By this point, more than thirty thousand people had packed into the plaza. As the provocative death metal blared, their excitement surged even higher. They rocked out while pressing toward the stage. At that moment, anyone who wanted to shift even slightly had to struggle with all their might.
The nearest psionic node was probably still more than twenty meters away. An ordinary person would have needed at least half an hour just to squeeze through that distance. But Yu Lian had already shifted into an etheric form, his body now existing somewhere between the illusory and the material. In theory, he could pass through the crowd like a quantum ghost. In practice, though, when he sped up, he felt less like a ghost and more like a gale. As he swept past, he really did knock several people off balance.
The benefits of a crowd were on full display here. Though those people stumbled, they only bumped into other concertgoers. A minor commotion rippled through the crowd, but thankfully it soon faded amid the feverish atmosphere, and no serious conflict broke out.
Yu Lian silently apologized and kept moving, slipping through a gap in the crowd without stopping. The conditions he faced now were exceptionally cramped and treacherous. Back in the day—no, in the future—when he'd charged into the Imperial Army's barrage as part of a suicide squad, it had felt just like this.
More importantly, the closer he got to the source of the psionic fluctuations, the more his physical state was inevitably affected by the spiritual energy. Before, the fluctuations had been so concealed that they were nearly imperceptible. But now, amplified by the death metal, they resembled a whirlpool forming in a raging sea.
If he were still an inexperienced rookie using techniques like a force-field