Chapter 549 — Reconnaissance

The dragon's appearance had only deepened Gao Yang's interest in that mysterious impact crater on the southern slopes of the Dark Mountains.

Whatever it was, it had clearly drawn the dragon's attention—and what had drawn the dragon's attention the last time?

Cecil, corrupted by the magic tide.

After withdrawing from the satellite link, Gao Yang sat quietly in his study for a moment, then sent Amber to summon Hedy and Byron.

When Hedy heard that Gao Yang intended to go to the southern slopes of the Dark Mountains himself to investigate, she was startled on the spot: "You're going to the southern part of the range?!"

"What's happening over there concerns me," Gao Yang said—there was no way to explain satellite surveillance to Hedy as she was now, so he left it at that. "The overload at the Great Wall happened only recently, and now there's a new disturbance near the wasteland. We have to find out what's going on."

"But it's far too dangerous over there," Hedy said anxiously. "Once you cross the Dark Mountains, you're staring the wasteland in the face..."

"I've faced it before, more than once," Gao Yang cut her off. "And crossing the Dark Mountains doesn't mean entering the wasteland—there's the Black Forest and the strip of plains in between. Strictly speaking, the southern slopes of the Dark Mountains still count as part of the 'civilized domain.' With my strength, plus a squad of elites, operating over there shouldn't be a problem."

Seeing Gao Yang's resolve, Hedy realized she probably had no way to talk him out of it.

The Ancestor always thought deeply before he acted; if he cared this much about the matter, there had to be a very important reason behind it.

But just as Hedy was about to nod and Gao Yang was about to discuss manpower with Byron, a voice suddenly came from the direction of the study door, cutting off everyone mid-motion: "Old friend, I'm afraid you won't need to cross the mountains for the time being—there's something going on in the Defiance Fortress."

Gao Yang looked up and saw Suojilin standing there.

...

When the "earthquake" occurred, Suojilin received orders at once. He led a squad of elite steel rangers into the Defiance Fortress, checking southward along the fortress's main corridor to confirm whether this ancient Gondorian structure had been affected by the tremors in the mountain.

As it turned out, the order had been both timely and absolutely necessary.

Magic crystal lamps driven by the modern magic net system lit the ancient, long fortress corridor as Gao Yang, accompanied by Amber, Byron, and Hedy, followed Suojilin deeper into the southern part of the fortress.

A squad of fully armed steel rangers marched with them, and along both sides of the corridor sentries could be seen standing guard at intervals; the farther south they moved, the denser the sentries became.

"After the earthquake, the man in charge of the Defiance Fortress arsenal sent in a report saying a great crash had come from the southern grand corridor," Suojilin said steadily as he walked at Gao Yang's side. "Workers in several of the southern work zones heard it too, along with obvious shaking. I was afraid the whole southern section might collapse, so I evacuated the workers from the area and checked along the main corridor the whole way..."

The long corridor gradually came to an end, and an exceptionally heavy, enormous isolation door presented itself before everyone.

This was the southern isolation door of the Defiance Fortress, and beyond this ponderous gate lay the vast cavern known as the Shadow Testing Ground. Gao Yang remembered this place—it was here that Amber had leapt through the Shadow Realm to reach the Pact Fortress, witnessed the assassination of Francis II, and brought back the key evidence of Crown Prince Edmund's secret collusion with the Cult of Ten Thousand Hells.

Because development and exploration of the fortress's other regions were still unfinished, and the current "Dark Zone Industrial Area" had no need for a space this large for the time being, the Shadow Testing Ground had been sealed off after that incident.

Suojilin came to the great gate of the Shadow Testing Ground and activated its magical mechanism. With a screech and grind of machinery, the newly installed magical mechanism drove the heavy isolation door slowly apart to either side, and the scene beyond the gate was laid before everyone's eyes.

"Honestly, it gave me a start too," Suojilin said.

Beyond the gate, a thin haze drifted through the vast cavern, and at the far end of Gao Yang's sight, daylight was pouring into the southern part of the cave—there was an extremely wide opening there, and the daylight and thin mist were clearly coming through it.

"Probably caused by the mountain collapsing—a secondary collapse from that 'earthquake' earlier. A section of rock sheared off and connected the originally sealed Shadow Testing Ground cavern with the outside," Suojilin said evenly. "The mist seeping in carries a faint magic-tide aura, but fortunately it's very thin—the kind of 'border mist' that's decayed to the point of being nearly harmless."

"...The southern Dark Mountains..." Byron stared at the rift at the end of the cavern, dumbstruck, and murmured, "Good God... it's been breached..."

Amber was just as dumbstruck: "So this Shadow Testing Ground was actually this close to the southern mountain wall?"

"Bring a full battalion here at once, with light and heavy artillery, and deploy them near the rift," Gao Yang said, whirling toward Byron, his words tumbling out fast. Then he looked to Hedy. "Muster the engineering corps, build fortifications near the rift, set up shield generators, and... bring plenty of Rebecca crystals."

If things worsened, he wouldn't mind blowing the entire southern fortress district to seal the gap.

Byron and Hedy grasped the gravity of the situation and responded swiftly to Gao Yang's orders: "Understood!" "Yes, sir!"

"I wanted to go have a look south of the Dark Mountains..." Gao Yang turned his head toward the Shadow Testing Ground, now open to the outside world, his tone thick with helplessness. "But I didn't mean to go like this..."

...

Soldiers and engineering teams urgently dispatched from Black Radiance City soon arrived at the Shadow Testing Ground, and with the cooperation of the steel rangers who had arrived earlier, they established a defense line inside the cavern as fast as they could and began building temporary fortifications anchored to it. Through all of this, Gao Yang did not leave the rift for even half a step.

It was only when the magic-guided cannons were set up near the cavern rift, and when large quantities of weapons and ammunition had been delivered to the south gate corridor, that Gao Yang and Hedy and the others finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Gao Yang brought Amber to the southern end of the cavern, and the two climbed atop the collapsed, shattered boulders to gaze out at the vast landscape beyond.

A slope covered in thin mist and tinged a purplish-black stretched away before them; this was the gentler mid-section of the southern slopes of the Dark Mountains, and at the slope's end, following the lie of the land all the way down, lay the boundless Black Forest.

The towering giant trees, eroded by chaotic magic energy, had taken on twisted, mutated, hideous forms. No flower, grass, or shrub looked as people remembered it; those plants mingled with thorns, poison sacs, rotting limbs, and swollen glands rustled ceaselessly under the foul wind, and some of them even crept slowly along between the rocks, while particularly unsettling shadows flickered in and out among the mutated, twisted vegetation, conjuring countless dreadful associations in every witness.