The lighting coverage had almost no blind spots, and the view from the watchtowers could overlook the entire area.
Any unauthorized intruder appearing in this plaza would be discovered almost immediately!
‘This is trouble…’
Lin Mo’s heart sank.
This was bad.
The level of security far exceeded his expectations.
He had originally thought that even if there were guards, they might only be scattered posts or patrols.
He hadn’t expected a well-equipped, heavily guarded underground fortress outpost.
He quickly scanned the passage exit where he was.
It was in a relatively dark corner at the edge of the plaza, but the distance to the nearest bunker and patrol route was no more than 50 meters.
Trying to cross this open area and sneak into those passages or doors that presumably led deeper without alerting anyone was simply a pipe dream.
Climbing?
The vault was smooth and filled with pipes and cables, with no place to grip.
Forcing his way through?
That would be suicide.
After observing for a longer time with bated breath, Lin Mo’s eyes acted like a precision scanner, missing no detail.
Finally, just as he was about to give up hope of sneaking in directly, his gaze fixed on an area below the right rock wall, shrouded in the shadow of a large transformer box.
There, there was a very faint, unnatural metallic reflection.
Lin Mo narrowed his eyes, focusing his vision to distinguish it.
That shape… a flat rectangular grid with what looked like screw marks on the edges…
‘A ventilation duct?’
And it was an inlet or exhaust port for a large central air circulation system!
A bold plan instantly formed in Lin Mo’s mind.
This might be his only chance!
He first retreated even more cautiously, ensuring he was completely hidden in the shadows of the passage exit.
Then, he closed his eyes and fully mobilized the little remaining Oracle power in his body.
An icy aura quietly condensed and circulated at his fingertips and in his mind.
He didn’t directly attack any person or facility.
His target was a thick cable hanging from the vault above that powered a high-power searchlight on one of the watchtowers.
The Oracle power, like invisible, extremely cold tentacles, extended extremely slowly and covertly along the rock wall and shadows, carefully wrapping around a section of the cable about 20 centimeters long.
This wasn’t destruction, but a sustained and precise low-temperature invasion.
Under Lin Mo’s fine control, the Oracle power continuously absorbed the heat from that section of cable and its internal wires, causing the temperature to drop sharply.
Metal becomes brittle at extremely low temperatures, and insulation layers harden and crack.
More importantly, when an electric current passes through a conductor with a drastic temperature change, it generates stress…
Time passed minute by minute.
Fine beads of sweat broke out on Lin Mo’s forehead.
Maintaining such long-distance, high-precision Oracle control was a huge burden in his current state.
He stared fixedly at the section of cable, silently calculating in his heart.
About 10 minutes later.
Sizzle — crack!
A faint sound, like an electrical short circuit, was followed by a more distinct snapping sound!
The cable, which had been continuously frozen by the Oracle power, finally succumbed to the internal and external stress and snapped in the middle.
Sparks flashed and vanished.
Almost simultaneously, the bright, high-power searchlight on the watchtower, which had been slowly rotating, flickered several times before completely going out with a poof.
The visibility in about one-third of the plaza suddenly dropped a level.
Although there was other basic lighting, the most critical and wide-ranging mobile light source was gone.
“Something’s wrong!” a soldier on the watchtower immediately shouted, his voice echoing in the cavernous underground space.
“Someone come take a look! Did a cable burn out, or is it a short circuit?!”
For a moment, the attention of almost all the soldiers on the plaza was drawn there.
The patrol stopped and looked toward the watchtower, soldiers behind the bunkers poked their heads out, and several soldiers near the break in the cable immediately ran toward the transformer box to check.
The soldier on the watchtower also hurriedly looked down to check the situation and reported urgently over the walkie-talkie.
‘Now!’
A sharp glint flashed in Lin Mo’s eyes.
Without a moment’s hesitation, he was like a cheetah that had been waiting for its moment.
He lowered his body to the extreme, almost hugging the ground, and burst out from the shadows of the passage at his top speed!
He didn’t run toward the center of the open plaza.
Instead, he stayed close to the cold rock wall, using the shadows of some crates and equipment piled on the ground as intermittent cover, and dashed toward the corner with the suspected ventilation duct!
The 50-meter distance would usually pass in the blink of an eye, but now, every meter felt elongated and filled with the fatal risk of being discovered.
Dash!
Around a pile of sandbags!
Dash again!
Slide into the deepest shadow cast by the transformer box!
Finally, he reached the corner.
Before him was a square ventilation duct with sides about 60 centimeters long, covered by a sturdy steel grate.
The mesh of the grate was very small, the screws were fixed from the inside, and the edges were tightly embedded into the concrete wall.
Lin Mo grabbed the cold iron grate with both hands and pulled hard toward himself.
It didn’t budge!
The sturdiness was expected.
Forced removal?
Prying with a combat knife?
Smashing with a tool?
Setting aside the fact that he didn’t have the right tools, any significant noise in this environment where everyone had just been alerted and their vigilance raised would be equivalent to suicide.
“Backup power! Start the backup power! Check the lines!” a soldier’s shouting and hurried footsteps echoed in the distance.
The lights could be restored at any moment.
Lin Mo’s pupils constricted, and sweat dripped from his temple.
‘Go for it!’
Only this thought remained in his mind.
He had to risk everything and open this grate within the few minutes before the backup power started and the lights returned.
He no longer tried to physically destroy the external structure.
Instead, his hands gripped the grate again, but not to pull.
This time, it was for conduction and control.
The nearly depleted Oracle power in his body was suddenly pushed to the extreme without hesitation or regard for the consequences.
A bone-chilling cold erupted from his hands, but he used his incredible willpower to constrain it tightly.
Instead of letting it spread aimlessly, it acted like a high-pressure water jet, precisely and intensely penetrating toward several key connection points where the iron grate was embedded in the concrete wall, as well as the internal weld seams of the grate itself!
This wasn’t freezing the whole thing; it was a targeted ultra-low temperature embrittlement attack on the internal lattice structure of the metal!
Creak…
A very faint sound, as if the metal interior was wailing, rang out.
Lin Mo’s face turned pale at a visible rate, his lips lost their color, and his body began to tremble uncontrollably.
This was a maximum output far exceeding his current physical capacity!
Time! He needed time!
Every second felt like dancing on the edge of a blade.
He could hear the low hum of the backup generator starting to increase, and flashlight beams in the distance began to sweep across the edges of the plaza!
Faster! Just a little faster!
“… Crack!”
Finally, with a slight but clear sound like ice cracking, a small piece of concrete and an internal expansion bolt at the top right corner of the grate’s connection to the wall shattered under the invasion of extreme cold and the continuous microscopic vibration of the Oracle power!
Immediately after, the connection point at the bottom left also loosened!
‘Now!’
A fierce look flashed in Lin Mo’s eyes.
His hands erupted with a final burst of strength.
No longer seeking to destroy, he worked with the already loosened structure and gave it a sudden sideways twist!
At the same time, he pushed hard with his feet!
Thud.
With a dull sound, the entire iron grate was pried inward by him, creating a gap large enough for a person to pass through!
He didn’t have time to check the specific damage to the grate or worry about leaving obvious marks.
Like a loach, he shrank his body and dove inside with lightning speed!
The moment he dove into the ventilation duct, he reached back and pulled the bent grate back to its original position as much as possible.
Although it couldn’t be fully restored, at least from a distance at a quick glance, it seemed to be still embedded in the wall.
Almost the instant he finished these actions and shrank his body into the shadows deep within the ventilation duct — vwoom!
The backup power was fully activated!
The lights in the plaza, especially the backup searchlight on that watchtower, suddenly brightened!
The blinding white beam immediately began sweeping across the field, making up for the dark blind spots from before.
The light beam swept rapidly over the corner where Lin Mo had just been hidden, passing over the ventilation duct… The grate looked a bit crooked, but under direct strong light and from a certain distance, one wouldn’t necessarily notice the signs of forced entry without looking closely.
The light beam didn’t stop and continued to move elsewhere.
Inside the ventilation duct, Lin Mo leaned against the cold metal wall, curled up in the darkness, and gasped for breath.
Sweat had almost soaked his inner clothing, and the cold touch of the metal made him shiver.
The wound on his left arm throbbed with pain, and the feeling of exhaustion from overextending his Oracle power hit him along with the dizziness of mental depletion.
That was close!
Just a bit more, and he would have been discovered.
But fortunately… he had gambled right and succeeded!
After a short breath, Lin Mo forced himself to calm down.
He listened carefully.
The commotion in the plaza outside seemed to be slowly subsiding.
The soldiers seemed to have concluded that the cable break was an accidental failure or equipment aging.
This gave him a little precious time.
He looked at the ventilation duct he was in — it was about 1 meter in diameter, enough for him to move inside while hunched over.
The inner walls were covered with a thin layer of dust, and the airflow carried a dry warmth and a faint metallic smell.
The duct extended into the dark depths, leading to who knows where.
Su Xiji… The underground dungeon… The desperate battlefield outside… And those mysterious black instruments…
All the clues seemed to point to this fortress hidden deep within the mountains.
And now, he was already inside.
Lin Mo took a deep breath, suppressing his physical fatigue and discomfort.
His eyes became sharp and determined once again.
He adjusted his posture and began to crawl silently along the ventilation duct toward the deeper, more core dark areas of this underground fortress.
The truth might be just ahead.