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

The atmosphere became slightly awkward after those words were spoken. Zhou Lang remained silent for a while, observing the situation—this kind of "you'll know later" statement was either a platitude or something more. The other person's expression didn't seem perfunctory, but there was too little information to make a judgment.

After stabilizing the situation, the X union members left, clean and tidy, just as they had arrived, showing no intention of joining the group. Zhao Qiang watched them leave, then turned to Zhou Lang and whispered, "What's the background of this union?"

Zhou Lang shook his head.

At the alley entrance, Gu Xing appeared, standing there having clearly witnessed the entire incident. He looked down at his toes and asked, "Need any help?"

After Gu Xing said that, Shen Kuo was the first to speak.

"You only came after witnessing the entire process; is it appropriate to propose cooperation now?"

Gu Xing didn't explain, and turned his head to Zhou Lang.

This silence was more unbearable than any explanation. Zhao Qiang nudged Zhou Lang with his elbow, his meaning clear: You decide.

Zhou Lang thought for a few seconds. "What can you offer?"

"Information. I arrived almost an hour earlier than you."

An hour represents a significant information gap in an SS-level dungeon. Zhou Lang called on Han Yingying to speak.

What do you think?

Han Yingying glanced at Gu Xing. "Intelligence must be shared; it can't be kept secret."

"OK."

Shen Kuo and Lin Rou exchanged glances and remained silent, but it was clear that they didn't genuinely agree; they simply didn't have enough manpower, and now was not the time to dwell on that.

Gu Xing's information quickly came in handy.

During the hour he arrived, he circled most of the town, scouting several key locations: the ancestral hall, the ancient well, the threshing ground, and the large house in the west of town that was always locked. He said the strange activity pattern was regular, not random wandering, but rather circling around that large house, with a radius of about 500 meters, where the density dropped significantly.

"The strange roots are in the mansion," Zhao Qiang said.

"The clues should be inside, but I can't say for sure that it will solve the dungeon."

As they walked towards the mansion, the density of eerie occurrences indeed increased according to Gu Xing's prediction. By the time they reached the outer wall, Zhou Lang had already used his skill twice. Zhao Qiang walked in the middle of the group, his face paler than when they entered the dungeon, but he never fell behind.

The mansion was a standard old-style courtyard house with three sections. In the first section's hall, the tables and chairs were all in place, covered in a thick layer of dust, except for an account book placed in the center of the table, which was new.

Han Yingying opened the ledger, flipped through a few pages, and then stopped.

"What's wrong?" Zhou Lang leaned closer.

The ledger didn't contain accounts, but rather a list, with each name followed by a date, all within the last three months. Flipping to the end, a blank page contained only one line of text, forcefully written, leaving creases on the paper:

It's too late.

The words silenced everyone present; no one spoke.

Zhou Lang flipped through the ledger from beginning to end, noting down the key information. When he turned to the third page, he discovered that some of the dates on the list highly overlapped with bizarre events in the real world—not coincidental, but the kind of overlap that matched specific locations.

He told her what he had discovered, but Han Yingying didn't respond immediately. Instead, she took a step back, leaned against a pillar, frowned, and stared blankly ahead.

This state lasted for almost a minute.

"Feed," Zhou Lang called to her.

She snapped out of her reverie. "I've been thinking about something. The format of this list...where have I seen it before?"

Zhou Lang didn't urge him; he waited.

Then she raised her hand and touched her temple—not because it hurt, but because it felt like a door had been pushed open.

As soon as the door opened, the accumulated contents behind it rushed out.

Her complete game logs, the guild's intelligence files, the details of every dungeon run—everything she thought she'd forgotten or hadn't noticed—was pieced back together. The gaps during her amnesia were filled in, except for one—the part about encountering the god—which remained neatly missing, with no clear boundary.

Everything else has come back.

She founded the X Guild. The person publicly identified as the "only max-level player who successfully left the game" is herself.

She stood beside the pillar, suppressing the information in her mind and not letting it show on her face.

"Do you remember now?" Zhou Lang asked.

"I remember part of it." She listened to her own voice, which was still flat. "The ledger format is the internal intelligence record format of the X Guild."

"Has the X Guild's intelligence network infiltrated this instance?"

"It could have been left by previous players," she said. "The X guild has a history of staying in high-difficulty dungeons, and this mansion could be an intelligence point."

The answer is true; there was no lie, but it only tells half the story.

Gu Xing then spoke, startling everyone—he said that in the hour he had come in earlier, he had looked for another booklet in the western side courtyard of the mansion. The format was the same as the account book, but it was full of symbols that he couldn't understand. He didn't consider it an important clue and just stuffed it into his backpack.

He took the booklet out, and Han Yingying took it from him.

That was an encryption format designed by the X Guild itself, which only core members could decipher. And she could read these symbols as quickly as she could read plain language.

She decoded the code rapidly in her mind, frowned and looked at it for about two minutes before looking up.

"I can understand most of it. This section records the location of the source of the strangeness, which is underground in the backyard."

Lin Rou: "Shall we go now?"

"Hurry," Zhou Lang said. "The union people might come again."

The group walked towards the backyard, with Zhao Qiang lagging behind, whispering to Zhou Lang.

"Don't you feel like this information about the instance was specifically designed for us?"

"Be more specific."

"Han Yingying just happens to be able to understand the format of the X Union; the dates on the ledger just happen to match reality in a bizarre way," he said. "It's too much of a coincidence."

"Finish what's in front of you first."

Zhao Qiang shut his mouth, but clearly didn't put it down.

Zhou Lang hasn't let it go either, but there's no reasonable explanation right now, so it's just sitting there.

---

There is an old, sealed well in the backyard, covered by a stone slab. After the slab is removed, there is no water, but there are steps leading down to it, and a faint light shines up from below.

Zhao Qiang looked at the well and sighed. "I don't want to say it, but we really have to go down."

"You can stay up there and keep watch."

He was silent for three seconds, then went downstairs.

There were about twenty steps to the bottom of the well; it wasn't deep. An old-fashioned kerosene lamp hung on the wall, its flame steady. The surrounding stone walls were densely covered with records, in the same format as ledgers, detailing a bizarre timeline that permeated reality, along with the data on changes at each point.

Han Yingying scanned the contents on the wall from beginning to end, her fingers clenching and unclenching.

She had seen this data in the X Guild's intelligence database; it was genuine and accurate—meaning that beneath this well was a base left by X Guild members in this instance.

Why it was left there, to whom it was left, and under what circumstances it was left there—she has no answers now. But the fact that "Guild X had already set up camps in the SS-level dungeon in advance" speaks volumes.