Survival of the Nation: My luck was a tiny bit worse.

Seeing that Ou Yun was still touching it, she became a little curious.

"Hey Captain Leng, look, can we take this stone back with us? We can build another sauna..."

"You're dreaming."

Leng Ruolan also squatted down and watched for a while.

She tapped the rock surface lightly with the tip of her dagger, and a small fragment peeled off the rock face and fell to the ground.

Leng Ruolan picked it up and held it in her hand. The fragments quickly turned into a small pinch of dark purple powder in her palm.

"Has it weathered away?"

Ou Yun was slightly surprised. "This stone is so strange."

Looks like it can't be used for a sauna.

"Don't worry, if you want to take a sauna, I'll have Black Hawk find you another fire-type friend."

Leng Ruolan patted the powder off her hands. "Since this thing weathered away so quickly, maybe the energy inside it weakened, so it weathered away at the slightest touch?"

Ou Yun said it should be. He stood up and looked around.

The surrounding rock walls grew darker the deeper one went, with purple light seeping out from the cracks in the walls—

The entire canyon looked like a high-speed tunnel leading underground.

After staring at it for a while, Ou Yun looked a bit confused. "Hey Leng, don't you think this looks a bit like...?"

Leng Ruolan understood immediately, "Like the tunnel we used last time to get the Abyss Crystal."

However, since the Hyena Queen warned them, it means this place is far more dangerous than the Abyss Crystal.

The two continued walking along the canyon for about half an hour.

The rock walls on both sides grew higher and higher, squeezing the sky into a narrow slit.

The surrounding light grew dimmer, while the purple light on the rock wall grew brighter, casting an eerie purple glow on both of their faces, making them look like zombies. Ou Yun tried to talk to Leng Ruolan to distract herself, but when she turned around and saw a deep purple face, she was so frightened she almost jumped up.

"Big brother, be careful."

The deep purple face let out a sneer.

"..."

Ou Yun thought to himself, "Dude, I didn't bring a mirror, otherwise I'd show you what a mess you look like right now!"

At the same time, the burnt smell grew stronger.

It smelled more like a stench, not like the smell of a rotting corpse, but more like the smell of burning sulfur, so pungent that it made you want to squint.

"Put this on."

Ou Yun pulled out two simple masks from his spatial ring—they were made of multiple layers of fabric with a layer of charcoal fragments sandwiched in between. The filtering effect wasn't great, but it was still better than inhaling directly through his nose.

Leng Ruolan took it and tied it to her face—at that moment, she suddenly noticed the source of the purple light.

There was a huge crack in the ground at the bottom of the canyon.

The edges of the crack were covered with charred marks, and the purple light was surging up from the depths of the crack.

The area around the crack was barren, and the rocks were pitted and uneven, as if they had been eroded by something.

A cloud of black mist hung directly above the crack.

The black fog covered an area roughly the size of half a basketball court and hovered about ten meters above the ground.

Its edges were constantly churning, as if something was crawling and writhing wildly in the darkness inside.

Occasionally, a dark red light would illuminate the interior of the black mist.

This light was so rare that even Ou Yun remembered it—

This thing emits the exact same light as the energy core on the chest of the Abyss Bone Demon!

Leng Ruolan's eyes widened in shock. "You were right...?"

Ou Yun slapped his forehead. "Captain Leng, Captain Leng, look at your jinxed mouth!"

"..."

Although Leng Ruolan really wanted to retort, "Do you have the right to call me a jinx?", she calmed down and prioritized the overall situation, maintaining a safe distance to observe the situation first.

The general location of the black mist remained unchanged, but there was considerable activity at its center, with bizarre and fantastical sights within.

But if you look closely, you can still see a faint outline, which is very small.

It resembles the posture of a baby curled up.

Leng Ruolan frowned immediately. "Still incubating???"

Ou Yun stared at the black mist for a long time—then suddenly spoke up: "Wait... Captain Leng! Look around that black mist, isn't there something moving?"

Leng Ruolan immediately looked in the direction he pointed.

The ground surrounding the black mist had cracked open with tiny fissures, appearing to split off from the larger cracks.

Several dark red tentacles were extending from the gaps, slowly swaying in all directions.

The tentacles were small, and although they were only the size of foxtail grass, their surfaces were covered with a layer of wet, sticky slime.

"Sizzle!"

The viscous liquid dripped onto the ground, immediately producing a corrosive sound.

Ou Yun gasped, instinctively taking two steps back: "This thing... why does it look so much like the tentacles of the Abyss Bone Demon?"

"It's not just similar, it's the same style."

Leng Ruolan's voice was unusually calm, "However, we don't know the complete form yet, so it's hard to be sure if this is the same type of Abyss Bone Demon... Hmm, but this one looks like it's not fully developed."

"Not fully developed yet..."

With a snap, Ou Yun pulled out a stun gun. "Let's do it while it's hot!"

Leng Ruolan slapped him away, saying no, "Look at the suction cups on these tentacles, there are so many more than the Abyss Bone Demon. If we rush up like this, it might take care of us before we even realize what's happening."

The risk is too great.

A sense of crisis had long been ingrained in Leng Ruolan's subconscious.

Although they hadn't encountered any fatal dangers along the way for a very long time, she still had a nagging feeling in her mind.

In her opinion, to put it bluntly, the forbidden area might have countless chances to fail, but they only have one!

If you die, you're really doomed!

But clearly, Europe was unaware of this.

He even took out a communication stone and made a phone call to Chen Hao.

"Feeding up? Feeding down? Brother Chen? I have something I want to ask you..."

"Oh, so we've reached this side of the valley... Oh, that's good, that's good, there's no danger, there's just one thing... Do you remember that Abyss Bone Demon?"

"..."

Then, under Leng Ruolan's watchful gaze, the two of them began to chat:

"Oh dear, there are tentacles here... yeah, the kind we saw before... right, and that burnt smell... what? Crystallization?"

Leng Ruolan suddenly took the communication stone and pressed a button on it.

Through the sound transmission stone, Chen Hao's voice began to play on speakerphone:

"Brother, based on what you've said, I suggest we avoid direct confrontation..."

Ou Yun, standing nearby, exclaimed, "Oh, so this thing can be used hands-free?"

"What did you say, brother?"

"It's nothing."

"Oh... Abyssal crystals seem to have a strong repulsive relationship with abyssal energy. You should still have those crystal fragments on you, right?"

"I brought it with me."

As Ou Yun spoke, he saw Leng Ruolan take a piece out of the spatial ring on his finger—

The moment the crystal was taken out of the ring, the black mist reacted immediately.

The churning at its edges paused noticeably, while the dark red lights inside pulsed even more violently.