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

"The person is still alive, but very weak. They need to be moved."

Zhou Lang nodded. He had two teammates carry the wounded soldier, while the rest remained on guard.

Just then, he heard a voice.

It came from deeper underground.

It wasn't a scream, it wasn't a groan.

It was laughter.

Low, intermittent laughter.

It was as if something was waiting for them deep underground, and had been waiting for a long time.

Zhou Lang gripped the chainsaw tightly.

The bandaged man's voice echoed in his mind: "That's the Ghost King."

"...I recognized it."

"It's smiling, which means it knows you're here."

"Any other good news?"

The bandaged man was silent for a moment before replying, "No."

"Very good." Zhou Lang turned to his teammates. "Let's go. Keep going."

No one objected. But everyone's expression was rather unpleasant.

Except for Shen Ye.

The S-rank player finally opened his eyes and looked towards the ground.

Zhou Lang saw his lips move, as if he was saying something.

But he didn't hear clearly.

The structure of the second basement level is much more complex than that of the first level.

The passage was no longer a straight line, but a winding maze. Zhou Lang marked each fork in the road on the wall to avoid getting lost.

The wounded soldier was temporarily placed in a relatively safe corner. Xu Mingyuan treated his wounds and used a bottle of medicine to stabilize his condition.

"He needs rest and can't take care of me," Xu Mingyuan said.

"Should we leave him here?" Gu Chen was a little worried.

"There's no other way," Zhou Lang said. "We can't carry him around to fight ghosts."

He contacted Li Feng by radio, reporting the situation and his location. Li Feng said he would arrange for backup.

After finishing these tasks, Zhou Lang squatted down, opened his backpack, and checked his equipment.

The chainsaw still has half its oil left. Five bottles of healing potions remain. Five defensive charms. The oil lamp and cane are still there.

It's enough, but not much.

"that……"

Lin Xiaolu's voice came from behind. Zhou Lang turned to look at her.

The girl hesitated for a moment before speaking, "I have something to say."

"explain."

"The operating table in that room... I've seen something similar in other instances before."

Zhou Lang's brow twitched slightly: "What do you mean?"

"That kind of operating table isn't just for creating corpse demons," Lin Xiaolu said, her gaze fixed on the ground without looking at anyone. "It's also a... teleportation point. Ghosts can use the operating table to move quickly within the instance."

How did you know?

Lin Xiaolu remained silent for a few seconds.

"I had it in my last instance too." Her voice trailed off. "I saw it with my own eyes."

Zhou Lang remembered what the intelligence said—the ghosts would keep resurrecting, and only by finding the core of the dungeon could they be completely eliminated.

If the operating table is a teleportation point, then the "resurrection" of the ghosts might not be a true resurrection, but rather they arrive from elsewhere through these nodes.

"So, we have to destroy all the operating tables along the way?"

Lin Xiaolu nodded.

Zhou Lang looked at Gu Chen: "How many more times can you blow up that much money?"

Gu Chen opened his wallet and counted: "I don't have many large sums left. But—" He took something else out of his bag.

A bank card.

"Can I withdraw money from the ATM?" Zhou Lang asked, looking at him.

"No need for an ATM." Gu Chen smiled. "My skills have been upgraded. As long as I know there's money in the card, I can convert it directly."

How much is in your card?

"This one... a little over two million."

Zhou Lang stared at the card and remained silent for three seconds.

"Don't tell me you're worried about money anymore."

Gu Chen scratched his head sheepishly: "That was given to me by my family. It would be hard to explain if I spent it all."

"You're in an A-level monster dungeon, your life is hanging by a thread, and you're still thinking about explaining this to your family?"

"That's true." Gu Chen thought for a moment, "Then let's spend it. Anyway, we can't spend it when we're dead."

Zhou Lang's lips twitched. The troubles of the rich are truly incomprehensible.

He relayed the situation to Li Feng via radio. Li Feng was silent for a moment before replying, "Useful intelligence. I've instructed the other teams to keep an eye on the operating table. Destroy it if you encounter it."

"clear."

The third squad continued forward.

On the rest of the journey, they discovered two more operating tables. Gu Chen blew one 1,000 yuan bill at a time, quick and efficient.

But then a problem arises.

Each time an operating table is destroyed, the number of corpse demons in the passage decreases. This sounds like a good thing, but Zhou Langyin felt something was wrong.

The decrease in the number of ghosts doesn't mean they've disappeared. They might just be—

It's been concentrated.

The radio suddenly crackled to life. It wasn't a report from a single team; it was a broadcast across all channels.

Li Feng's voice was somewhat urgent: "Attention all squads! Squad 5 has encountered a large-scale horde of monsters on the west side of the second basement level. At least five stitched-up corpse demons have appeared simultaneously. Three have already been killed. Squad 6 is going to provide support. The other squads continue their respective missions, but remain on high alert."

The fifth team.

Zhou Lang remembered that Han Ying was in the fifth team.

He clenched his fists but remained silent. It was too late to go now, and Li Feng had already sent reinforcements. All he could do was complete his own mission as quickly as possible.

"Keep going."

The team advanced a little further. At the end of the second basement level was a large elevator platform leading to the third basement level.

There was a side door next to the elevator platform. The door was open, and a strange sound was coming from inside.

Zhou Lang told the group to stop, and then he pressed himself against the wall and approached the side door.

Inside the door was a warehouse. The warehouse was filled with rusty mechanical parts and dilapidated equipment. In the center of the warehouse, a stitched-up corpse demon squatted on the ground, its back to the doorway.

It is eating.

Zhou Lang saw what it was eating and felt a churning in his stomach.

It's a person's arm.

Moreover, he was wearing a watch on that arm—a military-issue watch.

These belong to those soldiers...

Zhou Lang stepped back and made a "one" gesture.

Just as they were about to arrange the battle, Shen Ye suddenly moved.

He walked up from the back of the line, passing Zhou Lang without stopping.

"Get out of the way."

Before Zhou Lang could react, Shen Ye had already walked through the side door.

Then Zhou Lang saw a scene.

Shen Ye pulled a gun from his trench coat. It wasn't a modern pistol or rifle, but a hunting rifle. It had a wooden stock, double barrels, and an old-fashioned look.

He raised his gun and aimed.

The Corpse Demon sensed the presence and turned around.

boom.

A gunshot rang out.

The Corpse Demon's head is gone.

It wasn't shattered, it wasn't blasted apart. It simply vanished. Its entire body, including the thirty centimeters below its neck, turned to ashes.

The corpse demon's body collapsed, neither regenerating nor struggling. It was completely dead.

Zhou Lang stood there, stunned.

One shot?

Samsung Phantom, one shot?

He spent an hour and used half a tank of gas to solve something that someone else could do with a single bullet?

"..."

Gu Chen muttered in the background, "Holy shit."

Zhou Lang glanced back at him, and their expressions were exactly the same.

Shen Ye put away his hunting rifle, turned around and walked out of the warehouse, returning to the back of the group and continuing to stand against the wall.

He didn't say a word the entire time.