Chapter 712 — Beiyila in the Dream

Margarita immediately put on a stern face and was about to righteously reject this speech that so utterly disregarded the knight's code—but Amber had already bounded and skipped after Gao Yang, running into the entrance not far off, her voice carrying as she ran: "Hey! Wait for me! Going into such a dark place, you can't not bring a shadow master along. I'm a God's Chosen, you know, I've been God's Chosen for decades..."

...

Bard opened his eyes and finally saw clearly what was truly around him.

He had never entered any council chamber at all. What he had walked into was a magical secret chamber he had never seen before.

It was a mysterious room covered in runes. The ceiling, walls, and floor were densely carved with complex magical symbols. Apart from that, the only things in the room were two black stone pillars standing upright on the ground, similarly covered in magical runes. There was no other furnishing.

At this moment, all the runes had gone dark.

Bard did not know when this room had appeared. He only knew that when he had left the main camp, this thing had not been here—or perhaps his clearance had been insufficient, and so he had never known of this secret room's existence.

He guessed that the underground collapse had caused some rooms and corridors to shift out of place, and that the crisscrossing roots had further impaired his spatial judgment, so that he had accidentally taken a wrong turn, blundered into this hidden chamber, and come under the influence of the magical device here.

But regardless of what Rong said, it seemed that with the end of the dream, the devices here had already ceased operation.

He kept Gao Song's orders firmly in mind. Though the runes scattered everywhere made him somewhat uneasy, considering they were already nearing the deep layers, wandering about recklessly would bring far greater risks than these extinguished runes. He obediently stayed put, finding a spot in the room with a broad view near the corner of a wall, and quietly waited for the arrival of his contacts.

He waited a long time.

The passage of time would make an ordinary person accumulate stress, and the dim, eerie environment was even more unsettling. But Bard, who had endured far more terrifying trials and tempering, already had a heart like steel. Compared to those indescribable realms he had once witnessed, the darkness here could almost be called gentle. He stood quietly in the corner, keeping his mind and body in peak condition, counting the beats of his artificial heart to estimate the time, until some swaying lights appeared outside the room.

Gao Yang followed the trail markers Bard had left along the way and arrived at this lair deep underground.

The scale of this underground palace was astonishing, and its architectural style, which matched no human kingdom, stirred a trace of confusion and speculation in him. Though the palace had been severely damaged in its collapse, and the cultists of the Church of the End of All Things had destroyed or altered most of its original features through centuries of reconstruction and expansion, he could still tell from the sturdy wall materials and the ancient runes embedded in the floor and ceiling that this palace was not built by the Ansans.

Not even by the Gondorians.

But now was not the time to investigate the palace's detailed origins. He had already seen Bard Wendell waiting in the room, along with the dense array of magical runes and two magical devices that resembled stone pillars.

As an old schemer who had devoured the knowledge and memories of the Eternal Sleepers, could move freely through the Eternal Sleepers' psychic network, and had even personally participated in building the Eternal Sleepers' Insecurity System, the Piggyback Lab, and the Psychic Network Vulnerability Cluster, he was intimately familiar with these things.

"Eternal Sleeper technology," Gao Yang said, stepping forward to examine the two extinguished rune pillars. "...These should be auxiliary devices for projecting the user's spirit outward. Don't worry, they're completely scrapped. All the core runes have melted down. They can't be repaired."

Only then did Bard finally breathe a sigh of relief, and immediately after, he instinctively asked, "You... understand Eternal Sleeper technology?"

Gao Rong smiled. "A little. Just a little."

Bard froze for a moment, then quickly adjusted his expression and cautiously made himself as inconspicuous as possible.

He had stumbled upon "His Imperial Majesty's little secrets" again.

But Gao Yang did not mind, because as Daniel thoroughly mastered the security architecture of the Eternal Sleepers' psychic network, and as the various hidden hands, backdoors, and springboards he had originally set up in the psychic network grew day by day into a vast and complex "shadow network," he no longer worried as he once had about the Eternal Sleepers detecting this intrusion.

He had a whole array of methods to reconnect to the network, a whole array of methods to disguise himself and Daniel, and even a whole array of methods to create illusions—illusions of network security, illusions that the intrusion had been eliminated, illusions that there had never been an intrusion at all...

He had even set "Gao Yang Cecil," "Otherworld Wanderer," "Ansan Pioneer," and other such terms as hidden keywords. As long as anyone in the entire psychic network mentioned these keywords, he would know immediately, and before the information could be transmitted outward, he could determine whether he had been exposed, and thus take further action.

Of course, if possible, Gao Yang still hoped the Eternal Sleepers would never detect his intrusion. But from the mere "little secrets" Bard had encountered, he could not yet deduce the connection between Gao Yang and the Eternal Sleepers' psychic network. Moreover... even if Bard left here alive today, he would certainly be under strict surveillance for a long time to come.

With the Long Night cultists in the Southern Region essentially wiped out, a secret that could not be spoken aloud... would remain a secret forever.

Gao Yang turned his head and looked toward the room's exit.

"Now, let us continue the search."

This Eternal Sleeper device could amplify and project a person's dreams, but the device itself did not dream.

In this dark, profound place, there existed... people who could dream.

Judging from the scenes Bard had witnessed in the dream, the condition of these dreamers was likely not good—most of them had probably even lost the ability to control their own minds and bodies.

That made things somewhat easier to handle.