Encounter Battle

"Even if they got here at least half a year before us, the dust on those Incubation Rune Plates on the Pumping Station room floor is at least several months thick, and the Rune Array on the concrete seal at the main entrance has been reinforced three times."

Vivi stood up and clipped the Portable Analyzer to the special strap at her waist. "They used that time to turn the entire Radar Station into a Directional Guidance Relay Station. Then, while the host was running, they discovered the reverse pulse suppression phenomenon in the bedrock and followed the direction of signal attenuation to find the tunnel."

"And then?" Harry asked with a frown.

"But when the emergency lockdown program activated, the ancient runes in the bedrock used a reverse pulse to wipe out the host's automatic deletion program. That means there's some kind of response source deeper in the tunnel." Vivi smiled. "This response source can generate pulses synchronized with the deep-level signal from the Lut Desert. Its signal signature is not the same thing as the rupture-style pulses of Lucifer's Chain. If The Ashwinder Party had already used it for synchronization calibration when integrating the deep-level signals from three continents, then this response source may still be maintaining its original response mode to the host. Once we go down, we can use it to reverse-engineer the operating logic of those deep nodes."

She walked to the side of the Main Control Console and bent to check the two captives tied together with Binding Rope.

The man was still unconscious. The woman was awake, leaning against the base of the Main Control Console, her gaze still fixed on the Rune Arrays on the wall that had already gone dark.

When Vivi walked past her, she did not turn her head.