"It's no good!" Zhuo Wangsun jumped up from the ground and opened his Protective Suit. "The ground isn't any better. With such tall stones blocking it, you'd think the temperature would drop a bit, but it hasn't decreased at all!"

"The extreme heat in the Stone Forest Maze isn't because of the sun's rays either." Xu Huo looked at the sky, then reached down and touched the ground with his hand. He paused for a moment before brushing the dust off his palm.

The extreme heat made it impossible to sleep, so after resting for a while, the three of them set off again.

On the way, they encountered a few people. Everyone dragged their exhausted feet, exchanging no words, merely advancing in silence.

By midnight, Xu Huo's group had more than ten Warriors joining them from the front and back. Almost all of them had taken off their Protective Suits, shuffling slowly forward with their feet barely leaving the ground.

Xu Huo had also reached his limit; his Protective Suit was almost completely soaked with sweat. He had just taken it off to shake out the water when a sudden burst of dense gunfire erupted from ahead.

Before the people present could react, the thunderous sound of footsteps surged from the front. In the blink of an eye, countless Split-head Mutants appeared. They clung to the stone pillars, leaping up and down, ferociously charging towards the exhausted crowd.

"Open fire, quickly!" someone shouted in panic. But the Mutants were like a tidal wave, instantly crashing right before their eyes. Those who had raised their guns and those who hadn't were all slammed together. In the chaos, the stray bullets only managed to kill a few Mutants.

The people behind began to flee in all directions. As Xu Huo grabbed his piano wire, he saw Zhuo Wangsun and Jin Dong running towards another direction. He drew his sword, killed the two Mutants chasing them, and followed.

Perhaps due to bodily mutation, Jin Dong climbed the stone pillar with astonishing speed, actually leaving the physically enhanced Zhuo Wangsun behind below.

"Give me a hand!" Zhuo Wangsun kicked away a Mutant pouncing at him and shouted up at Jin Dong.

Jin Dong, who had been climbing rapidly, stopped upon hearing the voice, then turned around and quickly descended.

A look of pleasant surprise appeared on Zhuo Wangsun's face. Just as he was about to jump up to grab Jin Dong's hand, a sudden force wrapped around his waist. The next moment, his entire body was yanked backward, flying through the air and narrowly missing Jin Dong!

"Who is it!" Zhuo Wangsun turned his head and saw it was Xu Huo. Furious, he hacked down a few more Mutants before trying to tear at the line around his waist, only to be hoisted into mid-air the next second.

Xu Huo gestured with his chin towards Jin Dong. "Take a closer look."

Over there, Jin Dong, maintaining a difficult frog-squatting posture on the stone pillar, had already torn off his head cover. As his body was exposed, his head transformed into a thermal image under the Holographic Glasses.

"He's turned into a Mutant!" Zhuo Wangsun exclaimed in shock.

Now, not just for him, but in Xu Huo's eyes as well, Jin Dong's appearance had undergone a drastic change. His face was beginning to turn pale, cracks appeared in the skin on his forehead, and as he grabbed at it himself, large clumps of his hair fell out.

Xu Huo threw a bottle of potion at his face from a distance.

After the bottle shattered, Jin Dong licked a couple of mouthfuls of the spilled potion, then continued climbing up the stone pillar. He stopped at a certain height, twisted his head around, and stared fixedly at Xu Huo and Zhuo Wangsun dangling in mid-air.

"He's not going to jump over here, is he..." Before Zhuo Wangsun's worried words could finish, Jin Dong indeed took aim and pounced at them!

Even across such a distance, the leaping power of Jin Dong after his mutation was terrifying. Xu Huo took out his water jet gun and shot him in the shoulder.

Jin Dong fell, had his spine trampled and broken by the stampeding horde of Mutants, crashed into a nearby rock, and fell still.

Meanwhile, the gunfire hadn't ceased. Some of the people who had been closer to Xu Huo earlier were dead, others had fled far away. This time, the gunfire was coming from ahead.

Xu Huo looked back and saw several Warriors whose faces showed signs of albinism, fleeing in terror while firing their guns.

"Have these people also turned into Mutants?" Zhuo Wangsun could only see the thermal images, so he looked up and asked Xu Huo.

"They're injured," Xu Huo said with a frown.

The ones running back from ahead saw the two men in the air and immediately cried out for help loudly. However, their slightly ferocious appearances looked almost the same as the Mutants chasing them.

Xu Huo threw Zhuo Wangsun onto a nearby, higher stone platform, then used his kite string to pull one person up.

"Help! Help!" The rescued person clung to the line, frantically climbing upwards while shouting.

Zhuo Wangsun warned Xu Huo to be careful from a distance, but Xu Huo didn't move. He was only observing the physical details of the person below.

Jin Dong had been infected for over a year. After drinking the potion, he had briefly regained his senses. Yet, upon entering the Stone Forest Area, he turned into a Split-head Mutant. These people had been injured for less than ten minutes, yet they were already showing the same symptoms.

Jin Dong had been infected long ago and suddenly degenerated here, but he hadn't been injured.

The other injured Warriors were rapidly beginning to degenerate.

Comparing the two cases, the only common factor was the soil and the air. In other words, besides direct infection by the Mutant virus, certain elements in the air or soil could also accelerate human mutation.

The person below grabbing the rope gradually lost the ability to speak, but he was still struggling to climb up. However, just as he was about to grab Xu Huo's foot, a person suddenly jumped down from above the stone pillar!

Xu Huo retracted his kite string and moved back. The person who jumped down didn't pursue him either. Performing a mid-air flip, he used a prop to grab onto the stone pillar, then held his gun with one hand and began sweeping fire across the horde of Mutants below, even gunning down the people showing signs of mutation mixed among them.

"Hey! Those people are still alive!" Zhuo Wangsun couldn't help but shout.

Unfortunately, no one paid him any mind. Soon after, two more people leaped down from above, gripping ropes, and hung in mid-air, beginning to lay down crossfire on the Mutant horde.

The once ferocious horde of Mutants was soon piled high with corpses. The remaining ones fled in all directions, but strong lights suddenly lit up in the distance. Those Mutants seemed to fear the light, dodging and retreating back, until almost all of them were killed by the three gun-wielding Warriors.

A few minutes later, the Stone Forest returned to silence. A total of eight Warriors, appearing one after another, began gathering to clean up the battlefield.

Xu Huo collected the communicator and Protective Suit from Jin Dong's corpse, casually running his hand over his head as he did so. The area that should have been completely bald felt prickly instead.

"What are you touching it for!" A female Warrior rushed over, slapping his hand away, then quickly poured water from her canteen over his glove before saying, "If you had any wounds on you, just that action alone would get you executed!"

"Don't you know Mutants are infected with pathogens? You can't touch them carelessly!"

After speaking, the female Warrior used a grappling hook to drag Jin Dong's corpse away.

"Who are these people?" Zhuo Wangsun moved closer and whispered.

The piled-up corpses had already been doused with fuel. As the fire blazed, one of the tall, burly men walked over and shook hands with them. "My name is Gao Peng. This is my comrade-in-arms, Cen Lu. We're all from the 809th batch of Warriors. We've been staying in the cleanup area ever since we entered and haven't left."

Cen Lu was the female Warrior who had dragged away Jin Dong's corpse.

Zhuo Wangsun looked at them in surprise. "You've been here for almost half a year? Where do you get your supplies?"

Gao Peng laughed heartily. "There are still clean places in the cleanup area. Since you're here, we're all comrades now. Welcome to the team!"