Chapter 71

The wasteland’s dawn begrudgingly spat out a few strands of gray-white light, illuminating the three ready for departure. The Stone Wall cast a silent shadow behind them, the scorch marks on the repaired thornsteel armor like unhealed scars. Elli wore dark, light armor, carrying a short dagger tempered by Lunar Power, her waist pouch swollen with purification dewdrops Xiang Lingna had condensed overnight. Wrench hunched his back, shouldering a massive metal box fashioned from assault platform armor plating, its surface cluttered with crude antennas and conduits; at its core, a newly forged piece of thornsteel emitted a steady orange glow—this was his makeshift “Abyss Probe,” integrating energy scanning, environmental analysis, and short-range communication, its core driver the thornsteel ingot forged with geofire and trace order energy.

Lin Mo cast one last glance at the depression. Tong Xu was directing craftsmen as they hoisted a massive thornsteel armor plate; the impact sounds were dull and powerful. Lingna crouched at the edge of the seedbed, her small hand brushing over a withered Starlight Moss, pale gold specks seeping from her fingertips into the soil. He drew a deep breath of air thick with rust and charred earth, securing the “Geoforce Arbiter” firmly on his back, the blue glow of the hilt emblem pulsing weakly beneath its leather sheath. “Go.”

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

Stepping into the Withered Forest felt like falling into another world. Towering ancient trees were long dead, their branches twisted like the arms of the dying, draped in thick gray-green moss that exuded a cloying stench of decay. The air was thick as glue; every breath burned like corrosion in the lungs. Beneath their feet was no longer charred earth, but soft, slippery humus that swallowed sound and could instantly devour life. Light was filtered through Cengcengdiedie withered canopies, leaving only a ghastly green glow.

“Energy readings spiking!” Wrench whispered, pointing to a wildly fluctuating purple scale on the probe’s display. “Decay particle concentration is ten times higher than the perimeter! Life signatures… zero? No—false zero! These damn things are pretending to be dead!” His beady green eyes locked onto the constantly Shuaxin ing distorted waveforms on the screen—the malevolent ripples emitted by withered creatures lurking beneath the leaf litter and in the shadows of tree hollows.

Elli moved ahead like a panther merging into shadow. Silver threads, invisible to the naked eye, curled around her fingertips like sensitive tentacles, extending outward. As the threads brushed a seemingly dormant dead tree, the gray-green fungal carpet Weizhuang as moss suddenly writhed, launching dozens of sticky, sucker-tipped tentacles!

Sssss!

Elli didn’t even turn. Her fingers twitched. Several silver threads shot out like lightning, piercing the tentacles’ bases. Instantly, the frigid purification power spread; the tentacles froze midair, shattering into ice shards, while the withered fungus Weizhuang as the tree was coated in frost, utterly silenced.

“Three o’clock, mud pit—something’s bubbling!” Wrench urgently warned.

Before he finished speaking, a seemingly calm black swamp erupted! Countless flies, each the size of a fist, with rotting membrane wings and sharp mouthparts, surged upward like a black smoke column, buzzing toward them—the stench nearly suffocating.

“Close your eyes!” Lin Mo growled, stepping forward sharply, his left hand pressing Xukong against the ground!

Boom!

Several thornroots, armored in thick rocklike scales, burst through the humus, rising like giant brooms to sweep violently through the air! Cracking sounds rang continuously as countless flies were crushed. But the roots were soon coated in corrosive pus sprayed by the flies; the rock armor hissed as it dissolved.

Elli moved. Her hands swept before her, releasing countless silver threads from her fingers—not seeking to pierce, but wildly intertwining and extending! In an instant, a silver net nearly ten meters wide, woven from flowing lunar power, snapped open before her! Flies that flew into the net struck an invisible electric field, instantly burned and carbonized by the purification energy within the threads, crumbling into falling black ash. The net was unbreakable, holding back the flood of incoming flies.

“Holy… holy shit!” Wrench stared, dumbfounded, frantically operating the probe to record the waveform of Elli’s new lunar power form.

Lin Mo frowned. The rock armor on the thornroots was corroding far faster than expected. He clearly felt the forest’s decay not only eroding matter, but slowly, steadily seeping into his mental barriers, trying to awaken the suppressed violet mark within him. The blue glow of the Anchor of Order burned steadily in his soul, a lighthouse in darkness, resisting the omnipresent whispers.

“Probe’s got something!” Wrench suddenly yelled, pointing to a tiny, flickering emerald dot on the screen. “Not decay! Life signature! Pure! But… suppressed—right ahead, in that direction!” He pointed to a region deeper in the forest, shrouded in thick, impenetrable purple-black mist. The mist was viscous as solid matter, churning to reveal twisted, colossal shapes—the very core pointed to by the Annihilation Coordinates!

Lin Mo and Elli exchanged a glance. That faint emerald signal, in this forest of death, was a miracle. A survivor? Or a more refined trap by the Doctor?

“Stay alert. Keep moving.” Lin Mo suppressed his inner tremor; the Thorn Will spread beneath his feet, briefly solidifying a firm path through the slippery humus ahead. Elli’s lunar net advanced slowly before them, like a silver plow carving through filth, purifying all in its path. Wrench kept his eyes glued to the probe screen—the emerald dot, a candle flame in the wind, stubbornly guiding them toward a more precise location within the mist—a broken, inverted-rock-like ruin, entirely entwined by colossal decaying vines.