Chapter 36: The Awakening Lord, the Withered Mark, and the Doctor's Web

Lin Mo felt as though he had been drifting in endless darkness for an age. His consciousness would sink at times into an icy, bone-piercing fog, wrapped in rotting whispers; at others it would be scorched by raging earthfire, feeling a tearing, rending agony; and at still others it would be pulled back by a warm, resilient force, as if bathed in a spring of life.

When he finally struggled open his heavy eyelids, the first thing to meet his gaze was the leaden-grey wasteland sky, filtering through the cracks in the wreckage of the shack. His whole body felt as though it had come apart at the seams; every inch of skin burned with searing pain, especially his chest, as though a branding iron were being pressed into it.

"Ugh…" he let out a pained groan.

"You're awake." A cold, familiar voice sounded by his ear.

Lin Mo laboriously turned his head and saw Sister Ai Li sitting beside him, her back straight as a lone wolf guarding its territory. The wound on her shoulder had been bandaged; her face was still pale, but her eyes remained sharp. She was carefully honing an alloy dagger looted from a Black Scorpion corpse with a whetstone. Xiang Lingna lay asleep on his other side, tear-tracks still visible on her small face.

"Sister Ai Li… Lingna…" Lin Mo's voice was hoarse and dry.

Sister Ai Li paused, picked up a cracked bowl filled with clear, purified water. She carefully cradled the back of Lin Mo's head and fed him the water drop by drop.

The sweet, clear water soothed his burning throat, and Lin Mo felt a sliver of strength return. He looked around — the hollow was a wreck, the scorched earth riddled with cracks, the collapsed shack, the ruined remains of the steam crossbow, and in the distance that field of charred potatoes… the scars of war were stark and terrible.

"The Black Scorpions… retreated?" Lin Mo asked.

"Retreated. For now." Sister Ai Li was concise. "You've been out for two days. The earthfire eruption… energy… saved the elf?" She looked at Lin Mo, a question in her eyes. Though she didn't know the details, she could sense that the power Lin Mo had unleashed at the final moment was tied to the elven world.

Lin Mo nodded, feeling the searing core within the 【Seed of Life】 in his chest, and the steadily spinning thorn sigil deep in his consciousness. "Priestess Liyana… is safe for now. But the price…" He gave a bitter smile and explained how the ley-line fragment had been absorbed to stabilize the passage.

Sister Ai Li listened in silence, her cold face betraying nothing, only tightening her grip on the dagger. Lingna had also woken; hearing that Priestess Liyana was safe, a delighted look appeared on her small face.

Just then, Priestess Liyana's faint but clear psychic thought sounded in Lin Mo's mind:

"Lin Mo… you… you're awake? That's wonderful…" The thought was filled with exhaustion and concern. "Thank you… that power… warm… strong… it drove away the Rotclaw…"

"But… the Withered Mark… has deepened…" Priestess Liyana transmitted an image: at the tips of her silver hair, the purple stain had crept upward by about an inch, clinging like a bone-burrowing maggot. On her bare wrist too, faint purple lines like vines had appeared, emanating an aura of decay. "The Rotclaw's… power… is corroding… I need… moonlight… more… purifying power…"

The price! Forcibly resisting the Rotclaw, on top of her earlier expenditure, Nana's Predicament had worsened!

Lin Mo's heart sank. "What should I do? The passage is stable — can I come through to help you?"

"No… not… for now…" Priestess Liyana's thought was faint. "The passage… is stable… but transmitting matter… the risk… is enormous… your body… couldn't bear it either… spatial tearing…"

"I need… pure… Moonlight Crystal… or… a natural sacred object imbued with powerful life-force… only then can I suppress…the corrosion…" She transmitted images of Moonlight Crystal and several strange plants radiating a rich green glow. "These… only exist deep in the forest… 'Moon Shadow Lake'… or 'Emerald Glade'… but those places… have already been… completely swallowed by the fog…"

A lead had been found, but hope was slim.

"I… will find a way…" Lin Mo solemnly promised. He looked at the few stubbornly surviving 'Starlight Moss' clumps and the core potato seedlings within his territory; the faint natural aura they gave off might offer a little help? He tried to guide this aura, feeding it back through the passage to Priestess Liyana.

Priestess Liyana received this faint warm current, and a thread of comfort came through her thought: "Thank you… the gift… of life…"

Ending the link, Lin Mo's mood grew heavier still. Priestess Liyana's Nana's Predicament had not truly been resolved.

Wrench came limping over, holding in his hand a tablet computer, half scorched, that he'd found in the wreckage of Viper's command platform. "Boss Lin Mo! You're awake! Look at what Grandpa Wrench found!" He excitedly powered on the tablet; the screen displayed a fragmentary electronic map, on which a conspicuous red dot was marked, annotated beside it: "Anomalous Energy Source — High Purity (Suspected Ley-Line Core) — Coordinates Locked: Hollow, Sector X-7"

It was exactly the location of Hope Outpost!

"And this!" Wrench pulled up an audio recording — Viper's halting, broken report before he'd passed out:

"…Target stronghold… confirmed… stable spatial node present… linked to unknown high-energy world (codename: Garden)… possesses life-purification technology… holds high-purity ley-line energy source…"

"…Requesting… the Doctor… send support… deploy the 'Scavenger'… must… capture…"

The audio cut off there.

"'Scavenger'?" Lin Mo frowned.

"The Black Scorpions' trump card!" Wrench's beady eyes were filled with terror. "A… giant… mobile fortress! Armed with heavy energy cannons and force-field shields! Built specifically to flatten resistance strongholds! The Doctor's prized treasure! Viper called in the 'Scavenger'! We're done for!"

An even greater crisis loomed, a black cloud pressing down overhead! The Black Scorpions' Doctor, for the sake of the spatial node and the ley-line energy, had deployed his ultimate force! And the Moonlight Crystal and natural sacred objects Priestess Liyana needed were still deep in the forest, swallowed by fog…

Lin Mo struggled to sit up, looking at his battered companions and his devastated territory, then feeling the searing ley-line core in his chest and the stable thorn passage in his consciousness.

No retreat! Fight to the death! At the same time, he had to find a lifeline for Priestess Liyana!

"Wrench," Lin Mo's voice carried finality, "use every resource we have, build traps! Stall them for as long as possible!"

"Sister Ai Li, we need reconnaissance! Find the 'Scavenger's' weak points!"

"Lingna, take care of the 'Starlight Moss' and the fields — that's our hope!"

He gazed toward the elven world, his thought resolute:

"Priestess Liyana, hold on! I will find what you need! No matter the cost!"

The Withered Mark was spreading; the Black Scorpions' behemoth was closing in. The lord of the wasteland rose amid the ruins, his gaze turning toward the fog-shrouded forest of another world. A battle for survival and salvation across planes had officially begun.