# Chapter 3136: Battle Angel Remains Ruins
A beam of light swept across the corridor, and the ferocious, fang-baring carvings on the walls appeared one after another in Xu Huo's field of vision. In the dim environment, these carvings looked quite terrifying, but not enough to scare players this badly. He probed the surroundings again, sensing multiple spatial fluctuations. Some places clearly had spatial passages, and they also restricted mental power. Although some rooms were open, when his mental power probed inside, it was met with nothing but darkness.
He shifted his gaze back to the person beside him. "Did you come in alone?"
Probably relieved to see a living person, Upstairs's mental state was no longer as tense as before. "I came in with two other players, but we got separated not long after entering. I've been wandering around for a few days without running into anyone, but I've encountered some strange things instead."
"Strange things?" Xu Huo repeated.
Upstairs quickly motioned for him to lower his voice. "Don't speak too loudly. I suspect they can hear us."
He pointed at the statues on the wall.
"Living props?" Xu Huo asked.
"I don't know." Upstairs looked utterly bewildered. "Over these past few days, I've thought of every possibility—mental interference, living props, germs and toxins, mutated creatures, demons and monsters... They keep appearing around me from time to time. Although they haven't attacked me, every time they show up, I feel my energy dropping."
"I'm at least an A-rank player. Being startled shouldn't leave me unable to recover for so long, but I just can't seem to bounce back..."
The longer it went on, the stranger he found it. Living props in instances also attack players, whether mentally or physically—players can always figure out a direction. But Upstairs's situation was fatigue, like he'd suddenly lost his vitality, with exhaustion seeping from his mind to his body. And it wasn't gradual either. Every time one of those strange sculptures appeared, he could clearly feel his energy plummet sharply, like jumping down stairs.
"Could it be that you got disoriented and suddenly found yourself in front of a statue?" Xu Huo hadn't sensed anything special about the surrounding statues so far, and the darkness only limited mental probing—there was no mental energy interfering with them.
Upstairs hesitated. "Honestly, after all these days, I can't really tell anymore."
Hearing this, Xu Huo finally paid a bit more attention to him. Even cognition and perception were skewed?
"Have you really only been in here for a few days?" he asked.
"Of course," Upstairs patted the bag strapped around his waist. "I haven't even eaten much of my rations."
After learning a bit more and finding that Upstairs had little useful information, Xu Huo said, "Let's leave here first."
Upstairs suddenly grabbed his arm. "Don't wander around! It's easy to get separated!"
"Do you want to stay?" Xu Huo asked.
"Then don't walk too fast." Upstairs hesitated before adding, "The players who came in with me all disappeared suddenly."
The two walked along the corridor. Xu Huo kept looking at the sculptures on the walls. Upstairs endured for a while before he couldn't help asking if Xu Huo knew how to get out.
"Let's take a look around." Xu Huo brushed him off.
Upstairs had no better plan. Worried about losing this new companion, he stayed close to Xu Huo's side, maintaining a distance where he could reach out and grab him.
Xu Huo had come in to find the Battle Angel remains, so he wasn't walking fast. He would even linger around the sculptures and decorations.
There were cracks of varying widths on the sculptures and walls. Of course, looking through the cracks revealed nothing but endless darkness—it was impossible to probe the surroundings. To find out what was in the rooms, they had to go inside.
Seeing the first open door, he was about to enter when Upstairs said, "Let me hold onto you as we go."
Situations like suddenly disappearing when entering a room or passing through a door weren't unusual in instances. Xu Huo didn't object, allowing Upstairs to grip his shoulder.
They slowly walked into the room. The moment the light from their communicator could dispel the darkness, a hideous giant face suddenly pressed right up against Xu Huo's eyes. He instinctively raised a spatial barrier, but after calming down, he realized it was a carving that had fallen from the ceiling after the wall cracked.
Looking up along the inverted sculpture, most of the ceiling had collapsed. This half-section of the statue was hanging from one corner of the lamp, not yet fully fallen to the ground.
"How is it?" Xu Huo didn't feel any change in himself, so he asked Upstairs.
Upstairs checked himself. "I'm normal too."
Stepping around the statue, Xu Huo searched the room but found nothing, so they left.
When they walked out the door, the outside was no longer the previous corridor but another room.
This room was much more dilapidated than the last. There were no statues, but a crack running through the entire ceiling let out a whistling wind sound. Judging by the noise, the space behind it was extremely vast.
Xu Huo casually picked up a piece of wall plaster from the room and tossed it upward. The plaster passed through smoothly, but once inside, it sank like a stone into the sea—no echo at all.
Unable to probe the situation inside, he was about to leave when, just as he turned, he suddenly felt something. He turned back and came face to face with a sculpture that had appeared out of nowhere. Despite his preparation, the spatial barrier didn't work this time. Just as Upstairs had described, his energy was suddenly weakened, as if some of his vitality had been abruptly drained!
Stepping back slightly, Xu Huo carefully examined the statue that had appeared out of thin air. He reached out and tapped it—just an ordinary statue.
Rubbing his index finger, he eventually withdrew his hand and said to Upstairs, "Let's go."
Upstairs had also noticed the suddenly appearing sculpture. Uncertainly, he said, "I'm not seeing things, am I? That sculpture definitely wasn't here when we came in."
"Yeah." Xu Huo acknowledged.
"Then are you feeling anything wrong?" Upstairs pressed on.
Xu Huo gave him a faint, ambiguous smile. "What do you want to be wrong?"
Upstairs looked relieved. "It's good that nothing's wrong. I'm really worried I won't make it out of here. You absolutely can't have anything happen to you."
"Don't worry. If you've lasted a few days, it means these things aren't lethal." Xu Huo patted his shoulder.
Upstairs didn't respond, still sticking close to Xu Huo's side like before.
Xu Huo could feel his energy had decreased slightly, but Upstairs, who was right there with him, showed no change. If Upstairs wasn't hiding it, it meant the sculpture only targeted one person each time.
But there was no rush to judge. There was plenty of time and plenty of opportunities.
The two walked out of the room. The corridor outside had changed. There were still sculptures on the walls, but the decorative style and colors differed from the previous one. This time, the corridor was open on both ends, revealing rooms around the corners and an open tea room.
Xu Huo headed toward the tea room first.
On the table in the tea room stood statues identical to those on the walls, about a meter tall. At first glance, there was nothing unusual. Xu Huo circled around before walking to the table and lifting one of them.
"What are you doing?" Upstairs looked at him in horror.