I can find treasures in my dreams.

The sky over the Gobi Desert darkened in an almost paradoxical way.

The boundary of the night was not the usual gradual change of dusk, but rather like a drop of thick ink falling into clear water, spreading layer by layer, gradually encroaching, and forcibly splitting the sky in two.

Where the ink covered the area, it was already deep darkness, but outside it was still as bright as noon.

This bizarre and strange spectacle of "natural black and white" is enough to make anyone's heart clench.

Zhou Furui looked up and gazed at him, his Adam's apple bobbing involuntarily. His tone was full of admiration: "Lieutenant Colonel Yang, your judgment was absolutely accurate."

The two traveled swiftly across the Gobi Desert for nearly half an hour, just as the sky was half swallowed by darkness, precisely confirming Yang Donglin's earlier prediction—that in an hour, night would completely envelop this land.

Yang Donglin simply smiled faintly, without saying a word.

Since his soul merged into the soul card album personally crafted by his father Yang Fan, his sensitivity at the soul level has reached an unbelievable level.

In his father's words, "Some of his perception dimensions even surpass those of high-ranking knights."

When he awoke from the depths of the Gobi Desert, he had only glanced at the strange wisp of dark mist on the horizon and instinctively grasped the precise timing of the approaching night.

"Lieutenant Colonel Yang, how did the sky turn into this?" Zhou Furui couldn't help but ask, the celestial phenomenon before him completely overturning his decades of understanding.

“If we look at it from a game perspective, it’s incredibly simple.” Yang Donglin’s voice was calm and even. “This should be the countdown to the start of the game, a final ultimatum to all the chosen ones, and a way to gradually put psychological pressure on the players.”

He paused, then emphasized, "This is a very brutal game of death."

Zhou Furui nodded thoughtfully, but his brows furrowed even more.

Yang Donglin continued to explain: "A terrifying being capable of shaking heaven and earth, for unknown purposes, created this game world that is so real it's frightening, and forged a series of laws into the original rules of this place. The celestial anomalies are just the most obvious part of it."

"This...this is too outrageous!" Zhou Furui exclaimed, feeling a chill run from the soles of his feet straight to the top of his head.

Yang Donglin didn't reply, but his father's words echoed in his mind: Beneath the Black Sand Sea of ​​Death, there is a high probability that a fallen ancient god is being suppressed.

The so-called "abnormal leakage of deep-level laws" is nothing more than the ancient god's remains showing unusual activity. This hidden realm of the sunken sand abyss is most likely the work of this ancient god.

With the immense power of the ancient gods, creating a world and establishing bizarre rules was merely a matter of a snap of their fingers.

Ten minutes passed in the blink of an eye.

The territory of daylight was swallowed up by the whale of night.

The two piloted the Tiangong No. 9 battle armor, speeding at nearly 300 kilometers per hour, and had already traveled more than 120 kilometers away.

As far as the eye can see, there is still only the vast Gobi Desert and the silent stone sculptures scattered among it, without even a slight change in the terrain.

The Tiangong-9 battle suit can reach a ground speed of 480 kilometers per hour, and in short-distance flight it can reach an ultra-high speed of 1500 kilometers per hour, which is definitely higher than the speed of sound.

But on this desolate land, speed seems to have lost its meaning.

Zhou Furui frequently looked up at the sky, a sense of urgency surging through him like waves.

Even though his senses were far inferior to those of his superior, he could still clearly smell the chilling aura of impending danger.

"Buzz!"

A barely audible tremor was suddenly detected by the armor's high-precision sensors.

The main control AI instantly locked onto the sound source, and a red marker suddenly lit up on the holographic screen.

Zhou Furui looked in the direction of the mark, and with just one glance, he felt a chill creep up his spine and spread throughout his body, making his scalp tingle.

It was a broken stone sculpture, half-buried in the sand, now trembling slightly to a degree barely perceptible to the naked eye, with stone chips falling in a rustling sound, like a sleeping giant awakening.

As if sensing the prying gaze, the stone sculpture trembled more violently for two seconds before abruptly ceasing and returning to lifelessness, as if the earlier disturbance had been nothing more than an illusion.

This scene, however, confirmed Yang Donglin's judgment—once night falls completely and the game officially begins, all these stone sculptures will awaken.

Zhou Furui stood frozen in place, feeling as if his heart had fallen into an ice cave, and even his breathing became labored.

Yang Donglin also noticed the unusual movement of the stone sculpture. He frowned slightly and thought to himself, "It seems that the sanctuary is harder to find than expected. The game designed by this ancient god is far more difficult than anticipated."

He originally intended to figure it out on his own, but the current situation was pressing, so he had no choice but to use the power of the Soul Card Book.

"Wow--"

A gilded card book floated in front of him, its pages turning rapidly without any wind.

This card book, which appears to be only a dozen pages long, makes a continuous rustling sound as it turns pages. Even after hundreds of pages have passed, brand new cards keep appearing, completely defying the common sense of physics.

Hearing the commotion, Zhou Furui stared wide-eyed at the scene.

When he was pulled into the secret realm, he had a brief soul resonance with Yang Donglin, which allowed him to glimpse this mysterious card book.

After a short while, the card book stopped turning.

A card with a pale blue glow slowly floated out.

On the card's surface, a lifelike blue beast resembling a field mouse but covered in round scales is depicted, its scales intricately textured, as if it might break free from the card's grasp at any moment.

"Snapped!"

The blue light suddenly exploded, and the card turned into a cloud of shimmering blue light mist, which condensed into a palm-sized phantom beetle.

As soon as the little creature took shape, it stood upright on its hind legs, its two front paws gesturing intricate hand signals, its round eyes warily watching the darkening sky, occasionally pointing at the night with its paws. Its little head kept shaking, clearly an urgent warning: extreme danger after dark!

Zhou Furui stared in disbelief, only one thought in his mind: "The methods Lieutenant Colonel Yang has mastered are simply too unbelievable. Is this really the ability that a mid-level warrior should have?"

He couldn't help but speculate that each card in the Soul Card Album might correspond to a lost secret technique.

But this card album has at least five hundred cards. Could it be that Lieutenant Colonel Yang has mastered five hundred secret techniques?

The idea was so outrageous that even he himself couldn't believe it.

"I need you to find the nearest hidden shelter within ten minutes," Yang Donglin ordered in a deep voice, staring at the armored rat.

"squeak!"

The rat jumped up excitedly, patting its chest as if to guarantee its success.

Its body suddenly blazed with blue light, and a pair of crystalline wings of light condensed and took shape behind it.

It took off with astonishing speed, leaving a pale blue afterimage in the air before disappearing from sight in an instant.

“This thing has an incredibly strong sense of smell; we should have results within two minutes,” Yang Donglin said with ease and confidence.

Zhou Furui, however, was skeptical: "We've been searching in the Gobi Desert for over half an hour without any results. Can we really find this little thing of unknown origin in just two minutes?"

In less than a minute, a look of joy flashed in Yang Donglin's eyes: "Found it!"

His expression immediately turned somewhat strange: "So the shelter was hidden in a place like this. No wonder we couldn't find a single clue."

He turned to look at Zhou Furui and ordered in a deep voice, "Activate flight mode and stay close to me!"

"Whoo~"

The jets on the back of the armor quietly activated, the airflow noise being absorbed by the silent structure, leaving only a barely audible sound of wind, which lifted the armor slowly into the air.

Zhou Furui immediately activated the jet engine and followed closely behind Yang Donglin.

Two suits of armor flew low over the strangely shaped stone sculptures, covering a distance of thirty kilometers at full speed, and finally arrived at the location of the armored rat.

The little guy is hovering above a giant stone sculpture, circling around and around.

The stone sculpture resembled a sea turtle, over five meters long. However, its shell was not covered with ordinary patterns, but rather with sharp bone spikes. Its head was also ferociously open with a huge mouth, its white stone teeth gleaming coldly. Twisted stone tentacles were wrapped around its body, making it clear at a glance that it was no benevolent creature.

Upon seeing the two arrive, the beetle immediately flew down and circled the stone sculpture, its little paws constantly pointing at the sculpture while squeaking incessantly.

Its tail sways merrily from side to side, clearly emphasizing: the sanctuary is hidden inside this stone sculpture!

It immediately landed on the top of the stone sculpture's head and opened its mouth to spit out a ball of light the size of a fist.

The sphere of light hovered in mid-air, emitting a soft yet irresistible halo. Under the shimmering light, the stone sculpture gradually became hazy and transparent, and a cloud of white mist clearly emerged at its core, with ripples spreading outwards like water waves within the mist.

That was the entrance to the shelter.

Having accomplished all this, the rat transformed into a wisp of blue light and vanished without a trace.

Yang Donglin stared at the entrance, a feeling of awe welling up inside him: "My father's methods are truly endless."

Every secret technique in the Soul Card Album was a secret technique mastered by the old man. The old man used the secret technique to transform it into a card and gave it to him to use.

The card album contains an astonishing total of over 1600 cards, each with its own unique use; there are absolutely no superfluous or misleading methods.

He felt more than once that his father was an absolute freak, after all, Azure Star had only been around for twenty years, was this really the number of secret techniques that humans could master?

Zhou Furui's eyes widened, and while he suddenly realized what was happening, he couldn't help but feel a chill run down his spine.

During their previous search, they subconsciously excluded these stone sculptures that were about to turn into monsters. Little did they know that the game's designers had hidden the sanctuary in the most dangerous place, which was extremely cunning.

He then thought of a crucial question: how to get into the shelter?

His intuition told him that if he forcibly destroyed the stone carving, the entrance would instantly vanish; but if he didn't move the stone carving, he wouldn't be able to touch the core of the white mist at all. This was clearly a dilemma set up by the designer.

But this worry quickly dissipated, because Yang Donglin's methods were far more unfathomable than he had imagined.

"go!"

Yang Donglin gave a low shout and grabbed at the stone sculpture with his right hand.

As if drawn by an invisible force, the white mist suddenly began to writhe, and a wisp of mist meandered out from the giant mouth of the stone sculpture, transforming into a ring with a diameter of two meters in the air.

The two suits of armor, one in front and one behind, quickly swept to the edge of the circle.

The moment he touched the ring, Zhou Furui felt the surrounding Gobi landscape suddenly become illusory, and his body felt as light as if it had lost its weight, soaring rapidly upwards.

Just as the Gobi Desert was about to completely disappear from sight, countless deafening roars of beasts suddenly exploded, sweeping in from all directions.

The roar was filled with an extreme thirst for flesh and blood and a brutal killing intent, enough to shatter one's heart and soul.

Zhou Furui took one last look at the Gobi Desert, which was completely swallowed by the night, and a feeling of relief welled up in his heart: "Fortunately, Lieutenant Colonel Yang was here."

He knew perfectly well that if Yang Donglin hadn't risked venturing deep into the Gobi Desert, he would already be prey for the awakened stone sculpture, his body utterly destroyed. (End of Chapter)