I can see experience bars after being transported to another world.

The distribution of mithril.

"Ten cans plus the one that was already at the position, making a total of eleven cans," Lu Yuan continued.

"Bohr and I each took two cans, the Holy Armor Army and the Iron Guard Battalion each took two cans, and the remaining three cans were left at the shaft entrance as a backup for retreat."

Neither Heinrich nor Wolf had any objections.

"Five exorcism grenades. I'll take two, Bor will take one, and the Holy Armor Army and the Iron Guard will each take one. Ten Holy Light scrolls, six for the Holy Armor Army, and the remaining four will be left in the rear."

"Everyone get six hours of rest before the operation." Lu Yuan stood up. "Ammunition will be distributed tonight."

He looked at Buren.

"Are the tools ready?"

Buren patted the toolbox beside him.

"Anytime is fine."

The old man spoke with anticipation in his eyes. Clearly, he was looking forward to re-entering the official website.

As the meeting adjourned, Wolf passed by Lu Yuan, who felt a faint heat rising within him.

Wolf's body temperature seemed abnormally high.

Lu Yuan glanced at him again, but the other man didn't notice and had already walked out the door.

It was evening.

Lu Yuan stood behind the alchemy workshop, inspecting the equipment.

Revolver, 120 silver-plated bullets, 12 copper-cased incendiary bombs, two canisters of mithril, and two exorcism grenades.

The laceration on the web of my right hand has completely scabbed over.

Boer walked over, holding a brand-new bronze sword in his hand.

"Here you go." He handed over the sword. "This one's a bit harder."

Lu Yuan took it and weighed it in his hand. It was a bit heavier than the last one, the blade was thicker, and the hammer marks from the forging were denser.

"It's the standard armored uniform brought in from the supplies," Bor continued. "It's better than what we used before."

Lu Yuan hung the bronze sword at his waist.

Night fell.

The runes lit up.

The atmosphere on the position was much more relaxed than the previous nights, after all, there were dozens more people and boxes of weapons and ammunition.

Everyone was preparing for the early hours of the morning.

Lu Yuan sat on the wooden plank, looking in the direction of the cave entrance.

It's quiet over there, and it's the same over at the shaft.

But the night air carried a sweet scent from the direction of the breached drainage outlet on the east side of Beifang Textile Factory. It was stronger than during the day.

We can't wait any longer, because nobody knows where the green mycelium in the pipe network has spread to.

Three o'clock in the morning.

Everyone gathered at the shaft entrance, without saying a word.

The twelve members of the Iron Guard Battalion stood at the front, their long, dark gray coats motionless in the night wind.

Wolf stood at the head of the group, expressionless, his right hand resting on the roughly shaped short sword at his waist.

The eleven people behind him wore identical standard short swords at their waists, with gear patterns engraved on the hilts, the same as the badges on their chests.

The fifteen members of the Holy Armor Army were in the center.

Heinrich made a gesture, and the holy light inscriptions on the silver-white armor lit up faintly.

Lu Yuan and Bo'er stood behind the Holy Armor Army.

Beren leaned on his cane, his toolbox slung over his shoulder, with Kel standing close beside him, the two sandwiched in the middle of the formation.

Four Night's Watchmen brought up the rear, with the old soldier missing his little finger at the very back, clutching his bronze sword, his expression calm.

There were thirty-five people in total.

Glock remained on the ground.

Both the shaft opening and the eastern drainage outlet needed to be monitored, and he led the remaining night watchmen to coordinate the ground defenses.

Two people were left on guard at the front of the position. The young man who was frightened when he went down into the pipeline last time was one of them. This time, Lu Yuan did not let him come down.

Agnes's schedule was confirmed last night, and she can enter the Tower of Scholars the day after tomorrow.

The pipeline layer was resolved tonight. Time to get ready, and we'll head to the Boxue Tower the day after tomorrow.

I hope it goes well.

"Down."

Wolf was the first to lift the cast iron cover and climb into the shaft.

The sound of the iron ladder echoed through the well walls.

As Lu Yuan followed the Holy Armor Army onto the iron ladder, he noticed the moment his hand gripped the horizontal bar—the surface of the iron ladder was covered with an extremely thin layer of grayish-green film.

It wasn't there when I came down last time.

Although the mycelium gave up on breaking through the ground from the shaft, it had already taken root inside the shaft wall.

The membrane covering the stairs is very thin; stepping on it will cause it to crack, exposing the rusty iron underneath.

The entire iron ladder, from top to bottom, has a crossbar on every single one.

Lu Yuan didn't stop and continued downwards.

When Bol stepped on the membrane behind him, he muttered something.

"Will direct contact cause contamination...?"

"No, not this."

We arrived at the bottom of the shaft, at the pipeline inlet.

Thirty-five people landed one after another, and Wolf's men had already lined up on both sides.

In addition to the smell of decay, there was a sweet, cloying aroma in the air.

It smelled the same as the night breeze last night, but several times stronger and sickeningly sweet, making one involuntarily frown.

Heinrich wrinkled his nose slightly.

Wolf said, "Everyone cover your mouths and noses, don't breathe through your mouths."

The soldiers of the Iron Guard Battalion pulled out the inner fabric from their collars and covered the lower half of their faces in perfect unison.

Lu Yuan covered his mouth and nose with a scarf, and Bo'er did the same.

Beren took two pieces of cloth soaked in alchemical solution from the side pocket of his toolbox, handed one to Kel, and covered his mouth and nose with it.

"Let's go," Lu Yuan said.

The column began to move forward.

Sandworm oil lamps were lit at the front of the Iron Guard camp, their pale white light illuminating the passage ahead.

However, the first step into the pipeline layer felt wrong.

Last time, the ground was hard, mixed with some standing water.

The ground is soft underfoot, covered with a layer of grayish-green mycelium.

It was completely different from the saprophytic fungi that had filled the passage when the cave collapsed last time.

Saprophytic fungi are velvety and release acidic spores that are extremely corrosive; they cannot move without the purification of holy light.

The thing underfoot showed no signs of corrosion; on the contrary, it was quite elastic and made a squelching sound when stepped on.

Lu Yuan glanced down. The surface of the mycelium layer was slightly concave where he had landed, then slowly rebounded.

It's not a natural contraction after being compressed and deformed, but rather a very obvious creeping motion.

It's as if the thing under my feet sensed the pressure and is reacting.

With each step he took, the mycelium beneath his feet contracted once.

The entire passageway floor seemed to be "watching" them as they walked by.

Wolf noticed it too and glanced back at Lu Yuan.

"Did it know we were coming?"

"I knew it from the very first step we took in," Lu Yuan said in a low voice. "I confirmed it when we dissected the giant ghoul; these things are intelligent."

Wolf did not say anything more.

The procession continued forward.

They weren't moving fast, and the Iron Guards in front had already gripped their longswords at their waists.

After walking for about three minutes, the passage began to narrow.

The mycelium spread from the ground to the walls on both sides, and then climbed up the ceiling from the walls, gradually eroding the entire cross-section of the passage with the gray-green mycelium layer.

The further you go, the thicker it gets. At a certain point, the effective width is only wide enough for two people to pass side by side.

The surface of the mycelial layer begins to show ridges and spikes, and in some places, thick filaments extend towards the center of the channel, lying across the middle of the road like tree roots blocking the way.

It's difficult to avoid touching the mycelium.

Wolf stopped, turned around and glanced at Lu Yuan, then made a gesture.

The four Iron Guard soldiers in the front row simultaneously drew their short swords.

Wolfe placed his right hand on his chest, inside his long coat.

A faint red light appeared at the fingertips.

The color is very dark, like the color of red-hot iron in the last moments before it cools down.

The light spread from the fingertips along the back of the hand and disappeared into the cuff.

The four soldiers in the front row did the same thing at the same time: they pressed their right hands to their chests, and dark red lights lit up from their fingertips at the same time, lasting for about two seconds before going out.

At the same time, the color of the short sword changed.

Dark red lines extend from the hilt to the tip of the blade, like red-hot iron lines floating on the metal surface, and the air around the edge of the blade begins to distort.

A burst of intense heat emanated from the short sword.

The first cut landed on the mycelial bundle that blocked the passage.

The moment the blade made contact, the gray-green mycelium contracted violently, the contact surface turned black and brittle instantly, and then shattered into powder.

It's clear that the bacterial layer was directly carbonized.

The carbonization spread about half a meter to both sides from the cut, as if it were conducted along the fibrous structure of the hyphae.

With a single slash, a path wide enough for one person was cleared in the middle of the passage.

The mycelial layers on both sides of the cut surface wriggled wildly, as if they had been scalded and were desperately contracting, revealing the copper tube wall underneath.

Second knife.

The third cut.

The four men in the front row of the Iron Guard Battalion cleared the way simultaneously, their dark red blades slicing through the mycelial layer, and black carbonized powder fell in droves.

A burnt smell filled the air.

The group moved forward through the passage cleared by the four people.

[Detection Target: Believers' Extraordinary Abilities (Furnace Pathway)]

[...extraordinary beings who worship the Pure Furnace...but the inanimate objects responded to them, and thus they gained the power of the Pure Fire...]

[Taboo Studies - Seeker of Knowledge: +0.1…14.4/100]

Lu Yuan watched the movements of the Iron Guard Battalion in the front row.

The four of them moved in perfect sync, with the two on the left responsible for the left wall and ceiling, and the two on the right responsible for the right wall and floor. Each swing of their swords generated a distorted wave of heat.

A path was carved out of the dense, green fungal layer.

Wolf himself did not do it.

He walked behind the four people in the front row, his gaze sweeping across the cut surface of the mycelium, occasionally glancing at a particular direction.

He was observing the mycelium's reaction, just like Lu Yuan.

"Very strong." Lu Yuan noted this down in his mind.

The texture of the walls on both sides began to change, the passage narrowed, and the gray-white surface revealed the faint outline of a human body.

Living wall area.

Lu Yuan said, "There's something embedded in the wall ahead that will reach out. Last time it grabbed blindly, but this time it's uncertain. Don't get close to the wall, and don't slow down."

The Iron Guards did not react, but their formation tightened slightly, with each side giving way by half a step.

The speed of the front row remained unchanged, and the dark red blade continued to cut the mycelium, leaving carbonized powder scattered all over the ground.

Enter the living wall area.

The grayish-white arms were still embedded in the wall, but their surface was covered with grayish-green filamentous patterns. Mycelium had invaded the living wall.

Lu Yuan noticed that all the faces embedded in the wall had turned slightly toward the direction of the group.

They are watching.

But the Iron Guard Battalion did not give them a chance to see.

The four people in the front row maintained the same pace, their dark red blades sweeping along the walls on both sides, carbonizing the mycelium and the living walls together.

Before the grayish-white arm could even extend, it was sliced ​​into charred pieces along with the wall, falling to the ground hissing and emitting black smoke.

The fracture site lacks blood vessels and muscle structures; instead, it is covered with dense, grayish-green filamentous tissue.

The inside of these arms has been completely replaced by mycelium; the outside is human skin, and the inside is densely packed with mycelium.

The tissues carbonized by the furnace fire die directly.

The strangeness of the living wall clearly indicated that something was wrong.

A hint of fear flickered across that otherwise expressionless face, and his pale hands and half-embedded body writhed in agony.

But it was completely useless.

The Iron Guard's short swords slicing through this strange creature was like cutting tofu; they saw no resistance whatsoever and carved a path through it.

The carbonization from the furnace fire can permanently kill the mycelial tissue. This is the most important piece of information to date.

As the column passed through the middle section, several arms still emerged from the recesses not covered by the Iron Guard's blades.

A soldier of the Holy Armor Army had his shoulder armor clamped between two arms from above and below with tremendous force, and his body was violently pulled against the wall.

The armored soldiers nearby reacted swiftly, severing the arm with two quick strikes of their bronze swords and pulling the man back.

Without a furnace fire, the mycelium at the broken end of the bronze sword began to wriggle after a few seconds, attempting to rejoin itself.

The soldier glanced down at his shoulder armor; two light gray-green corrosion marks had appeared on the silver-white armor plates.

The two men in the back row of the Iron Guard noticed this and took a half step back. They used their short swords to make several more cuts along the concave wall, completely carbonizing the remaining arm.

The team pushed through the area with the live wall.

The arms that hadn't yet been carbonized neatly retracted into the wall behind them, especially those in the head area, which remained motionless as the procession passed by.

The Iron Guard battalion responsible for clearing the way ignored the fire walls that hadn't yet been extended, and the column continued forward.

As they continued deeper, the situation at the pipeline layer became increasingly dangerous.

The entire pipeline, except for the water discharge area, is covered with a thick layer of green mycelium on its curved walls.

These mycelia develop extremely well.

In some places, the lights even hang from the walls, taking on a somewhat 'dreamlike' quality when illuminated by the sandworm lamps.

The area in front of us is the crawler zone.

Lu Yuan still gave prior instructions: "There's something on the ceiling that's afraid of light. If you don't attack it, just ignore it. That thing is hard to kill."

The soldiers leading the way acknowledged.

When the light from the sandworm oil lamp shone on them, Lu Yuan saw them.

The grayish-white figures clung to the ceiling, far more numerous than before, their surfaces also covered with grayish-green mycelium.

The light shone on their faces.

They narrowed their eyes, neither retreating nor roaring, but simply continued to stare at the ranks below.

Looking at the pale green color on the crawlers' faces, Lu Yuan knew that they had obviously also been parasitized by mycelium.

It also seems to have gained the ability to resist light.

"Wait... the Great Ghoul gains intelligence, the Crawler gains light resistance... can this thing give the Weird an evolution???"

A chill ran through Lu Yuan's heart, but no matter what, he had to execute him as soon as possible.

The crawlers watched the procession below. This time, they neither retreated nor left. They moved forward, hugging the ceiling, silently following, always maintaining a distance of about ten meters from the procession.

Wolf looked up for two seconds, then looked away.

"Should we try killing that thing on top of our heads? Otherwise, we might get into trouble."

"You can give it a try."

As Lu Yuan finished speaking...