Chapter 00161: Lingering Echoes
# Lingering Echoes
Chapter 161
Novel: Above Destiny
Chapter 161: Lingering Echoes
In an instant, everything turned dark.
Countless fragmented scenes flashed before his eyes.
A collapsed hospital, lifeless eyes devoid of light, fading lives and cold corpses.
Walls riddled with cracks, falling dust, and distant, piercing screams.
"Try again, doctor, please try one more time."
A patient covered in tumors clutched helplessly at the doctor's coat.
The equally disheveled doctor stood frozen, lips trembling, too exhausted to speak the words that needed to be said.
"It's fine if I die, but please, save her..."
On the hospital bed, a desperate patient used his last ounce of strength to reach for his wife's hand on the adjacent bed, but he couldn't quite reach her.
The patient on the other bed had already passed away.
And so, he wailed.
Death came amidst his cries of despair.
The piercing cries echoed, but no one paid attention.
In the chaos of the collapsed hospital, no one even turned to look... because such cries of despair had already engulfed everything.
In the makeshift operating room, the surgeon paused, then set down his scalpel.
"Massive hemorrhage. There's no saving her. Let it go."
"But... there are still patients..."
"There's no medicine or equipment left! Where's the rescue team?! Where are the supplies they promised?!"
The enraged doctor roared, his eyes bloodshot, demanding, "What are we supposed to save her with? What are we supposed to save all these patients with? Lies? Everyone's begging me, begging me to hold on a little longer... I've already done my best, I've given it everything I've got! But who's going to tell me how much longer I have to keep lying?"
No one answered.
Only faint sobs could be heard.
The sound of tears hitting the ground.
The dim light fell into the dust, disappearing, like a soul leaping off a cliff, trying to reach the sky, only to plunge into the abyss.
Tears mixed with blood, reflecting the crimson sky.
Flames spread, thick smoke rising like pillars, holding up the gray-black heavens.
A sound of something falling echoed.
As if the heavens were collapsing.
The world fell into darkness, never to return.
All that remained were lingering echoes.
Yacheng, heavy rain.
Ten minutes after the Time Rift entered the northern mountain area, a speeding off-road vehicle came to a halt outside the tightly sealed square.
As Wen Wen jumped out of the car, she looked up and saw the pouring rain.
In the thick curtain of rain, a faint, blurry vortex could be seen.
It was already trapped within a force field that had appeared in the air.
Unable to move forward.
This was the entrance to the Time Rift.
Under the direction of the craftsmen from the third division of the Safety Bureau, construction vehicles were clearing the way, quickly completing the evacuation.
Then, they prepared to tow the trapped Time Rift to an uninhabited area.
The worst outcome had been avoided.
She let out a sigh of relief.
"Where's the search and rescue team?"
Wen Wen waved off the others offering her an umbrella and walked straight to Tong Shan at the front: "Have they been dispatched yet?"
"Currently, the Time Rift is in a locked state. The internal state has already started its cycle, and it probably won't open again until it's over."
Tong Shan stood under the vortex, sighing softly: "The good news is, after inspection, the alert level of the Time Rift is roughly at the Transformation stage. It hasn't reached the Rebirth or Transcendence stages yet. Also, Ahua is still safe. The life lock at home hasn't been triggered. The Star Core Association has offered help. Fourth Uncle just returned from Chaocheng. If the life lock is triggered, he can provide assistance at any time."
"Enough, stop with the buildup."
Wen Wen was all too familiar with the Tian Yuan group's habit of building up before delivering bad news.
She irritably flicked her lighter open and closed, "Just tell me the bad news directly."
"The bad news is, the Time Rift's detachment might have been an accident, but its arrival in Yacheng wasn't."
Tong Shan finally turned around, expressionless: "When the Time Rift began its drift, the Haizhou Guardian had already made arrangements, and the Ship City Safety Bureau was responsible for carrying it out. But initially, it was heading out to sea, not towards Yacheng. As a result, the Taiyi Ring and the Ship City personnel boarded ships and went out to sea, only to find nothing. Midway, it suddenly turned, heading straight for Yacheng."
"Something in Yacheng attracted the Time Rift?" Wen Wen frowned.
"Impossible."
Tong Shan shook his head firmly: "The premise of attraction is that there's an observable 'gravitational pull' between the two. But at such a distance, if there were a gravitational pull strong enough to drag an entire Time Rift to Yacheng, the Star Core Association would have sounded the alarm long ago. The entire city might have even been temporarily split into another dimension. According to its trajectory, it was supposed to head straight for the city square. But due to other reasons, it deviated and we intercepted it at the outskirts of the northern mountain area."
Wen Wen's expression gradually turned cold.
"So you're saying... someone did this on purpose?"
Someone wanted to send it to Yacheng, to a densely populated area, so that when it deteriorated, it would explode...
At that point, at least two districts would be completely flattened, and half of Yacheng would be contaminated.
No, probably more than just Yacheng.
"Ten minutes ago, the Chaocheng Safety Bureau also sent an urgent message. Another Time Rift appeared within the city limits. But because Yacheng was hit first, they were prepared and managed to intercept it. However, they can't enter the Time Rift yet and must allocate manpower to guard it, ensuring the worst doesn't happen. Ship City and Jiangcheng have also seen unusual activity. The smaller cities haven't reported anything yet, but they're worried about being wiped out and have started requesting support from the larger cities nearby."
Tong Shan said, "This is using the lives of ordinary people in Haizhou as hostages to tie up the Safety Bureau's resources... Just two incidents have thrown the entire Haizhou into panic. Who do you think is behind this?"
Wen Wen didn't speak.
She silently lowered her head and lit a cigarette.
The flickering flame was extinguished by the rain.
Crushed between her clenched fingers, the ashes fell into the rainwater, carried away by the muddy flow into the foul darkness.
And the sound of the heavy rain suddenly stopped.
Only silence remained.
"The Heretic Cult..."
Wen Wen's eyes darkened as she looked up at the rain frozen in the air, suspended in the stillness.
She sighed softly: "First the Dragon Sacrifice Society, and now these lunatics. Why do these persistent pests never seem to die out?"
Everything that had passed vanished without a trace.
In just a brief moment, Ji Jue staggered back a step, gasping for breath.
Returning from the records of the past, back inside the Time Rift.
He raised his hand, stopping Tong Hua from speaking.
"Let's go back to the office first."
The two of them made their way safely and smoothly back to the office.
Once inside, Tong Hua saw Ji Jue, that scoundrel, immediately chain the door shut.
Then, he pulled out a blood vial from his pocket and unsheathed the Skull Spirit Cage from his waist—the skull's eyes now glowed a deep, almost red green, a sign of how much he had siphoned off.
Using the blood, rich with vitality and spiritual energy, Ji Jue began to paint on the walls with his fingers.
His fingers, strengthened by his physical enhancements, were as hard as metal.
With the aid of his innate skill, he carved a series of spirit circuits into the walls, from left to right, top to bottom.
He didn't spare the floor or the ceiling either.
In just a few minutes, the once tidy and solemn office had transformed into a blood-soaked, crimson-patterned den that could easily be mistaken for a cult's sacrificial chamber.
"Necessity calls for haste. This will have to do for now."
Once done, Ji Jue clapped his hands and placed the skull in the center of the spirit circuits.
Instantly, spiritual energy flowed and spread, sealing off the entire office.
For a workshop's isolation, such a slapdash method was laughable, but for simply creating a barrier and preventing prying eyes, it was sufficient.
"Alright, now we can talk."
Ji Jue asked, "What else did you find in the fragmented records?"
"This Time Rift drifted over from the Quancheng Caverns."
Tong Hua sighed, organizing the chaotic findings.
"If I'm not mistaken, the place we're in now is the last hospital standing before Quancheng was destroyed decades ago. But just half a month ago, this place was just a nest teeming with monsters. Its transformation into a Time Rift must have started recently."
"..."
Ji Jue fell silent, understanding her implication.
If this hospital had been a ruin for decades, why had it suddenly become a Time Rift? Perhaps the environment within the caverns had gradually deteriorated, leading to a conflict between the forces of order and chaos, resulting in an irreparable distortion.
But the question remained: even if it became a Time Rift, how did it suddenly start drifting and end up in Yacheng?
Even if someone had dragged the dungeon here, how did it manage to drift into Yacheng's vicinity?
After all, Yacheng was quite far from the ruins of Quancheng, practically at opposite ends of Haizhou.
Why didn't it go to the closer Ship City or the more accessible Chaocheng? Instead, it bypassed smaller cities like Jiangcheng and headed straight for Yacheng?
Ji Jue remembered Zhao Zhou, who had vanished before his eyes.
Wasn't he the contractor hired by the Safety Bureau to patrol the outskirts of Quancheng's ruins?
There were too many mysteries, but they were too distant for Ji Jue to ponder.
Right now, survival within the Time Rift was his top priority.
For now, he was just barely managing to stay alive under the pressure of hospital regulations, superiors, colleagues, and patients.
As for the lord and the core, there were still no clues.
After a moment of contemplation, he pulled out the Soul Summoning Bell from his pocket.
After the surgery, before Director Qian could dump more trouble on him, he had finally gotten a brief period of rest.
But that didn't mean he could relax.
The key now was to map out the hospital's structure.
Sending people to do this was too risky.
After all, no one knew what horrors lurked in the depths of the hospital, or whether the attending physicians had territorial instincts...
He needed expendable scouts.
Ding~
A clear, crisp sound echoed within the sealed office.
The blood-red spirit circuits on the walls flared up, containing the bell's chime within the room.
Then, Ji Jue was glad he had prepared thoroughly...
The once empty office was now filled with countless shadowy figures, their faint wails overlapping, making one's head spin.
Just this one office alone held so many fragmented spirits.
Ji Jue rang the bell a second time, and the fragmented spirits gathered around the bell, coiling around the clapper.
When he rang it a third time, translucent spirit spiders, each the size of a finger, began to drop from the bell.
At first, they were as big as a palm or a fist, but as more appeared, they grew smaller and smaller, until they were no larger than a fingernail, almost unnoticeable.
"Eek—"
Tong Hua instinctively pushed her chair back.
By now, Ji Jue was surrounded by a swarm of eerie spiders of various sizes.
The sheer density of them would make anyone with a fear of insects scream on the spot.
The spiders, inheriting the ferocity of the fragmented spirits, were barely restrained, eager to attack and devour Ji Jue's soul.
But the moment they touched him, it was as if they had been burned, frantically retreating to keep their distance.
Yet, bound by the bell, they couldn't escape.
"Record book."
Ji Jue reached out: "Give me two sheets, regular ones will do, but make sure they're stable."
Tong Hua didn't ask what he needed them for.
Taking a deep breath, she grabbed a notebook, tore out two pages, and with a surge of spiritual energy, a silvery light briefly flashed across the pages before fading.
The moment Ji Jue took them, he felt an urge to write.
Without hesitation, Ji Jue tore the pages into tiny pieces.
With the aid of his non-aggressive forging and mental focus, each fragment retained the essence of the record book, though their quality had degraded to the brink of uselessness.
Then, Ji Jue pointed upward.
Immediately, the spiders scurried over the fragments, carrying the pieces as they climbed the walls, pushed aside ceiling panels, and slipped through the spirit barrier, disappearing into the darkness.
Only the faint rustling sounds, like a light rain, gradually faded away.
Ventilation ducts, ceilings, central air conditioning, electrical conduits...
The spiders, large and small, infiltrated every nook and cranny.
Ji Jue sighed regretfully.
It was a pity he hadn't brought his mercury vial.
Without mercury as a medium, pure spirit constructs had a limited lifespan, so he had to resort to this crude method.
He had to act quickly.
Limited by his own abilities, he couldn't manually control each spider.
He could only give vague commands, sending them in different directions through the ducts.
If they were discovered, they would self-destruct, imprinting their path onto the paper fragments before their spiritual energy ran out, and delivering them to a designated location.
Half an hour later, Ji Jue rang the Soul Summoning Bell again.
This time, a long, thin centipede crawled out from the ceiling, soon returning with a bundle of fragments from the main hall's ceiling.
However, only three-quarters of the fragments sent out had returned.
Some had been discovered, some captured, or perhaps met with accidents, failing to reach the designated spot.
But it was enough.
With the fragments of the record book and Tong Hua's interpretation, every ten minutes, the general layout of the hospital's main outpatient building began to take shape on the paper before them.
From the seventh-floor rooftop to the basement morgue and equipment rooms, a few areas remained blank, warranting further investigation or probing.
But none of the spiders sent to the inpatient building had returned.
Through the window, the inpatient building, covered in flesh, still echoed with wails and cries, as if they would never cease.
"We're on the fourth floor, Obstetrics and Gynecology, sharing the floor with Dermatology and Health Care."
Ji Jue recalled the elevator buttons and the floor indicators on the walls, trying to fill in the departments he remembered.
But Tong Hua's memory and observational skills were clearly superior.
She quickly sketched out the floor plan she had only glanced at once, labeling each floor: Internal Medicine, Emergency, Surgery, Critical Care, ENT...
The hospital's main structure gradually became clear.
The first floor was completely in ruins.
The second floor was partially occupied by some unknown entity, sealing off the entire level.
Parts of the third floor still had functioning departments.
The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh floors were relatively intact, with all their departments and sections listed.
Now, there was only one urgent direction left to investigate...
The two exchanged a glance, instantly understanding.
—The archives room!
(End of Chapter)