Chapter 49: No Sound Allowed
With a boom, the door to the top floor was violently broken open. After so many gunshots along the way, there was no need to worry about the noise being too loud at this point.
A cool breeze blew in. Out of the confined space of the corridor, the air was finally free of the nauseating smell of blood.
Looking ahead, Xu Xunyue’s footsteps faltered slightly.
On the top floor of the building, the dark night seemed to have been infinitely dispelled. This was clearly the highest place in the entire city, with no lights to illuminate it, yet before him was a dazzling white light, making it impossible to see what was there.
This white light seemed to be imprisoned in the small space of the top floor. People on the ground couldn’t see it; only by personally coming up could one discover it.
Xu Xunyue looked at Zhu Hui. Without asking, the other understood and said, “I can’t see clearly either. It shouldn’t be a problem with my vision, but with the energy field. Just like how I couldn’t see the light here from downstairs, maybe it will get better if we get closer.”
Saying this, he raised his hand and fired a burst of shots into the white light.
Gunshots rang out continuously, causing the cataclysmic beings below to roar, but the light did not dim or even flicker in the slightest.
The result of the long-range attack was already obvious.
Zhu Hui put away his gun, his face a little grim. His already emotionless expression became even colder.
His intuition told him that the thing in this dazzling white light, the contamination core, contained an extremely large amount of energy, and it was related to the spiritual aspect. Once he truly entered it, he might face a violent spiritual impact.
In short, it was a field that Sentinels were not good at.
“I’ll go. You guard for me and prevent any sneak attacks from cataclysmic creatures.”
What Zhu Hui could see, Xu Xunyue, as a Guide, had naturally also seen. He held Zhu Hui’s hand, then quickly let go.
Zhu Hui nodded and didn’t say much.
The unknown was certainly dangerous, but the trouble before them was clearly more suitable for his brother to solve while he provided cover.
Anyway… no matter what the result, he would face it with his brother.
Taking a few metal pipes from the railing, Zhu Hui managed to “lock” the top floor door from the inside with the metal pipes, even though there was no lock.
Xu Xunyue, on the other hand, approached the center of the white light step by step, not too fast and not too slow.
This top floor clearly had no living creatures or cataclysmic beings, only the special spiritual fluctuations and energy field of the contamination core. Physical vigilance was indeed unnecessary. If there was a sudden explosion, it wasn’t something he could prevent with vigilance.
As soon as he entered the range of the white light, a slight sense of discomfort enveloped his entire body. This level of fluctuation might be a strong spiritual impact for an ordinary Guide, but for Xu Xunyue, it was just a slightly uncomfortable pressure.
It was right to have Zhu Hui stay where he was.
The thought flashed through his mind, and then, the blurry voices that had been appearing frequently since he entered the Endless Snow appeared again.
[To have found such a precious treasure…]
[Hurry up and go forward. The most attractive thing in this city is this! Get it!]
[A powerful force is within reach, and it’s also of the same origin as you. There aren’t many things of the same origin in the world. This is too much of a coincidence.]
[Get it, and you will be the most powerful existence in the world. You can control the life and death of others, and hold onto the lives of the deceased.]
[That’s right. As long as you have it, the guys you just killed can be resurrected. They will live in this place forever. How wonderful.]
The layered, seductive voices repeated their central idea and strong desire. His consciousness was interfered with from all angles, and a needle-like pain came. Xu Xunyue frowned slightly.
This was how low-level brainwashing worked. It used various voices to continuously torture a person’s spirit, tormenting them until they were on the verge of death and exhausted, and then it would be convenient to instill any concept.
For fourteen years, such voices had appeared from time to time. If it were someone else, they might have gone crazy long ago. But this person was Xu Xunyue, an Offensive Guide with extremely strong spiritual power.
So he only felt repulsed and uncomfortable, and his life was not really affected.
The more urgent and numerous the voices became, the calmer Xu Xunyue’s heart became.
Continuing to walk toward the source of the spiritual fluctuations, the spiritual shockwave became stronger and stronger, but he suddenly heard a whisper as if it were said in his ear.
[Brother…]
Soft and gentle, it was an emotion from Zhu Hui.
And so Xu Xunyue even had the leisure to smile.
The feeling of having someone waiting for you was really not bad.
He still remembered the wedding night when he met Zhu Hui. At that time, the other had said very little, and his emotional fluctuations were almost non-existent.
But now, he could always hear Zhu Hui muttering in his heart, saying unimportant but very cute little things, or confessing to Xu Xunyue.
The person in question was very satisfied with what he heard.
As the distance closed, the white light was still bright, but the clarity was gradually increasing.
Xu Xunyue could gradually see that in the center of his vision, a black, human-palm-sized spherical object was floating in the air.
Is this it?
The spiritual fluctuations were indeed emanating from it.
Xu Xunyue was still calm. He was not bewitched by the voices in his mind, so he was naturally not interested in this so-called “precious treasure,” and only wanted to catch it and destroy it.
His pace did not speed up or slow down, but as he walked forward, he found that the surface of the black orb was changing.
Originally, it was completely black. The white light shone on it, not even creating a single reflection. But now, some lighter-colored light spots appeared on the surface of the orb.
The light spots quickly moved and arranged themselves, actually forming Xu Xunyue’s face on the black orb!
Then, the orb, which had been floating steadily in the air, suddenly crashed over without any warning, and disintegrated in the process, turning into a misty black mist—no, it would be more appropriate to say black shadows. These shadows drilled straight toward the Guide’s body.
Everything happened in an instant. Black shadows intertwined in the white light. The scene was quite terrifying, enough to make a child cry.
But just as these vine-like shadows were about to touch the human body, another wave of shadows appeared out of thin air.
They were more numerous, more agile, and smarter.
They exclaimed and cursed while fighting, so noisy that Xu Xunyue wanted to find a wolf to shut them up.
[What is this thing?]
[Why does it look so much like me?]
[No, it looks more like me.]
[It’s clearly me!]
[…Aren’t we all the same?]
[Ouch! It hit me so hard! I’m so angry. I was originally going to catch it and slice it up for research. Since that’s the case, we won’t let them go.]
[Just a copycat. It must have seen how fashionable we are, so it dressed up like us.]
[Copycats are unforgivable!]
[We hate guys who imitate us the most.]
[Get them, get them, get them!]
The two sides of shadows fought until the sky was dark. Xu Xunyue stood on the side like an uninvolved person, a golden light flashing in his ice-blue eyes.
He knew his own spiritual body’s attributes best. Ordinary bullets were indeed difficult to harm, and since the other side was of the same origin, it should also be immune to bullets.
In other words, it wasn’t that Xu Xunyue was lazy, it was just that there was really nothing for him to do.
Same origin… because this is my hometown?
To be able to awaken a spiritual body like his “deep sea shadow”—this was a non-academic name given by Xia Feng—so a similar contamination core could also appear.
But it didn’t matter what it was.
Anyone who wanted to confuse him, who wanted to keep him and Zhu Hui here, was an enemy.
He just had to destroy them.
As his spiritual body fought, the white light around him began to dim.
Xu Xunyue looked behind him and, sure enough, he saw Zhu Hui’s figure in the place where the emotions were continuously coming from.
Zhu Hui had clearly also seen him.
The top floor was limited in space. The two of them looked at each other from a hundred meters away. Xu Xunyue couldn’t see Zhu Hui’s expression clearly with his naked eye, but the closely connected mental link let him know what Zhu Hui was thinking.
[Brother looks uninjured. That’s great.]
[Can I go over?]
[I really want to go to brother’s side.]
Then, with a crack, the night sky shattered.
Large gushes of seawater poured down from the opening. The cracks grew more and more numerous, soon soaking their clothes.
He had returned to that feeling of diving in the sea.
The spiritual body’s battle was already over. The shadows that had been transformed from the black orb were all annihilated, and the dazzling white light disappeared. The shattered sky was the best proof.
[Come here.]
Xu Xunyue said through the mental link.
[Come to my side.]
Almost at the same moment, the Sentinel’s figure appeared by his side.
“Let’s go.”
Perhaps it was because of the victory in battle, and his spiritual body having crushed the opponent, but even though he was not in that abnormal state before, Xu Xunyue still had a similar feeling of affinity with the seawater.
He led Zhu Hui upward, pulling away from the underwater city.
The city below was a phantom of a bubble in the sea. When the mirage was dispelled, everything returned to its original state.
The bright and vibrant things became rotten and lifeless, as if they had been destroyed in an instant. But in reality, the outsiders had only restored this place to its original state, allowing this city to return to the river of time.
Endless Snow A1 Zone.
Xu Mengwei paced back and forth on the snow, with two large dark circles under his eyes, proof that he hadn’t slept for a while.
He looked anxiously in the direction of the cataclysm zone, checking his personal terminal at a very high frequency. Unfortunately, there was nothing that would make him stop in surprise, so he could only continue to pace back and forth.
After a while, Qiu Ye, in full gear, hurried past him.
“Wait! Consultant Qiu!”
Xu Mengwei hurriedly called out to him.
“The golden twenty-four hours have already passed. What did the higher-ups say?”
“Nothing. They’re still going through layers of approval. The main rescue team hasn’t arrived yet… and they might not come.”
Qiu Ye stated the facts with a blank expression, at the same time opening the cockpit door of an aircraft.
“Then you’re… hey! You’re not going to too? Consultant Qiu!”
Qiu Ye’s expression did not change.
“Besides me, there’s no one else nearby who can go deeper into a cataclysm zone.”
Qiu Ye was about to close the door as he spoke.
“No, wait, wait, look! Look over there…”
Xu Mengwei was so anxious he didn’t even know what he was saying, but his tone suddenly changed.
Qiu Ye paused, followed his gaze, and squinted at the twilight sky.
Imperial Capital, deep within the palace.
After walking through the elegant and simple corridors and expressionlessly accepting the salutes of the attendants, the Minister of Intelligence, Lu Si, quickly walked into the room at the end of the corridor.
The room was as grand as the corridors, and it was so quiet that a pin drop could be heard.
Lu Si bowed to the person at the head of the room with a deadpan face, then said:
“…According to the news from the Endless Snow A1 zone, the situation has stabilized. The out-of-control Sentinels have fully awakened, but those two are still missing…”
The person sitting in the shadows at the head of the room did not speak.
Lu Si was used to it.
In the past twenty-four hours, he had been required to report the situation in the Endless Snow every two hours. Every time he came to report, the Emperor was like this.
He hadn’t slept much all day, and his mood was numb.
He didn’t know why the Emperor was so concerned about the Endless Snow…
Although it concerned the two academies of the White Tower and the fresh blood of the Empire, and the impact was indeed great, why did he only look for him, the Minister of Intelligence, and ask so frequently?
Besides, if he really cared so much, why didn’t he directly ignore the Empire’s procedures and dispatch a large rescue team?
The Emperor’s temper was getting harder and harder to fathom.
In short, Lu Si only dared to think these things in his heart. He would not dare to say such words out loud.
Just as he was about to bow again and retreat, the personal terminal on his wrist rang. Lu Si hurriedly asked the Emperor for permission to check it.
After getting permission and opening the terminal, his face suddenly changed.
“L-Latest intelligence! Guide Xu and the Chief Sentinel have come out in an aircraft!”
The person sitting in the shadows at the head of the room stood up abruptly.
The White Tower Laboratory.
The white-haired dean of the Guide Academy had finished his all-night experiment where he had turned off his personal communication methods. He was drinking water from a cup while opening his personal terminal to check his messages. He hadn’t looked at it for two seconds before the water in his mouth sprayed out.
“Pfft—cough, cough, cough, missing?”
His face, which had been pale from staying up all night, turned even paler. He looked like he could faint on the spot at any moment. His equally pale assistant saw this and hurriedly ran over to support him and show concern.
“Dean, Dean, are you alright? I, I, I’ll call the medical staff right now.”
“Dean, you have to hold on! Don’t stay up all night next time!”
“Dean, I have an emergency treatment kit here that you can use. Where are you feeling unwell…”
“Wait.”
Xia Feng’s voice suddenly became sonorous again.
He wiped the cold sweat that had just broken out on his forehead and let out a long sigh of relief at the screen of his personal terminal.
Ah, I should have read the full message just now.
The Imperial Capital Express reported that they had come out alive twenty minutes ago.
That’s great…
Half a month later.
The White Tower, Guide Academy, Office Building, Seventh Floor.
Knock, knock, knock.
A girl in the Guide Academy uniform stood in front of an office. She knocked on the door with one hand, and held a stack of documents in the other.
“Teacher, I’m Yu Yuan. This is the performance of the classmates you asked me to collect last class…”
Some time had passed since the last outdoor practical activity, but the reason for the incident had not been found.
Considering the students’ safety, the two academies had decided to change the usual practice this year. They would no longer use the outdoor practical activity as one of the necessary parts of the graduation assessment, but would instead hold a small internal competition in the academy and rank and score it.
Time waited for no one. The graduating class students and teachers had returned to rest for a few days, and life had returned to normal. As the class president of Class 1, Yu Yuan would sometimes help collect some information in her spare time from training.
After stating her purpose, she didn’t wait long before she heard a reply from inside the office.
“Thank you for your hard work. Please give the things directly to Teacher Xu.”
Ah, so this was supposed to be given to the homeroom teacher in the end?
Yu Yuan blinked and agreed. Although she found it a little strange in her heart, she was just delivering materials. It was almost time for dinner. She would just deliver them and leave quickly.
She turned and knocked on Xu Mengwei’s office door.
Xu Mengwei was a little surprised by her arrival, but he didn’t say much. He asked a few questions about her recent situation and then let her leave.
What are the two teachers up to…
Yu Yuan walked out in a daze, and in a blink of an eye, she had thrown the confusion to the back of her mind and went straight to the cafeteria.
However, Xu Xunyue’s office was a different scene.
The curtains of the floor-to-ceiling window, which was the furthest from the door, were wide open, framing the academy scenery and the twilight outside. Looking from a distance, one could see a few Guides who had just finished class, laughing and talking with their companions on the side path, enjoying the youth that hung on the tail of their student days.
The sparse light of the snowy day shone in, not as bright as the indoor lights, but it added a touch of secret peace to the atmosphere. That kind of peace was the same as the feeling of curling up in a small house and reading a book during a storm, making one feel that the flow of time seemed to have slowed down.
There was no sound in the room.
Strictly speaking, it wasn’t that there was no sound. There was probably the rustling sound of a pen tip touching paper, the light and regular breathing sound, and… a sound like stirring water?
A wheelchair was parked in front of the hard, redwood desk in the center of the office.
The Guide with the low ponytail was sitting in this wheelchair, holding a pen in his right hand, writing something casually. The unhurried breathing came from him.
As he wrote, the hand holding the pen suddenly paused.
Xu Xunyue glanced at the content he had written on this page, found it very amusing, and simply decided not to continue tormenting his Sentinel.
With a thought, Zhu Hui’s hearing was returned.
He once again received the sound of writing in the room, Xu Xunyue’s breathing, the sound of water that made him blush, and even the faint laughter and conversation of the classmates and partners downstairs. But his brain didn’t react at all.
He was in a daze, his gaze sweeping blankly over the new computer and documents that had been pushed to the side of the desk. Then, as if he had been reminded of something, he pursed his lips even more forcefully, held his breath, and dared not make a sound.
Zhu Hui had been holding his breath for three minutes.
This was not difficult at all for the young Chief Sentinel, but it meant that he had been nervous for a full three minutes, and was still maintaining this state of high sensitivity in both his nerves and body.
Of course, Zhu Hui himself didn’t know how much time had passed, and Xu Xunyue wouldn’t tell him that it had actually been three minutes, and that Yu Yuan had left to find Xu Mengwei at the fifteen-second mark.
In these three minutes, Zhu Hui couldn’t hear anything. His hearing had been gone since the moment Yu Yuan spoke, so it was impossible for him to know when she had left.
He only knew that his brother didn’t seem to have turned on the mental interference, so he couldn’t make any strange sounds, and he had been holding on like this until now.
“There’s no one here now.”
Xu Xunyue reminded him in a low voice.
His fingers, wrapped in white gloves, pushed deep, the tips of his three fingers gathered together, aiming at the place that had been intermittently pressed for most of the afternoon.
Crystal-clear liquid slowly dripped down the crevice, leaving a not-so-obvious wet mark on the dark fabric that had piled up at his ankles.
“Sweetie is so amazing. You didn’t make a sound just now.”
His long eyelashes drooped slightly, his knuckles bent slightly, a very light movement, yet it made the young Sentinel, who was lying on the desk, sob.
He curled his lips into a smile and comforted him in a gentle tone:
“You can continue to cry now.”
