I can see experience bars after being transported to another world.

Lu Yuan quickly made a judgment.

He took an exorcism grenade from his waist with his left hand.

Complete exorcism gunpowder.

Pull out the safety pin, swing your arm back, and twist your waist.

The grenade slipped from his hand.

The deep red sphere slowly rotated in the accelerated field of vision, flying towards the thickest part of the vine wave ahead.

Lu Yuan turned off the time synchronization the instant he released the grenade.

[Time synchronization acceleration (off)]

[Sanity: -3...82/120]

The world is returning to normal speed.

The vine wave suddenly accelerated from slow motion, sweeping in from all directions.

Lu Yuan did not rush forward.

He took a few steps back, curled up in the recessed area of ​​the section he had just split open, held the bronze sword horizontally in front of him, and leaned against the charred, carbonized wall.

Cover your ears.

First came the intense, bright light.

When the exorcising gunpowder came into contact with the eerie aura in the tunnel, which was so dense it was almost tangible, the entire gunpowder instantly ignited.

A blinding burst of light exploded from the detonation point, illuminating the dark pipes several times brighter than the midday sun.

Immediately afterwards, exorcising light powder and silver powder spread wildly with the shockwave of the explosion.

In the confined tunnel space, the powder had nowhere to go but to spread in two directions along the passage.

The vines withered and crumbled amidst the silver powder.

The mycelium turned into ashes in the exorcism powder.

The highly concentrated silver powder resembled a highly corrosive acid.

It will sizzle and burn when it comes into contact with any gray-green tissue surface, and emit puffs of black smoke.

Then came the flames.

Unlike the normal type, the flames of the complete type lasted for a long time.

Silvery flames rolled in the pipes, completely burning the vine remains, riddled with holes from the corrosion of silver powder, to ashes.

After the flames passed, the mycelial layer on the copper tube wall was reduced to a charred, thin shell that crumbled at the slightest touch.

Grayish-green debris and vine remains mixed with silver dust and embers poured down from the ceiling.

Lu Yuan curled up in the dent, the debris hitting the bronze sword with a crackling sound.

The grayish-green liquid splattered on the trench coat, carrying a cloyingly sweet scent.

The light rain lasted for five or six seconds.

Then it fell silent.

Within a range of about twenty meters ahead, the vines had been completely cleared away.

The walls and floor were completely exposed, revealing the original bronze material.

The "wave" was blown to pieces.

But deeper into the tunnel, new vines are slowly emerging from the cracks.

Regeneration has begun, but at a much slower pace than before.

The exorcising properties of the silver powder still lingered, suppressing the activity of the mycelium.

And outside.

Everyone in the collection room heard the muffled thud.

The inscribed light curtain on the other side of the passage trembled slightly in the aftershocks of the explosion.

Boer gripped the bronze sword tightly.

Wolf looked towards the entrance of the passage:

"I wish him good luck."

Beren leaned against Kel, and the old man's lips moved slightly.

No one speaks.

The veteran, missing his little finger, stood by the left-hand entrance to the passage, his back against the wall. His gaze shifted from the entrance to the direction of the inscription-sealed area, then back again.

He was waiting for orders.

Bor's order.

But Bol did not say to withdraw.

No one said anything.

They are waiting.

[Sanity: -2...73/120]

Lu Yuan stood up from the dent and brushed off the debris.

He took out a perfect-quality sanity potion from his pocket, uncorked it, and drank it all in one gulp.

[Sanity: +15...88/120]

The thought sank into the chest.

Click.

[Time synchronization acceleration (enabled)]

[Rationality: -1...-1...]

The world has slowed down again.

He stepped over the vine debris, passed through the blasted hole, and continued downwards.

The fire in the furnace on the bronze sword had already faded considerably.

The dark red lines were reduced to a single wisp, like a candle wick about to burn out.

The tunnel darkened again after the area cleared by the exorcism grenade, and the density of vines and mycelium quickly returned.

But there will be no more vine waves.

It compressed all the vines it could mobilize into that wave, attempting to block the path of attack in one fell swoop.

Unfortunately, it failed again.

The more Lu Yuan observed the contents of the pipeline layer, the more certain he became that the thing inside was in a very bad state, and now was the best time to eliminate it.

Most crucial.

Lu Yuan was eager to know what he could gain by eliminating this thing that had not yet become a taboo.

Lu Yuan's figure flashed rapidly.

About fifteen seconds later.

The tunnel began to slope downwards, with the gradient increasing.

The sweet smell returned to the air, thicker than in the water collection chamber, and then Lu Yuan saw the first corpse.

A corpse suspended in mid-air.

It was a human being, dressed in civilian clothes, whose face was completely unrecognizable.

He was suspended from the shoulders and waist by three thick vines, hanging about two meters below the tunnel ceiling.

Its limbs hung limply, like a flying insect entangled in a spider web.

What's most striking is his head.

A vine as thick as a thumb pierced through the skull from the back of the head.

Liquid was flowing on the surface of the vines.

Grayish-green, it gushed from inside the cranial cavity and was transported upwards along the vines.

Meanwhile, another, darker liquid poured into the cranial cavity from the vines.

In and out, in a continuous cycle.

This person's brain is being flushed.

[Detection Target: Residents of Bronze City (Hostized...Nutrition being supplied...)]

[Note: The individual's neural tissue is being extracted...it seems something is forming through this process...]

Lu Yuan did not stop, and continued to delve deeper.

The second one.

The third body...the tenth body.

The number of corpses is increasing.

Workers in coarse cloth shirts, city hall employees in uniforms, and men in miners' clothes.

In the accelerated field of vision, every face was magnified and elongated, presenting a waxy yellow texture under the bright white light of the sandworm oil lamp.

The density of their hanging structures gradually increased from sparse at the entrance to almost shoulder to shoulder by the middle section.

Lu Yuan counted silently in his mind.

One hundred and twenty-seven bodies.

They were all human.

He would glance at the face of each corpse as he ran past.

It wasn't for identifying someone.

It's an instinct.

In Grimport, he witnessed the entire city sink into the sea.

Those who fought alongside him became his companions in the deep sea at the last moment.

He memorized every face.

Just then, the vines on the top of the skull of the nearest corpse above them moved.

With a sudden tug, it pulled half of itself out of the skull cavity, bringing with it a wisp of grayish-white viscous fluid, which lashed out towards Lu Yuan like a snake.

In acceleration mode, this flick is as slow as drifting on water.

The rope.

Lu Yuan turned to the side, and vines brushed past his shoulder.

Then came the second one, the third one, and a dozen or so.

The corpses above his head resembled a beehive whose burrow had been disturbed, with vines sprouting from the skulls one after another and waving blindly in his direction.

But when it comes to timekeeping, everything is in slow motion.

Lu Yuan walked among the vines.

The bronze sword is only swung when necessary, cutting through any vines blocking its path with a single strike.

The burning copper caused white smoke to billow from the fracture, and the remaining part spasmed and retracted into the cranial cavity.

Then he saw the one in the Night's Watch uniform.

The badge on his chest was still there, a crest of the moon and a gun, but his face was completely unrecognizable.

The vines on the top of his head were thicker and penetrated deeper than those on the other person's head.

[Target for detection: The Night Watchman (most of his brain tissue has already been extracted...)]

It's almost completely drained.

Lu Yuan did not stop.

But he remembered the location.

As Lu Yuan traversed the endless vines, he discovered that it wasn't just humans who were suspended in the air.

Ghouls begin to appear in the second half.

The Great Ghoul.

The grayish-red body was suspended in the same way, with thicker vines stuck on the top of its head.

It was larger than any I had ever seen on the ground, and its stratum corneum had completely peeled off, revealing grayish-green new tissue.

[Target detected: Giant Ghoul (dormant...deeply parasitized...under modification...)]

Further in, things appeared that Lu Yuan had never seen before.

A slender creature with extremely short limbs and a body that is coiled like a snake.

The skin is dark gray and smooth as wax.

The head has no face, only an oval protrusion that protrudes forward and is covered with tiny holes.

[Detection Target: Unknown and Mysterious (Dead/Parasitic)...Does not belong to any known category...]

Humans, ghouls, and unknown monsters were all indiscriminately suspended.

It all turned into nutrients.

What lies hidden deep within is not intelligence that has evolved on its own, but intelligence that has been stolen.

[Taboo Studies - Seeker of Knowledge: +0.8...18.3/100]

The fire in the bronze sword went out.

The dark red lines disappeared, and the copper surface returned to its original color.

As they ventured deeper, darkness pressed in, and the once overwhelming vines gradually faded away.

Clearly, it had discovered that these vines were insufficient to stop Lu Yuan's advance.

Lu Yuan took out a sandworm oil lamp from his pocket and turned it on.

The pale white light illuminated a small area.

The end of the suspended area.

The space suddenly expanded.

Lu Yuan turned off the time synchronization.

[Time synchronization acceleration (off)]

[Sanity: -3...64/120]

He stood at the edge of a vast vertical space.

It's as if a convergence node in the pipeline layer has been pushed open from the inside, with the copper dome arching upwards at least fifteen meters and the surrounding walls expanding outwards to form an elliptical cave with a diameter of about forty meters.

Lu Yuan stood on high ground, looking down.

There is a tree there.

It's not a real tree.

But its shape is very similar to an upside-down tree.

The root is at the top.

Countless vines of varying thicknesses hung down from the cave ceiling, like the roots of a giant tree hanging upside down from the ceiling, extending downwards, winding and finally converging into a main trunk with a diameter of nearly two meters.

The main trunk extends from the ceiling all the way to the bottom of the cave.

The road was full of hosts.

Humanity.

Ghoul.

The crawler.

Unknown and eerie.

They hang like fruit on the trunk and branches, densely packed and layered.

At least hundreds or thousands.

Each skull was pierced by vines, and a grayish-green liquid circulated throughout the system.

The brain tissue extracted from the skulls of each host suspended above was transported below.

The bottom of the main trunk.

It expanded into a huge spherical structure.

It has a diameter of at least ten meters.

All the main vines radiate outwards from here, embedding themselves in the cave walls, and then spreading throughout the city via a network of pipes.

It is the central hub of the entire hyphal network.

The sphere is translucent.

You can see inside.

Countless fragments of brain tissue are suspended in a grayish-green liquid matrix, woven into a complex three-dimensional network by extremely fine mycelial filaments.

Brain tissue fragments come from various sources.

There are human-shaped ones; they are grayish-white with a pinkish tinge.

There are ghouls, grayish-red.

There are those unknown and eerie ones, deep gray almost black.

They transmit to each other in the network as faint specks of light, which jump and flow on the hyphae like fireflies moving in the night sky.

Countless fragments of the brain, forcibly pieced together, formed a massive, distorted consciousness.

There are no eyeballs on the surface of the sphere.

Unlike the sub-cores, the outer layer of the main core is a series of semi-transparent thin films, with a grayish-green liquid circulating complexly beneath each layer.

The sphere is still pulsating.

The frequency is much slower than the core.

But it is heavy and powerful.

Like a sleeping heart.

With each throbbing, the vines throughout the cave trembled, and the mouths of the suspended hosts opened and closed simultaneously. Silent, synchronized, like puppets tethered to the same string.