Eyes on the Eggs, as if Guided by Divine Aid

Old Cat was very cautious. It had always been rational.

Terror and panic were brewing in the damp air.

Lu Yuan steadied himself and applied some aloe vera gel to his wounds. Extraordinary Tinder's healing ability quickly stopped the bleeding.

The situation was still far from optimistic. More monsters had begun following behind him.

Those shadowy figures were like flies that had caught the scent of a cracked egg, swarming toward him in a frenzy.

At that moment, he saw a small, blue-black creature with hollow eye sockets hanging upside down behind a stalactite ahead.

It opened its gaping, bloody mouth and gave him a bizarre smile.

Its bluish-gray body was densely covered in eyes.

Lu Yuan snorted coldly. The Donkey Head Mask flashed with red light as he used Mental Shock.

He pulled a dart from his belt and threw it.

Whoosh!

The small creature fled, and the dart struck the stalactite with a ding.

"Old Cat, did that thing really exist?"

"I think there is an extremely high chance that it did... but I cannot be certain. My Spirit Attribute is still at 0.1, not entirely reduced to zero. Perhaps only something completely made of stone can be immune to mental attacks."

Gui and demons really were two entirely different kinds of natural disasters.

A demon's power was tangible, something one could see with the naked eye.

A Gui's power lay in its strangeness.

Lu Yuan had all his abilities at his disposal, yet he felt a despairing sense of having nowhere to use them.

No matter how powerful a warrior was, in a Gui's nest, he would be stung to death by these damned flies.

Fortunately, his thoughts remained clear and his steps never stopped. Following the law of Always to the Right, he continued fully exploring the entire cave.

If he found some monster nest, he would burn it down in one go.

"There is plenty of oxygen here. Those monsters probably need oxygen to survive too... but how does the oxygen get in? Underground rivers?"

"I need to figure out exactly what Gui mental attacks are based on."

"If it could make me go insane whenever it wanted, it would have done so long ago. There would be no need to delay until now."

"There must be some mechanism I have not discovered..."

He said, "Do you think the monsters here were transformed from individuals of the Lize Civilization? Every monster has different abilities. In truth, I am fighting the entire Lize Civilization."

"That makes sense."

"Comrade, the Electromagnetic Wave is coming from here," Old Cat suddenly said.

Lu Yuan stopped and examined his surroundings.

But there was nothing here, only a relatively open patch of ground. It was as though an Electromagnetic Wave was being transmitted from some point in the void.

"If I am not mistaken, this is most likely a Different Dimension within a Different Dimension," Old Cat analyzed. "In other words, a spatial overlap phenomenon. But the overlap is incomplete, which is why a small amount of Electromagnetic Wave can leak out. Comrade, you also have the ability to create a Different Dimension. Can you break through it?"

"I'll give it a try."

Although hiding his abilities was key to winning battles, he had no choice but to use them when the time came.

Lu Yuan activated his Different Dimension. A thin membrane, like a soap bubble, enveloped and protected him.

Unfortunately, he saw nothing at all.

The Gui's Different Dimension and his own Different Dimension seemed to be two completely parallel abilities.

You did not interfere with me, and I could not interfere with you.

By that logic, hiding in his own Different Dimension still made him absolutely safe.

A powerful sense of security washed over him. As he breathed a sigh of relief, he did his utmost to think through the opponent's attack mechanism.

"Now there are no more eyes growing on my body... Do I have to be hit by a monster before they grow?"

"Hm?" Lu Yuan's expression changed slightly as he suddenly noticed monsters gathering around him.

The Different Dimension was safe, but he could not move inside it. If they waited for him there, he would not even be able to escape.

With no other choice, he canceled the Different Dimension and walked step by step toward the monsters.

These things were clearly extremely cunning. When they saw Lu Yuan reappear, they fled far away again.

They were like chewing gum, impossible to shake off. One-on-one, they were no match for Lu Yuan, yet they continued clinging to him like this.

Suddenly, a small creature shot out of the darkness and bit his arm with lightning speed before vanishing again.

Lu Yuan swung his sword through the air, slashing into the darkness. Foul-smelling blood sprayed out.

"Invisibility... damn it..."

The next moment, intense pain erupted in his palm. That sensation of something drilling into his flesh returned.

Although the row of bite marks had not pierced through his carefully stitched Lizard Skin gloves, the sharp pain made his scalp tingle.

When he removed the glove and looked, sure enough, a walnut-sized eye had grown from his palm.

"What the hell kind of game is this?"

Lu Yuan had fallen into a tremendous crisis. Once again gritting his teeth, he used a dagger to gouge out the eyeball.

Blood sprayed out, and the eyeball bounced onto the ground like a marble.

The palm had far more nerves than the shoulder. The intense pain made him bare his teeth as he continuously cursed the monster.

If this happened a few more times, he would end up chopping himself to death.

However, this injury made him think of a very strange possibility.

He ignited the corpse at his feet once again, and blazing flames rose through the cave.

The light briefly drove back the darkness.

"Before it burns out, those monsters will not come over for a while..."

"Old Cat, keep watch for a bit."

"Understood."

To test his hypothesis, Lu Yuan pressed his butt against the cave wall and entered a brief meditative state—he began hypnotizing himself, imagining that the cave wall had grown a mouth and viciously attacked his butt.

The cold wall was uneven and pitted, while the scent of blood mixed with the smell of burning, creating an indescribably foul stench.

Within that vague fantasy, something suddenly bit his butt, and intense pain immediately followed!

Lu Yuan opened his eyes and touched his butt. Sure enough, a bright red eye had actually grown from it.

"Did the cave wall change at all?"

Old Cat's eyes widened. "The wall did not change just now... but an eye grew out of your asshole!"

Old Cat grew extremely excited. "I cannot do much else, but I am very skilled at hemorrhoid surgery. Want me to do it?"

It even used its furry paw to stroke the cold eyeball.

"Stop talking nonsense. I finally understand the conditions for a Gui's attack." Lu Yuan shuddered at its touch. "It is the subconscious. Just now, I deeply hypnotized myself into believing that the cave wall was extremely dangerous and would bite people."

"Sure enough, when I got close, I felt as if I had been bitten, and an eyeball grew out of my butt."

"The monsters' initial attacks did not actually cause any physical harm."

"But getting bitten still made me uncomfortable, so the unease in my subconscious made those eyes grow..."

This guess was not far from the truth.

"That makes sense. So at first, I could not see them, while you saw eyes growing on yourself... because you frightened yourself."

"But you cannot control your subconscious." Old Cat was still fiddling with Old Lu's "hemorrhoid." "Even if you understand this, you will become even more uneasy. In this place, every rustle of wind and movement of grass will put you on edge."

"Isn't that exactly it... The monsters really exist, after all. They really can chop off my head." Lu Yuan smiled bitterly.

The mixture of truth and falsehood, reality and illusion, was indeed enough to make one's skin crawl.

Even after figuring out the exact principle, there was still no way to avoid the overwhelming panic.

Lu Yuan felt the skin all over his body begin to sting, as though eyes were about to burst out from beneath it like bamboo shoots.

He hurriedly calmed himself and stopped letting his imagination run wild. But the troublesome thing about humans was that their imagination was too rich... Lu Yuan could not help imagining what he would look like covered in eyes from head to toe.

The more he thought about it, the more his entire body hurt.

This dense pain, like countless ants gnawing at him, devoured Lu Yuan's nerves and engulfed his entire body in an instant.

"Ah!!" Lu Yuan could not help roaring. When he turned around, he saw that damned Old Cat viciously biting his neck.

"What are you doing? You scared me to death!"

"Comrade, I saw that you were becoming a little unhinged, so I had to stimulate you... Being bitten by me will not make eyes grow. Do not worry."

Lu Yuan waited for a moment. It really seemed like none had grown...

After all, even his subconscious believed that being bitten by Old Cat was no big deal.

"Humans really are fragile. If only I had some kind of mental ability."

"Stop thinking about gaining another ability all day long... You can resurrect, Old Lu. Think about it—you can resurrect."

"..." Lu Yuan let out a deep sigh. Being able to resurrect really was incredible. It gave him plenty of confidence.

He calmed down and pondered for a while, but did not immediately cut out the eyeball on his butt.

After all, his butt was quite far from his brain. If he really lost his mind, cutting it out would be quick enough.

He wanted to know what would happen if the eye remained on his body.

Some information could only be obtained by personally stepping into danger.

While staying on guard with Extraordinary Tinder, he sensed the information coming from the eyeball on his butt.

"What a strange feeling."

The eye on his butt could actually perceive the outside world as well.

Its gaze could penetrate his pants.

Everything was hazy...

It was as if his entire body had been placed in a starry sky, and those twinkling stars... might also be one eye after another...

There were far too many of them, perhaps tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands. They even gave him a strange sense of familiarity.

Lu Yuan felt a chill run down his spine and hurriedly shook his head, maintaining his clear will.

Pioneer's Eye: An eye formed by an unknown ability on your butt, which will cause your mind to become confused.

If more similar eyes grow on your body, perhaps you will be able to see deeper Different Dimensions, but its side effects are also obvious.

You are merely flesh and blood. Do not overestimate your willpower. It is like inhaling too much anesthetic—you will definitely lose consciousness. Once there are too many eyes, you will completely lose control.

Strange afterimages appeared in the space. At the location where the Electromagnetic Wave was being transmitted, there was vaguely a cave, though he could not see it clearly.

The eye on his butt kept twitching, blinking faster and faster.

Lu Yuan gritted his teeth and used Extraordinary Tinder to suppress the crazed eyeball.

"In other words, only those with extra eyes growing on their bodies can see extra things."

"The more eyes that grow, the deeper one can go."

"But at the same time, the higher the chance of being controlled... That is basically the rule."

"You mean we need to grow a few more?" Old Cat asked.

"Yes. Even though I have plenty of resources, I cannot waste them here indefinitely. Besides, my mental state will only get worse and worse."

Lu Yuan's mental state truly was no longer as good as it had been at the start. The feeling that every rustle of wind and movement of grass could signal danger was growing stronger.

Bone-chilling cold seeped into his body from all directions, as though monsters could attack him from the darkness at any moment.

The wounds on his shoulder and palm hurt more and more, as if the things he had cut away were about to grow back.

The eye on his butt transmitted a flood of chaotic information, making him faintly lose his mind.

He made up his mind. "Come on. I need at least one more eye before I can reach a deeper layer."

"Put it on your long-haired elephant. Do not put it on your butt again."

"Your asshole still has a use. The long-haired elephant does not." Old Cat said, "That organ is really not very useful. Castrating yourself with a single swing would be convenient, and it would not bleed much. Besides, do you not think an eyeball growing there would be strange and a little sexy?"

Lu Yuan was on the verge of breaking down. He admitted that Old Cat made a lot of sense.

Cutting that thing off would not affect his mobility.

But if he castrated himself, would he not become Lin Pingzhi?

"I can die, but I cannot live without my kun."

"Then put it on your eggs. You have two of them, so turning one into an eye does not make you a eunuch." Old Cat never joked around at critical moments. "It would be easy to cut off too."

Lu Yuan fell silent.

A minute later, through self-suggestion, a heart-rending pain came from his egg.

Something tore open, and blood stained his underwear red.

Another grotesque eyeball had appeared inside his body.

A Gui's ability truly was terrifying. As long as one believed they had been injured, an eye would immediately grow from the wound.

Of course, one could also possess an incomparably firm will, or use some form of hypnosis to control one's subconscious and become immune to this mental attack.

But then one would be trapped forever on the first level, never finding the Gui's true body.

A Gui would not fight an enemy that countered it.

This was indeed an almost unsolvable ability. Only an anomaly like a demon could fight another anomaly.

Drenched in sweat, Lu Yuan slowly came back to his senses. His vision became even more blurred, and countless afterimages appeared throughout the underground cave. From time to time, shadows poked their heads out to spy on him.

"How are you?"

"Being half a eunuch is not exactly pleasant, but I can still hold on."

This time, Lu Yuan finally saw the hidden second underground level. It truly was a deeper cave, pitch-black, as though it led into endless space and time.

"I am going down."