Chapter 1 Space Change

The Bafang Mingyue Palace Lantern in Li Yi's hand emitted a peaceful and unwavering light. The mist pouring out from the cracks in the ground rapidly dissipated upon contact with the light.

All the dense fog clung tightly to the surface of the underground fissures.

The spatial structure beneath the fog seemed to undergo some imperceptible but real changes.

Stepping out, the group didn't encounter the expected rocky rubble. Instead, they trod upon a layer of dense fog, like a soft carpet.

[Spatial structure has been altered. Players entering the anomalous space will not be penalized with sanity deductions.]

[The mission objective of surviving until the "sixth barrier contraction is complete" remains unchanged.]

Li Yi's heart stirred. As the system issued the prompt, the [Bafang Mingyue Palace Lantern] also updated a note.

[Note: This lantern is the key for the Different Arts Society to enter the deepest level of the Qiumo Cave.]

The group of players walked down the slanting mist passage. Under the illumination of the palace lantern, the dense fog ahead, so thick it was almost tangible, quickly receded, opening up a new, straight downward path.

Chu Yin's electronic positioning devices, drone equipment, and the like had all failed.

The positioning rope that Ash had wound around the subway station's beams had also snapped in two due to the closing of the mist behind the passage.

Initially, Ash had used a multi-functional mechanical watch to record the time, direction, and distance the group had traveled into the underground tunnel.

However, this mist passage was not static. Sometimes, before the light of the Bafang Mingyue Palace Lantern could reach far, the passage behind would sever itself, flying away before the players' eyes.

The group continued to advance downward.

The mist passage beneath their feet began to resemble a subway car quietly accelerating.

While the scenery ahead remained the same, it carried the players through various directions of movement, forward, backward, left, right, up, and down.

Of course, the most obvious sensation was the oppressive feeling brought about by the constantly increasing downward acceleration.

The feeling was extremely bizarre.

Only by relying on the sea-level positioning function on Ash's multi-functional mechanical watch could the group know that in just a minute and a half, they had descended one thousand meters underground, and were still falling.

The mist passage beneath the players' feet, like a train car with its own consciousness, flew into the interior of the giant tower along some crack.

During the journey, the grayish-white mist around the passage gradually thinned.

The group could clearly see the outside scenery through the nearly transparent walls of the passage.

Outside was a dark and gloomy space. Countless tiny points of light flickered in every corner of the space.

These countless points of light together formed the towering silhouette of a giant pagoda-like structure. The oppressive feeling brought about purely by its immensity even caused the players present to subconsciously hold their breath.

As the mist passage moved closer, the players saw the structure of the building there.

It was a ruined tower-like structure, shaped like a distorted cone, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. The narrowest point was still over a kilometer in diameter, and the widest point was obscured by mist, making it difficult to see clearly.

The main material of the building was some kind of cyan stone, combined with a small amount of brown giant wood, and various metals.

The giant tower's style was simple and unadorned, revealing a sense of primordial barbarism and even evil, like something from an ancient era.

Empty, oppressive, silent, and deep.

Even a glance was enough to easily determine that this building did not originate from any civilization or culture in human history.

The center of the giant tower was not hollow, but rather spanned by bridges of bizarre structure.

Most of the bridges had broken, and floated in mid-air in the form of countless giant stones.

More points of light dotted the few intact bridges.

Next to the bridges, various stone buildings also floated,

Some of these buildings resembled Gothic castles, some resembled Baroque churches, some resembled Eastern temples, some resembled egg-shaped libraries, and some even resembled modern skyscrapers.

It was impossible to imagine the specific function and meaning of these buildings.

As the distance to the giant tower continued to shrink, the group finally could see the appearance of the light points clearly—these light points were not lights, lamps, or starlight decorating the building.

But rather, they were deformed monsters similar to deep-sea anglerfish.

They had bodies roughly the size of apes or baboons, with blue faces and fangs, pointed mouths and sunken cheeks. Their bodies had no fur, only a layer of ugly, blood-red skin covered in blood vessels.

Their tails were wrapped around their waists like whips.

Their entire bodies were extremely thin, and above their heads were fleshy protrusions, shaped like small lanterns. It was these lanterns that emitted light similar to incandescent lamps.

These apes clung tightly to the stone walls, bridges, and buildings.

Regardless of their size, their ankles were all bound by a slender, long chain of mist, connected to the giant tower itself.

Most of the apes were asleep, squinting their eyes and digging their sharp claws into the stone walls, hanging on the surface of the buildings.

A small number of apes, because they didn't hang on properly, had their claws slip from the surface of the buildings, and their entire bodies fell freely.

Fortunately, giant rocks floated everywhere inside the giant tower.

Even if they fell, they would crash onto a giant rock below with a "bang", open their scarlet eyes, shake their heads, and continue to climb onto the surface of the building to fall back asleep.

There were simply too many of these ape monsters. They densely covered the buildings and the surface of the giant tower. At a glance, it was almost impossible to estimate their numbers.

Millions? Or tens of millions?

The group silently turned off their flashlight beams.

In the dim, misty space, the light emitted by the palace lantern became the only solace.

Suddenly, as if sensing something, millions of ape monsters all over the giant tower simultaneously opened their scarlet eyes and looked at the players in that mist car.

There was a deathly silence. There was no sound in the air. The players looked up and could only see thousands upon thousands of white lights intertwined with red eyes.

As if triggered by some signal, millions of ape monsters screeched and leaped out, falling towards the mist passage where the group was located like a torrential rain.

"Buzz—"

The Bafang Mingyue Palace Lantern suddenly burst out with an even more magnificent and bright light. All the apes that came into contact with the light of the palace lantern would fester all over, spontaneously combust, and burst into brilliant fireworks in the air.

Apes died in piles, but more apes continued to fall, impacting the light barrier created by the Bafang Mingyue Palace Lantern.

Everyone prepared for battle, but the mist passage car beneath their feet suddenly accelerated, plummeting straight down.

The speed of the downward plunge was too fast. The group was pinned to the top of the mist car by the acceleration.

The scenery outside flashed by like a revolving lantern. The players could only vaguely see the architectural styles of the giant tower constantly changing.

Within the various levels of the giant tower, each with its own unique style, resided all kinds of strangely shaped and indescribable demons.

These demons even formed a complete ecosystem by relying on the various plants growing inside the giant tower, as well as by hunting and devouring each other.

The further down they went, the more terrifying the shapes of the demons became, and the larger their sizes also increased. The group even saw scorpions ten stories high, giant snakes with human heads stretching hundreds of meters, titans with a hundred eyes, a hundred arms, and a hundred faces, and giant one-eyed spheres covered in tentacles.

Every demon seemed to be an evil creation unintentionally created by the creator in a deformed and terrifying nightmare.

Unlike the upper-level demons, these powerful-looking demons were generally in a deep sleep.

The chains of mist binding them were also more solid and reliable.

And they were extracting pitch-black demonic energy from the demons' bodies at a rate visible to the naked eye.

But, even though the descent speed of the mist passage was so fast, the powerful demons seemed to still sense something. One by one, they opened their eyes and sluggishly moved their huge bodies, vying to chase after the mist passage, even going so far as to fight each other, smashing countless cracks into the walls of the giant tower itself.

Just as the group was about to be devoured by the giant snake with the head of a woman opening its mouth, the mist passage "bang" pierced through some invisible and intangible barrier and reached the lowest level of the giant tower.