While the Knowledge Worm was working, it was also munching away.
As it flew, it continuously absorbed the sediments on the surface of the bones, released its guiding aura, and drew the atmospheric components of the blood into its body.
A thought struck Lu Yuan.
It can eat knowledge from the Sea of Knowledge?
Normally, the Knowledge Worm couldn't eat anything within the Sea of Knowledge because that knowledge was too "raw."
It required Lu Yuan to provide processed knowledge, such as consciousness crystals or his own knowledge. But now, it was eating directly, and there was no rejection reaction.
Either the corpse had "cooked" these things, or the worm itself was changing. Neither was particularly good news.
Furthermore, it was emitting something as it ate.
Lu Yuan sensed it through the symbiotic link, but he couldn't see clearly what it was.
It seemed to be an instinctive behavior; even the worm itself didn't know what it was doing.
Lu Yuan thought about recalling it, but the Knowledge Worm was currently serving as the students' invisible guide. He obviously couldn't withdraw it. Of course, Lu Yuan wasn't truly willing to withdraw it anyway.
Lu Yuan wanted to know more. With his greyish-white text and incredibly powerful Sanity as a foundation, he would never forgive himself if he missed this opportunity.
So, for now, he could only keep watching.
Once he returned, no matter what happened, he had to get to the bottom of this.
Thus, under the guidance of the Knowledge Worm, only eighteen of the twenty-three students remained in the group.
Of the remaining five, some had been led away by curiosity, walking alone toward a certain "pillar"; others had fallen behind during the march, creating a fatal distance between themselves and their companions.
In the eyes of the others, the companions who left were simply exploring other directions safely within this vast sea.
But in the images transmitted back by the Knowledge Worm, their endings were identical.
Blackish-red flesh quietly climbed up their bodies from the sea of blood beneath their feet. Before they even noticed, it eroded them bit by bit, eventually swallowing them whole.
Dark red patterns spread from their ankles to their waists, then to their chests, until they finally covered the lone students entirely.
Then, all that remained for them was disintegration.
Their bodies were like water-logged paper, silently coming apart and sinking into the sea of blood, turning into specks of light to be completely devoured by this corpse.
Lu Yuan watched all this from the barrier, frowning.
He had noticed a pattern. Those students who acted alone barely lasted a few minutes, while for the eighteen people clustered together, the rate of pollution spread was more than halved.
"How exactly does the Polymath Tower know so much?"
Not only could they pinpoint this corpse within this forbidden sea, but they also knew that grouping together could delay pollution.
But if they knew, why didn't they explicitly explain this before entering? Why did they let students leave the group at will?
Unless leaving the group was part of the plan.
Those five people were the default price to be paid.
Lu Yuan didn't dwell on that thought further.
If the group continued to shrink, the remaining people wouldn't last long.
Sister Lin, walking at the very front, spoke.
"We're almost at our destination. Everyone, stay close to me."
Her voice wasn't loud, but it carried far in this empty space.
The students traveling in scattered pairs and small groups heard the call and began to converge toward her.
Through the Knowledge Worm's perspective hanging above the group, Lu Yuan saw the full view ahead.
Hundreds of massive bones arranged in an arc rose from the sea of blood. They looked like breastbones, twisted and interlaced, with black flesh that had been depositing for unknown ages clinging to them.
Blackish-purple inscriptions flowed slowly across the surface of the bones, emitting an eerie aura.
In the center enclosed by the curved breastbones, a thousand-meter-long vortex was slowly turning, drawing in all the surrounding black blood and filth.
This was the core location of the corpse.
But the students standing on the "sea surface" saw something completely different.
Countless glowing stone pillars rose from beneath the water, blotting out the sky. The sea surface, shimmering with dreamlike colors, pulled at a massive vortex. Light of pale gold mixed with light blue flowed and rose above the vortex.
It was so magnificent it took one's breath away.
Sister Lin stopped at the outer edge of the vortex.
She turned around to face the seventeen classmates behind her. Her gaze swept over every face, finally landing on the small figure at the very back of the line, pausing for a moment.
She retracted her gaze, her expression solemn.
"We've arrived!"
"Remember our mission, and remember our names."
"We only have one chance. This is not just for the empire, but for ourselves. As long as we accept a complete fragment, we can take that step."
She paused.
"So no matter what happened before, you must resist the temptation of other knowledge now. This is the only way, and the only thing we can do. Do you understand?"
"Understood!"
The voices were uneven, but no one hesitated.
The Knowledge Worm seemed to be stirred by the aura emanating from this area. Its body continuously absorbed the overflowing knowledge residue, its mouth chewing on something unknown.
Feedback from the symbiotic link surged over. Greyish-white text flickered incessantly at the edge of his vision. Lu Yuan didn't even actively read them; they were all produced by the Knowledge Worm's eating.
【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +1... 44.3/100】
【Ancient Music Theory: +2... 4.4/10】
【Pharmacology: +4... 38.8/50】
Sister Lin looked at the classmates behind her, meeting their eyes one by one.
In everyone's eyes, there was resolve.
She nodded.
Then she raised her right hand. The guiding mark on the back of her hand, which had been rotating the whole time, suddenly flared with light.
She pressed her right hand onto the back of a boy's hand beside her. The mark peeled away from her skin, flowed along her fingertips to the boy's hand, and solidified once more.
The boy's hand lit up.
Sister Lin's hand went completely dark.
"I have walked the path; the direction is now in your hands."
She said only that one sentence.
Then she turned resolutely to face the vortex.
"I will open the road ahead for you."
The moment the words fell, all the occasional laughter and whispered conversations from earlier on the journey faded away.
Sister Lin took the first step.
Her body began to disintegrate at a rate visible to the naked eye.
With every step, her skin cracked a bit more, and countless lines of eerie silver-white light surged out from within her body.
The students behind her knew what they were seeing.
All the beauty they had left would freeze at this moment.
No one spoke.
Seventeen people raised their hands simultaneously, and the runes engraved on them began to glow.
Beams of multi-colored light surged from their bodies, circling above the sea of blood before finally landing on Sister Lin.
Her body was continuously annihilating and dissipating, but those lights barely managed to stabilize her remaining shell.
Lu Yuan saw it even more clearly through the Knowledge Worm.
From the moment Sister Lin took that step, countless white-glowing knowledge-derived insects swarmed out from her disintegrating body.
At the cost of the knowledge-derived insects' bodies, they forced a path through this spiraling sea of blood.
"So from the very beginning, the plan was to filter them out in this way."
Lu Yuan muttered to himself at the barrier while watching the images sent back by the Knowledge Worm.
Supported by the runic energy from the students behind her, the insects within Sister Lin's body surged out almost limitlessly.
The silver-glowing knowledge-derived insects let out bursts of silent screams.
In the Knowledge Worm's perception, it was an extremely sharp vibration. The moment the insects rushed out of the body, they were annihilated by the blackish-red blood aura at the edge of the vortex.
They struggled desperately, trying to swarm back into the girl's body.
But it was useless, because the girl's body was gradually collapsing and breaking down, like a leaking balloon.
At this moment, her body no longer had a place for the knowledge-derived insects to reside.
The insects wailed.
They were terrified; they were afraid. They tried to eat the host's brain to control the body and flee from this place.
But the remaining inscriptions on her arm continued to perform their final function, completely isolating the brain wrapped in insects.
The insects could not touch her consciousness.
Her consciousness remained clear until the very last moment.
She ignored the insects entangling her and within her body, looking straight ahead at the rotating "starry river" in the distance.
The blackish-red sea of blood trembled.
The slowly rotating vortex seemed to be stimulated and began to show signs of accelerating.
Lu Yuan saw clearly through the Knowledge Worm's perspective.
Sister Lin's figure had already begun to fade. Her skin was completely gone by the time she took her hundredth step.
Only countless insects surrounding an exposed brain remained, rolling a path through the sea of blood in the form of a sphere.
The white insects were receding.
The knowledge within Sister Lin's body was being completely ground away.
"What a pity..."
Sister Lin murmured to herself at the final moment, then pulled herself together.
"I can only go this far. I'll leave the rest to you..."
Sister Lin turned her head with a smile.
Before she could finish her sentence, her body was reduced to the mere outline of a head in the eyes of the students, and everything else dissipated into the mist of the Sea of Knowledge.
But in Lu Yuan's sight, Sister Lin's last remaining brain was gradually exposed as the insect swarm thinned.
Under the surrounding endless blackish-red blood aura in the air, it withered completely.
Finally, it vanished entirely.
【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +5... 49.3/100】
【Pharmacology: +9... 47.8/50】
【Medicinal Herbology: +12... 31.2/50】
With Sister Lin's death, the Knowledge Worm absorbed most of the overflowing knowledge.
Lu Yuan looked at the ticking numbers, knowing what lay behind them.
A person's lifetime of learning had, at this moment, turned into a few lines of greyish-white text.
【Sanity: -3... 49/140】
The pressure at the barrier continued.
The flow of fragments did not weaken with the student's death; instead, it became denser.
At the very back of the group, the small girl stopped.
She stood there, looking in the direction where Sister Lin had disappeared.
She didn't cry.
Her lips were pressed into a tight line, and her chin trembled slightly.
The person beside her gave her a gentle tug.
"Go."
The small girl didn't move.
She looked down at the back of her hand.
The rune was still glowing. Like the others, the light was flying forward along an invisible line.
When those lights had fallen on Sister Lin earlier, she had felt it.
A small part of something inside her had been drawn away.
It didn't hurt.
But a piece of her felt empty.
She looked up and glanced at the small, colorful light orb floating not far away.
The light orb floated there quietly, following the group's progress. The small girl withdrew her gaze, took a step, and caught up with the group.
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