Chapter 283

After a pause, the crab turned its body and looked at the silent black sphere. "Weiluo Willow, what are your thoughts?"

The others also looked at Wen Jing.

At this moment, only the weakest of them Weierna, wanted to return; the other two wanted to continue exploring.

The planet rotated slightly, Wen Jing's senses had already penetrated the stone pillars, reaching deep into the ruins... Then, she chuckled softly, "Since we're already here..."

"Indeed! Otherwise, wouldn't the trip have been pointless?" Aoderiqi immediately agreed.

His obsequious behavior throughout made Seweiya and Kashi look down on him, but Wen Jing's willingness to continue exploring made them breathe a sigh of relief.

If she chooses to return, even if she and Weierna only have two votes combined, everyone will have no choice but to return.

Although Aoderiqi was the 'homeowner,' everyone knew who truly made the decisions within the team.

Seeing this, Weierna naturally stopped saying anything and quickly became more alert, squeezing herself into a relatively safe position in the center of the group.

The team continued deeper into the territory.

The black ball drifted headlong into the depths of the canyon, followed closely by Seweiya and Kashi, with Weierna reluctantly joining the fray.

Aoderiqi lagged behind; beneath the crab's shell, something was slowly wriggling.

As you venture deeper into the canyon, more of the ruins are revealed to you.

After passing through the massive, dark green stone pillar, the unsettlingly dilapidated sculptures in the cracks of the rock walls on both sides became increasingly clear.

These sculptures had been studied before; they were just ordinary stones, neither rare nor of any value.

But as they went deeper, they gleamed with a cold, eerie light under Weierna's fluorescence, appearing to wriggle slightly like the blood vessels of a living creature.

But if you look closely, you'll find it's just an illusion.

"This place... is so eerie."

Seweiya and Kashi's initial excitement turned into tension in this oppressive environment, and Weierna's was even more so.

Only Aoderiqi became more and more excited the deeper he went.

Suddenly, a faint green light appeared in the darkness ahead.

This was the first time the team had seen a light source other than themselves in this area, yet it brought them no sense of security.

Bathed in a soft green light, the only intact building below came into view.

It was a huge altar.

The altar is circular, with a diameter of over 100 meters. It is made of black boulders and its surface is covered with dense, eerie patterns. A tall, bizarre statue stands on the altar, its main body consisting of countless intertwined tentacles.

In the center of the tentacle was a huge, tightly closed eye.

Meanwhile, more than a dozen dark crystals were suspended in the seawater surrounding the altar, each one larger than the ones Aoderiqi had brought back before.

Just as everyone was momentarily stunned by this scene, a vortex erupted behind them, and a powerful impact swept over them.

After feigning an apology all along, Aoderiqi finally revealed his true colors.

"Gurgle... gurgle... gurgle gurgle...!"

The next moment, Aoderiqi's Wilderness Body, which had no vocal organs, strangely emitted a sound.

He didn't use any human language, and his voice lacked its previous enthusiastic and ingratiating tone; instead, it was deep, resonant, and carried a tremor as if it came from the Deep Sea.

Only Wen Jing, through his Information Perception, understood the meaning behind his words: 'Great Deep Sea, these are my offerings to you!'

However, the people present weren't fools; even if they couldn't understand Aoderiqi's words, they could understand his actions.

"Not good!"

The other three reacted immediately.

Kashi immediately retreated, his body crackling with electricity to form a protective layer; Seweiya spread her wings, ice crystals condensing into a shield in the air; Weierna curled up into a ball, extinguishing all the fluorescence from her body and entering her strongest stealth state.

But Aoderiqi's objective in the raid was not to attack them, but to capture them.

As he uttered a call in an unknown language, the entire ruins came to life in the next moment.

Countless beams of eerie green light suddenly pierced through the cracks in the canyon rocks, weaving together to form a massive net that enveloped the entire area.

The sculptures embedded in the cliff face began to move, their eyes moving up and down, their fins opening and closing, their tentacles twisting and stretching...

They were all watching the procession.

An immense will surged from the depths of the ruins, carrying a cold, sticky, and Indescribable malice, directly crashing into the consciousness of everyone present.

"Meet..."

"A great transformation..."

The voices weren't individual sentences, but countless voices overlapping, like billions of insects crawling in the brain.

Along with these disturbing whispers of the mind, physical changes occur even earlier.

Seweiya's body stiffened abruptly, and the icy blue patterns on her butterfly dragon wings began to turn an eerie dark color.

Kashi was enveloped in a surge of electricity, attempting to dispel the will with lightning, but the scales on his body began to flutter and fall off, growing eye shapes from the fallen patches.

Weierna began to glow again, the light changing from a bright white to a ghostly green. Her tentacles deepened in color and began to uncontrollably entangle and knot, transforming into the tentacle aggregate on the altar.

Aoderiqi, who summoned the monster himself, was also not spared.

His body trembled violently, and strange patterns began to appear on the surface of his carapace. His eight legs twisted and stretched, becoming more tentacle-like, and his two giant claws opened, with dense barbs growing from the edges of their mouths.

Those bulging eyes began to separate to the sides, a slit appearing in the middle, as if something was about to open.

Unlike the other three who resisted, Aoderiqi actively accepted the change, laughing wildly in the Mental Link: "Feel the great will! This is true sublimation! I will become A-rank, no, S-rank!"

Immediately afterwards, his gaze locked onto his most important target in the room— Weiluo Thrann!

The black sphere, which was also affected by the whispers here... well, a little bit of moss appeared on its surface.

"The intensity of the transformation depends on the strength of the original Wilderness Body and the type of species... Aquatic species, whose forms are closer to those of statues, will be more affected."

Wen Jing did not use Information Touch to suppress the transformation here, but the degree of change was much shallower than that of the other four.

"Another factor is that actively approaching and accepting this transformation mentally will also increase its intensity." She Analysis the anomalies here with ease while turning her attention to Aoderiqi.

"Whoosh!"

The opponent was wielding its giant claw, which, after its mutation, was more than three times stronger than its normal form, and was accompanied by a vortex as it slammed towards Wen Jing.

The next moment, the black ball neither dodged nor avoided, but spun around in place.

This looked no different from her previous spinning motion, but it utilized a powerful Gravitational Field.

In an instant, the surrounding seawater, centered on the planet, was suddenly compressed and then expanded, forming a visible spherical ripple.

The traces left by Gravitational Field that warps space are more violent and irresistible than any tide.

Aoderiqi's giant claw, accompanied by a vortex, crashed down, but less than three meters from Wen Jing, it was abruptly deflected by an invisible force. His entire body seemed to be gripped by an unseen giant hand and violently flung backward.

"Boom--!"

Under Wen Jing's deliberate control, his massive body crashed precisely into the statue on the altar, but passed right through the middle of the statue and landed on the black boulder below.

The altar was intact, and the statues on it seemed to be nonexistent.

Aoderiqi slid off the altar, a gash appearing on his carapace from the force of the impact, from which a dark green viscous substance oozed.

But he felt no pain; instead, he let out an even more excited hiss, "Gurgle...!!" (He will give me more!)

With a hiss, tentacles began to emerge from his wound, eagerly covering his original carapace.

"As expected, this altar cannot be destroyed."

Wen Jing glanced at it briefly, then said to the others via the Mental Link, "You guys go back first."

Her swing just now also created a safe distance between the three of them and the core of the altar.

"I cannot return..."

Seweiya's mental fluctuations lost their previous faint arrogance, leaving only suppressed terror. Dark patterns had spread to half of her body, and the ice crystals under her wings no longer condensed, but instead drifted out as turbid liquid.

"Me too." Kashi also rolled around in pain, his eyes beneath the scales half-open, the pupils being consumed by the eerie green.

Weierna was the most severely injured; her tentacles were tied in knots, her shape was changing towards that of a statue, and she could only transmit faint distress signals.

Now, in addition to physical mutations, they also have to resist mental erosion.

Returning requires a relatively safe environment; even the slightest disturbance can affect the landing point. Currently, the three are physically and mentally 'locked up,' making it impossible for them to return.

"It's an environmental problem here; you should prepare for your return—"

Wen Jing's mental broadcast remained as steady as ever, allowing the three who were painfully resisting her delirium to grasp a sliver of clarity amidst the chaos, but they still lacked the energy to ponder the specific meaning of her words.

However, the next moment, they saw it directly, or rather, felt it.

"Click..."

A crack appeared on the originally dark black star.

The crack expanded Extreme Speed, and a bright, intense light shone from within, so bright that it was impossible to look directly at it.

The grooves and folds on the surface of the star melt in the high temperature, turning into flowing, scorching magma, which then quickly evaporates into a dazzling halo.

At the same time, the Gravitational Field strength increased sharply, and the surrounding seawater was instantly displaced, forming a vacuum spherical shell with a diameter of one kilometer.

The eerie green light, the writhing reliefs, the overwhelming murmurs... all were overshadowed at this moment by the starlight rising from the seabed.