Chapter 71: The Withered Path, an Emerald Gleam in the Silk Web

The wasteland's dawn grudgingly squeezed out a few strands of grey-white, illuminating the three figures ready to depart. The Boulder Bastion cast a silent shadow behind them, and the scorch marks on the Thornsteel armor of the Repair Zone resembled unhealed scars. Sister Ai Li wore a dark light armor, carried on her back a short dagger tempered with the power of Moonlight, and the leather pouch at her waist bulged with the purification dew Xiang Lingna had condensed overnight. Wrench hunched his back, bearing a massive metal box refitted from an assault platform's armor plate; the box was covered in crude antennas and conduits, and at its core a freshly forged piece of Thornsteel emitted a steady orange-red glow—this was his tinkered "Abyss Probe," combining energy scanning, environmental analysis, and short-range communication in one, its core driven by that very Thornsteel ingot forged with Earth Vein Fire and a trace of Order energy.

Lin Mo took one last look at the hollow. Copper Whiskers was directing craftsmen to hoist a massive Thornsteel armor plate, the impact sounds deep and forceful; Xiang Lingna crouched at the edge of the nursery, her small hand brushing past a withered Starlight Moss, pale-gold specks seeping from her fingertips into the soil. He drew a deep breath of air laced with rust and scorched earth, firmly strapped the "Earth Vein Arbiter" to his back, the blue light of the sword-guard emblem pulsing faintly beneath the leather sheath. "Move."

Target: Annihilation Coordinates. Direction: deep within the Withered Forest.

Stepping into the Withered Forest was like plunging into another world. The towering ancient trees had long since died, their branches twisted like the arms of the dying, coated in thick grey-green moss that exuded a sickly sweet stench of decay. The air was thick as glue, each breath carrying a stinging pain as if the lungs were being eroded. Beneath their feet lay no longer scorched earth but a loose, slippery layer of humus that swallowed every footfall in silence—yet could swallow life in an instant. The light was filtered through layer upon layer of withered canopy, leaving only a ghastly green glow.

"Energy readings spiking!" Wrench hissed, pointing at a purple dial on the probe box that was jumping wildly. "Decay particle concentration is ten times the outer perimeter! Life signs… zero? No, pseudo-zero! These damned things are disguising themselves as dead matter!" His bean-sized eyes were fixed on the distorted waveforms constantly refreshing on the screen—those were the malicious fluctuations emitted by the withered creatures lurking beneath the leaf litter and in the shadows of tree hollows.

Sister Ai Li walked at the very front, like a panther melting into shadow. Silver filaments invisible to the naked eye coiled around her fingertips, extending outward like sensitive tentacles. When the filaments swept past a seemingly dormant dead tree, the grey-green fungal mat masquerading as moss on its bark suddenly writhed, shooting out dozens of sticky tentacles lined with suckers!

Hiss-hiss-hiss!

Sister Ai Li didn't even turn her head; her fingertips twitched. Several silver filaments shot out like lightning, precisely pinning the roots of the tentacles. The extreme cold of purification power spread in an instant; the tentacles froze mid-air, shattered into ice shards, and even the withered fungal colony disguised as a dead tree was coated in a layer of frost, utterly silenced.

"Three o'clock, mud pit, something's bubbling!" Wrench urged urgently.

Before the words faded, a seemingly calm black swamp suddenly boiled! Countless fist-sized flying flies with rotting membrane wings and razor-sharp mouthparts erupted like a pillar of black smoke, buzzing as they swooped in! The stench was nearly suffocating.

"Close your eyes!" Lin Mo barked low, suddenly stepping forward and pressing his left hand toward the earth!

Boom!

Several Thornsteel roots sheathed in thick rocky armor tore through the humus and thrust skyward, sweeping through the air like massive brooms! The crackle of shattering rang without cease, countless flies crushed. But the roots were also stained by the corrosive pus sprayed by the flies, and the rocky armor hissed as it dissolved.

Sister Ai Li moved. Her hands traced empty arcs before her, countless silver filaments surging between her ten fingers, no longer seeking to pierce but wildly weaving and extending! In an instant, a silver great net spanning nearly ten meters, woven of flowing Moonlight, snapped open before her! The flies that plunged into the net struck an invisible electric web; the purification power contained in the filaments instantly seared and carbonized them, turning them into black ash that drifted down! The net was incomparably tough, firmly holding back the subsequent flood of flies.

"G-good lord!" Wrench gaped, scrambling to operate the probe and record the wave-pattern of Sister Ai Li's new form of Moonlight power.

Lin Mo, however, frowned tightly. The rocky armor of the Thornsteel roots was being corroded far faster than anticipated. He felt it clearly: the forest's power of decay not only eroded matter but was also slowly, ceaselessly seeping into his mental bastion, attempting to awaken the Dark Purple Mark suppressed within. The blue light of the Order Anchor burned steady in the depths of his soul, a lighthouse against the dark, resisting the whispers that seeped through every crack.

"The probe found something!" Wrench suddenly shrieked, pointing at an extremely faint but frantically flickering emerald-green dot on the screen. "It's not decay! It's a life sign! Very pure! But… suppressed by something, just in that direction ahead!" He pointed toward a region deeper in the forest, shrouded in a purple-black fog so thick it seemed solid. The fog rolled like something tangible, and within its churning, the twisted outline of something massive could be glimpsed—the very core the Annihilation Coordinates pointed to!

Lin Mo and Sister Ai Li exchanged a glance. That faint emerald signal, in this forest of death, was like a miracle. A cry for help? Or a more exquisite trap laid by the Doctor?

"Stay sharp, keep moving." Lin Mo suppressed the tremor in his heart; the power of Thornsteel Will spread beneath his feet, briefly solidifying the slippery humus ahead into a firm path. Sister Ai Li's Moonlight silk net advanced slowly ahead, like a silver plowshare opening a road, purifying the filth along the way. Wrench, meanwhile, stared fixedly at the probe screen; that emerald point, like a candle in the wind, stubbornly pointed the way, quietly indicating a more specific direction deep within the fog—there, the outline of a ruined structure, wrapped entirely in massive withered vines and resembling an inverted rock formation, seemed to loom.