Chapter 2718: Hallucination
This wasn't a normal conversation between people, nor should it have taken place in an environment like an underground ruin. Xu Huo turned back to look at Pu Yu and the other two, who were still digging. On their instruments, the final result regarding the living detection always showed only the five of them.
"Your instrument must be broken," Zhuo Mingfeng said from a distance. "It's been beeping constantly. This district is different from others, especially underground—many instruments don't work down here."
Qiao Shu, who had been holding the instrument, didn't speak. After adjusting it for a moment, the instrument seemed to return to normal, and new data began popping up on the screen.
"It's fine now."
Xu Huo averted his gaze and turned to Qiao Popo, who had suddenly walked to the edge of the cliff. "What are you looking at?"
Qiao Popo paused slightly. "There's movement below the cliff."
Yan Jiayu immediately leaned over. "Is it a snake?"
As her words fell, a rustling sound came from beneath the cliff. Xu Huo frowned and immediately warned, "Fall back!"
The moment he spoke, a massive tail lashed out from below the cliff, sweeping Yan Jiayu and the other woman flying!
Given Qiao Popo and Yan Jiayu's skills, dealing with a mutant animal like this shouldn't have been a problem. But unexpectedly, after they were flung out, for some reason, Yan Jiayu suddenly lost control and began plummeting downward!
Qiao Popo reached out beside her but failed to pull her back. In the blink of an eye, Xu Huo sealed the space near the cliff to catch her, but at the same time, the giant python lifted its head from below the cliff, opened its mouth, bit through the space barrier, and swallowed Yan Jiayu whole!
Countless space bodies began forming above and below the cliff. Worried about harming Yan Jiayu, he didn't use Space Tangent but instead tried to restrain the python. He moved quickly, but the giant python seemed completely unimpeded as it sank deep into the cliff...
Watching the massive shadow slither away, Xu Huo was about to give chase, but as he reached the cliff's edge, he suddenly stopped. Before he could make another move, a tremendous force struck him from behind. The immense pressure sent him flying. Qiao Popo, who had returned to the top of the cliff, expressionlessly used a prop to seal the entire underground cliff space, then stacked gravity props, forcing him to fall downward!
Xu Huo kept sinking into the darkness. This underground cliff seemed bottomless. No matter how many times he probed, he couldn't find the bottom. The giant snake that had appeared earlier was also nowhere to be seen, and there were no cave crevices on either side of the cliff for hiding.
He felt as if he had fallen into an endless abyss.
Without using space power to catch himself, Xu Huo manipulated the Space Ray, unsealed the Hyperdimensional Space Power on his finger, and casually reached out. In just two seconds, at a place where he could feel no solid objects at all, the Hyperdimensional Space Power tore a massive hole, and he abruptly fell to the ground—a ground that was only a few meters below his original height.
Realizing what was happening, he didn't rush to find an exit. Instead, he stretched out his arms to feel around him, then turned on his communicator. As the light flared, he found himself in a stone passageway, with the familiar curved stone ceiling above him and a huge hole to his right, melted through by the Hyperdimensional Space Power. Because of this hole, several nearby passages had been forcibly connected.
His perception spread through these passages. Xu Huo stood still for a moment before walking forward along one of them.
The plants on the stone walls grew brighter, as if more and more colored powder had been mixed into them. A strange smell seeped through the cracks in his helmet, entering his nostrils. The overwhelming odor made him uncontrollably nauseous, and finally, he couldn't help but tear off his helmet and vomit violently.
The communicator lay pressed against the ground beside him, its faint light blurring his vision. But he quickly adjusted, and when he looked again, he saw a large pool of black blood filled with fungal hyphae.
After expelling the toxic blood, his mind cleared considerably. He raised the light again and realized that the glowing plants on the stone walls had transformed into crisscrossing patches of colorful ore. He himself had been leaning against a rock the whole time, and at some point, his body had acquired numerous wounds.
The hyphae of the King Fungus extended from these wounds, from the gaps in his metal protective suit, proliferating and spreading wildly, covering several meters behind him.
The air was thick with a foul, fishy stench. Xu Huo endured the odor, not tearing off the hyphae on his body, but letting them continue to draw power from the surrounding ore.
The reason this district could grow so many mutant plants and possess such high spiritual energy was undoubtedly linked to these underground ores. The King Fungus only grew this fast when attached to Nuwa Stone.
Thanks to the King Fungus's rampant growth, the toxins in his body had likely been mostly purged, and his mind had returned to normal. Although he didn't find any trace of Yan Jiayu or Pu Yu and the others nearby, they probably weren't far away. In fact, they had never found any underground ruins at all—they had been wandering in circles through the underground passages.
They must have unknowingly fallen victim to something when they descended from the sinkhole. That was why they had ignored the instruments' anomalies. If such high spiritual energy could be detected on the surface, the underground situation couldn't possibly be better than above. The air conditions in the passages also defied common sense.
But what Xu Huo found hard to believe was that he hadn't noticed he was being affected at all... No, that wasn't right. He must have noticed, but under the dual influence of toxins and spiritual interference, he had deliberately overlooked these things.
The endless passages, the underground ruins, and the people in those ruins—all of it was the hallucination of the five of them. Every time he found something strange, his brain would later compensate for it. For example, they first saw the Outer Zone Player, then the albino local residents. Only after looking at photos did they belatedly realize these people had poor eyesight...
The air was filled with a large amount of toxins. Judging by the time, they had been inside for at least two days. They had been injured without knowing how, and on top of that, the hallucinations caused by the interference meant he had to find Yan Jiayu as soon as possible.
After confirming that his condition had improved, Xu Huo tore off the hyphae on his body and stood up. He released his Spiritual Realm to resist the external spiritual energy. Feeling his Spiritual Realm instantly compressed to a range of a hundred meters, his brow furrowed, and he followed the traces he had left earlier to head back.
But after walking for a while, he sensed something was wrong. His Spiritual Realm was too quiet. The other three personalities hadn't appeared at all. He searched the entire Library Tower but found no trace of them...
Xu Huo stopped. The colorful ore in the passage still emitted a faint glow, the varying intensities of light pulling his shadow in deep and shallow layers behind him.