Winter Lord: Starting with Daily Intelligence

Chapter 196 Search
The group was traveling through a dense, snowy forest.

The branches and leaves were withered and yellow, the ground was muddy, and a nauseating stench permeated the air.

The knight at the front of the group remained silent, focusing only on leading the way, while most of the mages behind wore silver masks, except for the leader, who wore a mask with purple and gold trim.

"Excuse me... how much further?" one of the female mages asked softly, frowning.

“We’re almost there.” The knight leading the way didn’t even turn his head. “The stronghold is just a quarter of an hour ahead. You can see it from the hillside. At this speed, we should be able to reach the ruins this afternoon.”

The monks nodded and continued on their way.

Slightly towards the back of the group, a young mage was whispering to his companion, complaining, "Didn't that Viscount Calvin say he'd already 'taken care of' the Mother Nest?"

"Now that everything is resolved, why are we still investigating? It's redundant... I was originally planning to go back and study the Fire Prison Array in seclusion."

His companion glanced nervously ahead and whispered, "Keep your voice down...don't let the archmage hear you."

"Hmph, so what?" the young mage scoffed.

He knew, of course, that he dared to speak so sarcastically at this moment because the leader of the group was Lady Flora, the famously kind old lady, gentle and tolerant, who never lost her temper.

Accompanying them was Grand Mage Dillin, the youngest high-ranking member of the Mage Forest.

Young people are naturally more likely to look down on younger big shots.

If it were one of those cold-faced, silent, and stern archmages who could freeze people on the spot, he would have shut up long ago.

Just then, the knight who had led the way spoke up again: "It's just ahead. You'll see it once you cross this forest. There are knights stationed here long-term."

The group quickened their pace.

When they emerged from the dense forest and climbed to the top of the slope, the sight before them took everyone's breath away.

"vomit……"

The young mage who had been complaining just moments before suddenly covered his mouth, turned his head, and began to vomit violently.

He thought he was used to seeing rotting corpses in magic laboratories and the ruins of sacrificial altars, but he had never seen anything like this before.

The air was thick with the stench of burning flesh mixed with slime, and an elderly mage couldn't help but mutter, "...Is this really real??"

The entire group from the Mage Forest fell silent.

The mother nest no longer exists.

The body that once writhed and decayed, resembling a giant beehive from a nightmare, is now nothing but charred fragments, piled up like collapsed rocks at the bottom of the valley.

Its pale, resinous shell was already shattered into pieces, with fragments embedded in the rock walls and the ground.

Between the cracks, faint afterimages of human faces frozen in flames can be seen, some ferocious, some screaming, solidified like wax sculptures.

Those tentacles that once ravaged the battlefield like giant pythons are now curled up into charred, withered branches, piled up haphazardly. The putrid juice seeping from the broken ends has long since solidified, yet it gleams with an eerie metallic luster.

Further out are countless filarial worms and their corpses.

The ground was littered with severed limbs and torn skeletons, many of whom were still wearing tattered knight armor, making them unrecognizable.

The self-destructing sacs inside each insect corpse had burst, releasing corrosive acid that scorched the ground into dense, honeycomb-like pits filled with a thick, greenish-black liquid that emitted a pungent, fishy stench.

The entire valley floor now resembles a black hill made of charcoal, flesh, and nightmares.

It is both ugly and possesses an indescribable solemnity, like an ancient and mysterious altar, silently telling of the fears this land once endured.

Several fully armed knights were cleaning around the "remains".

They were wearing heavy black protective armor, and heavy breathing could be heard from behind their masks.

Someone was carrying a kerosene can and continuing to burn the not-yet-completely-carbonized insect carcasses.

Someone was holding a long-handled sickle, carefully cutting away the remaining parasitic nerve tissue.

The knights on the outer perimeter held up torches to drive away wild beasts and carrion birds that tried to approach.

To prevent these remains from being accidentally touched, handled, or ingested.

Although Flora thought she was mentally prepared, her chest still tightened slightly when she saw the "hill of death" with her own eyes.

She took a deep breath and tapped her staff twice with her fingertips to bring her attention back.

Even the most obtuse mage, upon seeing this "ruin," no one doubted that what the young lord had said was true.

This calamity was real.

And he did indeed bring it to an end.

"Everyone..." Her voice was calm yet undeniable, "Go down and use your magic to touch the remains of the mother nest and these insect corpses. I want you to personally experience their magical properties."

As soon as he finished speaking, the young mages looked at each other, their expressions clearly showing their resistance.

“This…Grand Master, is this really necessary?” one of them tried to protest tactfully.

Flora glanced at him without saying a word, and the silent authority in her gaze silenced all complaints.

The monks ultimately obeyed the order.

They approached the insect corpses and charred remains hesitantly, releasing faint sensory spells at their fingertips.

It was just a fleeting moment of contact.

The first mage's pupils constricted sharply, and his body trembled as if pierced by an electric current.

He gasped in surprise, nearly collapsing to the ground, and quickly severed the magical connection, his chest heaving violently.

"Magic erosion...piercing my barrier like spikes, there are whispers, there is... noise...it is speaking...!"

The other person crouched down, clutching their head, their face deathly pale, muttering, "It's not ordinary residual magic... It's like some kind of will, an inhuman, primal malice, watching me, trying to devour me..."

Some people forcibly severed the spell, their eyes filled with terror and their throats tightening. They seemed not yet to have recovered from that momentary "mental contact."

Sweat streamed down his face, and his fingers trembled slightly.

Their reactions were almost identical: their pupils contracted sharply, their muscles trembled, and the magic on their bodies exploded like hedgehog quills, as they repeatedly tried to defend themselves.

But in any case, the twisted and chaotic magic they felt had been deeply etched into their nerves.

Flora simply watched all of this calmly.

“Remember,” she said slowly, “remember this feeling.”

"From now on, you will use your senses to search for the echoes and traces of similar magic in this valley, no matter where they are hidden, whether they are still alive or have only left traces."

So the mages tried conventional spells such as "Elemental Residual Tracing", "Spiritual Resonance Technique", and "Shatter Reflection" one by one, but almost all of them came to nothing.

Either the residual magic is so chaotic that it's impossible to discern directions.

Either the sensing technique will be immediately interfered with and backfired once it touches that malicious residue, or there will be chaotic echoes or mental fluctuations that are forcibly interrupted.

One of the mages, sweating profusely, stopped his spell: "It's like trying to catch a shadow in water; you can't grasp a single trace." Flora remained silent, watching everything until she slowly turned her head to look at the young man behind her who hadn't made a move yet.

“Dilin,” she called softly.

The young archmage beneath the purple-gold mask nodded slightly and finally stepped forward.

He didn't bring any assistants, nor did he prepare any complicated magic arrays. He simply took out a silver magic crystal and gently clenched it in his palm.

“Sensing magic won’t work in this kind of chaotic field using conventional methods,” he said calmly. “So I need to perform a ‘rewind’ to reconstruct the last magical fluctuations in this area.”

He closed his eyes, his silver hair trembled slightly, and the surrounding air seemed to suddenly stand still.

Accompanied by a deep and clear incantation, a silver magic crystal slowly rose from his palm. Complex light patterns flashed on the surface of the crystal, spreading like ripples on water, and then projected a blurry and distorted three-dimensional phantom.

That was the residual magic he had "compiled" with his mental power, and he began to trace it back in reverse.

What first appeared were countless fragments of magical information, remnants of the chaos after the war, scattered like broken bones across the land, drifting like sand.

He continued to probe downwards, penetrating the collapsed outer shell of magic.

The next moment, the entire phantom suddenly trembled violently.

“…Found it,” he whispered.

In the footage, the once silent valley suddenly exploded—that was the moment the magic bomb detonated.

A massive shockwave exploded in the core of the mother nest, and terrifying magic shattered the core in less than a second, unleashing a destructive vortex like a landslide and a tsunami.

Heat waves, debris, and demonic currents spread layer by layer in the illusion, as if the end of the world had arrived.

Go back again.

He frowned, his consciousness suddenly probing into the deepest wreckage, finally reaching that moment before it was destroyed.

The image stabilized.

The magic of the mother nest pulsed slowly and rhythmically, like the breath of some enormous life form.

Between the mountain of flesh and skeleton, countless nerve threads as thin as hair quietly spread.

Passing through the spines of the insect corpses, drilling into their bodies, and gently connecting with their magical cores, like puppeteers' strings, it precisely controls the spiritual rhythm of each insect corpse.

Those thin lines are not physical entities, but rather a resonance transmission structure at the spiritual level.

The mother nest acts as a "frequency source," causing all the insects to move in the same rhythm, like a silent symphony.

“This is it,” Dilling murmured.

But as soon as he caught a glimpse of the core of the resonance, his face suddenly turned pale.

The phantom shattered suddenly, and the magic crystal crashed to the ground. He swayed, clutched his forehead, and his lips turned slightly pale.

“Cough…cough.”

The mage standing nearby quickly stepped forward: "Lord Dillin?"

"It's nothing." He waved his hand and took a few breaths. "The time rewind was too long... I'm a little mentally exhausted."

He opened his eyes, still slightly dizzy, but his voice remained steady: "I have roughly located the mental control band of the Mother Nest."

It did indeed remotely control the insect corpses through frequency modulation synchronization. And some of these fluctuations... still remain outside the scorched earth.

Flora glanced at him, a hint of seriousness in her eyes: "Can you continue?"

“Of course.” Dilling looked up and gave a wry smile. “I can still hold on, but I’ll have to do it in a different way.”

Then, Dilling gently waved his right hand, restarting the second incantation.

A few strands of light, as thin as hair, extended from his fingertips and slowly drifted toward the remains of the mother nest and the surrounding insect corpses.

His gaze was focused as he manipulated the light to "scan" each of the charred and broken magic cores, as if searching for some kind of pattern.

Before long, the light began to vibrate slightly and gradually converged, as if responding to some familiar rhythm.

“...There are indeed signs.” Dilling opened his eyes, his tone calm. “These insects have all briefly maintained the same frequency as the mother nest, as if they were being controlled in unison.”

He stood up and continued, "I can save this 'frequency' and then use it to compare with nearby magical fluctuations to see if any area shows a similar reaction..."

This could mean there are other nests, or residual control signals.

He spoke slowly, each word tinged with caution and weariness.

“However…” he paused, frowning, “this is all we can do.”

Flora looked at him, her voice low: "Is there any clue that can be used immediately?"

“…No.” Dilling answered frankly, “The mother nest was blown up too cleanly, the magic was shattered into powder, and it was in complete disarray. I can only record this frequency first, and then try it slowly in the vicinity to see if I can stumble upon it by chance.”

Flora closed her eyes and sighed softly.

"That's all it can do."

Dilling is currently the most skilled mage in the entire Mage Forest in terms of 'sensory magic'; even if she were to do it herself, she couldn't achieve more.

However, if one wants to go further, that's beyond the capabilities of a "genius mage."

That is the domain of the Sorcerer Supreme.

Lindy suddenly spoke again, his voice low and unusually firm: "But I can be sure that this is not a naturally formed nest, nor is it an accidental mutation."

He slowly raised his head, his gaze sweeping over the charred and twisted remains of the mother nest and the scorched and cracked insect corpses around it, a cold light appearing in his eyes.

"The entire structure, whether it's the frequency construction of mental synchronization or that precise self-destruct mechanism... is too organized and too intentional."

He paused, his tone growing more somber: "It's like a meticulously planned experiment."

The surroundings were silent, and several young monks subconsciously tensed up, their expressions showing surprise and uncertainty.

Lindy didn't stop: "And most importantly, the magic system they use is completely different from any of the schools that our 'Mage Forest' has passed down through generations."

Whether it's the energy channeling method, the spell's structural logic, or the feedback mechanism of the magic wave, it all seems like... a system from another world.

"It might be some kind of... branch of magic that we have never encountered before."

His tone was low, yet it clearly conveyed a chilling unease.

As the words fell, the air seemed to freeze for a moment.

Flora's already troubled expression darkened further, her lips pressed tightly together, and her brows furrowed into a knot that seemed impossible to untie.

She stood quietly for a few seconds before speaking, her voice cold and unyielding: "You all rest for a while and get yourself ready. Then we'll prepare to depart."

She scanned the entire area, saying, "Using the frequency model established by Dilling as the core, we will gradually expand the search in the surrounding mountains and fields. We must not overlook even the slightest resonance, remnant, or interference."

(End of this chapter)