin Yu looked up abruptly at the loudspeaker that was the source of the voice; the thing was covered in rust and thick dust.

"Xiao Chengzhou is a Monitoring Node placed by 'Ouroboros'. His body has been deeply modified with biotechnology to simulate vital signs, with the goal of delaying you and leading you into a preset capture trap." Xiao Ya's voice was calm without a ripple, as if reading a cold technical report. "The information he provided is not credible."

Xuanyuan Qing seemed stimulated by this voice; her unfocused pupils slightly converged. She tremblingly raised her uninjured hand, pointing toward Lin Yu, her lips moving, but she could not produce clear syllables.

"He... notebook... biological... Chip..." The voice was as thin as a mosquito, yet unusually persistent.

Lin Yu understood immediately and looked at the black "brain" Xuanyuan Qing had previously fought to insert into the control panel—it was still embedded there, brought in along with the closing of the secret door, and was currently plugged into an inconspicuous groove on the inner wall of the channel, with scorch marks from the explosion still remaining at the interface.

Xiao Ya's voice continued: "B3 Level is the true core of the Observatory, divided into three zones: Experimental Zone, Life Support Zone, and Main Control Zone. The Maintenance Chamber is at the very bottom of the Life Support Zone. But the channel is filled with Biological Sensors and Directional Energy Fields left over from early experiments, and some areas are still under the monitoring of 'Ouroboros'."

A slight Data Stream noise came from the loudspeaker, and then Xiao Ya said: "I have already overlaid the unencrypted structural map of B3 onto the signal nodes left by the equipment you are carrying... wait..."

Almost simultaneously, the black "brain" that Xuanyuan Qing had inserted into the wall groove suddenly emitted a faint, high-frequency hum. Immediately after, on the inner wall of the channel, lines as fine as blood vessels began to emit a faint, ghostly blue light, outlining a blurry path along the spiraling downward channel wall, like will-o'-the-wisps emerging in the darkness.

"That Biological Chip... one of the backdoors left by Uncle Xu," there seemed to be a trace of imperceptible emotional fluctuation in Xiao Ya's voice, perhaps it was Lin Yu's illusion, "it connects to the early biological sensor network here and can bypass part of the monitoring by 'Ouroboros'. Follow the light, quickly!"

The ghostly blue light was not bright, even flickering and unsteady, dimming and brightening, but in the pitch-black channel where one could not see their own fingers, it became the only guide.

Lin Yu no longer hesitated and hoisted Xuanyuan Qing up again; the cold body temperature he felt made his heart tighten. He gritted his teeth, bearing most of her weight on himself, and moved rapidly downward along the direction guided by the light.

The spiral channel seemed to have no end; the metal steps underfoot had become unusually slippery due to years of dampness, and he almost slipped several times. Xuanyuan Qing's weight was pressed almost entirely onto him; her breathing was becoming weaker and weaker, every gasp carrying a heart-wrenching smell of blood, her head hanging limply on his shoulder, her consciousness already blurred.

Lin Yu gritted his teeth, each step taken with unusual steadiness, the muscles on his arms bulging from the exertion. He could not fall; at least not now. Xu Xiaochuan was still waiting for them above; that hotheaded kid, he didn't know how he was doing now. That old fox Xu Jianhua had dumped such a heavy burden onto his son, and onto him as well.

He did not know how long he had been walking downward, perhaps ten minutes, perhaps longer; time had lost its meaning here. The ghostly blue light guided them to the end of the channel. In front was no longer a spiraling downward staircase, but level ground.

But what made one's heart tighten was that three pitch-black forks appeared here, like the mouths of three giant beasts waiting to devour people, standing silently in the darkness, leading to unknown, deeper depths of darkness.

And the ghostly blue light that had guided them here became extremely faint and blurry in front of the three openings, as if its energy were exhausted, finally spreading out evenly and no longer pointing in any specific direction. The light permeated in front of the three entrances like a fog.

"Damn it! Are you kidding me?" Lin Yu let out a low roar, sweeping the beam of the searchlight violently toward the three openings.

In the left opening, the searchlight beam was swallowed by thick white mist just a few meters after shining in, and a pungent smell of chemical agents rushed toward them, stinging enough to make one's eyes water, like a mixture of disinfectant and some kind of acidic substance.

The middle opening was pitch-black and bottomless; the light of the searchlight seemed to be sucked in, unable to shine very far. It was unusually quiet inside, a dead silence, not even the sound of air flowing, which instead made one's heart crawl. That implant of Xu Xiaochuan's seemed to have a faint reaction to this direction; Lin Yu could feel the slight twitching of Xuanyuan Qing's body in his arms, which seemed to resonate with the reaction on Xu Xiaochuan's side.

From the right opening, a low, rhythmic mechanical humming sound faintly drifted out, "Hum... hum... hum...", as if some large piece of equipment were running, and the air was also relatively more circulated.

"Xiao Ya?!" Lin Yu shouted at the loudspeaker on the wall, his voice stirring up echoes in the empty intersection.