She suddenly sensed that there was a certain type of mental energy being transmitted.
It was an ancient force, as though from very far away. And it surged violently, without any warning prior.
It felt as though the entire world just trembled, or like there’s someone chattering excitedly away right beside you but you can’t hear it — the sound from the entire world fades away, and the only sound you’ve left with is the deafening thump of your own heartbeat.
She had no heartbeat. The thumping was from her mental net. Thud. Thud. That mental energy surged at her mind, everything was silent save for this sound.
It was fast at times and slow at times, as though some sort of signal or message.
She slowly got up. Vigilant, she surveyed the surroundings.
She separated and extended her mental powers in all four directions to check if there was anything off.
Her mental net was very sensitive, and that made things difficult too, because it could detect even a momentary mental energy disruption, even from a thousand metres away, yet her mental net would not be able to immediately pinpoint the source of such disruption. She would need to scour her way over manually.
Xuan Mo collected herself and concentrated, not letting go of any area in her search.
Nothing from the hallways, nothing from outside the dorms, nothing from the garden outside this building… there was no blue planet being acting strangely, everyone was normal… nothing from the guard house or the classroom building… behind the hill… behind the hill… found it!
Within the Golden Stone building, there were two young soldiers standing guard energetically. The golden stone in the glass cabinet was perfectly fine. Meanwhile, beneath the many layers of security, in the basement, there was actually a soldier holding the golden stone, and he had collapsed in pain.
The soldier was trembling. His face grew paler and paler, while the pool of blood on the ground quickly disappeared, until it was all gone. The young soldier trembled even harder. He was gradually growing colder and colder. He had been trying relentlessly to pull the golden stone away from his palm, but for some reason, even though his hand with the golden stone was unclenched, the stone was securely fixated to his palm as it glowed in a faint blue light.
The blue light streamed along the pattern on the stone. The dilapidated pattern, or whatever was left of it, would blink once in a while; this blinking increased in frequency afterwards, and it didn’t seem to be ending any time soon. It kept blinking its faint blue light, beyond that, nothing else happened.
She roughly made out that there seemed to be small wounds appearing on the soldier’s palm that the stone was attached to.
Of all things, human blood!
The stone required human blood to be activated!
While Xuan Mo to a certain extent had expected something similar, she was still floored at this finding. As expected, it was among the Top Ten Forbidden Crafts in Coalition. And it was wicked. From the situation, even such a small, useless piece that didn’t seem to do anything was enough to suck the young soldier dry, and evidently it still had further appetite!
She was suddenly thankful for Yi Fei’s sudden enthusiasm, and how she didn’t manage to touch the golden stone as a result. If she did have sufficient mental power, it wouldn’t be an issue, but if she didn’t, she perhaps wouldn’t have held out, and perhaps she might have been sucked dry, leaving only in her wake a human-figured casing.
Though she had no idea how or why this young soldier wounded himself and fed the golden stone, be it accidentally or not, he appeared to be in a dire state just from the fact that no one could hear his cries of agony. The warehouse that stored the golden stone was soundproof and completely sealed off. One could only contact those that were outside via an intercom, so even if the soldier screamed his lungs out, the people outside wouldn’t be able to hear him.
She would have closed an eye if it was something else, but if this harm was brought about by the Elge, then this would be within the jurisdiction of the Coalition Act. As a citizen of the Coalition, she would definitely do something to prevent this.
She immediately got out of her bed and ran over to the Golden Stone building at her fastest speed.
It was also until now that she was rushing with all her might that she realised in annoyance how heavy this body was. She really wished she could fly right now, but that was an ability that she had already lost…
The Golden Stone building was too far. She had to cross the many blocks of dormitories, cross the garden behind the hill, the multi-purpose hall, the control zone, the carpark, and run all the way to the hill, and run up the hill for several dozens of minutes…
By the time she reached, the soldier in the basement was motionless. Eyes wide, he looked at the ceiling. His entire body had shrunk significantly; his cheeks were hallowed in, and his expression was one of fear and agony.
Xuan Mo stood outside the metal door to the basement, silent.
Surprised at the person that had suddenly appeared outside the building in the middle of the night, the soldier followed Xuan Mo in, looking at her warily: “Student, this is outside research hours, please head back.”
Xuan Mo pointed at the metal door: “Open the door.”
The soldier shook his head: “If you are concerned about this, then you don’t need to worry. Xiao Zhao is inside looking after the stone, everything will be fine.”
“Open the door.”
The soldier frowned: “Student, do you have the security clearance? I will open the door if you do.”
As the most useless member on this research team so far, Xuan Mo obviously had no security clearance. She sighed, took out her phone, and dialled for Zhao Jing Lei as the soldier watched her in sudden anxiety.
“Hello.” Zhao Jing Lei picked up the phone very quickly, but his tone was still a little confused, evidently he had still been sleeping.
“Zhao Jing Lei, come over and open the door.”
“…what door?”
“The basement warehouse in the Golden Stone building.”
“You need to do something?”
“Enh.”
“Oh… Can you pass your phone to the person outside the building, I’ll get them to contact the soldier inside to open the door.” He continued explaining, “only a few researchers and myself have the key. If there’s any emergencies, the basement warehouse can only be unlocked from inside.”
Xuan Mo shook her head: “Then you need to come down yourself.”
“…there’s people inside the basement warehouse that are in charge of this.” Zhao Jing Lei yawned. “If you pass your phone to the soldiers outside the building, I can authorise you to enter, they will help to sort it out.”
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