Chapter 30: Heavenly Anchors, the Briar Portal, and the Doctor's Madness

The overwhelming will of nature and the life energy of the 【Seed of Life】 clashed and merged fiercely above the depression! Emerald and deep purple light intertwined, forming a pillar of light that pierced heaven and earth, stabbing straight into the center of the phantom of the withered forest!

【New Territory Anchor: 85%... 90%... 95%... 100%!】

【Anchor Successful! 'World Fragment - Elf's Sorrow (ID: Mist Forest)' has been incorporated into the Myriad Worlds Sandbox!】

【Source Channel (Temporary) Establishing... Insufficient Energy! Channel extremely unstable! Supports only single-use, short-duration, low-quality matter/energy transmission!】

【Warning! Target territory on the verge of collapse! Source Core (Withered World Tree Sprout) extremely weak! Host, intervene with caution!】

The cold system prompt exploded in Lin Mo's mind! Success! The second territory! The world of the elves!

At the same time, at the core where emerald and purple light met, space twisted and stretched violently like a torn scroll! An unstable oval portal, composed of madly growing, thorned dark green briars, slowly took shape in the center of the depression! Inside the portal, the wasteland scene was gone, replaced by that eerie forest, dead and withered, shrouded in purple mist! A suffocatingly dense aura of decay gushed forth from within!

The Briar Portal! A temporary channel connecting two worlds!

"No! Stop it! That is the 'Stable Spatial Rift' sample the Doctor wants! Seize it at all costs!" From the paralyzed assault platform, that cold electronic voice let out a hysterical roar!

The remaining nine assault platforms seemed to forcibly suppress some interference; their engines roared in overload, treads turned again, and the machine guns on the turrets struggled to lift, actually beginning to charge once more! The target was fixed squarely on the newly formed Briar Portal and Xiang Lingna standing before it!

"Xiang Lingna! Get out of there!" Lin Mo roared, raising his shotgun to fire wildly at the nearest assault platform, but the bullets were like scratching an itch! Ai Li's crossbow bolts shot at the platform's observation window were also bounced off by the thick bulletproof glass!

Xiang Lingna remained unconscious, bathed in purple light, chanting that ethereal and sorrowful elf elegy toward the direction of the Briar Portal, as if communicating with the world behind the gate.

Charging complete! Nine deadly cannon barrels locked onto the Briar Portal!

A hair's breadth from disaster!

A figure as fast as lightning suddenly lunged from the side, blocking the path between the Briar Portal and Xiang Lingna! It was Sister Ai Li!

There was not a shred of hesitation in her eyes, only cold resolve! She aimed her short crossbow toward the direction of the withered forest inside the portal, and with all her strength, fired the last of her three remaining bolts—the one whose arrowhead shimmered with the most intense, deep blue light—into the Briar Portal!

The bolt vanished into the ripples of the portal, unknown where it had been shot.

Immediately after, Sister Ai Li spread her arms wide, as if embracing death, and faced the impending metal storm! She intended to buy a final sliver of time for Xiang Lingna and that channel!

"Sister Ai Li! No—!" Lin Mo's roar was filled with despair!

Just then!

An unexpected change occurred!

Inside the Briar Portal, deep within that dead and withered forest, near the landing point of the deep blue bolt Sister Ai Li had fired, a faint, silver light, like a dying candle in the wind, suddenly ignited on the trunk of a long-dead, colossal black ancient tree! Though the light was dim, it carried a pure aura, utterly distinct from the surrounding decay!

At the same time, the purple light around the two seedlings in Xiang Lingna's arms surged to its peak! Two leaves with purple veins suddenly detached from their stems, transforming into two streaks of flowing light that instantly plunged into the Briar Portal, shooting toward that silver-lit dead tree!

"Voom—"

The entire Briar Portal shuddered violently! The briars growing madly along the portal's edges, as if infused with some power, instantly became thicker and sharper! An aura of nature, denser than before yet no longer purely decay but mixed with a faint trace of life, gushed forth from within the portal like a final flash of vitality! This aura swept across the depression!

The nine assault platforms, fully charged and about to fire, instantly froze in place as if a pause button had been pressed! The charging lights extinguished, and the engine roars ceased abruptly! All electronic instrument screens inside the platforms instantly filled with static, billowing thick black smoke! As if completely suppressed, overloaded, and destroyed by an invisible, higher-dimensional force!

"No—!!!" From inside the assault platforms came the desperate and incredulous roars of the Black Scorpion members! Immediately following were several muffled explosions from within the platforms! The nine steel beasts were completely turned into smoking scrap metal!

The crisis was resolved in an unimaginable way!

After emitting a final burst of light, the Briar Portal began to flicker and contract violently, becoming extremely unstable! It seemed ready to collapse and vanish at any moment!

The purple light on Xiang Lingna faded, and she collapsed softly, caught by Lin Mo who rushed forward. The two seedlings in her arms, after their leaves detached, quickly withered and turned to ash, as if they had exhausted their last trace of life source.

Sister Ai Li stood before the portal, looking at the withered world inside, then at the smoking steel wreckage on the ground. Her cold face showed no expression, only a flicker of an indescribable fluctuation in her eyes. That shot she had fired seemed to have... triggered something?

"The channel... is closing." Lin Mo looked at the increasingly unstable Briar Portal, then at the unconscious Xiang Lingna in his arms, the wrench-wielding companion groaning in severe injury beside them, and finally at this wasteland territory that had just endured catastrophe and now needed rebuilding from scratch.

Go? Or stay?

The elf world's lament still echoed in his ears. That silver-lit dead tree, those two flying leaves... seemed to be conveying a final hope.

Yet the threat of the Black Scorpion had not been eradicated. That "Doctor," having witnessed all this, would only become more mad!

"Sister Ai Li..." Lin Mo looked at his companion beside him.

Sister Ai Li's gaze shifted from the Briar Portal to Lin Mo's face, then swept over the unconscious Xiang Lingna and the severely injured wrench-wielding companion, before finally turning toward this depression where smoke had not yet cleared but the water purifier still roared. Her left hand hung limp, while her right hand gripped the empty short crossbow tightly.

"This place... is home." Her voice remained cold, yet carried an unyielding firmness, "But debts... must be repaid." Her gaze turned eastward, toward the direction of the Black Scorpion.

Lin Mo understood. The wasteland was the foundation, the homeland, which must be defended. The elf world was a responsibility, a new hope, which must also be answered. But not now. Now, they needed to rest and recuperate, needed to heal the wounded, needed to become stronger!

He took one last look at the vanishing Briar Portal, as if to carve the image of that withered forest into his mind. Inside the portal, it seemed a pair of silver eyes filled with sorrow and pleading met his gaze at the very last moment.

"I will return." Lin Mo whispered to himself.

The Briar Portal emitted a humming sound like a sigh, completely contracted, and vanished into the air, leaving only a few rapidly withering briar vines to prove it had ever existed.

The strange phenomenon in the sky slowly subsided, and the lead-gray wasteland sky once again covered the earth.

Inside the depression, smoke hung thick, ruins were everywhere, yet the core hut, the water purifier, and that stubborn potato field miraculously survived. The steam crossbow cannon, emitting white smoke, was completely scrapped. The wrench-wielding companion lay on the ground groaning. Xiang Lingna remained unconscious. Sister Ai Li's back wound had burst open again, blood staining the bandages red.

Hope Outpost, after enduring the shock of the convergence of myriad heavens and the baptism of a steel torrent, stood battered but unyielding.

Lin Mo supported Sister Ai Li, holding Xiang Lingna, looking at the severely injured wrench-wielding companion, then gazing eastward toward the direction where the Black Scorpion had retreated, his eyes weary yet infinitely resolute.

The wasteland lord had firmly established his footing amidst blood and fire, and shouldered a promise spanning the myriad heavens. A new journey quietly unfolded atop the ruins. Meanwhile, the Black Scorpion's "Doctor," in some dark base, watched the last vanishing spatial fluctuation data on the screen and that fleeting glimpse of the elf phantom, his eyes burning with a greed flame even more intense and mad than before.

"Spatial anchor... life purification... and... otherworldly high-level life forms... perfect samples! A perfect experimental field! At all costs... find them! Control that channel!"