Chapter 399: Mystery Oasis

Purple mist coiled around the team member's ankle like a living thing, the azure‑scaled mechanical prosthetic eye suddenly sparked—inside its visual sensor, the oasis's palm trees were melting, and hanging from the canopy were not coconuts but a placenta curled around a crystallized infant.

"Cognitive contamination! Hold your breath!" Ao Li's Inverse Scale stress tremor, the Boundary‑cutting Blade sliced the mist but splashed black Brain Fluid. The severed fog instantly reassembled, turning into three hundred umbilical cords that wrapped the Mo Sect's mechanical crossbow. Gongxu Yue's control talisman suddenly reversed, scorching a silver‑haired infant's lip imprint onto her palm.

####【Dead Water Illusion Spring】

In the oasis's central lake, bronze‑colored ripples spread; the water's surface reflected not the sky but the celestial sphere of the Polaris Tower. When a disciple of Clear Breeze Valley scooped water to drink, the liquid in his palm suddenly underwent a Quantum Leap, and leapt out of the water as a black‑haired infant's illusion: "Mama, are you thirsty?"

Lín Jìn's Star Sand‑infused right hand pierced the lake surface, and the Nirvana Fire it burned produced not steam but ash mixed with fragments of the Gui Xu Fetal Treasury Scripture. The lake water suddenly boiled, countless embryo‑shaped bubbles rose, each bubble imprisoning a coalition soldier's Crystallized Remnant Body.

"Back off!" Zixiao Zhenren's sword cleaved the lake shore, but Taiyi Pure Light was devoured by the water. Where the water curtain rose, everyone saw a horrifying truth—each plant in the oasis was an enlarged nurturing tendril, its roots entwining the desert's maternal nest Zigong, sucking the warriors' cognitive fragments.

####【Fetal Zigong Labyrinth】

The hissing of a swarm of sand scorpions suddenly rose from underground, and the sand beneath the survivors trembled and cracked. Ao Li's Boundary‑cutting Blade pierced the fissure, and the blade felt a sucking sensation—300 meters below the desert, a black‑stone altar was melting and casting sand scorpion carapaces into a new Abyss Return Ruler embryo. The silver‑haired infant's illusion sat beside the embryo, playing a marble game with its crystallized eyes.

"Southeast Xun position!" Gongxu Yue's mechanism box ejected a Mo Sect compass, its needle tangled in mycelium. When she forced the needle to turn, the entire oasis inverted, and everyone fell into the Klein Bottle Structure's Zigong labyrinth. Zixiao Zhenren ignited his primordial spirit to light the Taiyi Bright Lamp, whose glow revealed a pulsating Fetal Heart monitor on the wall—each heartbeat peak corresponded to a newborn's compound eyes opening somewhere on the continent.

####【Nurturing Trap】

The oasis's palm trees suddenly overgrew, and where the bark split, nurturing tendrils emerged. Two disciples of the Lingxiao Pavilion were swept by the tendrils toward the canopy; their Golden Pill exploded in their chests, turning into nutrient fluid that seeped into the tree core. The azure‑scaled God‑slaying crossbow switched to blast mode, but its bolts transformed into candy upon striking the trunk, which the silver‑haired infant's illusion sucked into its mouth.

"Games require equal exchange~" the black‑haired infant rose from the lake's center, twirling Ao Li's newly born Inverse Scale in his hand. The lake water suddenly surged, and within the Star Sand‑laden waves appeared three hundred nursing pods, each containing a baby with newly formed compound eyes, sharing vision with the oasis plants via umbilical cords.

####【Blood Source Awakening】

Ao Li's spine suddenly turned jade‑like, and chaotic spiritual marrow uncontrollably poured into the Boundary‑cutting Blade. When the blade's edge reached the nearest nursing pod, the baby inside instantly opened seventy‑two compound eyes, projecting a black‑stone matrix of the desert's core onto its pupils—there, new divine embryos were being 3D‑printed from coalition soldiers' cognitive fragments.

"Destroy the nurturing core!" Lín Jìn's Star Sand‑infused right hand suddenly performed a Quantum Leap, piercing seven dimensions to grasp the energy hub of the black‑stone matrix. Nirvana Fire flowed backward along the Star Sand channels, but when it reached the core it was extinguished by the silver‑haired infant: "Big brother's blood is the best accelerant~"

When everyone, bloodied all over, rushed out of the oasis, a harsh alarm sounded from the tactical star chart in their arms. In the Crystallization Conservation Institute's surveillance feed, three hundred babies were synchronizing the oasis's Fetal Heart Pinqü, their cries resonating through the ruins of the Northern Library, pushing the black‑stone altar's Gui Xu scar forward by another 1%.