171: The turning point and the resonance of "stone"

When Wang Jianguo received the intelligence from Evelyn via the highest priority secure line, intelligence born of extraordinary "intuition," even a commander as seasoned and resolute as he was couldn't help but experience a moment of intense shock and rapid deliberation. The intelligence lacked traditional coordinate parameters, image evidence, or signal tracing; it was merely a child's vague description based on a mysterious "feeling"—"a particularly cold, particularly bright spot within a dark red light patch" and "the direction where malice is most concentrated." It sounded more like a mystical divination than reliable military intelligence.

However, Wang Jianguo did not dismiss it lightly. His profound gaze quickly swept across the main screen, which displayed a battlefield situation map riddled with static and blind spots due to communication interference. Combining this with fragmented but abnormal reports from several still-connected frontline observation points—the unnaturally high coordination of enemy attacks in certain areas, the unusually immense pressure from certain directions—Zhuoyue's seemingly absurd description surprisingly, and disturbingly, matched these scattered anomalies! This was a high level of strategic insight based on intuition and experience.

Time waits for no one, and opportunities are fleeting. Continuing with passive defense would only lead to being worn down and overwhelmed. A risky gamble was necessary! Wang Jianguo's eyes sharpened, and he made a decision in an instant. His commands, steady as a mountain yet carrying an undeniable, resolute force, were immediately transmitted through the remaining command network to key operational units:

Precision Strike Order: "Falcon Team, attention! Target area: Alpha-7 sector, eastern cliff shadow band. Authorized to use high-penetration reconnaissance pulses and miniature drone swarms for risk reconnaissance. Priority: Identify and confirm the presence of high-value command nodes or energy relay devices. Once detected, no secondary authorization needed, immediately deploy 'Armor-Piercer' precision-guided missiles for destruction! Repeat, highest priority, destroy upon discovery!"

Key Defense Adjustment: "All B-zone and C-zone defense units, immediately contract towards the main northeast passage, forming a tiered, in-depth defense. 'Fortress' squad, advance to E-4 intersection, set up an ambush utilizing favorable terrain. The enemy's next main assault is highly likely to come from the northeast; pin them down at the intersection! Firepower configuration to emphasize anti-armor and area suppression!"

Tactical Deception Coordination: "D-zone units, execute tactical feints, creating the illusion of our reserve forces moving southwest, to attract and disperse enemy attention."

With the orders issued, the entire "Homeland" defense system, like a precise war machine, began to rapidly and accurately readjust its deployment. Previously evenly distributed firing points quietly shifted, reserve units silently moved out from their hidden positions, and reconnaissance units infiltrated the darkness like ghosts.

The reversal of the battle came swiftly and fiercely, confirming the correctness of Wang Jianguo's risky decision and proving the astonishing value of Zhuoyue's "intuition"!

The "Falcon Team," carrying out reconnaissance, indeed discovered a cleverly camouflaged enemy forward temporary command post, almost blending into the rock face, deep within a seemingly natural rock crevice—the area indicated by Zhuoyue as the "particularly cold, particularly bright spot"! Inside, there was not only a high-power battlefield data link repeater and real-time monitoring terminals, but even a small, portable high-energy power core for special equipment! The "Armor-Piercer" missile, trailing fire, accurately hit its target, and a dazzling fireball erupted between the cliffs, followed by a deafening explosion! The enemy's regional command and coordination capabilities instantly collapsed, and the offensive in the corresponding area clearly became chaotic and delayed!

Meanwhile, in the northeast, the pre-ambushed "Fortress" squad precisely collided head-on with an elite enemy assault force, which had deployed new heavy assault equipment and was attempting to forcibly breach the defense line! Due to their prior preparation and advantageous terrain, the ambush achieved perfect results. Dense anti-armor firepower and precise crossfire disoriented the aggressive enemy, inflicting heavy losses and firmly containing their offensive momentum outside the defense line!

The battle instantly turned! The "Homeland" defenders successfully shifted from a passive, struggling defensive posture to a targeted, efficient counterattack and active suppression! In the command center, the long-suppressed atmosphere lifted, and the voices of the staff officers were once again filled with confidence and drive. In encrypted communication, Wang Jianguo, with a voice still steady but with an undeniable hint of relief, affirmed towards the safe house: "The intelligence was crucial! The counterattack is effective! We've taken out one of the enemy's eyes! Hold your ground, keep pushing!"

Eerie Backlash: Assassination at the Consciousness Level

However, just as the dawn of victory pierced the darkness and brought a moment of relief, inside the safe house, an even more bizarre and dangerous crisis erupted without warning!

Zhuoyue, who had fallen into a deep coma from exhaustion and whose breathing had just stabilized, suddenly began to convulse violently without any warning! This was not the trembling from earlier energy loss, but a more terrifying, full-body, opisthotonic-like tonic spasm! His small face instantly turned purple, his forehead was frighteningly hot, his lips trembled uncontrollably, white foam spilled out, his teeth clenched, emitting a grating "clack-clack" sound, and unconscious, painful gasps squeezed from his throat, as if he was enduring unspeakable torment!

Even more alarming was the unprecedented and terrifying change in the "Singing Stone" he had held tightly in his hand, even in his coma! The stone's surface temperature rapidly increased to a degree hot enough to burn skin, and it emitted a noise that was no longer a hum, but a sharp, ear-piercing sound like countless fine needles scraping glass, or like the roar of a demon from the abyss, extremely jarring! This sound not only traveled through the air but seemed to directly echo deep within one's mind, assaulting one's sanity! On the stone's surface, where the textures were originally smooth, subtle, web-like cracks rapidly spread, shimmering with an ominous, eerie glow! It was as if something extremely dangerous was trying to break free from inside the stone!

"Zhuoyue!" Su Mu screamed in terror, lunging forward, trying to hold down his violently convulsing body, but was almost thrown off by his sudden, surprisingly immense strength.

Evelyn's face drastically changed, and she immediately rushed to the portable multi-functional physiological monitor connected to Zhuoyue's head. When she saw the electroencephalogram (EEG) image displayed on the screen, her heart almost stopped, and a chill shot from the soles of her feet to the top of her head! On the screen, Zhuoyue's brainwaves were not the expected smooth delta or theta waves of a coma, but rather an extremely abnormal, unprecedented, high-amplitude, extremely high-frequency pattern of frantic beta or even gamma wave oscillation! This oscillation was extremely unnatural, with sharp, eerily regular waveforms, as if his brain was no longer discharging from its own neurons, but had become a "resonance chamber" forcibly driven and synchronously oscillating by a powerful, malicious external signal source!

"No! It's a consciousness resonance attack! Reverse localization synchronization!" Evelyn instantly understood, her voice becoming sharp with extreme horror! Morpheus! He must also possess a "mother lode" or some powerful consciousness resonance amplifier, originating from the same source as the stone in Zhuoyue's hand, perhaps even with a higher energy level and stronger control! He had acutely captured the unique energy signature inevitably emitted by Zhuoyue during his recent wide-range perception, and used it as a "beacon" to precisely lock onto his consciousness coordinates in reverse! At this moment, Morpheus was using this deep, almost soul-level connection, based on the same source of ore, to launch an insidious and fatal "consciousness beheading" attack! This, perhaps, was the true, most deadly hidden move within the "Ragnarok" plan, concealed beneath the frenzy of physical attacks! Its aim was to directly destroy or control the consciousness and fundamental existence of the "seed" amidst the chaos of physical offense and defense!

"We must cut off the connection immediately! Physically isolate that stone!" Evelyn anxiously tried to pry open Zhuoyue's tightly clenched fingers from the stone, but those five slender fingers were like iron clamps at this moment. No matter how hard she pulled, they wouldn't budge, as if the stone had grown into the nerves and muscles of his palm! She quickly grabbed a spare special shielding blanket, lined with high-density metal mesh and wave-absorbing material, and wrapped Zhuoyue's hand, which was clutching the stone, layer by layer, pressing it tightly, but the effect was minimal! Zhuoyue's pain continued to intensify, and the frantic oscillating waveform on the brainwave monitor showed no signs of weakening! This attack from the conscious level seemed to be able to penetrate conventional physical shielding and directly affect Zhuoyue's spiritual core!

A flash of inspiration in despair and the miracle of faith

"What should we do?! If this continues, his brain will burn out!" Su Mu watched Zhuoyue struggling in pain, even showing slight signs of suffocation. Her heart felt like it was being scorched on a hot iron plate, and tears rolled down like broken pearls, almost collapsing. She futilely tried to hold Zhuoyue's convulsing body in her embrace, feeling the intense, uncontrollable tremors, and her heart was filled with unprecedented helplessness and despair.

Just at this critical moment, Su Mu's tear-blurred vision inadvertently swept across a tablet computer with a cracked screen placed in a corner of the control console—it was the core display terminal of the "hand-cranked early warning system" that Zhuoyue had been tinkering with earlier. Although this system was full of loopholes and practically useless in actual defense, at this moment, the waveform diagram representing the "stone resonance state" on the screen clearly showed an extremely regular, frighteningly high-amplitude oscillation pattern with complex encoding characteristics. It was highly synchronized with the frantic oscillation pattern on Zhuoyue's brainwave monitor, almost identical!

A seemingly absurd thought, yet one that cut through the darkness of despair like lightning, suddenly struck Su Mu! She grabbed Evelyn's arm as if clutching at a last straw, her voice hoarse with extreme urgency and excitement, and shouted, "Evelyn! Use that! Use the program he made himself! The 'Harmony Sound' he coded! Quick! He believes in that! It's his 'talisman'!"

Evelyn was momentarily stunned by Su Mu's sudden shout, but her powerful brain instantly understood the deep psychological implications and possibilities behind Su Mu's seemingly illogical suggestion! When Zhuoyue was messing around before, he had indeed written an extremely childish little program called "Harmony Sound." Its principle was to generate a random white noise and a series of phase-disordered, simple-toned synthetic waves, attempting to "cancel out" the "disharmonious sounds" he imagined the stone was emitting. From a rigorous physics and signal processing perspective, such a program would almost certainly be ineffective against this level of conscious resonance attack, and might even be counterproductive by introducing new clutter.

But at this moment, in a desperate situation where all conventional scientific methods had been declared ineffective, this "placebo," originating from Zhuoyue's own cognitive system and regarded by him as a "magic weapon," might become the only irrational breakthrough to break through this strange consciousness attack! This was about the power of belief, the anchoring effect of the mind, and that ineffable subtle connection between a creator and their creation! This was a gamble, fighting a "heart demon" with a "heart medicine"!

A desperate attempt! There was no time to hesitate! A look of determination flashed in Evelyn's eyes. She immediately rushed to the tablet computer, her fingers trembling slightly from tension, yet she swiftly slid the screen. Among a jumble of application icons, she accurately found the "Harmony Sound" program, whose icon Zhuoyue had drawn as a crooked smiley face, and with all her might, she fiercely pressed the run button!

"Buzz—Squeak—Ee—"

A chaotic, unharmonious, even somewhat harsh white noise, mixed with intermittent, strangely abrupt tones, as if a child were haphazardly banging on a synthesizer, immediately emanated from the tablet's low-quality small speaker, filling the confined space of the safe house. This sound, combined with the malevolent, regularly sharp hissing from the stone, formed an extremely bizarre, discordant mixture, even sounding somewhat ridiculous.

At the same time, Su Mu also made her most instinctive and direct response. She no longer tried to physically intervene with the scorching stone, but instead leaned down, using all her strength, her arms like the strongest vines, tightly, tightly embracing Zhuoyue's still violently convulsing body. She pressed her cheek tightly against his frighteningly hot forehead, and desperately, with a tearful but volcanically firm voice, she repeatedly called his name louder and louder in his ear: "Zhuoyue! Zhuoyue! Wake up! Look at me! I'm Su Mu! Your class monitor! Do you hear me?! Come back! Come back to me! We're all here! No one can take you away!" She poured all her maternal love, all her protective faith, all her desire for life, unreservedly into these tearful calls, trying to light a guiding lighthouse for him in the invaded ocean of consciousness.

A miracle, in this seemingly absurd and unscientific combination of interventions, quietly occurred.

Perhaps the chaotic white noise and strange synthesized sounds coincidentally created some unexpected, weak interference or modulation on the complex frequency level of the aggressive resonance waves with specific encoding, disrupting their precise synchronicity; perhaps deep within Zhuoyue's subconscious, there truly existed a deep-rooted, almost instinctive trust in the "talisman" he had personally created and imbued with good wishes, and this trust, at a critical moment, shook the foundation of the external malicious invasion, activating his consciousness's self-protection mechanism; or perhaps, Su Mu's pure and fervent love and protective will, powerful enough to penetrate the fog of consciousness, truly played a crucial role like a "stabilizing needle in the ocean," providing a solid, warm, and uncorruptible "anchor point" for his consciousness lost in the storm of pain... Under Evelyn's gaze, so tense she almost stopped breathing, amidst Su Mu's hoarse, emotional cries, and accompanied by the tablet's unharmonious yet "self-righteous" "noise," time seemed to freeze. A few seconds later, Zhuoyue's frantic, opisthotonic-like full-body convulsions began to visibly diminish little by little... His tightly clenched jaw slowly relaxed... The terrifying high temperature on his forehead gradually began to drop... The sharp hissing sound from the stone in his hand gradually weakened, turning into a low hum, and finally fell silent. The spread of cracks on its surface completely stopped, and its temperature rapidly returned to normal... On the brainwave monitor screen, the dangerous, frantically oscillating waveform's amplitude began to significantly decrease, and its frequency gradually slowed, slowly returning from the heart-palpitating gamma and beta waves to the delta and theta wave spectrum of sleep... That terrible feeling of being forcibly invaded, torn, and synchronized by external malice, like a receding tide, slowly but surely faded away.

When Zhuoyue's breathing finally became steady, long, and deep again, and his body completely relaxed, merely falling into a deeper, protective restorative sleep, Evelyn and Su Mu felt as if all their strength had been instantly drained. They almost simultaneously collapsed to the ground, their backs completely drenched in cold sweat, as if they had just been pulled out of water. They sat slumped on the cold floor, panting heavily, looking at each other. They both saw in the other's eyes the immense terror of having narrowly escaped death, an unspeakable exhaustion, and a complex emotion mixed with lingering fear and relief.

This invisible and perilous attack on the conscious level was once again defused, but Morpheus's methods were so bizarre, vicious, and unpredictable that they far exceeded their worst expectations. And the deep connection between Zhuoyue and those mysterious stones, which could both bring extraordinary perception and easily lead to catastrophe, like dancing with a devil, had already become an extremely sharp Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, whose origin had to be investigated as soon as possible and an effective control method found. Outside the safe house, the sound of gunfire seemed to become sparser, indicating that the battlefield situation was developing in a favorable direction, but the atmosphere inside the safe house became heavier and more urgent due to this silent, yet even more terrifying, confrontation. The road ahead was full of known and unknown thorns.