Different Perspectives

The emotions transmitted through the symbiotic link were crystal clear: it wanted to go in. It wanted to return.

The Knowledge Worm squirmed urgently within his left eye socket, its entire body glowing. Dark purple and silver-white light flashed alternately, the colors shifting faster than Lu Yuan had ever seen before.

Lu Yuan hesitated.

Allowing the Knowledge Worm to enter a branch of the Sea of Knowledge carried risks. If the symbiotic link were to snap within the river, he might lose the worm forever.

But this was also the only chance.

Looking at the barrier from the outside, all one could see were colors and light specks. To truly understand what was happening inside—the state of the students and the actual structure of the Sea of Knowledge—

He had to send in a creature capable of perceiving the essence of knowledge to see it firsthand.

Lu Yuan made his decision.

He sent a short command through the symbiotic link: "Go, but don't stray too far. Keep in contact at all times."

With Lu Yuan's affirmation, the worm shot out from his left eye socket. It moved with incredible speed, like a dark purple stream of light, darting into a gap in the barrier, weaving through the flow of fragments, and vanishing into the depths of the river.

The symbiotic link experienced a slight fluctuation, but it remained stable overall.

In the next moment, Lu Yuan's vision split.

One eye remained in the conscious space, watching the pale void and the waterfall-like river.

The other perspective came from the Knowledge Worm.

It was traveling at high speed through the river, chasing after the group of students.

The Knowledge Worm caught up with the students.

It approached from the side, unnoticed by anyone.

Through its perspective, Lu Yuan saw the world as the students saw it.

Twenty-three people were walking upon a boundless "sea surface."

The water beneath their feet was like liquid glass. Every step sent ripples outward—ripples that were not transparent, but woven with countless colors that swirled like a shattered kaleidoscope.

The sea surface was extremely calm, without waves, yet it possessed a very slow rise and fall, as if the entire sea were breathing.

There was no sky above.

Instead, there was an endless colorful dome. Dark purple and deep blue flowed at the highest point, gradually fading toward the edges into greyish-green and pale gold. The entire vault was like a living oil painting, with colors surging silently.

Auroras, Lu Yuan thought.

Massive pillars rose from beneath the water's surface.

Some towered into the colors of the dome, their tops vanishing at the limit of sight.

Others were only half-exposed, jutting out of the water at an angle like the masts of sunken ships.

The surfaces of the pillars were covered in glowing patterns, similar to inscriptions, but they did not belong to any inscription system Lu Yuan recognized. The patterns flowed slowly across the stone, as if they were alive.

Between some of the pillars, extremely thin lines of light were connected like silk threads, vibrating in the air.

The entire space took on the feel of a cathedral because of these pillars and lights—grand, solemn, and making one instinctively want to be quiet.

The students were clearly awed as well.

The group was much quieter than when they had first entered; no one spoke. The sound of their footsteps grew lighter, as if they were afraid of disturbing this space.

Sister Lin walked at the very front. A slowly rotating mark glowed on the back of her hand, pointing like a compass toward a distant direction.

She did not look back, only saying, "Keep up."

Someone whispered, "Is this... the Sea of Knowledge?"

No one answered.

"It's even more... than the mentors described..." another voice said, trailing off halfway. They didn't know how to describe it.

The small girl walked at the very back of the line. She looked down at the ripples her footsteps made; beneath her feet, the ripples were golden and brighter than anyone else's.

She said softly, "It's so beautiful."

No one responded.

Silence was the instinctive reaction when facing something so vast.

In the distance, someone noticed something—a small, colorful orb of light was floating to the side of the group.

"What is that?"

"I don't know."

"...It doesn't look dangerous."

The small girl glanced at it, tilted her head, and then gave it a slight nod as if saying hello.

The group continued forward.

Everything the Knowledge Worm saw was the exact opposite of what the students saw.

The very first second Lu Yuan cut into the Knowledge Worm's perception, he knew something was wrong.

The water surface beneath their feet, where the students walked amidst warm ripples...

Was blood.

Thick, dark red blood interwoven with deep purple covered his entire field of vision. It was boundless, and its surface was covered by an extremely thin membrane, like the scab that forms on the surface of blood left out for too long.

The students were walking on the scab. With every step, they broke a small piece of it, revealing the viscous dark red beneath.

The blood was rising and falling slowly, as if breathing.

Those pillars rising from the "sea surface"...

Were bones.

Massive, greyish-white bones, their surfaces covered in a thin layer of rotting meat. The meat had dried and shriveled against the bone like old leather, and it was covered in patterns of dead veins, greyish-purple in color.

The bones rose from the sea of blood at varying heights and angles; some were straight up, some tilted, and some were broken, leaving only a stump.

It was like an unimaginably large corpse, with only the tops of its ribs exposed.

The "aurora dome" the students saw above was, in the Knowledge Worm's perspective, pollution.

A dense, writhing mist of light seeped continuously from the gaps in the bones and blood.

The reason the colors were flowing was that the mist was writhing like countless microscopic insects, weaving together in the air to form a barrier.

The "glowing patterns" the students saw were the residual veins on the surface of the bones, but because they had been soaked in the Sea of Knowledge for too long, they emitted an eerie aura.

Through the Knowledge Worm's perception, Lu Yuan finally understood.

This was not the Sea of Knowledge.

This was not some branch; this was the interior of the body of an indescribable entity that had sunk into the Sea of Knowledge.

The entire space they were in was the inside of a corpse.

【Warning: You have ignored the protection of the Sea of Knowledge.】

【You are currently inside the... ??... of a certain existence.】

There were only two lines; the greyish-white text was uncharacteristically brief.

The opening in the vault—the circular opening thirty meters above the center of the hall—did not lead to the sky, but to the body of some existence.

No wonder. No wonder they could carry out this mission. The location had been determined beforehand.

All the questions that had puzzled Lu Yuan were explained in this moment. No wonder they could harvest the desired knowledge in such a boundless sea...

The group followed the direction of Sister Lin's mark. The further they went, the more intense the colors of the "sea surface" became.

The water shifted from cool tones to warm tones; golden and warm orange light rose from beneath their feet.

"It gets warmer the further in we go," a boy said, sounding very relaxed.

"Yeah, the mentors said it would feel like this near the center."

But in Lu Yuan's eyes, it was getting warmer because the blood was getting deeper. It had risen from their ankles to their shins. For the students at the front of the line, the "water" had already reached their knees. The temperature came from the rotting blood that had not yet completely cooled.

The deeper they went, the fresher the blood and the higher the temperature.

The students were completely unaware. They walked in blood, believing they were stepping on glowing water.

"Sister Lin, is the mark pointing toward that largest pillar?" someone asked. The largest pillar was several hundred meters away, towering into the dome.

"Probably. Let's go," Sister Lin said without looking back.

That largest "pillar" was, from the worm's perspective, a complete spinal column. It was so massive that one had to tilt their head back just to see the top. The rotting meat on the bone's surface was thicker than elsewhere, and the vein patterns on the flesh were more dense.

It was clearly the center of this corpse. The students were walking toward the corpse's core.

"I'm a little nervous..." a girl whispered.

The person beside her patted her shoulder. "It's fine."

For the first few people to enter the deeper areas, very faint dark red patterns began to emerge on the skin of their shins.

They were very faint, almost invisible unless one looked closely.

But the Knowledge Worm saw them clearly. The shape of those patterns was identical to the dead vein patterns on the surface of the bones.

It was pollution. It was already happening, yet not a single person felt it.

Some people began to approach the pillars out of curiosity. The "patterns" on the surface of the pillars looked like some kind of script. Someone reached out to touch one; upon contact, a wave of warmth spread through their fingertips, as if they had touched a hot spring stone.

"There's knowledge here... I can feel it... so much..."

His expression became dazed.

The blood at the base of the bones was thicker and darker.

Near the bottom of the bones, the blood had turned into a black, gel-like substance.

In the deep gaps between some bones, at the joints, the "meat" had thickened unnaturally, piling up into lump-like masses of scar tissue that sealed the gaps tightly.

The boy was touching that very flesh. His body began to be polluted at a rate visible to the naked eye.

The small girl walked at the back of the group. To her, the blood was golden, warm water that just reached her ankles.

She glanced down.

"It's so warm."

She lifted her foot and shook off some "water droplets." A few golden specks of light flew out, landing on the water and creating tiny ripples.

In Lu Yuan's eyes, what she shook off was a string of dark red blood droplets. When the droplets fell back into the sea of blood, they didn't create ripples, but extremely thin threads of blood.

A first dark red pattern had already appeared on her ankle.

Lu Yuan watched as the students walked deeper and deeper toward the spinal column, but he could only worry in vain; the Knowledge Worm had no way to speak.

The only thing he could do was use the Knowledge Worm to lead the students away from the most dangerous areas as much as possible.

Lu Yuan sent a command to the Knowledge Worm through the symbiotic link: Lead those who stray too far or approach the dark bone gaps back to the group.

The Knowledge Worm received the command. It flew near the students who were approaching the dark areas and released a faint wisp of knowledge aura above their heads.

The effect was immediate.

The guiding marks on the backs of the students' hands had a natural response to the knowledge aura. The aura released by the Knowledge Worm interfered with the mark's positioning, causing the pointer to shift by a few degrees.

The mark suddenly rotated.

"Huh? The mark changed?"

"This way?"

"It might be a normal adjustment. It changes occasionally the further in we go. Sister Lin said the route isn't a straight line."

The students did not suspect anything. They trusted the mark as they would a compass and naturally changed direction, veering away from the edge of the dark bone gaps.

The small girl noticed the movement of the colorful orb. It always flew above the heads of those about to stray, stopped for a moment, and then flew away. Then, the marks of those people would change.

"That little light orb seems to be leading the way," she said, frowning slightly.

The person in front of her didn't look back. "Don't overthink it. Just follow the mark."

The small girl said no more, but she took one more look at the light orb.

Most of the people were successfully guided to relatively safer areas. The group's overall path shifted slightly, but they avoided the thickest blood zones and the densest bone gap belts.

However, there were two or three students who had gone too deep. They were in the middle-front of the group and were the first to enter the deep-water zone. The dark red patterns on their legs had already spread from their ankles to above their knees.

The Knowledge Worm released its aura above their heads.

The marks did not react.

The pollution was too deep. The marks themselves had been compromised and no longer responded to external knowledge aura. They were already approaching the edge of the dark bone gaps.

Lu Yuan had no other way.