The marsh was silent in the dead of night.

Gu Xi had followed the strange sound in her perception deep into the marsh.

The white miasma, which should have completely vanished into the darkness after nightfall, had somehow reappeared.

A white glow suffused the air, and a watery mist hung thick and disorienting.

A speck of silver light suddenly appeared.

Gu Xi stared at the silver speck floating in the white mist and raised an eyebrow slightly.

’So that’s what the little tadpole looks like.’

To be precise, it wasn’t a tadpole at all, but a creature that strongly resembled one. Its body was like a beating heart, pulsing steadily, and it was densely wrapped in what looked like blood vessels, with a short tail trailing behind.

Gu Xi stopped and slowly scanned her surroundings. The patch of marsh under her feet was the very place her spiritual power couldn’t penetrate before. And this strange little tadpole...

The odd sound she’d heard back at the camp must have been made by this thing.

’It lured me here on purpose.’

Gu Xi’s gaze fell on the little tadpole—or more accurately, on the part that looked like a tail.

’If I’m not mistaken, this thin, vein-like tail is the creature’s true body. As for the heart-like thing it’s wrapped around...’

Just then, the tail twitched. Immediately after, all the veins and vessels wrapped around the "heart" suddenly unfurled, forming a silvery, palm-sized net that glowed in the darkness.

A small, brown, heart-shaped stone detached from the net. The moment it fell, Ya Bao eagerly snatched it out of mid-air.

Gu Xi looked down, slowly rubbing the small, heart-shaped stone in her hand. ’So all that strange energy was coming from this little stone.’

A strange yet familiar feeling rose in her heart.

This stone and the one Li Ming had told her about—the one she had clutched in her hand as a child—must have come from the same place.

But the energies contained within the two stones were completely different.

The energy in her stone was noticeably gentler and purer, while the energy in this one was far more savage and violent...

After a long moment, she looked up at the silver net still floating in mid-air. "Did you lure me here just to give me this stone?"

’But why?’

The small silver net, which looked as if it were woven from veins and vessels, hovered silently for a moment... then vanished into thin air.

A night breeze swept past, and silence returned to the marsh.

Everything that had just happened felt like a figment of Gu Xi’s imagination.

But the cool little stone in her hand told her it had all been real.

She looked down at the small stone, and the mud beneath her feet began to roil and sink rapidly to either side...

Over ten minutes later, Gu Xi had sunk several hundred meters beneath the marsh. This was as far as her spiritual power had been able to reach before; below this point was nothing but a void of darkness.

Gu Xi thought for a moment, then suddenly threw the heart-shaped stone out... but nothing happened.

’That can’t be right.’

Gu Xi frowned slightly. After another moment of thought, she shot a blast of her ability at the stone. Soon, with the small, heart-shaped stone at the center, the surrounding mud began to bubble up as if the entire underground marsh was boiling.

’It’s working!’

Gu Xi continued to channel her ability into the stone. Soon, a dark whirlpool appeared in the bubbling mud. Without any hesitation, she had her vine snatch the stone from the muck and stepped into the black vortex.

About half a minute later, she emerged into a massive underground hall.

Gu Xi looked up. The hall was enormous, so vast she couldn’t see the other end. It was packed with rows of pod-shaped Hibernation Chambers, numbering over a thousand by her estimation.

But strangely, all the chambers were open and empty.

Something was very wrong.

Gu Xi frowned slightly as Ya Bao automatically transformed into a vine several meters long, coiling protectively around her.

Just then, emergency lights flickered on in the otherwise pitch-black hall.

Under the dim, yellow light, a tall, thin man emerged from behind a distant Hibernation Chamber.

The first thing Gu Xi noticed wasn’t the man himself, but the palm-sized silver net floating beside him.

’Just as I suspected.’ This silver net had to be something like Ya Bao—a physical manifestation of an ability.

’So, this man is the owner of the small net?’

Gu Xi’s gaze shifted to the man.

"Did you have it lead me here?" Gu Xi asked. At the same time, Ya Bao reverted to a small green sprout and wrapped around her fingertip.

The man nodded.

Gu Xi noticed the man’s complexion was much paler than a normal person’s. And his eyes... Gu Xi couldn’t describe them. Just looking into them dredged up a flood of negative emotions: brutality, ferocity, despair, madness... and on and on.

"Why?" Gu Xi didn’t avert her gaze, meeting his eyes calmly as she asked.

The man opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

Finally, the man pointed to the small stone in Gu Xi’s hand, then to the small silver net beside him...

Following the man’s gestures, Gu Xi clutched the small stone and began to piece things together. "You can’t contain it with your net anymore, so you wanted to give it to me?"

The man nodded, then pointed at the stone in her hand again, patted an empty Hibernation Chamber next to him, and followed up with another flurry of gestures.

Gu Xi continued to guess. "Are you saying the people in the Hibernation Chambers were all turned into monsters by this stone’s influence, and you were the one who dealt with them?"

The man nodded again, then pointed to his own eyes, a flash of pain crossing his face.

It wasn’t just the people in the Hibernation Chambers. The wardens who had been left behind, like him, had all been affected by this stone. They had gradually lost their sanity, becoming bloodthirsty monsters who then opened those chambers...

By the time he successfully evolved and regained his senses, he was the only one left in the entire underground hall.

And he... could no longer get out.

Gu Xi watched the man in silence. He eventually looked up at her again, pointed at the stone in her hand, and gestured for her to deal with it quickly.

Gu Xi didn’t move. She stared at the man for a while before speaking. "I’ll assume for now that you sensed my ability and figured I could suppress this stone, so you wanted to palm it off on me. But there’s one thing I don’t understand."

She took a step forward, staring at him. Though she was a full head shorter than the man, Gu Xi looked at him with a commanding air and asked, her eyebrow raised, "You said you were the only one left here. Then what about Yun Ye?"

Hearing the name Yun Ye, the man seemed lost and confused.

Gu Xi narrowed her eyes, a dangerous glint in them. "Didn’t he get out of this place all those years ago?"