musicians of old

Chapter 860 Central Control Area

"That's right! Master Fanning!"

Upon hearing Fan Ning's words, the leader of the Dawnbreakers sitting opposite him hadn't even finished exhaling his deep breath before hurriedly speaking:
"That's right. Before setting off for 'Coordinate X,' the leader instructed us that no matter how things developed afterward, we should continue to maintain order as much as possible and try to contact Master Fanning to return to headquarters."

“Duplicate message.” Fanning glanced at him. “Twenty seconds have passed.”

The man's Adam's apple bobbed involuntarily, and his face, already swollen and sallow from lack of rest, looked even more embarrassed.
"Master Fanning, even if you wanted me to fabricate something, I couldn't concoct what the leader's specific arrangements would have been. To be honest, at the final roundtable meeting of the discussion group, we at the Enlightened One level were also conveyed and studied some of the incomplete information. It seems that before departing for 'Coordinate X,' the leader was mainly considering 'how to maintain overall stability under different developments.' However, Mr. Pogrerich is indeed far-sighted. Now, those of us who are acting on orders and relaying messages sometimes wonder, is there any possibility of saving this world that has rotted into a mess? We do sometimes think that way."

"Do you know what's above the 'X-coordinate'?" Fan Ning was amused and shook his head with laughter, tapping his fingers on the wooden table.

The two of them paused for a moment, then looked at each other blankly.

They truly didn't know that if Fanning had directly instilled that knowledge into their minds without taking effective protective measures, they would have gone insane on the spot.

The sunlight outside the window was too bright, the sky too blue, and the sea breeze blowing through the blinds brought the feeling of midsummer.

Fanning didn't say anything more; he was probably just admiring the scenery.

Seeing that the already difficult conversation was about to slip away and turn cold again, the two leaders were racking their brains, sweating profusely.

After several dozen seconds, the other insightful person's expression suddenly became complicated. He seemed both relieved and hesitant, unsure if the information was invalid.

"Also, I recall an earlier meeting of the Alliance of Dreams where the leader made a digression, roughly saying that his final 'summit plan' would only proceed with less than a 50% certainty, because that was 'Jin's' true principle, and the other 'instructions' he gave to his subordinates were for the other, more than 50% certainty scenario."

Fan Ning listened quietly.

During this time, he nodded slightly and coughed violently a few times while covering his mouth.

Everyone watched these reactions with trepidation, making guesses but daring not to say anything.

Fortunately, a few seconds later, Fanning slowly stood up:
"Lead the way."

The entire bright and fragrant world vanished in his hands, like a rapidly shrinking sphere.

A sickly, dark green light poured down instantly, like cold, sticky mucus adhering to the surface of everything, and the white house disappeared.

Even Qiong has disappeared.

The bright oil film on the river surface was flowing and twisting, and the banks were covered with proliferating fleshy moss.

The nightmarish world returned, and the moment everyone breathed a sigh of relief, the cloying, rotten smell instantly blocked their airways, and a low, buzzing sound reappeared faintly in their ears.

"Headquarters direction?" Fan Ning asked.

“Almost due north, Master Fan Ning.” The team leader cautiously surveyed the suddenly changed environment, then quickly pointed to the opposite bank of the river. “But after we get to the other side, we’ll probably have to head northwest first. The ‘Central Control Zone’ is still quite a distance away. Before the arrival of the next few days, we’ll have to transfer at another outpost.”

"Lead the way due north," Fan Ning said.

“But Master.” Another expert paused, taken aback.

"Master Fan Ning, Miss Qiong, she..." Some people were momentarily surprised and doubtful.

But Fanning had already walked ahead without looking back.

"Okay. Received, received." The two leaders quickly followed.

The group circled around to a point where the river narrowed and became shallower, crossed the water, and stepped onto a winding ditch on the north bank that seemed to have once been a main traffic artery.

On both sides, there were towering, unidentified objects, glowing green and obscuring the sky. They resembled the steel skeletons of gnawed buildings, with colorful, oily liquid seeping from many broken parts, gathering into shimmering rainbow streams at everyone's feet.

During this time, several people subconsciously turned their heads to look in the direction of the "center".

Even from a great distance, the view from that direction was still the most terrifying. The sky bulged dramatically, becoming an indescribable funnel-shaped shadow. Under the illumination of the "noon moon" on the other side of the sky, the whole thing looked like a dark green vortex slowly writhing.

Staring at it for a little longer, the sky above my eyelids seemed to begin to "melt," the thickened, asphalt-like clouds threatening to collapse and drip down.
"Damn it, I can't help turning my head."

"It's really evil."

Although almost everyone who has survived knows that it's best not to observe the "center" or the dark green moon at all, people still occasionally have the morbid urge to "take a look," as unavoidable as a low-level physiological "knee-jerk reflex," unless one's spine is crushed.

It felt as if this world had lost all connection to its original landscape. Everything seemed to have collapsed, been squeezed, or melted into a flat, pancake-like mass, all heading towards the disintegrating center. Inexplicably, even the boundary between the "awake world" and the "transferred dream" seemed to have melted away. Every conscious individual who attempted to enter the dream experienced inexplicably strange circumstances; it felt as if they had entered a dream world, yet also as if they had simply entered another reality, slightly different from their original one. Moreover, the "worms" within were more active. Upon waking, some even found themselves inexplicably outside the "sanctuary."
Besides being nocturnal and avoiding dreaming, the surviving people also had the experience that the closer they were to the "edge of the pie," the easier it was to find a suitable area to build a "shelter"—generally, the closer they were to the center of the collapse, the more active and dense the "worms" were.

The "central control zone" and several other "large control zones" of the remnants of the Special Patrol Department are distributed in a fan-shaped pattern, located as far away from the "X coordinate" as possible. Given Fan Ning's current condition, he would not dare to venture too far towards the center.

After traveling for hours or even dozens of hours, whenever the colors in everyone's retinas became more and more vibrant, Fan Ning would throw the peach-colored orb in her hand again, allowing a small area to be enveloped once more by the dreamlike atmosphere of midsummer.

They had never seen any "shelter" that could be formed and constructed so instantly, completely unaffected by the degree of regional collapse. The team members who had been observing along the way were secretly astonished.

What they couldn't understand even more was that the girl in the purple dress seemed to only appear within the "projection".

"Carol, do you think Pogrerich might actually have another way?" Joan asked softly during one of their journeys when they were hiding from the daylight.

“If all this is caused by simply ‘sunset and moonrise,’ then there is hope in trying to solve this problem objectively. But, ha,” Fanning said, shaking his head and laughing as he leaned against a parasol on the beach.

Upon hearing this, Joan fell silent once again.

She knew that Fan Ning was not someone who would be easily defeated by difficulties or who would easily become discouraged.

In fact, the world before and after the Harvest Arts Festival was already bad enough and suspicious enough.

Could someone who lacks a fighting spirit write a work like the Symphony No. 6 in A minor?
After the third hammer blow of the final movement, the wreckage of the "Old Days" was destroyed, and the "Midday Moon" cast its most intense polluting light on the first day of the year. Relying on the connection she had established with the "Sanctuary" in advance, as well as some inexplicable guidance from spacetime, Joan pulled the falling Fanning into a safe zone through the layers of shattered spacetime.

Even so, Fan Ning's current situation is still not optimistic. As soon as he was promoted to an Order Master, his divine essence suffered a "suicidal blow".

As for Joan herself, she almost lost all her extraordinary abilities during the first day. In the emergency, her remaining divine projection and the "Great History Projection" of the Southern Kingdom coexisted in a special way.

This is already the best possible outcome.

If Joan were not an Order Executor, or if she had not been familiar with the characteristics of the Southern Projection when Fan Ning first entered the Abnormal Zone, or if she were not bound and guided by those inexplicable temporal and spatial connections, then if any one of these three conditions were not met, she would undoubtedly die like everyone else, and Fan Ning herself would not survive either.

Later, faced with this situation, the two did try to find a solution.

After Fanning's Order Enforcer strength recovered somewhat, he explored all the areas he could reach, but still found himself at a loss.

This world is beyond saving.

Joan felt that the reason he went there was probably just to see how much more enthusiastic these people from the Special Patrol Bureau could be about "playing"—as he put it, it was just a pitifully small amount of interest.

As night fell, the projection receded, and Joan's figure vanished once more with the dream.

Fanning, carrying his "Illidan" guitar and with the no-longer-lit "Night Watchman's Lamp" hanging from his waist, continued on his way.

The duration of the day-night cycle varies each time, exhibiting a completely irregular and chaotic state. Moreover, it often seems to be longer than previous day-night cycles, so we can only use "night number" to replace the date for a rough estimate.

After traveling for five nights, the group arrived at a mountainous region with rolling hills.

The mountain range's surface had an oily and magnificent sheen, and in the distance, Fanning could see a piece of metal fragment with sharp faults suspended above the highest peak.

Pogrelic climbed onto the weapon in front of the house, the largest piece of the smashed "Blade" wreckage.

It can be considered one of my own "masterpieces".

After all, a lose-lose situation is better than a win-win situation, and a lose-three situation is better than a lose-two situation. What's even more ridiculous is that it's not certain who is better between a "dictator" and a "dangerous element."
It's better than those other pitiful bunch.

Fanning laughed inexplicably and mockingly.

Today, this largest "raging silver piece" emits an extremely sharp silver flash that seems to cut through the line of sight, causing the space of a considerable area of ​​the surrounding mountains to be slightly distorted, and cyan characters that signify control are constantly outlining its boundaries.

At the central stronghold of the remnants of the Special Patrol Bureau, the group climbed towards an isolation platform halfway up the mountain, where more and more officers and investigators were patrolling and guarding the area.

There was a steel door in the mountain wall ahead. When the investigator on duty learned that this small team had actually invited Fan Ning over, he was obviously shocked. Without daring to delay, he quickly reported the situation and invited the group inside.

"Dangdang!"

The heavy steel gate slammed shut.

The eerie darkness and noise were kept outside, while the pale light of the carbonized lamps illuminated the road ahead.

Despite being heavily guarded and surrounded by layers of people, Fan Ning's expression remained unchanged. Carrying a guitar on his back, he walked into the abyss-like depths of the tunnel without looking back.