A bizarre and terrifying experience; I messed up the dungeon world.

Han Yingying also came over.

"Fighting amongst yourselves in a dungeon?" Her voice wasn't loud, but it was penetrating. "Do you think you've lived too long?"

"Who said we're in a dungeon?" The burly man chuckled. "The dungeon hasn't started yet. This is the preparation area before teleportation; killing people here isn't against the rules."

That's a little-known fact. There is indeed no ban on combat in the preparation area.

Zhou Lang's hand touched the chainsaw.

"Don't be impulsive." Zhao Qiang tugged at him, his voice trembling. "There are more than a dozen of them."

"Fifteen," Zhou Lang counted.

"Then we absolutely mustn't fight!"

Some of the opposing forces had already drawn their weapons. The burly man from Rift Sky wielded a giant hammer, while the man from Dark Erosion carried a pair of curved swords. The other guild members also assumed their stances, forming a semi-circle around Zhou Lang and his companions.

Meng Yuan and Su Wan stood at a distance. Su Wan glanced at Meng Yuan, who shook his head slightly. Neither of them moved.

Expected.

"I'll ask one last time." The burly man raised his hammer, its surface reflecting a cold light in the gray daylight. "Join the guild, or—"

He didn't finish his sentence.

A black beam of light fell straight down from the sky, crashing onto the ground in front of him and splashing up a large amount of red dust. Everyone instinctively stepped back, and the burly man staggered several steps, almost falling.

The black light dissipated.

A person stands at the landing point.

Calling it a "person" isn't quite accurate—because the figure was completely shrouded in black mist, obscuring its face; only the outline was discernible as human. It wasn't tall, was rather thin, and stood casually, as if it had been dragged from the sofa and wasn't fully awake.

"It's so noisy," the figure said. The voice was neither male nor female, with a strange echo.

"Who are you?" The burly man gripped the hammer tightly, but didn't dare to move.

A hand emerged from the black mist, its long, slender fingers gleaming faintly with silver light. The hand drew a circle in the air, and the giant hammer in the burly man's hand flew out on its own, spinning twice in mid-air before landing a dozen meters away.

The entire audience fell silent.

"The X Guild," the figure announced, speaking as if ordering takeout. "I just came out for a walk, and you all cause a scene. My walk has been ruined, who's going to compensate me?"

No one responded.

Guild X—this name is legendary among players. There's no publicly available information about its leader, no public list of members, and no one even confirms its existence. Some say it's the strongest guild, others say it's just an urban legend.

Now its members are standing right in front of them, still complaining that their walk has been disturbed.

"Like a rascal." The figure turned to Zhou Lang. "I know you."

"I don't know you," Zhou Lang said.

"You'll get to know each other soon enough." The figure chuckled, the black mist swirling around it. Then it turned to the group of guild members, its tone chillingly casual: "Disperse. If you don't, I'm really going to make my move, and then it'll be hard to say whether this preparation area will even be big enough."

The burly man's face flushed and paled in turns. He gritted his teeth, but finally waved his hand and led the Rift Sky members away. The Dark Eclipse members hesitated for two seconds before following suit. The remaining guilds scattered like birds and beasts, as quickly as if they had rehearsed it.

Within half a minute, only the figure shrouded in black mist remained in front of Zhou Lang.

"Thanks," Zhou Lang said.

"You're welcome." The figure withdrew its hand, and the black mist closed up again. "The one next to you—" It tilted its head towards Han Yingying, "She'll find out eventually."

"What do you know?" Han Yingying asked.

The figure didn't answer, but looked down at the circular pattern of red soil at its feet.

"The dungeon is about to begin. Stay alive, there's a lot more interesting stuff to come."

As soon as the words were spoken, the black mist suddenly dissipated, and the figure vanished. His arrival was earth-shattering, his departure silent.

The ground began to shake. The lines on the circular pattern lit up red, and everyone was frozen in place, unable to move.

[The Ninth Dungeon Officially Begins]

[Difficulty: SS]

[Instance Name: Plague Wasteland]

Objective: Survive in the wasteland for seven days, find the source of the plague, and destroy it.

[Special Rule: The eerie concentration increases by one level every day.]

The concept of a preparation zone disappeared, and the red wasteland stretched to the horizon in all directions. Everyone was randomly scattered and teleported to different areas.

Zhou Lang landed alone.

He stood on a cracked plateau, surrounded by undulating red earth hills, with a dry riverbed winding through the distance. The wind was strong, making his clothes flutter loudly.

Ten seconds later, Zhao Qiang ran over from fifty meters away, out of breath.

"Brother Lang, where's Sister Yingying?"

"Looking for them." Zhou Lang opened the map, and the instance marked the location of each player. Han Yingying was about three kilometers to the southeast, while Meng Yuan and Su Wan were further to the west.

"Let's go find her first." Zhou Lang put away the map and strode away.

When they found Han Yingying, she was dealing with a problem—three red beetles that had crawled out of the ground, each the size of a washbasin, with hard shells and the ability to spray corrosive liquid from their mouths. A section of Han Yingying's coat sleeve was burned off, and there were several red marks on her arm.

Zhou Lang cleaved one in two with a saw, Zhao Qiang used the impact hammer he got in the previous dungeon to knock down the second one, and Han Yingying took care of the third one herself.

"Insects?" Zhao Qiang kicked at the beetle carcass on the ground. "This is all there is to an SS-level dungeon?"

"This is day one," Han Yingying reminded him. "The eerie concentration increases by one level every day."

Zhao Qiang's smile froze on his face.

The five met on the first day. Meng Yuan and Su Wan came to find them—when Su Wan approached, Zhou Lang noticed that she wasn't as wary as last time. Although she still kept her distance, at least she wasn't turning her dagger around.

"Those guild members are gathering," Meng Yuan reported. "The members of Rift Sky and Dark Eclipse have joined forces, along with several other guilds, making about fifteen or sixteen people. They haven't given up and plan to continue causing trouble for you in the dungeon."

"Aren't you afraid of the eerie?" Zhao Qiang didn't understand.

"They think that dealing with you first, then the strange ones, won't be a big problem," Meng Yuan said with a subtle expression. "After all, it's fifteen against five, so numerically speaking, it shouldn't be a big problem."

"Will you help us?" Han Yingying asked directly.

Meng Yuan glanced at Su Wan. Su Wan turned her face away.

"I won't help," Meng Yuan said honestly. "But I won't help them either. We won't help each other."

"Fairness," Zhou Lang said.

The next day, the eerie atmosphere indeed intensified. Cracks began to appear on the red soil surface, and instead of beetles, translucent worms crawled out of them. These worms had no eyes, relied on sound to locate themselves, and could cause a wound to rot within ten minutes if they bit someone.

Day three.

The union coalition has arrived.

They launched their attack at dawn, with fifteen men flanking from three directions. Five men on the east side blocked the retreat, five men on the west side advanced head-on, and five men on the north side circled around to the flank of the high ground.

Zhou Lang discovered it early. The oil lamp's sensing range was greatly expanded in the instance; he could sense the number and location of enemies when they approached within two hundred meters.

"We can't beat them," he concluded.