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

Lu Yuan flipped himself up and stood up, aiming the "flame" in his right hand at the third-tier Gray Pact member who was peeking out from among the wooden figures.

The effect of the sealing disk has long since worn off.

The clever fellow had regained his supernatural abilities and was crouching in the shadow of the wooden figure, his hands pressed to the ground, his grayish-white skin reconnecting with the roots beneath the floor.

He was trying to regain control of the vines.

Lu Yuan fired the last copper-cased incendiary bomb.

boom.

Orange flames exploded in the middle of the wooden figure, which sprang up from the ground and scrambled towards the vines further away. He wasn't hit, but his hand was severed from the ground.

Lu Yuan did not pursue.

The ammunition tanks are empty.

His gaze was drawn to something else.

The Gray Pact member who was pierced by vines.

It's still moving.

A thick vine pierced through his head, penetrating his skull and half of his cervical vertebrae, suspending him in the air.

With the seal gone, his third-tier strength returned to his body. He was still alive and moving in a way that defied common sense. His limbs were twitching, his lips were moving, and his eyes were moving erratically in their sockets.

The vines were keeping him afloat.

Like the "fertilizer" on the wall, branches run through the body, maintaining basic life and controlling movement.

His body was jolted by the vines.

She swung towards Lu Yuan.

Lu Yuan sidestepped his body.

But then the black water followed.

A large amount of black liquid overflowed from his mouth and eye sockets, splashing an arc of black rain along his path.

The Grey Pact's unique ability is that even when a dying body is controlled by vines, residual extraordinary power still seeps out from the body.

Black water fell onto the stone slab, emitting corrosive white smoke.

A few drops splashed onto Lu Yuan's coat, and the inscription on Boren's body immediately lit up. The pale golden light repelled the black water, but the brightness of the inscription dimmed by another ten percent.

It can't hold on for much longer.

Lu Yuan used the speed boost from the Time Boost to slide out of the Blackwater's coverage area.

[Sanity: -5...95/120]

Where is the "9"?

Lu Yuan glanced around.

The spore fog was so thick that you couldn't see anything more than ten meters away.

A whistling sound.

From the right side.

"9" increased its speed again, and the grayish-white figure rushed out from the depths of the spore mist. Its charred right arm had been mostly restored, with grayish-white new skin covering the scorch marks, except for the fingertips which were still charcoal black.

Lu Yuan felt the oppressive force rushing towards him.

This is what I've been waiting for.

He was facing the direction from which the "9" was coming.

Time granting and deprivation.

[Sanity: -80...15/120]

An invisible wave emanated from Lu Yuan's body.

But the number "9" stopped.

His movements froze less than three meters from Lu Yuan. Time was being forcibly stripped from "9," starting from the surface of his skin and seeping inward.

The grayish-white skin dried rapidly in the deprived areas, and fine cracks spread from the fingertips to the wrists, and from the wrists to the elbows.

The expression on "9" changed in that instant.

The curve of her lips disappeared.

He looked down at his withered right hand.

Then he looked up at Lu Yuan.

There was a look in his eyes that Lu Yuan had never seen on his face before.

However, the effect of deprivation on the fourth order is far less than that on the Tower of Learning.

That time, he directly killed the mentor who had been corrupted by the strange entity, because the opponent was only at the second level.

"9" is a fourth-order mutated superhuman. His body began to repair itself at the same moment it was subjected to the stripping of time. Underneath his dry skin, a blackish-yellow liquid was seeping out, filling the cracks and resisting the erosion of deprivation.

I froze for a second and a half.

Lu Yuan's sanity was reduced to only 15 points.

Blood gushed from his nose and left eye simultaneously. The instantaneous depletion of 80 points of his sanity caused his brain to contract violently, and the edges of his vision began to turn gray.

But he did not fall.

Because during the one and a half seconds that the worm of knowledge froze on the "9", it had already swum from the surface of the skin into a deeper place.

[Sanity: -3...12/120]

A violent tremor emanated from the symbiotic connection, which then abruptly weakened.

The symbiotic connection was not severed. The worm of knowledge infiltrated the "sea of ​​knowledge" within "9"'s body. When it passed through the physical barrier of a fourth-order superhuman, it was compressed to an almost imperceptible degree, but the thread was still there.

This time, Lu Yuan has placed all his bets on the Knowledge Worm.

His only gamble was whether the worm of knowledge, once inside "9," could buy him even a few seconds of life.

The effects of deprivation have worn off.

"9" regained its mobility; its dry skin became smooth again after being soaked in a dark yellow liquid; the cracks in its fingertips healed; and its joints became flexible again.

"9" stands still.

Because he sensed it.

Something unfamiliar was moving inside his body.

"9"'s gaze suddenly sharpened.

He lowered his head and stared at his chest.

Intermittent images came through the symbiotic connection, and Lu Yuan could sense that it was moving through "9" at an extremely fast speed.

In the images transmitted through the symbiotic connection, the Knowledge Worm took a bite off every place it passed by. Lu Yuan could feel that the aura emanating from "9" was weakening at an extremely slow rate.

"Knowledge-derived worms?"

"9" seemed to recognize something.

His voice was low, and his tone carried a coldness that Lu Yuan had never heard before.

"You actually have a knowledge-derived worm that wasn't imprisoned by that tower."

He looked at Lu Yuan.

Lu Yuan stood five meters away, half his face smeared with blood, holding the empty missile pod "Flame" in his hand.

"Die."

"9" completely ignored the worm of knowledge within its body and headed straight for Lu Yuan.

Lu Yuan understood his meaning: if the host is killed, the symbiote will naturally be expelled from the body.

"9" takes a step forward.

The body of the Gray Pact member, still dangling from the vines, swung back again. Black liquid poured from his mouth, forming a fan-shaped black curtain in the air, which, together with the frontal pressure of "9", blocked Lu Yuan's retreat from above.

On that half-dead face, the eyes suddenly darted around, focusing on Lu Yuan.

Lips move.

"Come with me."

The sound was squeezed out from the air left in the throat, muffled, but every word was audible.

Lu Yuan was now at a dead end.

Ahead is the number "9". Above is black water, to the left and right are vines, and behind is a wall of branches.

Rationality at 12 o'clock.

One more stasis will bring it back to zero.

unless--

Guard II.

the second time.

Lu Yuan didn't know what this meant, but the cost of a second attempt would be even greater.

But he had no choice.

[Defense II (Temporary, Increasing): Consumes 30 points of maximum sanity.]

[Sanity cap: 120 → 90]

[Sanity: +50...62/90]

The sanity cap has been reduced from 140 to 90.

But reason returned.

62 points.

Enough for one stasis.

Lu Yuan activated his power at the same instant his rationality was restored.

Timekeeping and Stasis.

[Sanity: -40...22/90]

The world froze once again.

Black liquid hung overhead, each droplet suspended in mid-air, refracting the remaining light in the hall.

The figure of "9" solidified into a gray-white frozen silhouette three steps away.

The vines stopped growing.

The hanging corpse remained suspended in mid-air, a twisted smile still lingering on its lips.

Lu Yuan's vision began to blur.

At 22 PM, my rationality is still dropping, and the time acceleration is continuing, decreasing every second.

The world he sees is no longer a clear picture.

Color blocks.

Everything turned into blurry blocks of color.

Light green and black hung in the center of the hall; those were vines and black water.

The black and yellow block is three steps away; that's the number "9".

Deep within that dark yellow mass, a tiny point of colored light was moving.

The insect of knowledge.

It's still inside, still desperately gnawing on it.

Lu Yuan's gaze shifted downwards slightly.

At the edge of the color block, there are several extremely thin red threads extending from the body of the "9" towards the ground, piercing into the cracks in the stone slabs beneath its feet.

Red silk thread.

He's seen this before.

Lu Yuan tried hard to search his memory in his blurry mind.

seen.

But I can't remember where it is.

The thought flashed through my mind for only a moment before being interrupted.

The stagnant outer layer shattered.

A giant tentacle made of insects pierced through the branch wall.

Half a person's thickness.

The gray, fleshy worms intertwined, forming a dense, whip-like structure resembling muscles.

Its front end pierced through the vine wall at an incredible speed, penetrated the branch defense line set up by "9", dispersed the spore mist, and even penetrated the static barrier around Lu Yuan.

Static time was physically torn apart.

Time resumed its flow.

The black water fell, and the vines began to move. The body of "9" began to move.

But that enormous tentacle was even faster.

It enveloped Lu Yuan's entire upper body in the instant it shattered from stillness, and then violently dragged him back from the altar area.

Lu Yuan's head hit the surface of the insect's body, the world spun for a second, and then he was pushed to the other side of the branch wall.

Rick.

Rick is no longer human.

When I last saw Rick unleash his true form in the pipeline, insects swarmed out from under his skin, but at least he still maintained the basic outline of a human.

there's no more.

Before me was a mass of countless thick, fleshy worms.

The swarming insects, which were originally as thick as a finger, had now swelled to the thickness of an arm, with rings on their bodies and their bodies constantly wriggling back and forth.

The insects intertwined, twisted, and meandered, forming a rough human-shaped outline, but only an outline.

Two dark red dots of light hovered at the "head" position.

Those are Rick's eyes.

"Execute him!"

Rex's voice came from deep within the insect's body.

The voice trembled, each word enveloped by the writhing sounds of countless insects, sounding both muffled and violent.

This statement was directed at the number "9".

The next moment, the swarming insects erupted in full force.

The gray swarm of insects poured out of Rex's body, its density, speed, and coverage all several times greater than before.

The swarm of insects pressed against the dome, the ground, and the walls, crushing in from three directions simultaneously.

The vines that had been pressuring Lu Yuan were now retreating in the face of this horde of insects. Branches were being gnawed and pierced, and the corrosive secretions from the insects were rapidly forcing the vines back.

The first half of the hall was engulfed by the swarm of insects within ten seconds.

"9" changed his expression.

Instead of confronting the swarm of insects head-on, he retreated rapidly and returned to the center of the altar.

His hand landed on the inscription on the ground.

An eerie green light emanated from the grooves of the inscription.

The vines around them began to twitch.

All the still-growing gray-green root tissues trembled at the same time.

Then the drying process began.

Those "fertilizers" on the walls, those pierced by branches—human bodies, clinging to the last vestiges of life, were simultaneously drained of their last nutrients.