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

Seeing Ouyun approach, it slowly poked its head out of the water and made a low gurgling sound.

"Hey buddy, we're going out for a bit. Keep an eye on the camp here."

Ou Yun squatted by the pool and, without waiting for the other person's consent, patted the edge of the giant turtle's shell. "You know that noise from before, right? It's that thing that likes to scream—if it comes again, just kill it. Don't leave it alive."

The giant tortoise's eyes seemed to understand, but not quite. "Gurgle?"

"By the way, has anything unusual happened in the river lately?" Ou Yun asked again.

The giant tortoise actually tilted its head and thought for a moment, then pointed its claw towards the downstream direction.

Ou Yun's eyes seemed to understand but not quite. "You mean... there's something moving in the water downstream?"

The giant tortoise nodded.

However, Mr. Ou simply asked casually, "Okay, then it's up to you!"

"..."

Ou Yun stood up, took out a large, frozen fish from his spatial ring, and tossed it to the giant tortoise. "This is today's pay. I'll give you a bonus when you get back."

The giant turtle opened its mouth to catch the fish, glanced at Ou Yun, and then sank back into the water with a gurgle.

*

The roar of the propellers echoed through the valley.

The helicopter slowly took off and flew towards the circular valley.

From the air, the forest area is breathtakingly beautiful.

The rolling mountains are covered with a dark green velvet blanket, and the river meanders through the valleys.

Occasionally, you can see a few huge mutated beasts running on the ridge. When they see a helicopter flying by, some look up at it, while others simply disappear into the forest.

"To be honest, this scenery would be at least a 5A-level scenic spot in the real world."

Ou Yun sat in the passenger seat, looking down through the porthole, his tone tinged with emotion.

Leng Ruolan gripped the joystick, sitting upright. "Then you can talk to the Forbidden Zone about giving you this piece of land after you clear the level."

"Okay, I'll talk about it later."

"..."

"We'll build a resort in the valley, with Nanbei as the security captain, Lvdou as the receptionist, and Storm and Black Hawk as the power plant—"

"A giant frost-covered roc as an air conditioner?"

"Yes, yes, yes."

"Oh."

The outline of the circular valley has come into view at the edge of the horizon.

That huge, ring-shaped depression surrounded by cliffs would probably look like a meteorite crater on satellite images—but up close, it looks more like a sinkhole that has been opened up from the inside by something.

The cliff face was covered with dense purple veins, which still gleamed eerily in the sunlight.

Leng Ruolan narrowed her eyes. "The lines are denser than when you came last time."

"Abyssal energy is spreading."

Ou Yun also dropped his joking expression and stared at the circular valley below. "The canyon that deadbeat mentioned should be nearby—fly west and see if there's any unusual terrain."

The helicopter circled over the circular valley once, then turned and flew west.

After flying for about ten minutes, the terrain began to change.

The once lush forest became sparse, and more and more bare rocks were exposed on the ground, their color gradually changing from grayish-brown to dark purple.

The acrid smell in the air grew stronger and stronger—a smell that Ou Yun and Leng Ruolan were both all too familiar with; it was practically the standard accompaniment to the remnants of abyssal energy.

Leng Ruolan suddenly spoke up, "Over there, right?"

About a kilometer ahead, a narrow crack appears to have been cleaved open by a giant axe and is embedded in the mountainside.

The rock walls on both sides of the crack are almost vertical, and the surface of the rock walls is covered with dense purple patterns, which are more than ten times denser than those on the other side of the circular valley.

At the end of the fissure lies a vast circular basin.

Just as Mike described.

The ground in the basin was scorched black and barren.

In the very center of the basin stands a massive stone pillar, constructed from countless bones, armor plates, and minerals. Dark purple light flows through the patterns on the surface of the pillar, and thick purple mist continuously pours out from the crack at the top.

Meanwhile, the mist was churning and surging at the bottom of the basin.

Something was moving in the fog.

"There really are places like that."

Leng Ruolan hovered the helicopter about 300 meters above the basin and looked down through the porthole. "When did this thing appear? We've circled around here several times before and never seen it."

"It's probably a newly updated patch for the Forbidden Zone."

Ou Yun raised his binoculars and carefully observed the situation in the basin. "Look at those things in the fog, aren't they tearing each other apart?"

Leng Ruolan also raised her binoculars.

Sure enough, the shadows in the sea of ​​fog, large and small, devoured each other.

Just as the six-legged wolf-like monster tore a spherical chunk of flesh in two, it was ambushed from behind by a much larger bony mantis. The two monsters then rolled and tore at each other in the sea of ​​fog, until finally the mantis was caught in a tentacle that emerged from the depths of the fog and disappeared into the thick mist before it could even struggle.

"Raising Gu poison."

Leng Ruolan put down her binoculars. "If you throw a bunch of monsters into the same place and let them devour each other, the one that survives will be the strongest—and then what? Where will the strongest one go?"

"Of course they came to find us."

Ou Yun remained remarkably calm. "This isn't the first time the Forbidden Land has done something like this. Abyss Bone Demons, Abyss Scorpions—maybe that so-called lord came about this way."

Leng Ruolan was silent for a few seconds, then suddenly pushed the helicopter forward a little.

What are you doing?

"Let's take a closer look and take some photos to send back to Brother Chen for analysis."

"I'm afraid even Brother Chen can't analyze this."

The helicopter slowly descended to a height of about 100 meters from the edge of the basin.

At this distance, the details within the basin can be seen quite clearly.

The two then realized that the surface of the pillar was not a simple pattern at all; under the light, it had a strange, translucent texture.

It looks like a piece of frozen meat.

Leng Ruolan was stunned. "This pillar... is it alive?"

"What do you mean?"

"Look at the bottom of the pillar."

Ou Yun looked in the direction Leng Ruolan pointed.

The base of the pillar is rooted in the scorched ground in the center of the basin, with countless fine roots extending from the base of the pillar and digging deep into the soil like blood vessels.

There were many monster corpses lying around, some decaying and some not yet decaying.

Various bizarre, seemingly pieced-together corpses lay beside the roots. And the roots weren't just anchored in the ground; some were even embedded directly in the corpses.

Ou Yun was shocked. "It's absorbing the residual energy from those monsters after they died?"

The energy released by the dead monster was absorbed by the soil and then transported to the pillar through the roots.

"So, the mist at the top of that pillar is abyssal energy?"

The two looked up at the same time, following the direction of the purple mist.

Mist billowed from the top of the column, forming a faint purple band in the air.

The fog drifted further west, disappearing behind the distant, layered mountain ridges.