Hope is a dangerous and often cruel substance. For Captain Lin Mei, leader of the independent hunter squad "Nomad," it was a poison she had learned to avoid. Yet, as she stared at the glowing screen of her tactical tablet in the gritty, makeshift command tent, she felt the poison seeping back into her weary soul.
The air in the tent was thick with the sterile scent of antiseptic and the acrid smell of ozone from overloaded energy shields. Outside, the quarantined Sector 7 was a landscape of urban decay, a fresh wound on the face of Shanghai. Two of her squad mates were in the medical bay, their minds fractured by the psychic shrapnel of the Shriekers' attacks. Her best vanguard, a man she considered a brother, was nursing a shattered arm. Her squad was broken. They were a failure, another statistic in the endless war.
And now, she was staring at a forum post from a user with zero history named "Oracle," a post that claimed to know a secret that had eluded the world's best minds.
Her first instinct, honed by years of battlefield cynicism, was to dismiss it. 'Another armchair academic, spinning theories from the safety of his mother's basement.' The web was full of them. But the memory of her comrades' silent, screaming faces, their eyes wide with a terror she couldn't fight, made her hesitate. Their standard tactics had failed. Their expensive sonic dampeners had proven useless. Desperation was a powerful motivator.
Then she looked closer at the attached diagram. Like the user "Hephaestus," she noticed the details. She was a veteran who had personally performed field autopsies on dozens of Abyssal creatures. The drawing of the vocal organ—the precise curvature of the cartilage, the placement of the energy conduits—it wasn't just a guess. It was drawn with an unnerving, intimate familiarity. It resonated with a deep, instinctual flicker of truth.
This wasn't just a theory. It felt like a memory.
"Xiao Zhang!" she called out, her voice rough with exhaustion.
A young man with glasses perched on his nose and grease stains on his jumpsuit looked up from a dismantled energy rifle. He was their tech specialist, a genius who could coax a few more minutes of life out of dying equipment. "Captain?"
"Our long-range sonic emitter. Is it operational?"
"The main power cell is cracked, Captain," he said, shaking his head. "And the frequency modulator is unstable. It's scrap metal."
"I don't need it to be perfect," Lin Mei said, her eyes fixed on the tablet. "I need you to make it do one thing. Can you force it to emit a stable frequency at exactly 27.3 kilohertz?"
Xiao Zhang blinked, pushing his glasses up. "Twenty-seven point three? That's… oddly specific. And it's outside the standard combat frequencies. The stress could cause the emitter to overload and explode." He looked at her with concern. "What is this for?"
Lin Mei swiveled the tablet to face him. He leaned in, read the post, his brow furrowing deeper with every word.
"Captain, you can't be serious," he whispered, his voice incredulous. "The source is an anonymous, brand-new account. This could be a troll. It could be disinformation from a rival guild trying to get us killed. It's insane."
"What's insane," Lin Mei retorted, her voice low and fierce, "is letting two more of our people end up as mindless vegetables because we were too afraid to try something new. What do we have to lose, Zhang? We've already lost. This is our last-ditch effort. A foolish gamble. Now, can you do it or not?"
Xiao Zhang looked from his captain's desperate, determined face back to the impossibly detailed diagram on the screen. He let out a long, shaky breath. "...I'll need at least an hour. And I can't guarantee for how long it will hold the frequency. Maybe ten seconds if we're lucky."
"Ten seconds," Lin Mei said, a dangerous glint in her eyes. "That will be more than enough."
The school day ended as it had begun, in a sea of social maneuvering and blatant power-plays. As Qin Mo walked towards the school gates, he saw Su Liying up ahead, surrounded by a group of students from the student council. She was listening patiently to their chatter, but her gaze seemed distant.
As he passed the group, her eyes briefly met his. A flicker of something—curiosity, concern?—passed through her features before it was gone.
"Qin Mo," she called out suddenly. The students around her fell silent, looking back and forth between their school goddess and the infamous "triple-zero."
He stopped and turned, his face as placid as ever. "Yes?"
"Are you... feeling okay?" she asked, her voice soft. It was a simple question, but it felt loaded. It wasn't the pitying tone others used. It was genuine inquiry.
"I am fine," he replied, his voice a flat, even monotone.
Su Liying pressed her lips together. Her talent was screaming at her. The closer she was to him, the more intense the sensation became. It was like standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon on a windless day. The sheer scale of the emptiness was so profound, so absolute, it felt like a presence in itself. It was a silence that was louder than any scream. She knew, with a certainty that defied all logic and test results, that this boy was not empty. He was just... incomprehensibly vast.
"Okay," she finally said, giving him a small, hesitant smile. "Take care on your way home."
"You too," he replied with a slight nod, before turning and continuing on his way, leaving Su Liying and her stunned friends behind. His interaction with her was a minor, unexpected variable. Interesting, but ultimately, not critical to his primary calculations. His focus was already shifting back to the grander stage.
Twilight painted the ruins of Sector 7 in shades of orange and deep purple. Twisted rebar clawed at the sky like skeletal fingers, and the shells of burned-out buildings stood as monuments to the Abyss's fury. Here, at the very edge of the still-active quarantine zone, Captain Lin Mei and Xiao Zhang lay prone behind a slab of shattered concrete.
"The emitter is calibrated, Captain," Xiao Zhang whispered, his voice tense. He was clutching a device that looked like a futuristic rifle, but with a large, satellite-dish-like barrel. A red light on its side was blinking erratically. "But the energy readings are unstable. I meant what I said. Ten seconds, maybe less, before it blows."
"Understood," Lin Mei replied, her eyes scanning the desolate street ahead. She activated a small, secondary device, which began emitting a low-frequency pulse designed to mimic the distress call of a common city rodent. "Lure is active. Now we wait."
They didn't have to wait long.
From the shadows of a collapsed overpass, a figure emerged. It moved with a jerky, unnatural gait, a grotesque parody of a bird. It was an Abyssal Shrieker. Its body was covered in greasy, black feathers, and its head swiveled on a thin neck, its multiple red eyes scanning for prey. Its most terrifying feature was the large, pulsating throat sac that bulged beneath its razor-sharp beak, glowing with a faint, sickly purple light.
It homed in on the source of the lure. As it drew closer, Lin Mei took a deep breath, her own spirit power flaring to life, wrapping her in a thin, shimmering blue shield. It was a familiar comfort, but she knew it was a fragile one.
The Shrieker spotted them. It lowered its head, its throat sac swelling dramatically as it drew in abyssal energy. A high-pitched whine began to build, a sound that promised madness and oblivion.
"Now, Xiao Zhang!" Lin Mei yelled, bracing herself. "FIRE!"
Xiao Zhang squeezed the trigger.
There was no thunderous boom. No brilliant flash of light. There was only a high-frequency hum that was felt more in the bones than it was heard, a sound at the very edge of human perception.
For one agonizing heartbeat, nothing happened. The Shrieker continued to power up its attack. Lin Mei's stomach plummeted. 'It was a hoax. A cruel joke. We're dead.'
Then, the universe seemed to stutter.
The Shrieker's building cry choked off. The purple glow in its throat sac flickered violently, like a dying lightbulb. The creature froze, its body trembling. A low, wet gurgle escaped its beak. Its multiple red eyes widened in what could only be described as confusion and agony.
The high-pitched hum from their emitter continued.
CRACK.
A sound like over-stretched leather tearing echoed in the quiet street. A network of dark, spidery veins appeared on the Shrieker's throat sac. A single drop of viscous, purple-black blood dripped onto the pavement.
Then, with a sickeningly wet tearing sound, the entire vocal organ ruptured. It wasn't an explosion; it was a catastrophic, internal collapse. The creature convulsed wildly on the ground, its limbs flailing as it was drowned from the inside by its own corrupted biology. After a few seconds, it fell still.
Silence descended upon the ruined street, broken only by the sound of two humans gasping for air.
Xiao Zhang stared at his readings, his mouth agape. "Internal... catastrophic cellular rupture... of the entire vocal system..." he stammered, reading the results aloud. "It matches the theory... perfectly."
Lin Mei slowly lowered her spiritual shield. She was trembling, not from fear, but from a profound, world-shaking awe. She looked down at her tactical tablet, her eyes finding the forum post, finding the simple, unassuming username.
Oracle.
This was no armchair academic. This was no troll. This was something else entirely. Something terrifying and new.
Back at the "Rift Watchers' Respite" forum, the thread about the Shrieker vulnerability had been buried under pages of new posts. The initial mockery had died down, leaving it to be forgotten.
Until a new reply appeared. It was from a verified, high-ranking user, "Nomad-Lead."
The reply was simple, professional, and contained a high-resolution, time-stamped photo of a dead Shrieker with its throat grotesquely imploded.
Subject: CONFIRMED.
My team just field-tested the 27.3 kHz frequency on a live Shrieker. The theory posted by user 'Oracle' is not a theory. It is 100% accurate. The creature was neutralized in 3.7 seconds via catastrophic vocal organ failure. We suffered zero casualties. I repeat, the method is confirmed.
The forum was silent for exactly twelve seconds.
Then, it exploded.
The thread was instantly flooded with a tidal wave of replies, shooting it back to the top of the entire site.
User_IronFist88: "...Holy shit. They actually did it."
User_WindRunner: "Nomad-Lead is a legit Captain. If she says it's confirmed, it's confirmed. How is this possible?"
User_SnakeEyes: "Who the HELL is Oracle?!?!"
User_Hephaestus: "I knew that diagram was special. This 'Oracle'... has just changed the rules of the game."
The seed of knowledge, planted in silence and cynicism, had not just sprouted. It had erupted, shaking the very foundations of their understanding of the war. And across the city, the architect of this chaos was quietly finishing his math homework, utterly oblivious to the storm he had just unleashed.