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

"I remember... a person. Very tall. Not a person." Her words were fragmented. "He was standing somewhere, in a very bright place. He was doing something—he was... separating himself."

The bandaged man suddenly flashed through Zhou Lang's mind.

"What is she saying?" Zhou Lang asked the bandaged man.

The bandaged man's voice became extremely low, so low that Zhou Lang could barely hear it: "She's talking about you."

"What?"

The bandaged man offered no further explanation.

Mu Chen grew impatient: "What are you dawdling for? If you're going to get off, then get off. Waiting here is just waiting to die."

Zhou Lang suppressed his doubts and nodded: "Yes."

Fourteen people descended the spiral staircase. The staircase was narrow, allowing only two people to pass side by side. The shadow did not follow, but instead, a different threat arose—the staircase was covered in runes, which would light up and unleash different attacks every so often. Some were flames, some were ice spikes, and some were mental shocks.

Mental attacks are the most troublesome. One of Mu Chen's teammates, while passing through a dense area of ​​mental attacks, suddenly turned around and attacked his teammate behind him with a ghost weapon. Mu Chen reacted extremely quickly, grabbing the man's wrist and twisting it, causing the ghost weapon to slip from his grasp. But the man's eyes had already rolled back, and he was making incoherent noises.

"They've been taken into custody," Jiang Du said.

Without hesitation, Mu Chen struck the man on the back of the neck. The man lost consciousness. Mu Chen then carried him on his shoulder and continued walking.

After descending for about twenty minutes, we finally reached the bottom of the stairs.

At the bottom is a circular hall. In the center of the hall is a coffin.

A black, enormous coffin covered with inscriptions.

A person was standing in front of the coffin.

No, it wasn't human. It had a human outline, but was at least two meters taller than a normal person. Its body was made of a translucent gray substance, and its face was blurry, with no discernible features. It stood motionless in front of the coffin, like a sculpture.

A prompt appeared on Zhou Lang's system interface:

Five-Star Ghost - The Tomb Guardian

Five stars.

Everyone's blood ran cold instantly.

The intelligence reports that the weaknesses of four-star monsters are all "unknown," and even the names of five-star monsters are appearing for the first time.

Zhao Qiang muttered a single word: "Damn."

Lin Yan gripped the knife tightly.

Fang Yan's bone knife began to emit a faint resonance, which was the stress reaction of the ghost weapon when facing an existence far beyond its own level.

The tomb guardian moved.

It didn't leave; it simply turned its head. Or rather, its face turned towards the crowd.

Then it opened.

The sound didn't come from its mouth, but from every wall of the entire hall simultaneously, as if the whole clock tower was speaking:

"One of you does not belong here."

It paused for a moment.

"Find him. Hand him over to me. The rest of you can pass."

A subtle, deathly silence fell over the hall.

Fourteen people, thirteen pairs of eyes sizing each other up. And one pair, Han Yingying's, was fixed on the tomb guardian.

Mu Chen was the first to speak: "Who?"

The tomb guardian did not answer. It turned back to its position facing the coffin, remaining motionless, and said no more after giving its conditions.

"It's sowing discord," Jiang Du quickly analyzed. "A classic prisoner's dilemma. We don't know who the 'outsiders' are, but as soon as someone becomes suspicious, the cooperation collapses."

Fang Yan said coldly, "What if it's true? What if there really is someone who is different from us?"

"We can't just hand them over," Zhou Lang said.

Mu Chen glanced at him: "What's the rush?"

That's quite interesting. Zhou Lang's hasty denial only made him seem suspicious to others.

Zhao Qiang took half a step forward, blocking Zhou Lang and Mu Chen: "Let's talk this out, stop being sarcastic."

"Me, being sarcastic?" Mu Chen pointed at the Tomb Guardian. "A five-star monster, everyone here combined couldn't defeat it. It offered you a way out, and you don't want to take it?"

"What kind of path is it to betray your teammates?" Zhao Qiang's prosthetic fingers flicked out energy spikes, buzzing loudly.

The atmosphere suddenly became tense. Mu Chen's teammates instinctively gripped their ghost weapons, and Fang Yan's men were also on guard. Jiang Du and his remaining teammates retreated to the wall, their self-preservation stance obvious.

Zhou Lang spoke, his voice not loud, but it carried far in the quiet hall: "Mu Chen, you killed thirty-seven four-star monsters in the semi-finals, making you the kill leader of the entire tournament. I acknowledge your combat prowess, but if you want to start an infighting here—I'm ready to oblige."

Mu Chen stared at him for a few seconds.

Then he laughed.

"Fine. No handing over the prisoners. Then let's fight." Mu Chen turned to face the tomb guardians. "Everyone, are you ready?"

No one answered that they were ready, but everyone raised their weapons.

The tomb guardian turned around again. This time, its movements were no longer slow.

Its body swelled and deformed, and a gray, translucent substance spread outwards, causing the temperature in the entire hall to drop sharply. The inscriptions carved on the coffin began to glow, and runes peeled off the surface of the coffin and flew into the body of the tomb guardian.

It grew larger. From three meters to five meters, from five meters to ten meters. Its body filled most of the hall, and its gray limbs transformed into countless tentacles, each carrying the power to crush a three-star monster.

Mu Chen was the first to rush forward.

His twin ghostly weapons unleashed their full power, slicing out blue arcs of light that left over a dozen wounds on the tomb guardian's body. But those wounds healed within a second, leaving not even a trace of healing.

Fang Yan followed closely behind. She brought the bone knife down with all her might, imbued with the strange power she had cultivated throughout her life. The blade cut into the tomb guardian's body about half a meter deep—then bounced back. Fang Yan staggered back seven steps, her hand splitting open, blood dripping down the hilt of the knife.

Jiang Du simultaneously controlled six ghostly artifacts from the rear to launch a long-range bombardment. Six attacks of different attributes struck the tomb guardian, creating a cloud of dust. When the dust settled, the tomb guardian was unharmed.

"Five stars is five stars." Jiang Du retracted the ghost weapon. "The damage can't even break through the defense."

Zhou Lang activated the chainsaw, all the runes on the saw teeth were activated, and the dark red light was stronger than ever before. He found the right angle to cut in, and the chainsaw made contact with the tomb guardian's body—

it works.

The chainsaw cut through its surface. Not much, just a cut about three centimeters deep, but it did make a cut.

"Zhou Lang's weapon can hurt it?" Mu Chen noticed.

The tomb keeper also noticed it.

One of its tentacles lashed out at Zhou Lang with incredible speed. Zhao Qiang blocked it with his prosthetic arm—the entire prosthetic arm, along with the fixation device on his shoulder, was knocked off. Zhao Qiang crashed into the wall, creating a human-shaped dent.

"Zhao Qiang!"

"Not dead yet—" Zhao Qiang slid down the wall, his right side covered in blood, but his voice was still clear. "My arm is gone, but it's fake anyway."