Lu Yuan looked at the root system stabbing into the copper pillar.
Throughout the entire time he was speaking, not a single one had stopped.
“Your roots have been growing upward the entire time I was talking.”
Silence.
A very brief silence.
Then the voice changed.
It was no longer soft.
“...You are not smart enough.”
When dozens of mouths spoke this sentence simultaneously, their synchronization reached its peak.
Every syllable was perfectly aligned.
It was a consciousness that had only just been born, yet learned at an incredible speed.
After his recent assessment, Lu Yuan had confirmed that the thing before him was merely 'meat on the chopping block'—it possessed low intelligence and lacked the combat power to back up its appearance.
His intent sank into his chest.
Click.
【Timekeeper · Acceleration (Activated)】
【Sanity: -1... -1...】
The world slowed down.
Lu Yuan uncorked the bottle of Eerie-Bane Potion and charged forward.
Twenty meters.
In his accelerated state, it was a matter of seconds.
The sphere made its final response.
The arms of the suspended hosts all reached out.
Hundreds of vines grabbed toward Lu Yuan at once.
In his accelerated vision, the movements of those vines were painfully slow.
Lu Yuan’s body darted between two vines, even using one as a springboard to jump again.
Five meters from the sphere.
He hurled the bottle of Eerie-Bane Potion.
The glass bottle flipped through the air, accurately smashing against the junction between the sphere’s surface and the roots on the copper pillar.
It shattered.
The moment the potion touched the living tissue, the effect was more violent than expected.
The vascular patterns on the sphere's surface contracted frantically around the point of contact. The hyphae tissue began to fester from the impact site, turning from greyish-green to black, then into a slushy liquid that trickled down the sphere.
Within three seconds, a large area of the outer wall tissue had completely necrotized, exposing the fragments of floating brain tissue inside.
The sphere convulsed violently.
The corpses screamed in unison, letting out meaningless roars.
【Sanity: -3... 53/120】
Lu Yuan pulled the last two exorcism grenades from his waist.
He shoved the first one into the festering pit burned by the Eerie-Bane Potion.
The outer protective layer had been corroded away, allowing the grenade to rest directly against the exposed deep structure.
The second one was thrown toward the convergence point of all the main trunk vines at the bottom of the sphere.
The moment the grenades were in place, Lu Yuan turned and ran.
Maneuvering and jumping between the vines, he returned to the edge of the cave in three steps.
He deactivated Timekeeper.
【Timekeeper · Acceleration (Deactivated)】
【Sanity: -3... 50/120】
He dropped to the ground.
He covered his ears with both hands.
The first sound.
An internal detonation.
The exorcism gunpowder ignited inside the sphere. A blinding glare erupted from the festering wound, like a sun being lit inside the sphere.
The silver powder and exorcism light powder were mostly contained by the sphere's outer wall, preventing them from spreading too far outward.
But the interior was completely destroyed.
The brain tissue fragments floating in the greyish-green liquid were instantly charred under the double cauterization of the silver powder and the intense light.
The neural network woven from hyphae was burned through as if being uprooted.
A massive cluster of light points went dark.
The sphere’s pulsing nearly stopped.
After a few violent tremors.
The entire sphere split down the middle.
Greyish-green liquid gushed from the rift, mixed with charred brain tissue residue and white specks of silver powder.
Then came the second sound.
The explosion at the bottom of the sphere was even more violent.
Three main trunk vines were blown apart at the epicenter. The greyish-green tissue at the breaks carbonized and withered in the lingering flames.
The upper half of the sphere collapsed.
The lower half, the area that had long since been corroded into a dark brown by the copper, shattered into dozens of charred fragments.
The entire cave was vibrating.
The upside-down giant tree shook violently.
The root system on the ceiling quivered frantically, and the hosts hanging from the trunk swayed like wind chimes.
The remnants of the main trunk vines twitched convulsively. The tissue at the breaks tried to stretch toward the fragments again, attempting to piece the shattered parts back together.
Lu Yuan pushed himself up from the ground.
He took out the last jar of mithril from his waist and unscrewed it.
The silver-white liquid was splashed onto the connection between the main trunk vines and the sphere fragments.
Silver flames erupted.
The tissue at the breaks carbonized and withered in the silver flames, completely terminating the attempt to reconnect.
The fire spread downward along the roots, burning the root filaments that were stabbing toward the copper pillar.
The filaments were already half-dead from the copper's cauterization. As the silver flames passed, they were burned through one by one.
Lu Yuan saw the runes at the base of the copper pillar that had been covered and eroded. At the moment the roots snapped, several of them lit up again.
A faint ghostly blue light slowly solidified.
The seal was recovering.
Albeit very slowly.
【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +1.5... 21.8/100】
The sphere emitted one final low-frequency vibration.
It traveled from inside the broken shell, conducting through the copper structure toward the distance.
But it was far, far weaker than the one in the catchment basin.
【Sanity: -2... 48/120】
Dozens of mouths opened again.
But this time, there was no synchronized speech.
Some were screaming, some were whimpering.
Only a few mouths were still haltingly spitting out words.
“...Hurts...”
The word was repeated by different mouths.
Like a child who had just learned to speak, it was the only word it could think of in its extreme pain.
Lu Yuan tore open a Holy Light scroll and threw it toward the center of the cave.
Golden light exploded, illuminating the entire space.
The remnants of the sphere disintegrated further in the holy light.
The upside-down giant tree, the broken trunk, the withered roots, and the falling hosts.
Under the radiance of the golden light, they all shattered piece by piece like a collapsing building.
At the moment the holy light illuminated the vault, Lu Yuan saw it.
At the rift in the sphere.
Amidst the shattered remains of brain tissue, the light of one object was not suppressed by the holy light.
Instead, it grew brighter.
A faint light, intertwined with greyish-green and dark gold, was exceptionally clear under the golden holy light.
It was the size of a thumb.
It came from the very core of the sphere, the area where the hyphae were most densely woven and the brain tissue liquid had the highest information density.
It was a product of accidental crystallization under the high-temperature cauterization of the exorcism silver powder.
Like fired pottery.
The extreme heat had burned the densest hyphae tissue into a crystal, within which residual patterns could still be vaguely seen.
The dark gold came from the marks left by the cauterization of the copper pillar's runes.
It was still pulsing.
Lu Yuan ran back under the cover of the holy light. As he passed the crystal, he leaned down, scooped it up, stuffed it into the alchemical sampling bottle in his satchel, and tightened the cap.
He did not stop his pace.
The dozens of mouths gradually closed.
One by one.
Finally, only a greater ghoul remained. Its keratin-covered body trembled slightly, and its three-layered mouth opened and closed faintly.
“...Will... come... back...”
It was the final words of a consciousness that was dying just as it was being born.
However, the essence of hyphae was spore reproduction.
As long as a single spore survived, and there was enough time and nourishment, it could grow again, accumulate brains again, and learn to think again.
It did not understand death.
It only knew that it would return.
Then, that mouth also closed.
【Detection Target: ? (Hyphae main core... consciousness matrix has been destroyed... but deep root system still survives...)】
【Note: The core consciousness has been lost... the root remnants still retain the most primitive biological instincts... under the dual pressure of copper cauterization and resource depletion... the root system will enter an extremely long period of dormancy...】
【Time required for regeneration... unknown... could be years... could be decades... could be longer...】
【But it will not be forever.】
Lu Yuan ran into the passage he had come from.
As he ran, he looked down at the alchemical sampling bottle in his satchel.
Through the glass, the greyish-green and dark gold light of the crystal flickered on and off.
The pulsing continued.
At the edge of his vision, greyish-white text surfaced.
【Detection Target: ? (Consciousness crystal... extremely dangerous... dormant...)】
【...An unprecedented crystalline body... internally sealing a large amount of... compressed... mental resonance and inscription traces...】
【...It seems to be the last remaining fragment of... an existence that had not yet fully been born... insufficient knowledge... unable to further analyze...】
【Warning: This crystal still possesses extremely faint activity... prolonged possession may result in unknown influences...】
【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +1.5... 23.3/100】
Lu Yuan withdrew his gaze.
His figure became blurred in the darkness.
The hyphae throughout the tunnel were in a state of paralysis after losing their central command.
There were no tides, no obstructions.
Only a quiet layer of hyphae that no longer wriggled, and a sweet scent that was gradually fading.
He ran for about three minutes.
A dark gold light appeared ahead.
The passage entrance sealed by inscriptions.
Lu Yuan reached out and passed through the light curtain.
Warmth flowed across his palm.
The catchment basin.
The moment Lu Yuan passed through the light curtain, the ground beneath his feet began to tremble.
This time, it was far more intense than when the ghouls had attacked.
Behind the inscription-sealed passage entrance, the light curtain vibrated violently. The dark gold light flickered on and off, as if some immense pressure was slamming against the seal from the other side.
Bo Er was the first to rush over, grabbing Lu Yuan’s arm.
“What—”
He didn't finish his sentence.
The remnants of the hyphae layer on the ceiling of the catchment basin suddenly twitched violently.
All the greyish-green tissue still attached to the walls, ground, and vault began to contract frantically at once, collapsing like a skin that had its skeleton removed, before suddenly expanding.
A sweet scent so thick it almost felt physical surged from all directions.
【Environmental Perception: Warning... pollution concentration rising sharply... evacuate immediately...】
【Sanity: -2... -2... 46/120】
Lu Yuan grabbed Bo Er.
“Go! Now! Everyone, retreat!”
Wolf reacted the fastest.
“Imperial Iron Guard, retreat formation!”
No second command was needed.
The twelve men completed their turn within three seconds. The front rank became the rear guard, and the rear rank became the vanguard, moving toward the way they had come.
Heinrich’s Holy Armored Army followed closely behind. Their holy light inscriptions were all turned to maximum brightness, their golden light forcing the surrounding hyphae back a few inches.
Bolen was being supported by Kail. The old man’s legs were still shaking, but no one stopped to wait.
Lu Yuan ran in the middle of the group, looking back as he ran.
Behind the inscription-sealed passage entrance, the dark gold light curtain continued to vibrate.
On the other side of the curtain, something was making a final struggle.
The sweet scent was still intensifying.
A greyish-green mist visible to the naked eye began to appear in the air, seeping from every pore of the hyphae layer and filling the entire passage.
【Environmental Perception: Pollution concentration exceeding limits... prolonged exposure will lead to irreversible contamination...】
“Cover your nose and mouth! Reduce your breathing!” Lu Yuan’s voice came muffled from behind his scarf.
The team retreated at full speed.
The passage the Imperial Iron Guard had hacked through on the way in was still there. Carbonized hyphae remains covered the ground, crunching under their feet.
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