After being poisoned by mushrooms, all the strange creatures became fascinated by me.

Therefore, it's not hard to understand the cold light that lingered in Tang Li's dark pupils at this moment.

She had never loathed or hated anyone so much.

And that person's voice still haunted me: "I'll count to three."

"If you don't come out soon, I'm going to get serious."

The seventh floor.

The entire building was shaking again.

Qiu Wanting nearly collapsed to the ground, drenched in sweat, his clothes soaked through, as if he had just been pulled from the water.

"I...I really can't go on." Qiu Wanting gasped for breath, the precious core item of the dungeon, the curved surgical scissors, already carelessly tossed on the ground. "Why are these scissors so difficult to use..."

"Looking at it from another angle, piercing through the entire instance with a human body to open a path to the original world is already an astonishing feat, worthy of being called a great achievement." Nanjiang sat on the shoulders of the swollen human body, arms crossed, encouraging him with measured intonation, "...Does putting it that way make you feel better?"

"No." Qiu Wanting gasped in despair. "I really regret... leaving too few players behind."

The copy itself was indestructible, and using the curved surgical scissors required a great deal of energy and stamina. Even Jiang Hui was exhausted after using them a few times. The children couldn't be relied on; their swollen bodies didn't even have the dexterity to grip the scissors properly, so Qiu Wanting had to take their place.

Then this intelligent player only tried once before collapsing on the ground like a dead dog.

Jiang Hui stood expressionless to the side and nudged Qiu Wanting's leg: "Stand up."

Qiu Wanting scrambled to his feet.

Nanjiang looked at Jiang Hui in surprise: How come your words have such an effect?

Jiang Hui smiled reservedly: "I was lucky enough to be Boss Qiu's instructor for a while before."

The group continued on to the next location marked by the children.

"Speaking of which," Qiu Wanting, who had forcibly hopped onto Lu Qisheng's swollen body as a mount, suddenly remembered someone, "How's Tang Li doing? It seems like there's been no news at all?"

Their new companion has always been very easy to manage, but he's also known for his decisiveness. Why hasn't he met up with them for so long? Could he have run into some trouble?

Jiang Hui pressed a few buttons on the walkie-talkie, then frowned: "Something's not right."

"Tang Li turned off the walkie-talkie herself... She was in a situation where she absolutely could not be disturbed."

Qiu Wanting began taking props out of her pocket: "I'll try to see what's going on with her."

Inside the basin.

The dean's countdown has ended.

"Hide!" Xiao Mei's voice rang in Tang Li's ears.

Tang Li was about to lean out to grab a book, but upon hearing this, she didn't think twice and rolled over to lie at the bottom of the file shelf.

Then, what did she see?

That's a scene that only appears in the deepest nightmares.

A huge, winding...corpse.

Many heads, many arms, many arms and legs.

It's like collecting hundreds or thousands of corpses, stacking them together, putting them into a huge stone mortar, and pounding them into a paste and mud that are indistinguishable from each other with a pestle. Then, it's poured out of the mortar, into a long water pipe, and then squeezed out from the other end of the pipe by brute force.

That's how it became such a colossal behemoth.

Just one glance was enough to cast a shadow over her for life. Tang Li asked herself: What...is this?

"This is... the Dean's true form." Xiao Mei's voice rang in the earphones, like a dream.

The Dean's true form?

That explains why it looks so disgusting.

Countless limbs and parts were fused together, resembling a headless, tailless, endlessly extending giant worm of dismembered flesh. Its plump, fleshy body trembled, so large that it could barely pass through the maze's passageways, forcing it to squeeze through the gaps between the file shelves. Countless pieces of flesh were scraped off, and the passageways were completely filled by the giant worm of rubble, leaving no gaps.

The giant, dismembered worm itself seemed to lack consciousness; it didn't even have a unified brain. However, every piece of dismembered remains and every limb that made up its body seemed to be alive.

The fingers, painted with red nail polish, were still flexing and extending nimbly, tentatively groping for a man's foot beside her, as if wondering why it was inside her body. A patch of skin with a small mole was also twitching incessantly, and a small indentation could be vaguely seen in the lower right corner of that patch—a navel.

There were also human heads, countless human heads dotting the torso of the giant corpse-splitting worm, men, women, young and old, some with their eyes closed, some with their cloudy, yellowish eyes open. Whenever the giant corpse-splitting worm scraped its fat body across the file racks, those heads would let out painful groans and sighs.

"The dean said we have to find a girl and eat her," a shrill, bewildered child's voice rang out. "Hehe, eat her, eat her, but my mouth is connected to someone else's stomach!"

"A girl? A...a girl?" A drooling swallowing sound, a slurred male voice, "Go find...find a...woman..."

"Oh, oh, it's too crowded. I don't think I should have come here," an old woman said in a hoarse, strained voice. "My nose is squeezed into my head! Could some young man help me pull it out?"

Tang Li silently covered her mouth and nose, pressing her body against the file shelf behind her, remaining motionless.

The giant, dismembered worm, like an overloaded train, slowly passed by her. At its closest, its wildly waving hands could almost touch Tang Li's curled-up toes.

Then, a deadly stench erupted.

Compared to this, the stench of blood in the previous scenes seemed mild. The stench of corpses permeated the cold air of the maze, making Tang Li feel nauseous and causing tears to involuntarily stream down her face.

After an unknown amount of time, the giant worm finally disappeared, leaving behind only a pile of red, yellow, and white viscous liquid and bits of flesh.

"Tang Li, don't come out yet," Xiao Mei's voice came through the earpiece. "Be careful it doesn't come back."

"The Dean's true form is the Corpse-Shattering Giant Worm, but like an earthworm, it can split into multiple giant worms that coexist simultaneously. The Corpse-Shattering Giant Worm we just saw wasn't long enough, so I estimate... there should be three more of the same size."

"His head will only appear on one of the giant worms, and only that one has intelligence. The other giant worms are very unintelligent, and as long as you hide well like you are now, they won't be able to find you."

Therefore, Tang Li understood that she needed to wait a while longer to make sure that what she had just passed was not the cunning giant insect with the dean's head embedded in it.

As it turned out, Tang Li was lucky this time; the giant worm's groans and complaints had completely disappeared, leaving only the stench that lingered.

"Your current location has already been searched by the giant worms, so it's relatively safe," Xiaomei explained dutifully. "The maze is huge, and the giant worms move slowly, so it won't take them long to explore the whole place."

"I suggest you don't move yet, just stay here..."

At this moment, Tang Li nimbly ducked and darted out.

Amid Xiaomei's terrified cries of "Eh eh eh!", she rushed to the bookshelf, shoved the previous book back in, and took out a new one.

Then, the movement smoothly returns along the same route.

They went and returned in a flash, swift as a rabbit and as fast as a falcon, extremely efficient.

Xiao Mei felt her AI's heart pounding. She asked softly, "...Is it that important?"

Tang Li paused slightly as she was about to open the book.

"Do you absolutely have to know the truth? Is there no way to clear the game without finding out everything?" Xiaomei tried to understand everything using her previously accumulated player-centric thinking. "The more information you get, the more dungeon rewards you'll receive?"

"But the other players weren't as desperate as you... I get it! It's the viewers in the live stream, right? They're the ones who put up a bounty, asking you to find out the truth about the dungeon?"

"Stop, stop, stop." Tang Li chuckled. She glanced at the live stream amidst her busy schedule and saw that some viewers had already started giving her tips. "No, it's not, Xiao Mei."

Tang Li sighed softly, not giving a perfunctory answer just because the other party was a clueless AI.

"It's just because everything they did should be seen, and all the evil should be ended. I was moved by him and her, and that's exactly what I could do."

Xiao Mei asked blankly, "Are he and she... the master and the master's father?"

Tang Li nodded.

"...Then," the AI ​​muttered to itself, "Xiao Mei also wants to help them."

"Tang Li, Tang Li," AI Xiao Mei asked timidly, "What...what can I do?"