High Above

For the first time, Ian thought he saw Sister Yingguang - but soon, as the phantom of the dragon girl gradually stared at him, and the picture in the drone gradually became clearer, he understood that the other party was not the one he knew. A brilliant nun.

But it did give him a familiar feeling.

Under the dim moonlight, Ian saw a 'phantom'. In academic terms, it is ‘virtual projection’.

Yes, in the silver chip, this kind of phantom is called virtual projection, and it is essentially a silhouette of the soul of a creature projected into the virtual world and reflected back to the real world... Although it sounds weird. times, but in fact, it has real power. Even because of the changes in the virtual realm itself, the power of the virtual realm projection may even be more powerful than the original body.

But what really surprised Ian and Tres was the appearance of this virtual realm projection.

In the moonlight, a dragon girl wearing scale armor is walking slowly forward in the grassland. She has long fiery red hair like flowing flames, hanging down like a waterfall, over her white neck, slender waist and The snow-white feet touched the ground, igniting layers of translucent spiritual flames.

This dragon girl has a very beautiful appearance, with a pair of pure golden eyes. She looks around the world with a hint of confusion and curiosity. She looks quite weak and cute - but there is an instinct between her brows. Arrogant, and although the close-fitting scales highlighted the girl's slender waist, the dense dragon scale spikes on them meant that she was not easy to get close to.

As for the blade tail behind him that is constantly swaying, as if it is made up of many deformed joints, it proves this point.

——This is an extremely dangerous creature.

Whether it was Ian or Tres, this was the first thought that flashed through their minds.

Especially the dragon horns on the opponent's head. Abnormal, weird, burning with a translucent scarlet psychic fire, like a molten antenna struck by lightning, or a gnawed blood coral, with a sense of incomplete distortion that makes people feel While uneasy, it also gives people a different kind of dangerous beauty.

"This phantom's power has the third level peak...basically the strongest one among the phantoms wandering in the wild."

When Tres saw the description below the dragon girl, he couldn't help but whispered to himself: "Her spiritual flame is not fire, but a kind of 'poison' created by pure spiritual power, which can paralyze, paralyze, and lose the person who comes in contact with it." They have lost their consciousness and even suffered from memory confusion - several victims are currently undergoing rescue."

"The good thing is that she basically doesn't kill people. Unless she is actively attacked, otherwise, at best, she will be burned to a coma."

But the shock in Ian's heart was not due to other reasons.

But because of the dragon girl's appearance.

"Isn't this Anfa? Of course, it's a feminine Anfa... Wait, doesn't this mean that this is Xiou?!"

The beautiful dragon girl looks very much like Anfa's twin sister, especially the elf's golden eyes, which have an innocent childishness, but her hair and figure have some characteristics of dragons and mountain people. , in general, the most professional ethnologists can recognize several characteristics at a glance.

But besides being surprised by his appearance, Ian's heart couldn't help but sink: "I know that Xiou's dragon soul was restrained by the Feiyan Land. In other words, Xiou was actually conducting experiments in the Avak area. In the room."

"And now, Xio also appears in the phantoms in this area - can I speculate that all the phantoms in this area are essentially the projection of the souls imprisoned in the laboratory in the virtual realm?"

This is not impossible, it can even be said to be the truth!

"We need to get around these phantom monsters."

Tres said this, not out of fear, but out of ordinary considerations: "First capture an ordinary phantom outside. After completing your mission, we will slowly go deeper..."

Complete His Highness Mikael's mission. This was what he did not say, and Ian nodded slightly: "The phantoms of the peak of the third energy level have appeared. There must be a fourth energy level in the core of this laboratory. We can't attract too much attention... In this way, first We use drones to detect an area and then take a step forward. This is the safest way."

Although the speed of exploration is the slowest and it is easy for other teams to fall behind, neither Tres nor Ian intends to take credit for pure exploration - completing their own tasks is the most important thing.

The tracked off-road vehicle speeds through the wilderness of the Awak region, kicking up dust. The fields that were once vibrant in summer have now become barren and desolate. The residents who lived here in the past have either fled here long ago, or they have been wandered by the aberrant monsters and phantoms. Kill and become a corpse.

Now, Ian and his team's vehicle passed by a former village. The place was empty and dilapidated, full of traces of being attacked by wild beasts. The brown bloodstains on the ground, the mutilated corpses and the charred houses all proved that something had happened here. A tragedy and a desolate atmosphere made the goblins become increasingly serious.

The speed of the off-road vehicle is not fast, and drones are used to detect crises ahead at any time. At this speed, they can probably reach the core area of ​​​​Awak before dawn, which is the hilly area where the Viscount's residence and the suspected laboratory are. .

Ian is also constantly collecting information about the abnormal psychic fluctuations here.

Judging from the feedback from the silver chip, the psychic anomaly occurring in the Avak area today is essentially a huge virtual ritual.

This ritual was once recorded in the book "Abyss Sacrifice". It is called the "Silent Abyss". Its name comes from a large-scale virtual change in the lost era thousands of years ago.

At that time, the country of Yanjiang had not yet been unified. In an area close to the Exile Land - it was not called the Exile Land at that time, but was called the Extreme Cold Forest - there was a child who was born with extraordinary psychic abilities. He was born, but was sacrificed by the local tribe to the cold winter.

His death, the extreme resentment and pain before his death, connected the fear of winter in all the creatures in the extremely cold forests, forming a huge avalanche that occurred in the virtual world.

A fragment of the virtual world collapsed, or it connected to the real world.

In an instant, the entire arctic forest was enveloped by the virtual realm, which was filled with extreme psychic cold. If you opened your mouth, your tongue would be frozen off. Everyone could only remain silent, and there were many creatures wandering inside. The eternal resentment and pain are still distorting that area of ​​time and space, causing an extra place of exile in the forest that will suddenly appear from time to time and swallow everyone.

If it does not reach the third energy level, as long as it enters it, even the sublimated ones will not be able to survive and will not be able to return.

And this time, although it was not as good as the collapse of the virtual realm in the Exiled Land, Ian felt something bad: "If we say that those madmen are planning to rely on the pain caused by the death of millions of people, and despair, to artificially conduct a virtual collapse...then what is their real purpose?"

Ian doesn't believe that there is any meaning in simply recreating the 'Abyss of Silence'. The other party definitely wants to use this to grasp some more profound information...

Moreover, he also understood why Xiou had been regarded as a target and a trap was made to capture him.

Because Xio is an abnormal dragon.

He, or she, or even him, is unable to move, trapped in the dragon's nest, and can never leave.

The fear and confusion for a long time are hidden in the heart, and the resentment and unwillingness towards one's own body are the best sacrifices to activate the 'Abyss of Silence'.

and……

"Once the Silent Abyss unfolds, it proves that the core area has been shrouded by the fragments of the virtual realm. It just depends on how big it can eventually expand... In other words, our target, the laboratory in the Avak area, is now likely to have been Shrouded in a virtual realm!"

Ian told this guess to Hua An and Mo Feng, who were also controlling the instruments and collecting virtual realm data.

The two fairies immediately opened their eyes. They looked at each other, obviously very surprised: "They want to create a virtual overlap zone? And they have succeeded?"

"Oh my god, I thought they had created a giant ethereal psychic entity. They had such a big battle to summon a certain ethereal machine god - I didn't expect that they actually caused the virtual realm fragments to collapse into reality. world!"

The goblins did master some of the data and saw some clues.

But just as Ian thought before, as long as the beginning of the guess is wrong, the subsequent answers will not be correct - there are too many possibilities in the virtual world, and the signs are too complex, making it difficult to completely foresee.

If Ian wasn't cheating, it would be hard to see this.

"Yes, it is precisely because this area has gradually begun to overlap with the virtual realm that those 'phantoms', that is, the virtual realm projections, appear so frequently!"

Ian guessed that he was not only discussing with the goblin, but also telling the news to Mikael, who was definitely listening: "But it can't be the God of the Void Realm - Archduke Thorin has been moving out for so many years. The population in his own territory has been facing a refugee wave for almost six or seven years. He must be trying to reduce the population density in his territory and reduce the possibility of interference from the God of the Void Realm!"

"In this case, we must capture a virtual realm projection as soon as possible."

Hearing this, Mo Feng nodded seriously, so hard that even the purple ink forming his hair floated out: "Moreover, this will cause irreversible damage to the virtual realm."

"The virtual space corresponding to the current Exiled Land is still fragmented, and it will probably take more than a hundred years to return to normal. We must not let the virtual space in the Avak region collapse, otherwise it will be another thousand-year trauma!"

This is indeed the correct idea. Through the projection of the virtual world, we can in turn determine the progress of the Silent Abyss ritual, and we can also understand many things.

For example, Grand Duke Thorin’s ultimate goal of doing all this.

After hearing the discussion between Ian and the goblin, although Tres couldn't understand it at all, he at least understood that they had to go deeper.

Therefore, he ordered the two off-road vehicles to go deeper, instead of just trying their luck on the outer layer.

Soon, they found a group of virtual realm projections.

But the problem is, there are a lot of phantoms coming.

In front of the cross-country transport vehicle, seventy or eighty knights suddenly appeared. An entire knight group galloped on horseback, as fast as the wind, rolling up smoke and dust into the sky, and speeding towards Ian and his group.

"The Knights of Viscount Avac?!"

Tres, who had done his homework, looked at the scenery transmitted by the drone and couldn't help but open his eyes wide. He said in confusion: "Why are they here!"

"Did they also become virtual projections?"