I can find treasures in my dreams.

Consciousness seemed to rise slowly as if submerged in icy water. Yang Donglin was the first to regain consciousness, and all he could hear was the dry wind unique to the Gobi Desert, along with the rustling sound of fine sand rubbing against his armor.

He suddenly opened his eyes, and the eye protection mode of the Tiangong Type 9 battle armor automatically activated, filtering out the glaring gray-white halo.

The two were lying on a vast expanse of gray Gobi Desert. The ground was so flat it was almost eerie, without a single natural undulation. Scattered rocks stretched to the horizon.

Zhou Furui beside him also slowly woke up. His armor supported him as he sat up, emitting a very faint mechanical sound.

The major took a breath and his gaze unconsciously swept around before being drawn to the jumbled rocks.

Zhou Furui glanced at it a few times, feeling a little uneasy.

Because many of the stones were not formed naturally at all; they were clearly the remains of broken statues, yet there wasn't even the slightest trace of carving, as if they were strange creations formed directly from chaos.

Not far away stands a half-collapsed stone sculpture, shaped like a curled-up giant pupa. The pupa's body is covered with spiral protrusions, and each protrusion is inlaid with a hemispherical crystal. Black mist vaguely flows inside the crystal, like countless closed eyes.

Further away lay a statue broken in two, a headless humanoid body with its arms twisted into pretzels and fingertips deeply embedded in its torso, the bone structure visible at the cut surface.

This is all so bizarre!

"Where...is this?" Zhou Furui magnified the scenery through the enhanced vision of his battle armor, staring blankly at the desolate Gobi Desert.

He switched between several detection modes in an instant, but the screen kept displaying prompts such as "no life signal" and "no energy response," as if this were a truly no-man's-land.

But for some reason, the chill in the major's heart grew stronger and stronger.

Yang Donglin did not rush to respond, but tapped lightly on the control panel of the battle armor with his fingertip.

With a barely audible buzzing sound, a palm-sized miniature dragonfly drone popped out of the storage compartment on the left shoulder. Its wings unfolded and gleamed with a metallic sheen, and the panoramic camera mounted on the body quickly activated.

The drone took off like a real dragonfly, climbing hundreds of meters in a few seconds and transmitting a panoramic view of the Gobi Desert to Yang Donglin's retina in real time.

in the screen.

The gray Gobi Desert stretches to the horizon, with no curves visible on the ground, creating a counterintuitive scene of "a round sky and a square earth".

The scenery in the distance was exactly the same as what was underfoot, with rocks and statues scattered everywhere, not even a weed or a grain of sand, as desolate as a corner forgotten by time.

“Interesting.” Yang Donglin pondered for a moment, then slid his finger across the virtual screen, zooming in on the details of the statue captured by the drone. “I feel that the spatial structure here is very stable, but the rules are clearly different from those outside.”

Zhou Furui chimed in from the side, "These statues don't look like they were sculpted by humans!"

Yang Donglin nodded: "That's right, they are the embodiment of the unique world laws here."

Zhou Furui listened, seemingly understanding but not quite: "This rule is really strange."

The major paused, then said in a tone full of self-reproach, "Lieutenant Colonel Yang, you shouldn't have come in. You risked your life to save me..."

Yang Donglin raised his hand to interrupt the other person. He had no interest in discussing what had already happened, because it was a waste of time: "It's useless to talk about this now."

His gaze fell upon the gray sky, where a dark hue had appeared at the edge, like ink spreading in water, its rate of spread clearly exceeding the normal range of Azure Star.

Yang Donglin's voice was calm and unwavering: "In at most an hour, it will be completely dark here. The dangers of the Gobi Desert will be activated in the darkness. We must find shelter as soon as possible."

Zhou Furui paused for a moment, then glanced around again. The Gobi Desert was still desolate, and even the wind had subsided.

A thought flashed through his mind: "There isn't even a bug here, so where does the danger come from?"

Instead of explaining directly, Yang Donglin used the main control system of his battle armor to set a red virtual target for a broken stone sculpture a hundred meters away.

When two or more suits of armor are together, they will automatically form an intelligent data link, which is why Zhou Furui immediately spotted the target.

The statue resembles a two-headed monster; one head is outlined as a wolf's head, while the other looks like a composite of dozens of human faces, with distorted and overlapping features, making it indescribably ferocious.

Yang Donglin's voice came through the data link: "Major Zhou, you can use the plasma scalpel to cut its neck."

Zhou Furui was completely dumbfounded, staring at the stone sculpture with a face full of confusion.

Cut a rock?
He hesitated for two seconds, took the words as an order, and raised his hand to activate the weapon system on the right arm of his armor.

"Om-"

A deep, resonant energy hummed, and the energy conduits on the arm guard glowed with a ghostly blue light.

A condensed, pale blue light blade slowly extended out, with tiny sparks of energy dancing along its edges.

Plasma scalpels are not a new technology. Before the era of natural disasters, the medical field had already been using low-temperature plasma surgical systems, and the industrial field had also widely used industrial plasma cutting machines.

The plasma blade of the Tiangong Armor is based on a principle closer to that of a plasma cutting machine.

The latter mechanism primarily utilizes a high-temperature, high-energy plasma arc to melt the metal, and then uses a high-speed airflow to blow away the molten metal, thereby achieving cutting. The plasma arc operates in a compressed, high-temperature state, typically between 10,000 and 30,000 degrees Celsius, far exceeding the surface temperature of the sun.

Even a portable plasma cutter is still about the size of a suitcase.

The Tiangong Armor's high-tech plasma blade generator is only half the size of a palm and weighs about 1.5 kilograms.

The plasma arc generated by this device not only reaches an astonishing temperature of over 50,000 degrees Celsius, but also possesses a certain degree of fire-based supernatural power.

"Oh!"

Zhou Furui pushed off the ground with his left foot, and his entire suit of armor leaped into the air, flying dozens of meters like a large bird, and swung his light blade at the stone sculpture.

The light blade trembled, instantly detached from the arm guard, and flashed across nearly twenty meters, precisely striking the wolf's neck.

The plasma blade of this armor was not designed as a purely melee weapon from the beginning; its core combat tactic is "blade ricochet".

"Pala~"

A flash of light.

A smooth, mirror-like slit appeared seamlessly at the wolf's neck, without any flying pebbles or dust, as if it were not hard rock but some kind of flexible biological tissue.

With a muffled thud, the wolf's head, its fangs exposed, crashed heavily to the ground, rolling several meters before coming to a stop.

Zhou Furui's expression changed drastically.

Dark red, viscous liquid was clearly seeping from the broken part of the neck.

Like blood about to congeal, with a velvety sheen, one or two drops fell heavily onto the gray Gobi Desert.

The liquid made a slight "sizzling" sound when it hit the ground, leaving a faint dark mark on the rock, clearly indicating its corrosive nature.

Despite being a lifeless stone sculpture, it seems to be flowing with the "blood" that only living things possess!
This terrifying scene sent chills down his spine, and the biosensors in his armor even detected his rapidly accelerating heartbeat.

Almost simultaneously, a notification message suddenly popped up in the helmet's view, and the data stream refreshed at millisecond speeds:

"Unknown liquid sample detected, initiate instant composition analysis..."

"Detected blood-like core components: hemoglobin analogs (43.2% similarity to the blood of carbon-based organisms of Azure Star), erythrocyte-like structures (containing trace amounts of bioactive factors, with an activity intensity of 0.37), and calcium deposits (matching the characteristics of bone metabolites);"

"Seven unknown polymeric compounds were detected, which could not be matched in existing biological databases;"
"Additional note: Airborne residual samples have been automatically collected. It is recommended that they be sent to the laboratory for in-depth analysis."

Zhou Furui suddenly turned to look at Yang Donglin, his voice trembling slightly: "Lieutenant Colonel Yang, this...this stone sculpture is alive?"

Yang Donglin's tone remained calm: "After dark, the laws of the world will awaken the stone sculptures in the Gobi Desert, which is why we need a shelter."

Actually, the person who truly needs a shelter is Major Zhou, because he possesses the Soul Card Book created by his father, which contains at least a dozen ways to save his life, but there's no need to say it aloud.

Zhou Furui's lips twitched a few times, but he swallowed back the words, "How do you know all this?" which were on the tip of his tongue.

Today is the first time the two of us have worked together, so asking such a question would be too presumptuous and would make me seem both ignorant and abrupt.

Yang Donglin seemed to see through his thoughts, his gaze sweeping lightly over his subordinate's tense profile, and he took the initiative to answer: "My soul is much more sensitive than that of ordinary people, so I can clearly sense that there are hungry souls full of malice hidden in the stone bodies of these stone sculptures, just waiting for the night to fall before they break free of their restraints."

Zhou Furui subconsciously recalled the white bone chains he had glimpsed from the perspective of a soul, and a chill ran down his spine. He swallowed hard.

This new boss is not only decisive in his actions, but also possesses such a strange perception, making him far more complex than he appears on the surface.

He immediately composed himself and adopted a completely convinced posture: "I understand, I will follow your arrangements from now on."

Yang Donglin said no more and strode towards the depths of the Gobi Desert ahead. His armor made a steady "thump-thump" sound as it stepped on the gravel. The sound was clearly transmitted to Zhou Furui's ears through the data link: "Everyone who has fallen into this secret realm has heard the phrase 'The game has now begun,' right?"

Zhou Furui quickly followed behind, nodding hurriedly: "I can always capture this sentence in the Retrospection Secret Technique."

Yang Donglin spoke faster and faster: "I strongly suspect that the daytime was deliberately left as a breathing period for the chosen ones, while the nighttime was the time to start the game."

"From the perspective of game design logic, no one can withstand the almost endless stone monsters in the Gobi Desert for an entire night."

"There must be a safe haven hidden here, otherwise the game would lose all meaning and become just indiscriminate slaughter."

Zhou Furui listened with increasing admiration, his heart filled with emotion.

They had only been in the Gobi Desert for a few seconds when Lieutenant Colonel Yang immediately made the decision to "find shelter," clearly seeing through the key to the secret realm as soon as he landed.
Just moments ago, I was completely lost and didn't even know where the danger was coming from.

The differences between people are indeed astonishingly vast. (End of Chapter)