Lu Yuan glanced at the shadow that had vanished behind him and nodded.
He walked to the edge of the Collapse Pit and looked down into its depths.
It was pitch-black below. Even the Marching Lamp could not illuminate much, while Rotating Inscriptions spread from the edges of the walls, growing denser the deeper they went.
Lu Yuan hesitated no longer. Carrying the Marching Lamp in one hand, he stepped inside.
Klaus stood in the Pipe Network Layer, watching Lu Yuan disappear into the darkness. Then he turned to Margaret.
"Go clear out the nearby Ghouls. Those things have surged back in under the cover of the fog. I'll watch these people."
Margaret nodded without saying much and headed toward the entrance.
The Pipe Network Layer soon fell quiet. Klaus stood alone before the Collapse Pit, looking down into the darkness below, lost in thought.
The instant Lu Yuan entered the darkness, he felt the ground beneath his feet tremble faintly, as if something below were slowly writhing.
He raised the Marching Lamp and shone it around.
The light only reached three to five steps ahead. Any farther, and it seemed to be swallowed whole.
Rotating Eerie Inscriptions covered every inch of the passage—above him, beneath him, everywhere. They spun in circles, slowly devouring the lamp's light.
Lu Yuan narrowed his eyes.
The moment his gaze landed on those inscriptions, an intense dizziness surged through him. The entire world twisted along with those spinning curves.
He immediately lowered his eyes, doing his best not to focus on any single inscription. Only then did most of the dizziness subside.
Before entering this deeper region, a single Rotating Inscription truly could not do anything to him.
Now, the number of inscriptions had multiplied by an unknown amount. The conclusion remained the same,