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

A beam of pale blue light shot out along the tunnel formed by the insect's body.

Lu Yuan closed his eyes the moment the pillar of light lit up. The light was too bright, carrying a heavy and majestic blue light, as if the light on the entire bronze city wall had been compressed into a beam of light at this moment.

Even with my eyes closed, the light still seeped in through the gaps in my eyelids, leaving a burning afterimage in my eyes.

The sound arrived the instant the beam of light burst forth.

The sound of the vines carbonizing was like the crackling of oil in a frying pan, with dense popping sounds blasting from one end of the channel to the other, and the spores emitting a sharp hissing sound as they evaporated.

Then came a dull thud.

The beam of light landed on something.

When Lu Yuan opened his eyes, the pillar of light had already dissipated, and the faint blue afterglow slowly drifted down in the passage, like extremely fine ashes.

The passageway was burned clean.

From one end to the other, all the vines, roots, and spores were carbonized, leaving only the charred stone walls and a straight, clean passageway that didn't look like an underground space.

The beam of light ended at the altar.

Lu Yuan could barely make out a few patches of color in the direction of the altar. His eyesight had deteriorated to the point that he could only see things within three meters. Anything beyond that was just a blurry outline and patch of color.

But the perception of those seeking knowledge fills in a part of the gap.

Grayish-white text danced intermittently at the edge of his vision, translating the distant scene into fragments of information he could understand.

'9' did not die.

The gray and white text told him this.

[Target for detection: Gray Pact member 9 (mutated extraordinary) (severely injured)]

The beam of light struck '9', but in the instant before it arrived, '9' did two things.

He first flung the third-tier puppet, whose skull was pierced by vines, into the path of the pillar of light through the root network. The puppet and the branches instantly carbonized and disintegrated in the ghostly blue light, turning into a cloud of fine ashes that drifted in the passage.

Then he grabbed the third-tier subordinate who had been hiding among the wooden figures and pulled him over to stand in front of him.

That third-tier creature lasted less than a second against the beam of light before carbonizing, disintegrating, and turning into ashes.

Both third-tier units died.

The beam of light had weakened considerably after penetrating the wreckage, but it still struck '9'.

But he is still alive.

The eerie green light on the altar extinguished largely after the beam of light passed by.

Lu Yuan could sense that even from this distance, his environmental perception still detected a sudden drop in the extraordinary aura emanating from the direction of the altar. At least two-thirds of the eerie green energy flowing within the inscription grooves had been burned away by the beam of light.

At this moment, Buren could no longer hold on and collapsed.

When Lu Yuan turned his head, Beren could no longer stand. The dark blue inscriptions on the old man's cane all went dark at the same time, and he leaned to the side. If the edge of the insect swarm hadn't caught him, he would have fallen directly onto the stone floor.

His face was so pale it looked bluish, his lips were bloodless, his breathing was rapid, and his chest was rising and falling like someone who was about to drown.

Borrowing the power of the entire Bronze City came at a price far greater than Lu Yuan had imagined.

Then Lu Yuan sensed it.

The protective runes on Beron's body also went out, and the pale gold patterns that had been faintly glowing on the surface of his clothes all went dark at this moment.

The air we can breathe has changed.

A sweet, metallic taste rose in my throat.

The spores are back.

The cloying sweetness that had been filtered out by the Beren inscription returned, even stronger than before, and the sudden loss of its filter made it particularly pungent.

The gray area at the edge of Lu Yuan's field of vision expanded by another circle.

[Sanity: -1...26/90]

The gray and white text jumped.

But this discomfort came quickly and went away just as quickly.

The altar was destroyed, the vines were withering away, and the gray-green roots that had grown wildly before began to die at the same moment the inscriptions were destroyed. The withering meant that they would no longer produce new spores.

The spores remaining in the air began to thin out within seconds, the sweet feeling in the throat faded, and the discomfort gradually subsided.

Rake gave '9' no time to breathe.

The moment the altar inscriptions went out, the swarming insects launched a full-scale attack.

What Lu Yuan saw with his naked eye was a gray wave surging forward. The boundary of the insect swarm in his blurry vision was like a gray line that kept pushing forward, swallowing up the front half of the entire hall from left to right.

Those mutated branches that had been enhanced by '9' began to wither after losing the power supply from the altar. Their hard shells cracked, and the gray-green tissue inside turned black and shrank, like branches that had been drained of moisture.

The insect swarm is no longer a tug-of-war with the vines.

The branch wall was quickly gnawed through and dissolved, and insects poured in from every opening.

The vine defense line, which had been advancing steadily, turned into a pile of fragile, withered branches after losing its power supply.

The swarming insects hollowed out the branches from the inside and crushed the hard shells from the outside, tearing the last line of vine defenses around the altar to shreds.

Rek's insect body emerged from above the swarm of insects.

Two dark red dots of light hung at the very top of that gray mass, like two dark red gems embedded in the insect's body.

Those are Rick's eyes.

They were staring at the half-damaged '9'.

Lu Yuan watched all of this from the edge of the insect swarm.

He was no longer capable of participating in battles of this level. With only 26 points of sanity and no more rune protection, all he could do was spectate.

To Lu Yuan's naked eye, all he could see were patches of color: gray swarms of insects and blackish-yellow '9s churning and colliding deep within the hall, like two blobs of paint being mixed into the same bucket of water. He couldn't make out the details or the moves.

But the occasional glimpses of gray text intermittently translated the battle situation into words.

Even though he was seriously injured, he was still in great danger. Although his speed was greatly reduced due to the injury to his left side, it still exceeded the limits of ordinary people.

The remaining vines made a final struggle under his willpower, their branches piercing through cracks in the ground, attempting to entangle the insect's body, but their size was no longer comparable to before.

Reck's swarm of insects surrounded '9' from three sides.

The sounds of fierce fighting came from afar, with huge impacts mixed with the cracking of insect bodies.

As the swarm of insects advanced, the sound changed; a denser, more fragmented sound came from the depths of the insect tide, like countless mouths chewing at the same time.

Rick was serious.

Several lines of gray and white text jumped up and down rapidly at that moment.

[Target for detection: Leike (Mysterious and Extraordinary) (Overload)]

[Humans who embrace the swarm of insects seem to have unleashed the vast majority of their power; let them welcome the power of the swarm.]

The gray swarm of insects converged simultaneously from three directions: the dome, the ground, and the walls. With its overwhelming size, it crushed the last remaining defenses around '9' and swallowed '9' whole into the sea of ​​insects.

The number '9' disappeared into the gray.

Rex's dark red eyes flashed briefly in the depths of the insect swarm.

Then the executions began.

Lu Yuan couldn't see what was happening deep within the insect swarm; all he could see was a constantly churning mass of gray.

But he can hear.

Sound does not need eyes.

The sounds coming from deep within the swarm of insects were extremely clear.

'9' did not shout.

But you can hear the crunching sound of the shell being gnawed apart, so dense it sounds like someone is stomping on shards of glass.

Then came the wet, sticky sound of flesh being torn from the bones, a sound with a teeth-grinding illusion, like tearing a piece of fascia tightly attached to the bone.

The essential ability of the swarming insects is both to devour and to strip away.

Each insect bites off a small piece of flesh, which then transforms inside the insect's body, becoming a new insect.

To peel off, to reproduce.

A cycle, and that's precisely what makes the swarming insects so terrifying.

Grayish-white skin fragments floated out from the depths of the insect swarm, mixed with blackish-yellow bodily fluids. These were the remnants of '9's carapace-like skin after it had been gnawed apart, like dried scales blown away by the wind.

From the surface to the inside, '9's body is being dismantled layer by layer.

The total number of swarms actually increased dramatically in a very short time. Every piece of flesh that was peeled off from '9' was transformed into a new swarm within a second or two. Was Rek feeding his army with '9's own body?

The creaking sounds grew more frequent.

The wet, sticky sound is becoming more and more frequent.

A fourth-order mutated superhuman is being dismantled piece by piece in the face of execution by the swarming insects.

Just as the number '9' was about to be completely hollowed out.

Lu Yuan first felt the stone slabs under his feet shaking.

It was so light that you wouldn't notice it unless you were pressed against the edge of the insect swarm. A very faint but rhythmic pulse came up from deep within the ground, like something throbbing beneath the stone slab.

Then an ancient, heavy aura seeped from beneath the ground.

Lu Yuan could barely make out the source through his blurry vision.

Those red threads that he had noticed earlier.

The extremely fine thread extending downwards from the body of '9' and piercing into the cracks of the stone slab is undergoing a dramatic change.

The silk threads, which had been as silent as if they didn't exist, were as thin as hair and descended from '9's' legs, disappearing into the cracks in the ground.

They are pulsating now.

Lu Yuan could see the threads contracting and expanding in the cracks of the stone slab, like an extremely thin heart making its final struggle.

The thread thickened, expanding from the thickness of a hair to the thickness of a chopstick, and then to the thickness of a finger, all within three or four seconds.

The overall color also changed drastically, from a deep dark red to black, eventually becoming a texture like solidified ink.

The red thread is no longer red.

They turned into black veins.

The veins were pulsating, each pulsation accompanied by a clear fluctuation of energy. Something was flowing through these veins from beneath the ground into '9's body.

An anomaly has appeared inside the insect swarm.

The crunching sound changed; the previously dense chewing sounds began to become sparse, and in some areas, they simply stopped.

Rek's insect body began to slow down in a certain area.

The swarming insects that were peeling away the flesh and blood of '9' and reproducing new insects were suddenly suppressed by a force surging from within.

An unsettling scene appeared in Lu Yuan's field of vision.

Even though it was blurry, he could still make out that there were raised bumps under '9's skin.

Those were swarming worms that were multiplying inside the body, trying to break free.

But after each bulge rose, it was pushed back down from the inside by a dark force.

The bumps on my skin appear and disappear repeatedly.

The swarming insects could no longer reproduce inside '9'.

Those black veins were still pulsating, sending some kind of power that Lu Yuan couldn't understand from beneath the ground into '9's broken body.

The aura of '9' completely changed, and the swarm of insects suddenly exploded outwards in a circle near the area of ​​'9'.

The insect died instantly upon approaching that area, as if some force had drained its life force, and the entire insect instantly transformed from a living organism into a dry, empty shell.

Gray shells fell off the surface of the insect nest one after another, like a gray snowfall.