The red cloth headband that had warped an entire race lay quietly inside the Block.

Mo Ling walked forward and carefully picked it up.

The red cloth headband did indeed exude a certain allure, making it hard to look away.

Unfurled, the headband wasn’t very large—just the right size for an adult’s head.

He touched it. The material was a fine silk, exceptionally smooth to the touch.

The surface of the red cloth headband was also immaculate, as if brand new, unstained despite having been passed around.

Mo Ling experimentally teleported a handful of sand in and sprinkled it over the red cloth headband.

The sand slid off, leaving the headband as clean as ever, without a single stain.

’What a strange item.’

"So this one item is what threw an entire race’s sense of identity into disarray?"

Holding the red headband, Mo Ling still found the situation absurd.

’So, the price of this relic is a warped sense of self, and its ability is a one-time material transformation?’

After making this simple assessment of the red headband, Mo Ling tossed it to Li Luo.

Li Luo also examined the red headband, a confused look on her face, before she started looking up information.

There were no records.

There were many headband-shaped relics, but none of them matched. A search for "material transformation" abilities only brought up information related to the Golden Touch Hand.

Li Luo tried many different search methods but found nothing. The information on this relic was a complete blank.

Li Luo confirmed the red cloth’s origin and use with the ghosts one more time. Their story was exactly the same as before, with no discrepancies.

’Why would it appear out of thin air among the executed members of the Natural Gas Race?’

Mo Ling was confused.

However, he suddenly remembered the donkey ears.

’Donkey ears and a red headband?’

’Golden Touch Hand?’

’It can’t be such a coincidence, can it?’

Mo Ling was about to give Li Luo a hint, but she was already searching on her electronic screen.

"King of Phrygia."

The King of Phrygia from Greek mythology, who was utterly obsessed with gold, prayed to Dionysus and was granted the power to turn anything he touched into gold. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

In the end, he even turned his own daughter to gold with a touch of his finger.

Filled with remorse, he prayed to the god again, who then retracted the power and restored everything he had changed to its original state.

Afterward, the King of Phrygia judged a music contest between Apollo and Pan. Because he favored Pan, he was punished by Apollo.

The punishment was to grow a pair of donkey ears.

He then used a red headband to hide the donkey ears and conceal himself.

The detailed myth was displayed on the electronic screen. The more Mo Ling read, the stranger he felt. ’How can there be such a coincidence?’

’Two relics with nearly identical abilities, and a myth that connects them.’

Mo Ling felt his thoughts grow even more muddled.

How could a relic that appeared out of thin air in the remote Thorn Stone Forest on the 2nd Floor of the Abyss be related to another one that appeared on Earth?

Mo Ling thought for a long time but couldn’t come up with an answer.

Li Luo sifted through a lot of data but found nothing more about the red headband. So, she placed it back on the Block for Mo Ling to retrieve.

"Let’s deal with the matter at hand first."

Tossing the red cloth into a corner, Mo Ling turned his gaze back to the trembling ghosts.

Now that he knew the reason for the ghosts’ mental instability, Mo Ling only found them somewhat pathetic.

Their perception of self had been warped, and they had to constantly use lies to justify that false reality. He could only imagine how much their existence had been altered.

With a sigh, Mo Ling dismissed the thought of wiping them all out.

’Without the red cloth, these ghosts can’t cause the Anomalous Vein Sickness anymore.’

’Perhaps, after a while, the Mineral Race in the Thorn Stone Forest will realize this.’

The ghosts were still looking pleadingly at the Block, begging for mercy from time to time.

After giving Li Luo a heads-up, Mo Ling maneuvered the Block to float upward and away, returning to the path ahead.

...

On the path ahead, Shibeng seemed to have reverted to his apathetic personality; the ripples and trembling on his body had vanished.

Mo Ling had been observing him, finding Shibeng’s personality shifts fascinating every time he witnessed them.

’Shibeng probably knows the Anomalous Vein Sickness has been dealt with, so his fear has subsided.’

"Past the cavern ahead, we’ll be near the exit. You can just fly straight there," Shibeng said, his face devoid of expression.

His tone had reverted to that numb state, completely devoid of emotion.

Every time Mo Ling heard him speak like this, he felt like he was listening to a robotic voice announcer.

’So boring.’

Just as he was about to teleport some rocks out to startle Shibeng, Mo Ling noticed that an expression had returned to his face.

An expression of timid fear.

’What’s wrong? Did he see something?’

Mo Ling quickly floated forward and discovered that the cavernous tunnel ahead was indeed different.

The fluorite veins here seemed to have been artificially carved to make the light more uniform.

Obstructions in some dark corners had been deliberately removed, and reflective ores had been embedded to illuminate these shadowy areas.

It was as if someone had intentionally created a lighting system.

The path here also seemed to have been deliberately smoothed; the previous tunnels had all been littered with rubble of all sorts.

Because the tunnels within the Thorn Stone Forest frequently collapsed, the previous passages had many newly-carved, winding side paths and showed signs of repeated excavation.

This tunnel, however, was perfectly straight. Mo Ling noticed that its ceiling even had some pillar-like supports, apparently designed specifically to prevent collapses.

The deeper they went, the stranger Shibeng’s expression became, and Mo Ling noticed that the man-made traces in the tunnel were growing more and more obvious.

At regular intervals along the walls, colorful ores had been placed, which looked brilliant in the light of the fluorite veins.

The rock ceiling not only had supporting pillars but also some rather crude carvings.

Most of these carvings depicted various types of mineral veins: tree-like, web-like, long and narrow, anthill-style...

The carving quality was terrible, but Mo Ling could still make them out.

Not only that, but there were also carvings of the Mineral Race in various forms. Mo Ling saw not only the common four-armed members but also some bizarrely shaped ones.

What Mo Ling found most fascinating was an enormous carving that took up a large section of the rock wall. It depicted a mighty member of the Mineral Race with countless arms.

The technique of this particular carving was clearly much better. Various strange patterns floated around the mighty figure, but they were too small for Mo Ling to make out what they depicted.

’The proportions are very strange.’

’Who would do something like this?’

’If the support structures were to prevent collapses, then what was the point of these meaningless decorations and carvings?’

Mo Ling carefully observed these aesthetically pleasing carvings and decorations. No matter how he looked at them, he couldn’t believe they were the work of the emotionless Mineral Race.

Having reached this point, Shibeng finally seemed to realize something and shouted in terror:

"I should have known! No wonder this place was sealed off! This is an Anomalous Vein Cave!"