The fragment sealed inside the box had remained quiet the entire way.
It gave a slight tremor only when the ruins of Shadow City came into view.
Shattered city walls, overturned blocks, and black stone tower foundations slanting out of the ground stretched layer after layer into the distance. The entire city looked as if someone had violently ripped it apart, then brutally pressed it back into the earth. Nothing remained on the heights but rubble and broken pillars. Wind howled through the cracks, making their eardrums ache.
"It's reacting." The Star Spirit engineer carrying the sealed box lowered his voice. "Very weak. Much weaker than beneath Black Rock."
Tian Ce did not immediately order anyone to charge in.
The battle beneath Black Rock had only just ended, and the deathly silence of places like this had begun to unsettle him. If the sealed fragment had reacted, they had come to the right place!
That was all the more reason not to rush in. If they scared off both the people below and the clues, then the hard battle before this would have been for nothing.
Tian Ce spread out the Mind Network first. The nearby players immediately gained a vague sense of the terrain in their minds. He swept through every ruin that could conceal someone, every crack that might lead underground, and every shadow that looked safe but held tainted psionic residue within it.
"No high-level reactions on the surface." He looked toward the collapsed plaza in the distance. "There are quite a few living creatures, but they're scattered around. They don't look like an organized remnant force."
Data Maniac raised his eyes as well, silver light flashing through his pupils.
"Most of the surface is dead," he said. "The place that still has real activity is below."