Warhammer: The Time Traveler

Chapter 20 Illusion and Disguise (Signed, please read and add to your favorites)

The secrets underground distracted Chen Yu from most of his attention, but he did not relax his monitoring of the surface. The newly deployed sensor network and the constantly patrolling servo skull continuously sensed every heartbeat of this desert.

Several days later, one evening, the alarm was triggered.

A notification sounded in the workshop indicating that "an unauthorized moving object is approaching the monitoring boundary."

Chen Yu shifted his gaze from the underground structural map to the main screen. Real-time footage transmitted from his servo skull showed three heat signatures cautiously moving about two kilometers east of the town. They were driving a modified, dilapidated-looking small dune buggy, moving slowly and stopping occasionally to observe the town through binoculars.

"Vital signs analysis: Standard human, mild cybernetic enhancement. Armament scan: Low-grade live ammunition, homemade explosives. Behavioral pattern: Highly vigilant, clear reconnaissance intent. Threat level: Low." The servo skull calmly assessed.

They weren't from the Chaotic Blade Gang. Their equipment was worse, their movements more cautious; they looked like typical homeless scavengers.

In the past, Chen Yu's choice would have been simple: either ignore them or physically eliminate them once they entered the workshop's threat range.

But at this moment, looking at the three tiny, hopeful figures on the screen, a different thought surfaced in his mind. Killing consumes energy, generates waste that needs to be disposed of, and might attract more unnecessary attention. More importantly, his recent reverse engineering research on cybernetic prosthetics and network technology in the cyberpunk world requires actual test data.

“An opportunity to test a new plan,” Chen Yu said. “An efficient form of passive defense is not destruction, but guiding them to leave on their own and spreading information that is beneficial for isolating this place.”

He quickly wrote a piece of instruction code, incorporating principles reverse-engineered from local network protocols and prosthetic neural interfaces. "Old pal, execute the 'illusion' protocol. Attempt to access their visual prosthetic data stream and overwrite their visual signals. Inject the pre-set fear imagery module. Other units, cooperate by creating abnormal acoustic effects and subtle energy disturbances."

“Command confirmed.” The servo skull silently blended into the twilight and drifted toward the three scavengers. The other two replica skulls began to produce subtle, elusive noises at specific locations on the edge of the town—like the twisting of metal, faint sighs, and the faint hum of energy overload.

The three scavengers were completely unaware of this. They stopped their dune buggy and decided to walk into the town.

"Old Cat, this place is really weird, it's not even marked on the map." A younger voice said with a hint of nervousness.

“Shut up, mole. The crookeder the place, the more likely you are to find something good. Look at those metal frames, they could fetch a good price if you took them apart.” The leader, known as Old Cat, responded in a low voice, his right eye gleaming with the cheap red light of a scope.

"Dog nose, use your sensors to check for any energy signals?"

The scavenger, nicknamed Dog Nose, raised his wrist, on which was strapped a crude radiation and energy detector. "A little... faint fluctuation, very mixed, can't pinpoint the source... wait, the reading is jumping..."

Just then, the servo skull silently hovered above and to their sides. A directional data stream shot out silently, attempting to interfere with and infiltrate the visual prosthetic wireless receiver module of the old cat and the mole.

Old Cat blinked sharply: "Damn! My eyes seem to be malfunctioning... Did something just float past that corner over there? Something white..."

The mole's voice instantly changed tone: "Cat...Cat Bro! I saw it too! A...a floating skeleton! Shining! Right behind you!"

In their vision, a pale, distorted skull with eerie blue flames burning in its eye sockets floated in the air, silently grinning at them, sometimes disappearing, sometimes reappearing in another direction. This was a composite image of a successfully injected servo skull.

"What nonsense are you spouting!" Old Cat shouted, but his voice trembled as his own prosthetic eye saw similar terrifying hallucinations.

"The detector! The detector's gone mad!" Dog Nose cried out in terror. The readings on the screen of the device in his hand jumped wildly, pointing in all directions and emitting a piercing alarm—this was the energy disturbance created by the replica skull nearby. Immediately afterward, a faint sound, like a woman's weeping, was played through directional speakers, mingling with the sound of the wind and drilling into their ears.

"A ghost...a ghost!" The mole was the first to break down, throwing away the iron rod in his hand and turning to run away.

Old Cat's courage crumbled instantly. The terrifying hallucinations he witnessed, the maddening equipment, the eerie cries... everything pointed to one conclusion: this town was not an abandoned ruin, but a cursed land!
"Retreat! Retreat quickly!" he roared, stumbling and staggering after the mole as he ran towards the sand truck.

The dog with the nose was already terrified and scrambled to catch up.

The three jumped into the car at ten times the speed they had come in, the engine roaring hoarsely, and fled the town in a panic, not even daring to look back.

The servo skull hovered silently in the air, the light in its eye sockets returning to calm, and data injection ceased. The illusion vanished, the crying stopped, and the energy disturbances subsided.

"Test results assessment: The low-end visual prosthetic implant has a high success rate in intrusion. The illusion module operates stably and effectively induces fear in the target. The coordinated interference effect is significant. The target was successfully driven away. Energy consumption: negligible." The servo skull flew back to the workshop, calmly reporting the data.

Chen Yu looked at the data feedback with satisfaction. "'Phantom' protocol archived, set as one of the standard response modes for dealing with low-threat unauthorized intrusions."

He paused, then added, "Continuously monitor surrounding electromagnetic signals. Capture any rumors or discussions about unusual activity in this area."

Just as he had predicted, a few days later, the servo skull sifted through the scattered communications from the captured wanderer channels and found a few interesting snippets:

"...It's absolutely true! Flinttown is haunted! What you see with your own eyes might not even be real!"

"...Don't go anymore. Old Cat and the others almost didn't come back. They said they saw a skeleton ghost, and all the equipment went crazy..."

"...The cursed place must be haunted by the wronged spirits of those who died in the company's past wars..."

"...Stay away from that desert, it's weird..."

Rumors, like ink drops on water, began to spread slowly but steadily among the small group of homeless people and scavengers. "Ghost Town," "Skull Land," "Cursed Land"... these labels began to be associated with this abandoned town.

Chen Yu stood in the workshop, listening to the servo skull report on the intercepted fragments of rumors. The feedback from an external perspective made him satisfied with his strategy.

This supernatural terror is far more effective at deterring scattered opportunists than a stronghold entrenched by a lone, technologically advanced armed wolves. It filters out most fly-like nuisances without attracting the immediate attention of larger powers.

His defense strategy has been upgraded, incorporating elements of information warfare and psychology beyond mere physical destruction.

The underground exploration is about to begin, and he needs the surface to be "quiet" enough. And these scavengers who scared themselves away, along with the "ghost stories" they took with them, are the best talisman for now.

Inside the workshop, the figure in the red robe was once again immersed in analyzing the structural diagrams of the underground base. The whispers outside about the "Ghost" seemed to be merely the prelude to his next technological practice.

(End of this chapter)