Chapter 82: Turns out you're the mole!

Lin Xue leaned against the stone wall, took out that scorched-black crystal core, and hooked it up to the makeshift reader.

The screen lit up but still showed gibberish, though it seemed a bit more stable than before.

"Read… a little…" Lin Xue's voice hoarse, "Wang Jun wasn't lying… what Lin Yan gave really is an energy amplifier. The schematics… are almost identical to Lin Zhen's early abandoned research on a 'consciousness resonance field'."

Zhang Jun's heart gave a jolt.

"And…" Lin Xue traced a few fragmented lines on the screen with her fingertip, "It mentioned the 'agreement'… and the 'substitute'…"

"What does that mean?"

"Not clear, too fragmented." Lin Xue shook her head, her face worsening, "It sounds like… Lin Yan and Lin Zhen made a deal. Lin Yan… might not have been entirely forced."

Zhang Jun sucked in a breath of cold air.

The screen flickered again, displaying the last barely legible piece of information.

"This is…" Lin Xue's voice trembled with fear, "A set of coordinates… deep in the Himalayas… plus a warning…"

"The target area's energy threshold is abnormal; prior activation will trigger a large-scale psionic phenomenon, controlling all high-level neural activity organisms in the area…"

Zhang Jun sprang to his feet: "Control… all high-level neural activity organisms? Damn, that old bastard wants to turn everyone into his puppets?"

Lin Xue's voice quivered: "Once that beacon in the Himalayas is activated… the consequences are unimaginable."

In the distance, the pursuers' howls and the drones' engine noise came again, growing nearer.

The two looked at each other.

"First survive," Zhang Jun said, his voice dry, "then we'll settle the score with that old bastard."

"To the Himalayas." Lin Xue cut him off directly.

"Are you crazy? Just the two of us?" Zhang Jun's voice rose.

"What else? Watch him turn everyone into walking corpses?"

"Let's go." Lin Xue stood first and headed toward the mountain stream outside.

"Where are we gonna get something that can fly?" Zhang Jun followed behind.

"The lookout post over there." Lin Xue didn't break stride.

"That old fox Lin Yan wouldn't leave himself without a retreat."

The two retraced their path, reached the side of the lookout post, pushed aside vines and camouflage netting, and found a flight device lodged inside, clearly a patched-together wreck.

"Just this thing?" Zhang Jun gave it a quick up-and-down look.

"It's a spare Lin Yan discarded. As long as it can fly, don't expect too much."

Not far into the flight, the rolling mountains beneath were blanketed in heavy snow.

The farther forward we flew, the more the airframe shook.

"Hold on!" Lin Xue snarled, gripping the controls with both hands.

"What the hell is this now! Is that beacon doing it again?" Zhang Jun asked.

"The energy field is expanding! Much faster than expected!" Lin Xue's face turned ashen, "We need to find a place to land!"

Before her words could settle, the flight device nose-dived into the ground!

All the instrument panels went black instantly!

Clang—!

The world spun, and everything fell silent.

I don't know how long passed, Zhang Jun came to, shoved open the deformed hatch, and snow buried him up to his knees.

Lin Xue also clutched her arm, struggling to crawl out from the other side,

that flight device was totally written off, reduced to a heap of scrap metal.

Looking around, nothing but white snow peaks stretched in every direction.

The air felt heavy with pressure, making it hard to breathe,

"Damn, this godforsaken place, even the air is shaking." Zhang Jun rubbed his hands, which were fast losing feeling from the cold.

"The beacon shouldn't be far."

Lin Xue squinted against the wind and snow, looked, and pointed to a massive glacial crevasse in the distance.

"The energy fluctuations are coming from there."

The two trudged through the deep snow, one step deep, one step shallow.

Finally, they reached the edge of that huge glacial crevasse, its depths unseen.

"Down there."

Lin Xue pulled a climbing rope from her pack, grabbed the icy cord, and slowly slid down into the crevasse.

On the ice walls on either side, a faint blue glow began to seep through.

The ice cavern was vast, countless huge icicles hanging from the ceiling.

In the center of the cavern stood a huge metal structure.

—this is the beacon.

Before the beacon's control panel stood a figure.

Not Lin Zhen, but Lin Yan.

He looked less human than when we last met, half his body almost entirely replaced by cold metal machinery.

He faced the control panel, his fingers flying over the keys and screen,

Zhang Jun burned with rage, ignoring fatigue and cold, "Lin Yan! You really are in league with that old bastard! What are you trying to do?"

Lin Yan turned slowly, his face showing no emotion, his voice hoarse.

"In league? No, Zhang Jun, I'm just cleaning up the mess Lin Zhen left behind."

"Cleaning up a mess?" Zhang Jun stepped forward, his own energy flickering unstable, "I think you want to control everyone!"

"This is a necessary sacrifice." Lin Yan said calmly.

"Lin Zhen has been completely driven mad by chaos energy; he only wants to open that door and bring destruction into this world. I need enough power to control all of this."

"Control? So you're just helping him build this damned thing?"

"This is far more than just an amplifier."

Lin Yan's gaze swept over the two of them.

"It's also a tuner. Lin Zhen thought that simply amplifying energy could steadily open the passage; he was too naive."

"The true purpose of this device is to control the resonance power of the two of you. Use it to stabilize the dimensional passage, and then I will lead this 'purification'."

Zhang Jun and Lin Xue froze in place.

Inside the crystal core, those fragmented messages, those unsettling shards—the consciousness resonance field, the amplifier, the substitute, the agreement...

Damn! So that's what's going on!

At that moment, the beacon suddenly emitted an extremely piercing hum!

A violent, indescribable energy wave swept across the entire ice cave!

A huge pressure appeared out of nowhere, slamming onto the two of them!

This sudden powerful stimulus, combined with some inexplicable bond accumulated from previous death battles, and the fury and despair now pushed to their peak, mixed together, becoming the most potent catalyst.

In the chaos, the two didn't even glance at each other, yet a thought flashed simultaneously in their minds: Kill him! We must stop all of this!

Almost as an instinctive bodily reaction, the purple power within Zhang Jun that had always been somewhat uncontrolled and Lin Xue's remaining ice soul power erupted violently at the same moment!

No longer the previous mutually repelling, clumsy collisions; this time, two utterly different forces, as if pulled by some invisible strong thread, wildly attracted and resonated with each other!

The violent purple energy and the extreme-cold silver-blue power, in a posture never seen before, wildly tangled, spun, and fused!

A spiral-shaped energy shockwave fusing purple and silver instantly formed!

"I'll kill you, you son of a bitch!"

Boom—!