Chapter 219: Underground Tunnel
Truso: What are you talking about? I don't understand any of it.
Lin Ye: Is your mental energy just for decoration? Or is your brain made of water?
Truso: ...I only know how to use mental energy for fighting.
Charlotte: What a waste. You might as well release your mental energy into the wild.
Lin Ye: If you can send the length and angles of each corridor segment to the chat room, I can help calculate for you. But you can't make any mistakes—a tiny error leads to huge miscalculations.
Truso: Uh, never mind then. I don't have any measuring tools.
Lin Ye: Then there's nothing to be done. I'm continuing to explore the underground tunnels. Talk later.
Lin Ye closed the chat room and entered the underground platform.
The platform was pitch black. As his light swept across, Lin Ye discovered a massive blood-red eyeball on the wall on one side of the platform.
This eyeball looked vivid and extremely realistic. Without mental energy, Lin Ye would have thought it was an actual eyeball growing on the wall. But it was actually just an exceptionally realistic mural.
"Huh?"
Just as Lin Ye shifted his gaze away, he caught movement from the eyeball on the wall in his peripheral vision.
But when he turned to look directly at the eyeball, he found it hadn't moved at all.
Lin Ye carefully sensed the interior of the eyeball again, but he detected nothing, as if it were just an ordinary mural.
This time Lin Ye didn't look away. Instead, he stared intently at the eyeball while simultaneously controlling his spiritual energy blade to slice through the wall.
The Waste Zone had high spiritual energy concentration, allowing Lin Ye to easily manipulate the ambient spiritual energy.
As the wall was cut apart, Lin Ye suddenly discovered that beneath the mural grew densely packed blood-red active eyeballs of various sizes.
These eyeballs kept rotating to look in different directions, but when the mural was cut open, they scattered in all directions like startled insects, with some escaping deep into the wall structure.
The eyeballs moved extremely fast. Lin Ye attacked immediately but only managed to pierce two eyeballs before they escaped.
Collecting the eyeball corpses, Lin Ye again sensed deep within the wall structure, this time discovering an area that mental energy couldn't penetrate.
Earlier he had been deceived by those eyeballs—they had used some method to fake the situation behind the mural.
Lin Ye used his spiritual energy blade to cut through the wall and dig out the object that couldn't be sensed with mental energy.
It was a pitch-black irregular stone about the size of a human head.
'Could this be Waste Stone?'
Lin Ye didn't know what Waste Stone was either, but judging from the name, this stone had a high probability of being Waste Stone.
'Too bad I don't know how to use this thing.'
Lin Ye stored the Waste Stone in his loot space, then used mental energy again to sense deep within the surrounding walls.
Although he didn't know the purpose of Waste Stone, the third additional mission required collecting some valuable Waste Zone items.
After sensing for a while, Lin Ye didn't discover a second Waste Stone.
'None left... No, maybe there are other places where eyeballs gather within the walls.'
After some thought, Lin Ye tried using Victoria's fluctuating mental detection method to sense his surroundings, but this time he wasn't sensing for participants—he was sensing for eyeballs and Waste Stone.
'The mental fluctuations of eyeballs are very weak... Modifying fluctuation pattern... Concentrating mental energy... Increasing mental energy intensity...'
It didn't take long for Lin Ye to adjust the frequency of his mental fluctuations. After several more adjustments, he finally detected the positions of nearby eyeballs.
There was a section of wall behind which numerous eyeballs had gathered.
Lin Ye didn't move immediately. Instead, he began carving runes near the wall. However, before he could act, those sharp eyeballs scattered like small fish startled in water, with most escaping deep into the wall structure.
Previously they hadn't expected Lin Ye to see through their disguise at all, otherwise Lin Ye wouldn't have even managed to hit two eyeballs.
Lin Ye dug out the Waste Stone from inside the wall and placed it in his loot space.
After confirming there were no other valuable items on the platform, Lin Ye jumped into the pitch-black tunnel.
He didn't know if there were still trains here, but even if there were operating trains, as long as the trains didn't completely fill the tunnel, he would have places to take cover.
Just after entering the tunnel, Lin Ye sensed that one side of the tunnel was blocked off. He was about to turn around when a possibility occurred to him.
'If that eyeball hadn't moved slightly, I really might have been completely fooled by these eyeballs and died here.'
Mental perception was Lin Ye's most important method of gathering information. If his mental perception was deceived, he would make many wrong judgments and might even overlook enemy attacks—this state was extremely dangerous.
If he hadn't been enhanced by God's Blood, Lin Ye wouldn't have noticed the eyeball's movement at all earlier. Although it left potential risks, he had to admit that God's Blood was quite useful.
Lin Ye used the mental fluctuation detection method to sense the tunnel interior. The walls were filled with blood-red eyeballs of various sizes.
They were affecting Lin Ye's perception, attempting to manipulate his actions.
Controlling beings with mental energy wasn't difficult for these eyeballs. If it weren't Lin Ye here, even if replaced by an intermediate spiritual energy user, they would be controlled to death by these eyeballs without any resistance.
Lin Ye tried attacking nearby eyeballs, but whenever he showed even slight attacking intent, those eyeballs would quickly disappear deep into the walls.
Even when he didn't show intent, it was useless—his attack speed couldn't keep up with the eyeballs' escape speed.
Lin Ye could only use digging for Waste Stone to soothe his frustration at not being able to hit the eyeballs.
There weren't many Waste Stones in the tunnel walls, but there weren't few either. Lin Ye was taking the 'blocked' tunnel path, and every few dozen meters he could find a Waste Stone within the walls.
As Lin Ye advanced deeper into the tunnel, eyeballs began gathering around him. They seemed to have noticed Lin Ye's insufficient attack speed, so they only fled when Lin Ye attacked the walls directly, while other eyeballs took turns affecting Lin Ye's mental perception.
Lin Ye could only temporarily withdraw his mental energy and switch to using his five senses to gather information.
He could actually destroy the walls on a large scale, but this was underground, with that dangerous grassland above—he definitely didn't want to bury himself alive in this place.
Lin Ye continued forward while digging for Waste Stones. Waste Stones were generally located where eyeballs were most concentrated. As long as he didn't use mental perception to navigate, these eyeballs couldn't affect him.
'Can I use the mental fluctuation detection method to sense my surroundings?'
This detection method could only sense specific types of creatures. Lin Ye wanted to improve it, but couldn't think of an approach immediately.
Just as Lin Ye was contemplating detection methods, a massive blood-red mouth suddenly emerged from below, biting toward his lower body.
The mouth bit through two spiritual energy shields. Before the shields completely shattered, Lin Ye controlled his spiritual energy blade to sever the connection between the mouth and the ground.
Having lost its buried portion, the mouth twitched several times, then released the nearly shattered spiritual energy shields and fell to the ground motionless.
"There are actually traps here too?"
Lin Ye never expected that he would be the one to step into a trap someday.