Chapter 300 — I've Got You

The scene before him gradually steadied, and once more the gilded palaces and spires of the City of the Arcane Pivot rose before Gao Yang's eyes.

Watching the ceaseless coming and going of the Eternals' "avatars" and this city humming along in its quiet order, Gao Yang could not help but breathe a little easier.

It seemed the disguises he had set up within the network were all working nicely, and the backdoors he had planted for his infiltration had not been discovered by the Eternals.

Then again, that was only natural—before something like a computer virus had ever existed, who could possibly have known what antivirus software was?

This was not his first or second infiltration of this world—it was his third—and his course of action within this mind-network was already quite clear.

Steal technology, plant backdoors, monitor the Eternals' movements, and if the chance presented itself, use this mind-network to exert a little more influence over the Eternals, so that this peculiar cult might continue to develop in the direction he desired.

Skirting the crowds, Gao Yang reached the region where the node crystals were situated. After connecting to the primary channel, he first confirmed that the "testing ground" he had left behind was proceeding as usual, then quietly withdrew from the covert connection and began searching for any technical data that might exist, aided by the node crystals.

Though his previous attempts had all failed to uncover any useful information, Gao You had not come away entirely empty-handed from these successive connections. By parsing and studying the knowledge of the Eternals he had devoured, and through his experience of pilfering resources within the mind-network, he had begun to vaguely grasp the principles and structure of this network—and he had discovered that the loopholes within it allowed him to do far more than he had first imagined.

This network was connected directly into the mental world of every Eternal. In other words, in theory it could link straight into the thought and memory space of each one of them. Of course, the Eternals themselves knew the risks involved, so whenever they connected to the network they shielded and isolated their own consciousness, to prevent anyone from using the connection to invade their minds in reverse. Yet in Gao Yang's view, their protection was clearly insufficient.

Perhaps it was because the Eternals had never imagined that someone within their "own" network would prey upon fellow members of the church like this—or perhaps Gao Yang's own soul mutation was simply too severe, granting him such extraordinary control over his subconscious world that, in his eyes, all the deceptive and concealing shielding measures in this mind-network might as well not exist at all...

The faintly glowing node crystal floated quietly before Gao Yang. He fixed his gaze upon its surface, and his psychic power gradually diffused outward. He could sense the truth hidden beneath this crystal's deceptive exterior—a vast sea of data being exchanged, allocated, and reconstructed here, countless thoughts of the Eternals surging and churning in the depths of that data sea. Some were mighty, some were frail; the mighty thoughts were tightly bound to the very structure of the network, such that the slightest disturbance risked triggering a network-wide alarm. But those frail thoughts...

They were like seaweed and zooplankton drifting among the waves, lacking both protection and vigilance.

Those were the lower ranks of the Eternals, the most fundamental mass of the cult. Their greatest value within this network was to contribute computing power, and to serve as a "buffer" absorbing data pressure whenever the network experienced violent fluctuations. For this immature network, fluctuations were exceedingly common, and the Eternals had chosen the crudest and simplest method to ensure the overall stability of the network.

Gao Yang carefully let his spirit continue to spread. Leaping through the node crystals, he slowly traced the threads of those thoughts and roughly judged what strength their owners behind them might possess. He even began attempting to read the shallow memories of those thoughts—one of the most basic abilities of the Eternals. Though Gao Yang had obtained this knowledge by devouring, this was the first time he had actually put it into practice.

He had to be exceedingly careful. Once his infiltration of the network was exposed, there was no telling how extreme the reaction of those cultists—already so on edge about "otherworldly wanderers"—might be. For all he knew, they might panic and yank out every server cable in the place...

A blurry vision manifested in Gao Song's mind. He saw countless points of light flickering and drifting within the hazy outline of the City of the Arcane Pivot—most of the lights in the outer layers of the city, a few in the inner layers, and several especially bright ones clustered in the region of the great palaces at the city's center.

He carefully steered around those lights that were too powerful or too close to the central district, and began making contact with targets that looked ripe for the picking.

He glimpsed fleeting shallow memories—strangers gathering for an assembly, the daily life of a gloomy and desolate old castle—and amid these swiftly passing fragments, he suddenly saw a scene of particular strangeness.

An aged mage living in seclusion, a paranoid man gone astray, a soul lured into corruption by the Eternals, willing to become a slave of dreams...

He slowly drew closer...

In the mountains of the southwestern frontier of the Typhon Empire, an ancient mage's tower stood quietly atop a craggy peak. The dim light of dusk draped itself over the black roof of that ancient spire, then crept down along the mottled outer walls, tracing a hazy rim of gold upon the tower's body. Yet this light could not dispel the tower's lingering gloom in the slightest—instead it only made the tower seem as though it had been torn from the very sky, eerie and inexplicable.

The mountain folk dwelling in the village at the foot of the peak always harbored dread toward that mage's tower on the summit. They knew a terrifying sorcerer lived within that black tower, and that each nightfall the silhouette of that dreadful mage would appear in the highest window at its top. The ignorant villagers took the strange winds, lightning, and mist of the mountains as signs of the sorcerer's wrath, and with these tales they warned the village children never to approach the summit, lest they fall under the mage's bewitchment and be turned into stone statues in the tower, or into talking owls kept by the mage. Such was, by and large, the mountain folk's imagination of magic.

In truth, their fear was not entirely without reason, for within that black tower did indeed dwell a dreadful old mage whose mind had grown somewhat unhinged. It was said that the old mage had come from the imperial capital of Aldernan and had been exiled here by the emperor for studying forbidden knowledge. He lived in seclusion, eccentric in temper, never speaking with the villagers. He had several apprentices as gloomy as himself, and he would only send them down the mountain to buy food or conduct other business. From those black-robed apprentices the villagers could often catch the scent of blood. And so the unsettling and terrible rumors about the black tower spread ever further.

Mary, thin and black-haired, carried the provisions she had purchased and left the village under the fearful gazes of the mountain folk. Those absurd speculations, brimming with unease and conjecture, seemed still to swirl about her ears. She wrapped her black mage's robe tighter about herself and used her hood to shield against the chill night wind of the mountains, walking alone along the mountain path.