Hello, is this a letter addressed to Demon Fortress?

Fourteen days after leaving the corridor.

After enduring the mental and physical torment brought about by the bloody and cruel forbidden zone.

Finally, on the northwestern horizon.

Elvia saw a highland slowly rising from the horizon.

That's Dragonbone Highlands.

Behind it, the towering peaks of Dragon Bone Mountain came into view once again.

Immediately, Elvia's tears welled up.

She suddenly stood up, waving her arms and shouting wildly.

The sound echoed through the vast desert, carrying an irrepressible excitement and joy.

"arrive!!"

"We're almost there!!"

She took off her light coat.

He waved it around on the ant's back like a savage, the fabric fluttering in the wind.

The appearance of the highlands meant that the frontier was not far away from them.

She couldn't wait to kiss the soil of her hometown.

She didn't want to stay in this desolate red sand for even a second longer.

Behind her, Lillian reacted quite differently.

She looked like she wanted more.

The three forbidden areas that Elvia had just passed through were of little use to her.

It possesses a strong sense of bloodshed, and the fighting there is unprecedented.

The same applies to Lillian.

That hellish scene also had a huge impact on her.

But as the saying goes, the more dangerous the place, the more precious things there are.

Just along this route.

Lillian used her levitation spell to capture too many incredible magical materials that she had only ever seen in museums.

Several blood crystals, shimmering with a dark red luster, were fragments that had accidentally fallen from the edge of the Butcher's Lair.

Several barbs that had fallen off from the Thousand Needles Demon still had intact toxin crystals at their tips.

A small piece of bone marrow deep within the Bone Demon's lair, its entire body gleaming with a pale, eerie light.

There were also a few grains of crystallized sand that I found at the edge of the Thousand Needles graveyard.

Each grain contains intense elemental fluctuations.

It is the best material for magic experiments.

With these materials, she even believed that the stingy old man would kneel down before her.

Reveal the answer to that riddle without reservation.

For her, the most precious thing was not the top-grade magical materials that filled her hood.

Rather, it is a unique experience of traversing desperate situations.

Lin Gui did not lie to her.

This is indeed an experience I will probably never forget in my lifetime.

She gained so much from it, knowledge that she could never access in the academy.

Ironbacked Army Ant.

This type lacks the ability to conceal itself and has weak personal strength.

Yet they were able to survive in the red desert, a counterintuitive miracle.

Like a veil in the dark night, it is a miracle of the weak overcoming the strong.

And the person who discovered this miracle.

Lillian looked past Elvia, who was waving excitedly, and at Lin Gui.

Lin Gui was sitting sideways at the front of the ant.

He flipped through the magic textbook in his hand, seemingly unmoved by Elvia's ecstasy.

But Lillian noticed that his expression seemed somewhat serious.

She had never seen him like this since entering the red desert.

Even the few bloody forbidden areas we just passed through.

He also had the leisure to make jokes about Elvia.

I recall the feeling of being pricked by needles in the dark entrance of the corridor.

Lillian had a bad feeling.

Perhaps it was her introverted personality that honed her sensitivity to external dangers.

After waking up at that cave entrance, she felt a terrifying presence that was enough to overwhelm everything.

She knew that place, in the boundless darkness they had walked through.

There must be something incredibly powerful nearby.

Moreover, Elvia may not have realized it.

The Shaxia Corridor is one of the restricted areas embedded within the red soil desert.

When they came out, there wasn't a single demon in the surrounding sand.

Including epic demons.

And at that very moment...

The ironback army ants that had been crawling continuously stopped.

The ants that had accompanied it along the way also stopped.

All the ants stopped at the same time.

Their tentacles stopped moving, and their six segments remained stationary.

Dozens of black compound eyes all turned towards the northeast.

An unusual silence descended.

After leaving the gloomy Bone Demon's lair, they headed north along the outskirts of the Red Earth Desert.

Even the red sand may not be able to completely conceal their traces.

The battle between the desert demons never ceased along the way.

Sand centipedes hunted sand lizards, and burrowing giant scorpions ambushed sand spiders, with screams and sounds of limbs being torn apart rising and falling.

But now... they seem to be frozen in place.

In the distant desert, several giant burrowing scorpions that were fighting suddenly stopped, their pincers hanging in mid-air.

A sand centipede emerged from under the sand but did not pounce on its prey; it simply stood there motionless.

The sand lizards stopped running and huddled motionless at the edge of the sandpit.

The entire desert fell into an eerie, deathly silence.

The sound of the wind seemed to have been sucked away, even the whistling became thin.

Elvia also sensed something was wrong and slowly lowered the arm that had been waving her coat.

Lin Gui was silent for a moment, then lowered his head, gently stroked the top of the ant's head, and whispered something.

The ant's antennae drooped slightly, then lifted again.

Lin Gui raised his head, his voice calm:

"Let's keep moving forward."

"Let's get through the last forbidden area first."

Upon hearing this, the ant resumed its six-segmented limbs and began to crawl quickly.

Other ants followed closely behind, and the black ant stream moved quickly across the ground.

They climbed towards the last forbidden area beside Dragonbone Highlands.

Although it's called a forbidden area, strictly speaking, it's not.

Rather, it is a lair where a great many demons from the outskirts of the red desert gather.

It is called Red Sand Nest.

It was an area covered by a thin layer of red soil.

Beneath the red soil are countless nests.

Countless openings are interwoven beneath the sand, like a tattered net.

There are several wide passageways leading down to the bottom of the highlands.

The red soil covering the entire area is very shallow, a thin layer covering the entrance of the cave.

Sunlight easily penetrated, turning the thin layer of soil into a translucent dark red.

The openings were faintly visible in the light, like countless half-open eyes.

The moment the ant's legs stepped into the area, the deathly stillness began to come alive again.

The sand beneath the red sand nest began to tremble slightly.

A faint crawling sound came from the soil.

It was as if something had been startled awake, moving back and forth in the narrow passage.

Several sand lizards poked their heads out of the cave, looked around, and then retreated back inside.

The giant scorpion from the burrow began to move across the sand again.

The pliers picked up a piece of gravel, as if only continuing after confirming it was safe.

The sand centipede also emerged from the sand again and crawled away along a winding path into the distance.

The half-open openings closed again in the sunlight, like eyes closing their eyelids.

The entire red sand nest regained a regular, rhythmic commotion characteristic of the demon's lair.

Elvia and Lillian both breathed a sigh of relief.

The deathly silence just now was terrifying, and now seeing these hideous demons active again is unsettling.

That put their minds at ease.

Elvia patted her chest, smiled, and pulled a small bottle from her pocket, uncorking it like a champagne bottle:

"Finally! It's finally over!"

"When I get back to Karan, I need to get some rest and take care of my skin, which has become rough from being scorched by the sun."

She pinched her cheek, her tone light with relief, as if she had just survived a close call.

Lillian, curious, leaned forward and whispered a question:

"Teacher, where are we going?"

All Lillian knew from beginning to end was that they had to cross the red desert.

But she didn't know where her final destination was.

Lin Gui did not answer her question.

He reached into the storage space and took out the Wind Whisperer's Scepter.

He held the scepter horizontally in his hand, his voice carrying an unprecedented solemnity.

"We've arrived at the most dangerous place."

"Get ready, be careful."

"Otherwise, we'll all die here."

Elvia paused, holding the bottle in her hand.

Lillian's smile froze on her lips.

The two of them looked at Lin Gui at the same time.

His expression was so calm that it didn't seem like he was joking.