The sudden shudder was like a bone-piercing steel nail freshly pulled from an ice cave frozen for ten thousand years. It pierced straight down from the back of Meng Chao's head through his spine, pinning him firmly to the ground and freezing the blood throughout his body, even the bio-currents surging through his Neural Network.
But the next second, flames born of the apocalypse reopened his blood vessels and nerves, causing both the volume and speed of his neural signals to surge tenfold in an instant.
Meng Chao narrowed his eyes, his gaze sweeping like lightning across the tops of the dozens of Stone Pillars that were continuously releasing "brainwaves."
He clearly saw that atop every Stone Pillar stood a skeletal statue of the Great Horned Rat God.
Some statues stood, some lay down, some sat; each took a different form.
Yet the bones of every skeletal rat god, including the great horns on their skulls, spread outward like tangled antennae.
At the base of every statue sat a High Priest of the Great Horned Legion.
They sat cross-legged with their eyes shut, sunk into deep meditation—or rather, a nightmare state.
"I should have realized it long ago."
Meng Chao thought, The stone forest was already in complete chaos. If these High Priests were still awake and retained independent personalities and Free Will, they should have ended their meditation long ago and jumped down to protect the Ancient Dream Saintess.
In their current state, it was obvious that they had all been remotely controlled by "Jackal" Kanus, hidden in the darkness, reduced to some kind of "signal Transfer Station" and "amplifier."
"'Jackal' Kanus is using the High Priests seated atop the Stone Pillars to implant killing commands into the brains and armor of these Origin Warriors."
Meng Chao said to