novellk Chapter 566 Central Node
Chapter 566 Central Node
"Sense where the energy is most concentrated."
Zhao Hao nodded and closed his eyes.
The pale golden light between his brows shone brightly again, even brighter than before. His talent automatically activated when he sensed the energy channels of the barrier, transforming those invisible energy flows into images that his brain could understand.
He saw it.
In his perceived world, the entire North Wind Barrier transformed into a vast net of light. Lines of light crisscrossed, some as thick as an arm, others as thin as a hair, converging from all directions towards the same point.
The density of those lines far exceeds that of other places, like countless rivers flowing into the same ocean.
Zhao Hao opened his eyes and pointed into the depths of the icy plains.
"Over there. About... four miles away."
His fingers trembled slightly, not from nervousness, but from the overwhelming pressure emanating from that direction. Even at such a distance, the energy still made him feel suffocated.
"The energy density is at least ten times higher than the surrounding area. It's like...like the center of a vortex, where all the energy is converging, or like a heart, from which all the blood is pumped out."
Lin Tian glanced at the finger he was pointing at, then stepped forward.
Zhao Hao took a deep breath and quickly followed.
The deeper you go, the more desolate the surrounding scenery becomes.
The ice layer was no longer flat; instead, large areas of it fractured and bulged. In some places, the ice surface arched high, as if something was pushing it up from below; in other places, it was deeply sunken, revealing the gray-black rock layers underneath.
Runes were carved on the rocks, but they had faded so much that they were almost invisible.
The icicles thinned out, replaced by large chunks of ice rock. These ice rocks were scattered across the ice surface, varying in size from as large as a house to as small as a human head. Their shapes were irregular, and their surfaces were covered with cracks, as if they had been torn from the ice by some enormous force.
An ancient atmosphere permeated the air.
It wasn't the stench of monsters, nor the aura of death, but something more fundamental—the sedimentation of time.
Zhao Hao's breathing became increasingly rapid.
It wasn't fatigue, but the oppressive energy was growing stronger, like an invisible hand choking him. His heart was racing, his temples were throbbing, and a fine layer of cold sweat beaded on his forehead.
"Are you alright?" Lin Tian asked without turning around.
"It's...it's alright," Zhao Hao said through gritted teeth.
He didn't say "okay" because he really wasn't capable. But he didn't want to say "no" even more and be left here.
After passing through a narrow ice valley and then over a raised ice ridge, the view suddenly opened up before us.
It was a huge depression in the ice field.
The depression is circular, about 300 meters in diameter, and surrounded by towering ice walls, resembling a natural arena. The surface of the ice walls is as smooth as a mirror, reflecting the gray-white sky and everything on the ground.
In the very center of the depression stood an altar.
hexagon.
Each side is approximately five meters long and about three meters high.
The altar was made of an unknown black stone. The surface of the stone was not smooth, but covered with a fine texture, like the natural patterns formed by some ancient rock under high temperature and pressure.
At each of the six corners of the altar stood a stone pillar, about the height of a person, its surface covered with runes. The lines of the runes were densely packed, extending from the top of the pillar to its base, eventually merging into the patterns on the altar's base.
The runes on the six stone pillars are connected by patterns on the base, forming a complete rune array.
In the center of the altar, a piece of ice crystal floats.
The ice crystal was about the size of a washbasin, with an irregular shape, like a diamond that had been cut randomly. Its surface had countless facets, each of which glowed slightly. Light refracted and reflected between the facets, creating an extremely complex light and shadow effect.
The colors of those lights weren't just ice blue; there were also pale gold, silver-white, and even a very faint trace of purple, as if a rainbow had been flattened and stuffed into this ice crystal.
But Lin Tian's gaze fell on the cracks on the surface of the ice crystal.
Three.
One line extends from the top to the bottom, almost traversing the entire ice crystal; the other two branches out from the sides, like the forks of a tree branch.
The edges of the crack were not smooth, but rather had a fine, jagged edge, as if some internal force was constantly tearing it apart.
Beneath the ice crystals, there is a groove around the base of the altar.
Those grooves were originally meant to be channels for guiding the flow of energy, like circuitry on a circuit board. But now, several of the grooves have broken, and the edges of the breaks are blackened, like burnt-out fuses.
Some runes have deviated from their original positions. The deviation is small, only a few centimeters, but it is this few centimeters of deviation that has caused the entire energy channel to be cut off.
Zhao Hao stood beside Lin Tian, looking up at the altar with his mouth slightly open.
"This...this is..."
"Central node," Lin Tian said.
The system notification sounded in both of their ears at the same time.
[Discovery: Central node of the North Wind Barrier.]
[Current seal integrity: 62%]
[Multiple damages detected at the central node: 3 core crystal cracks; 7 energy channel fractures; 5 rune misalignments.]
[The seal's integrity is continuously decreasing. If it falls below 50%, the central node will initiate an emergency shutdown procedure, at which point all external access permissions will be severed, including repair permissions.]
Lin Tian's gaze shifted from the ice crystals to the area around the altar.
Three monsters were wandering around the altar.
They weren't very big, about two meters tall, but the sense of oppression they gave off was far greater than that of the Ice Armor Rhinoceroses and Frostclaw Beasts we had encountered before.
Their bodies appear to be pieced together from ice crystals and rocks—the torsos are grayish-white rocks, the limbs are translucent ice crystals, and a faint blue light flows at the joints, like some kind of liquid energy circulating.
The head has no facial features, only a diamond-shaped groove, in which is embedded a blue crystal core the size of a fist. The crystal core is faintly glowing, sometimes bright and sometimes dim, like the frequency of a heartbeat.
【Guardians of the Icefield】
Rating: 75
Type: Elite
Special Feature: Ice Armor - When attacked by physical attacks, reduces damage by 30% and reflects frost damage back to the attacker.
Special Feature: Energy Link - There is an energy link between the three guardians. When any one of them is attacked, the attack power of the other two will be temporarily increased by 20% for 10 seconds.
Trait: Guardian Will - When near the central node, health regeneration speed is increased by 200%, and immunity to all control effects is granted.