Forgotten Photo Studio

Chapter 136 The Role of the Jade Cicada

The observation room was completely silent.

The technician, watching the rapidly fluctuating psionic readings and mental pollution index on the monitoring screen, whispered:

"Manager Lin, the mental pollution index has exceeded the safety threshold. Chen Zhiwei's defensive barrier can only hold for a maximum of three minutes. According to the conventional response strategy, they should immediately find cover or try to force a way through using area-of-effect dispel spells, but that would consume a huge amount of resources..."

Lin Lan did not answer; she crossed her arms and stared intently at the main screen.

In the scene, Xu Yan neither panicked and retreated, nor did he prepare to unleash any offensive spells. He stood still, his gaze sharp as a hawk's, rapidly scanning the entire spirit nest.

"What is he doing?" the technician wondered.

“He’s… ‘reading.’” A bright light flashed in Lin Lan’s eyes, and a slightly interested smile appeared on her lips. “He’s looking at their ‘patterns’.”

Inside the corridor.

"We can't force our way in, or we'll be worn down and die here!" Xu Yan's mind raced, and he pushed the camera's viewfinder to its limit.

But he never pressed the shutter button.

Within the viewfinder, the seemingly chaotic and disorderly wandering spirits vaguely form a huge, slowly rotating, invisible vortex in their movement.

All the spirits, like iron filings attracted by a magnet, revolve around some deeper, darker being at the center of the vortex.

"Zhiwei, hang in there, trust me, come with me!" Xu Yan shouted, making a move that almost made the technician in the observation room gasp.

Instead of attacking or defending, he completely released his control over the jade cicada in his arms.

A deep, cold, and absolutely deathly aura, seemingly originating from the deepest part of a tomb, spread out from him and instantly enveloped the two of them.

He even used the jade cicada to exquisitely simulate a trace of information fluctuations that were of the same origin and nature as these wandering spirits, filled with pain and confusion.

He pulled Chen Zhiwei along, no longer trying to find a way out by sticking to the wall, but instead heading straight towards the center of the nest, the area where the wandering spirits were most concentrated, facing the gray wave of spirits.

A miracle happened.

As Xu Yan approached, carrying with him a dense aura of "deathly stillness" and "shared origin," the wandering spirits that had been frantically attacking the golden barrier suddenly froze. Their distorted figures became "gentle," and their restless whispers subsided.

As if Moses parted the Red Sea, the dense waves of spirits spontaneously parted to both sides, as if in awe, or as if ignoring, making way for them a narrow passage straight to the core.

Xu Yan walked calmly and steadily through the gray waves composed of countless tormented souls.

Chen Zhiwei followed closely behind, the light of the Soul-Suppressing Bell tightly enveloping her, counteracting the remaining spiritual erosion outside the passage.

She watched Xu Yan's retreating figure as he walked through this silent, eerie, and magnificent sea of ​​spirits, her heart filled with indescribable awe.

This is not only a shock to the power of the Jade Cicada, but also a shock to the amazing insight and courage that Xu Yan showed in the face of adversity.

Observation room.

"This...this is impossible?!" The technician stared in disbelief at the illogical scene on the surveillance footage. "He...he disguised himself as part of 'them'? What kind of principle is that?!"

Lin Lan slowly exhaled, her eyes sparkling with undisguised appreciation and curiosity.

She murmured to herself, a hint of excitement in her voice:
“It’s not about pretending to be ‘them,’ but about understanding the ‘environment’ and integrating yourself into its rules. Amazing… Xu Yan, you’re giving me more and more surprises.” After passing through that eerie, wandering spirit area, a heavy, rusty iron gate appeared ahead.

On the door, painted with dark red, seemingly still-wet paint, was a huge, eerie symbol that was constantly wriggling slightly—the simplified mark of the “center” that they had seen from the outside!
A dark aura, ten times purer and ten times more dangerous than that of the wandering spirit area, seeped out from the crack in the door like a living thing, carrying a sense of blasphemy against life and distortion of rules.

“The core anomaly… is inside.” Xu Yan murmured. He could feel a slight vibration coming from the camera in his arms, an instinctive reaction when encountering a high-level entity.

He tried pushing the door, but it wouldn't budge.

There was no keyhole on the door, only that slowly wriggling symbol, as if mocking the power of physics.

“I need a ‘key’… or, to understand its ‘rules’.” Xu Yan stared at the symbol, fragments of past memories surging in his mind, but he couldn’t find a direct answer.

He cannot, and should not, use the power of "Yuan," as that would be tantamount to drinking poison to quench his thirst.

The atmosphere inside the observation room was somber.

The technician reported: "The target 'rule complex' is active, with its energy level stable at the peak of E+ level. Its spiritual pressure characteristics indicate that it has a high degree of mental pollution and rule distortion. The success rate of conventional bronze-level response strategies is less than 0.1%."

Lin Lan didn't speak, she just stared intently at the screen.

How will Xu Yan break through this door? By forcibly attacking the symbols? That will only trigger a stronger backlash.

Inside the corridor.

Xu Yan did not act rashly.

He closed his eyes and heightened his senses to the extreme, carefully perceiving the pattern of the writhing symbols and the rhythm of the flowing dark aura.

A few seconds later, he suddenly opened his eyes, a flash of understanding in them.

“It’s not a lock, but a ‘filter’,” Xu Yan quickly told Chen Zhiwei. “It repels ‘life’ and ‘order’. Any touch that carries a strong aura of a living person or orderly spiritual energy will be considered an attack.”

He immediately said to Chen Zhiwei, "Zhiwei, Yuchan!"

Chen Zhiwei understood and, together with Xu Yan, simultaneously infused their spiritual energy into the jade cicada.

Instantly, the power of concealment was activated to its extreme, and an invisible, absolutely "dead" membrane completely enveloped the two of them. All the vitality, heat, and even the orderly fluctuations of spiritual energy around them were perfectly concealed, as if they had turned into two cold stones, merging into one with the surrounding environment.

Inside the observation room, a technician stared at the two signals that had almost disappeared from the psionic detection screen and exclaimed, "They've vanished?! No... they've been perfectly concealed! This level of concealment..."

A glint flashed in Lin Lan's eyes: "He used the rules, rather than fighting against them. He saw through the first layer."

Xu Yan reached out again and gently pressed on the wriggling symbol.

As expected, no counterattack was triggered.

The symbol was still wriggling, but it seemed to regard them as "dead objects" or "the same kind".

Immediately afterwards, a dull thud came from inside the iron gate as a mechanism turned, and with a creak, it slowly opened a crack inward.

(End of this chapter)