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

The worm of knowledge chews and chews while it works.

As it flies, it continuously absorbs the deposits on the surface of its bones, releases guiding energy, and draws the energy components in its blood into its body.

A thought struck Lu Yuan.

Can it devour the knowledge of the ocean of knowledge?

The worm of knowledge cannot eat in the sea of ​​knowledge, because that knowledge is too "raw".

It needs Lu Yuan to provide processed knowledge, such as consciousness crystals or its own knowledge, but now it is consuming it directly without any rejection reaction.

Either the corpses had "cooked" these things, or the insects themselves were changing; neither of these is good news.

Moreover, it emits something while it's eating.

Lu Yuan sensed it through the symbiotic connection, but couldn't see what it was.

It seems to be an instinctive behavior; it doesn't even know what it's doing.

Lu Yuan wanted to recall them, but the Knowledge Worm was now the students' invisible guide, so it was clear that they couldn't be withdrawn. Of course, Lu Yuan wasn't really willing to just withdraw them like that either.

Lu Yuan wanted to know more. With his gray-white writing system and incredibly strong rationality as a foundation, if he missed this opportunity, Lu Yuan would definitely slap himself twice.

So for now, we can only keep an eye on it.

Once we get back, no matter what happens, we must get to the bottom of this.

Thus, guided by the worm of knowledge, only eighteen out of the twenty-three students remained in the group.

Of the remaining five, some were drawn by curiosity and headed alone toward a certain "pillar"; others fell behind along the way, falling into a fatal gap with their companions.

To others, those who left were simply exploring other directions safely in this vast ocean.

But in the images transmitted back by the Worm of Knowledge, their fates were exactly the same.

Dark red flesh and blood quietly climbed up their bodies from the sea of ​​blood beneath their feet, gradually devouring them before they even realized it.

Dark red lines spread from the ankles to the waist and abdomen, then to the chest, and finally covered the entire body of the lone student.

And all that was left for them was disintegration.

The body, like a piece of paper soaked in water, silently disintegrated, sank into the sea of ​​blood, and turned into specks of light, which were then completely devoured by the corpse.

Lu Yuan watched all this from the other side of the barrier, and frowned.

He discovered a pattern. The students who acted alone could barely last a few minutes, while the spread of pollution was more than twice as slow when the group of eighteen people gathered together.

"How does the Tower of Learning know so much?"

Not only were they able to pinpoint the body in this forbidden sea, but they also knew that gathering people could slow down the contamination.

But if they knew this, why didn't they clearly explain it beforehand? Why did they allow students to leave the group on their own?

Unless leaving the team was already part of the plan.

Those five people were the price that was tacitly accepted.

Lu Yuan didn't continue thinking about it.

Because if the team continues to shrink, the remaining people won't be able to hold out for long.

Sister Lin, who was walking at the front, spoke up.

"We're almost at our destination, everyone stay close to me."

The sound wasn't loud, but it traveled far in this open space.

Students who were walking in small groups heard the call and began to converge in her direction.

Through the perspective of the Knowledge Insect hovering above the group, Lu Yuan saw the whole picture before him.

Hundreds of enormous, arc-shaped bones rose from the sea of ​​blood; they appeared to be sternums, twisted and intertwined, covered with black flesh and blood that had accumulated for an unknown period of time.

The dark purple inscriptions flowed slowly across the surface of the bone, exuding an eerie aura.

At the center of the arched sternum, a thousand-meter-long vortex was slowly rotating, drawing in all the surrounding black bloodstains.

This is the core area of ​​the corpse.

But the students standing on the "sea" saw something completely different.

Countless shimmering stone pillars rose from the water, blotting out the sky and the dreamlike sea surface was stirred by a huge whirlpool, with pale gold and light blue light flowing and rising above the whirlpool.

It's breathtakingly beautiful.

Sister Lin stopped at the outer edge of the vortex.

She turned around to face the seventeen classmates behind her, her gaze sweeping across each of their faces before finally settling on the short figure at the very end of the line, where she paused for a moment.

He looked away, his expression serious.

"We've arrived!"

"Remember our mission, and remember our names."

"We only have one chance, not only for the Empire, but also for ourselves. If we can take on a complete fragment, we can take that step."

She paused.

"So regardless of what happened before, we must now resist the temptation of other knowledge. That's the only way, and the only option. Do you understand?"

"clear!"

The voices were uneven, but no one hesitated.

The worm of knowledge seemed to be touched by the aura emanating from this area, its body constantly absorbing the overflowing remnants of knowledge, while it chewed on something unknown.

Feedback from the symbiotic connection surged in, with gray-white text jumping around at the edge of his vision. Lu Yuan didn't actively read it; it was all eaten up by the worms of knowledge.

[Taboo Studies - Seeker of Knowledge: +1...44.3/100]

[Ancient Music Theory: +2...2/50]

[Pharmacology: +4...27/100]

Sister Lin looked at her classmates behind her, meeting their gazes one by one.

There was a resolute look in everyone's eyes.

She nodded.

Then he raised his right hand, and the guiding mark on the back of his hand, which had been rotating, suddenly lit up.

She placed her right hand on the back of a boy's hand beside her. The mark peeled off her skin, flowed down her fingertips to the back of the boy's hand, and solidified again.

The back of the boy's hand lit up.

Sister Lin's hand turned completely dark.

"I've walked this road; the direction is in your hands."

He only said that one sentence.

Then he resolutely turned around and faced the vortex.

"I will pave the way for you."

The moment those words fell, all the occasional laughter and hushed conversations that had been happening on the way vanished.

Sister Lin took the first step.

Her body began to disintegrate at a visible rate.

With each step he took, his skin cracked a little more, and countless lines gleaming with an eerie silvery-white light surged out from within his body.

The students behind them all knew what was happening.

All the beauty they had left would come to a standstill at this moment.

No one speaks.

Seventeen people raised their hands at the same time, and the runes engraved on their hands began to glow.

Multicolored rays of light surged from their bodies, swirling above the sea of ​​blood before finally landing on Sister Lin.

Her body was constantly annihilating and dissipating, but the light barely held her remaining shell in place.

Lu Yuan saw things more clearly through the Insect of Knowledge.

From the moment Sister Lin took that step, countless knowledge-derived worms glowing with white light surged out of her gradually collapsing body.

At the cost of the knowledge-derived insect's body, they forcibly carved out a passage through this spiraling sea of ​​blood.

"So this was the intended screening method from the very beginning."

Lu Yuan looked at the images transmitted back by the Insect of Knowledge and murmured to himself at the other end of the barrier.

With the support of the student rune energy behind her, the worms inside Sister Lin's body surged out almost endlessly.

The knowledge-derived insects, gleaming with silver light, emitted silent screams.

In the perception of the Insect of Knowledge, it was an extremely sharp shock. The moment the insect burst out of its body, it was completely annihilated by the black and red blood energy at the edge of the vortex.

They struggled desperately, trying to surge back into the girl's body.

But it was no use, because the girl's body was gradually disintegrating and collapsing, like a deflated balloon.

At this moment, there was no longer a place for the knowledge-derived worms to inhabit her body.

The insects are howling.

They were afraid, they were terrified, and they tried to devour the host's brain and control the body to get away from here.

But the remaining inscriptions on the arm still served their final purpose, completely separating the brain from the insect-infested area.

The insects couldn't reach her consciousness.

She remained conscious until her very last moment.

She ignored the insects writhing inside her body and stared intently into the distance at the swirling 'galaxy'.

The dark red sea of ​​blood trembled.

The slowly rotating vortex seemed to be stimulated and began to show signs of accelerating.

Lu Yuan saw it clearly through the perspective of the Insect of Knowledge.

Sister Lin's figure gradually disappeared, and her skin completely vanished the moment she took her hundredth step.

Only countless insects, swirling around a naked brain, rolled a path through the sea of ​​blood in the shape of a ball.

The white insects are disappearing.

The knowledge within Sister Lin was completely erased.

"What a pity..."

Sister Lin muttered to herself at the last moment, then rallied her spirits.

"This is as far as I can go. The rest is up to you..."

Sister Lin turned her head with a smile.

Before she could finish speaking, all that remained of her body in the students' eyes was the outline of her head; everything else vanished into the mist of the sea of ​​knowledge.

In Lu Yuan's view, Sister Lin's remaining brain was gradually exposed as the swarm of insects decreased.

Surrounded by endless black and red blood energy in the air, it withered completely.

It eventually disappeared completely.

[Taboo Studies - Seeker of Knowledge: +5...49.3/100]

[Pharmacology: +9...36/100]

[Medicinal Herbs: +12...26/100]

With Sister Lin's death, most of the overflowing knowledge was absorbed by the Knowledge Worm.

Looking at the fluctuating numbers, Lu Yuan knew what lay behind them.

All the knowledge a person has gained in their lifetime has been transformed into a few lines of gray text at this moment.

[Sanity: -3...49/140]

The pressure at the barrier end continues.

The fragmentation flow did not weaken due to the student's death; on the contrary, it became more concentrated.

At the very back of the line, the petite girl stopped.

She stood there, looking in the direction where Sister Lin had disappeared.

She didn't cry.

His lips were pressed into a thin line, very tightly, and his chin trembled slightly.

The person next to her gently tugged at her.

"Walk."

The short girl didn't move.

She looked down at the back of her hand.

The rune was still glowing, and like everyone else, its light was flying forward along an invisible line.

She felt those rays of light fall on Sister Lin just now.

A small portion of something was removed from my body.

It doesn't hurt.

But there was a gap.

She looked up and glanced at the small, colorful orb of light hanging not far away.

The ball of light floated there quietly, moving forward with the group. The little girl looked away, took a step, and caught up with the group.