"Laugh--"
Blood was spilled.
One inspector after another is working tirelessly in each passageway.
Some were injured, some sacrificed their lives, and some had doubts.
But at this moment, they all chose to persevere.
In a passageway, the members of the Taowu Squad were carrying out their respective tasks.
Shi Ruiyuan stood in front of a rock wall that was trembling slightly and blocking the passage.
Without hesitation, he crouched down slightly, raised his bleeding right arm, and pressed it to the ground.
With a rumbling sound, the rock wall in front of them thickened rapidly, and the tremors stopped just as quickly.
Instead of focusing on dealing with the large number of low-level Calamity Beast, they used his abilities to cleverly separate the Fourth Tier Calamity Beast from the rest of the Calamity Beast.
Although it's still a bit difficult to fight, at least they won't be bothered by a large number of low-level Calamity Beast.
Having completed the thickening of the rock wall, Shi Ruiyuan turned to look at his two teammates who were fighting against the Fourth Tier Calamity Beast.
He had just gone up to help, injuring his arm in the process. Furthermore, it wouldn't be easy to create a rock wall to block the passage, so he didn't go back up, but...
Seeing his two teammates struggling to put up an increasingly difficult fight, Shi Ruiyuan gritted his teeth.
"Damn it, they want more..."
Before the words were even finished, a voice rang out in the team channel next to their ears.
"Plan executed!"
"Except for Wang Hu and Liang Yanhao, everyone else, find a way to escape immediately and rendezvous at the Crystal Melting Zone!"
Shi Ruiyuan frowned slightly, and just as he was about to ask a question, he heard new orders coming from the team channel.
"Ignore the Calamity Beast; let them follow if they want!"
"Should we just leave it alone?"... Shi Ruiyuan was slightly taken aback, then looked at his two teammates.
They had clearly heard the news as well, glancing in their direction with a hint of confusion in their eyes.
After hesitating for a moment, Shi Ruiyuan gritted his teeth and said:
"Never mind, let's go, let's come back!"
After saying that, he took the lead and ran in another direction of the passage.
The other two hesitated for a moment before following.
Before long, the group arrived at the Crystal Melting Zone of the Eye of Earth Marrow.
Unlike what I saw when I first arrived, this place was much more chaotic, with many stone pillars bulging from all sides, and numerous pits of Xiaoxiao appearing in various places.
Not paying much attention to this, Shi Ruiyuan glanced around and saw that a considerable number of people had already gathered in the Eye of Earth Marrow Crystal Melting Zone.
The vast majority of people were covered in blood, and many, like him, had injuries of varying degrees of severity, or even...
"Are there so many people missing?" Shi Ruiyuan frowned, his mood suddenly becoming heavy.
But he didn't dwell on it too much; instead, he subconsciously glanced in the direction they had come from.
The two Fourth Tier Calamity Beast that had been chasing behind suddenly stopped in their tracks after seeing so many people and several Calamity Beast corpses.
He turned his gaze in other directions and saw that the situation was the same at several other passageways.
The sudden appearance of a large number of enemies, along with the numerous corpses of their own kind on the ground, caused them to instinctively wait.
This was both to wait for the situation in the other passages and to wait for the lower-level Calamity Beast that were still catching up.
"You even considered this? But where is Shen Heng?"
Shi Ruiyuan thought for a moment, then glanced around but didn't see Shen Heng.
Just as he was wondering whether he should ask, three figures suddenly ran up from the side.
The leading figure was covered in black armor, so his expression was not visible, but the two figures behind him both had somewhat numb expressions.
He didn't even need to look to know what had happened.
After arriving at the Crystal Melting Zone, Shen Heng first glanced at Zheng Guomin, who had already arrived there.
His armor was covered in claw marks, and blood was seeping out from them.
Despite Shen Heng's attempts to cover for them by transmitting his voice, the two Shadow Nightmare Leopard still managed to get past them in the final minutes.
Fortunately, only the two Shadow Nightmare Leopard passed by, and only for a few minutes!
After confirming that Zheng Guomin's injuries were not too serious, Shen Heng turned his attention to Zhou Xuan and Qin Yu, who were standing next to Zheng Guomin.
Qin Yu remained unchanged, but Zhou Xuan now held several brown branches in his hand, each with a large amount of soil at one end.
While the location of the Eye of Earth Marrow is somewhat similar to that of a mineral vein, it is not entirely the same.
At least, those crystals weren't something you could just dig up directly.
Based on Shen Heng's prior perception and the brief observations he made upon arriving, the entire process should be as follows:
The Eye of Earth Marrow contains some unique energy, but this energy is not yet formed.
Instead, it requires the Calamity Beast to gradually suppress it with its Origin Power, and through the unknown branches that shroud the entire Crystal Melting Zone, it will condense into the roughest crystal.
Finally, it is refined through the mysteriously formed pit in the middle of the Crystal Melting Zone.
The overall process is actually quite complex!
Although the decision had been made to blow this place up, considering its research value, Shen Heng still asked Zhou Xuan to collect some soil, branches, and even energy from the core crater so that it could be handed over to the Research Department for study after returning to the base.
It seems the soil and branches are fine, but the energy in the core cavity is inaccessible, and even the branches that have been accessed...
Shen Heng's gaze fell on the branches that Zhou Xuan was holding, and he could clearly feel that they were slightly different from those he had seen on the rock wall before.
Previously, I could clearly sense a life force on the rock face, but now these things seem to be dead.
Shen Heng glanced at the branches scattered across the wall, which also seemed to have lost their vitality, before turning his gaze back to the branches in Zhou Xuan's hand.
"What went wrong? Why are they all dead?"
"I don't know either!" Zhou Xuan scratched his head, looking a bit exasperated. "These branches die as soon as they detach from the main branch. I've tried several times and it's always the same!"
Upon hearing this, Shen Heng turned his gaze to the surrounding rock walls, as if he could see through them the branches that enveloped the entire Crystal Melting Zone.
Are there any special harvesting methods?
Or does it mean that you can't take just a portion, and you have to take the whole thing together?
Turning his gaze back, Shen Heng continued to ask:
"So you just killed the entire branch?"
"No, I didn't touch it! I just took these few branches!" Zhou Xuan hurriedly denied. "Later, when I had nothing to do, I tried to take another one, and then I found it had suddenly died!"
"Died suddenly?" Shen Heng asked.
Upon hearing this news, Zheng Guomin's face turned pale and he frowned.
Qin Yu's hand tightened unconsciously. She parted her lips slightly, as if she wanted to say something, but after hesitating for a moment, she still didn't speak.