This question naturally had no answer.

Not only that, Li Hongbin soon discovered something else—

"The Boss doesn't seem right..."

A very simple sentence, yet it concealed two pieces of information.

Guan Ce was indeed not right.

First, there was something wrong with him personally.

His initial daze could still be understood as him falling into some kind of terrifying line of thought, unable to extricate himself.

But now, his daze clearly seemed like he had lost his soul. No matter how Li Hongbin waved his hand in front of his eyes, he had no reaction!

Secondly, the Guan Gong tattoo on his body was also particularly abnormal!

Initially, the Guan Gong tattoo had only opened a pair of red eyes.

Although those red eyes carried an effect that made one's heart palpitate, making the players present dare not meet their gaze.

This could also be understood as a tattoo effect.

At the same time, the light screen image projected by those eyes was obviously also a kind of tattoo effect.

So, just red eyes and projecting a light screen image wasn't that abnormal yet.

But as the two "stick figures" in the "white paper" of the light screen image seemed to be erased by an eraser...

The entire Guan Gong tattoo on Guan Ce's body also seemed to be affected by something!

This tattoo originally appeared as the black of a normal tattoo.

To the naked eye, one could clearly feel it was a black tattoo.

But looking at it now...

It inexplicably made one feel that the black presented by the tattoo was the same as the abyss scars on Li Ku's body—it was a scar etched onto Guan Ce's body!

And...

This scar of his looked even more bizarre than Li Ku's.

It was an indescribable weirdness...

As if the black scar outlining the Guan Gong pattern was a living thing!

Apart from that...

The three monsters Li Ku had restrained with black threads were now also clearly more out of control.

Their piercing screams became more rapid and sharp, as if urgently wanting to do something.

At the same time, their bodies, imprisoned by the threads, seemed to start struggling even more violently!

This feeling was as if... they wanted to break free from their restraints and charge into the tattoo scar on Guan Ce's body!

Li Ku naturally also noticed this bizarre scene.

His face with facial paralysis showed no change in expression.

However, Li Hongbin and Gong Cheng, who were in the same group as Guan Ce, couldn't help but feel a bit scared now.

If even they felt afraid, the three cannon fodder players they restrained were naturally even more despairing.

Li Hongbin was about to speak, to persuade Li Ku to give up exploring that eerie underground palace.

But he didn't expect Li Ku to speak first, directly saying in a deep voice:

"The players' preliminary exploration is over. This time, let the monsters go."

"You should still have recording orbs on you, right?"

Both Li Hongbin and Gong Cheng fell silent.

However, with Guan Ce having problems now, they didn't dare to easily defy Li Ku.

So, after a moment of silence, they actively took out recording orbs.

The out-of-control monsters themselves couldn't normally carry recording orbs.

But it didn't matter; Li Ku directly bound the recording orbs with black threads.

At the same time, he also bound the monsters with black threads, placing them into the underground palace.

Based on the exploration tone he had set earlier, this time's monster scouting also didn't put in all three monsters at once.

Only the one with the irregular black stone was placed.

The black stone couldn't walk down stairs, equivalent to being continuously lowered down using the threads.

At this point, Jiang Ye reminded Li Ku, "This underground palace, besides the route leading to the white light at the very bottom, might also have some hidden routes."

Li Ku nodded, obviously thinking the same.

So, for this lowering of the monster, he didn't pursue speed. Instead, he slowly increased the thread length, gradually lowering the black stone and the recording orb.

During this process, he also used the light found by the recording orb and the small bees to carefully observe if there were any details he missed during the entire long staircase section when he lowered those two cannon fodder players.

Thus, pairs of eyes carefully stared at the recording orb for observation.

Including...

Jiang Ye noticed that the pair of increasingly bizarre Guan Gong red eyes also seemed to be staring at the recording orb!

This glance made Jiang Ye's heart palpitate again.

And roughly after exploring about one-third of the length of the long staircase...

The meticulous Li Ku really discovered a slightly abnormal step.

The steps of that long staircase all looked pitch black and ancient.

What Li Ku noticed was that at the corner of one of the steps, the pitch-black crack seemed to let light through?

He studied the recording orb for a while, and after confirming this step was problematic, he used the threads to manipulate the black stone, originally intending to first probe the reality of that crack.

But unexpectedly...

The black stone bound with the recording orb simply pressed against that crack...

And seemed to be sucked in by a suction force!

The image from the synchronized recording orb outside their underground palace instantly changed!

After the change...

A new staircase scene appeared.

It looked no different from the staircase just explored.

But this time, because he had been carefully observing the staircase details, Li Ku almost immediately discovered...

"It changed..."

"The staircase presented now is no longer the one from just now!"

"This... what's going on?" he murmured as if talking to himself, his gaze firmly locked on the recording orb, observing all the details of the current staircase scene.

Again, at the corner of a step, he detected an unusual crack.

Li Ku again manipulated the black stone to crash into that crack...

The image changed again, returning to the original staircase route.

"This..." Li Ku, with his scar-covered, expressionless face, let out a light sigh that could hardly conceal his shock.

Li Hongbin and Gong Cheng also quickly reacted—

"These underground palace stairs seem to have forked paths?"

"By going through this crack, you turn onto another staircase path?"

Theoretically, that was indeed the case.

But Li Ku, connected to the black stone through the black threads, clearly felt—

The two different staircases...

Their extension directions were both straight down!

If it was really a "fork," how could both branches still be consistent in direction?

Unless this kind of "fork" didn't follow normal spatial principles!

Li Ku immediately thought of the image of the stick figures on the white paper...

He couldn't help but imagine a possibility—

Suppose these "forked" staircases were on different "sheets of paper"?

All the sheets were placed vertically?

So, when the black stone jumped between different sheets, the direction didn't change; they were all downward?

But was this understanding correct?

Li Ku didn't know.

However, he had a vague feeling...

The rules of this underground palace space might differ from normal human understanding and cognition!

Then...

Assuming we follow his understanding.

Did the bottom spaces reached by the different "sheets of paper" all lead to the White Light World that the previous "sheet" led to?

Or would they present different scenes?

Actually, from this perspective, this entire eerie underground palace could perhaps be divided into two parts.

One was the staircase part, and the other was the underground palace part the stairs led to.

Based on what's seen so far, the staircase part was like a maze with abnormal spatial rules.

After understanding this, Li Ku somewhat wanted to try...

Should he personally explore the staircase maze?

After all, this part didn't seem to have much danger.

After some thought in his heart, Li Ku looked at Jiang Ye and the others.

Jiang Ye pondered for a moment, but his gaze fell on the toilet paper monster restrained by Li Ku.

Following his line of sight, Li Ku instantly understood what he was thinking: "You mean, use this toilet paper to leave marks in the staircase maze?"

Jiang Ye tentatively asked, "Can the thin threads emanating from your scars also serve as marking effects?"

Li Ku shook his head: "Seems not."

"When the staircase changed, I didn't feel any break in the black threads. They always extended from this entrance to the position within the staircase. Without a break, how can you make a mark?"

Jiang Ye explained: "What I mean is—"

"You can release multiple threads at the same time. At that bizarre step crack, have thread A pass through the step crack, and have thread B not pass through the crack."

"This way, two threads can form two exploration branches."

"When step cracks are discovered again within the two branches, new branch explorations can be formed... it's equivalent to the tree DP in algorithms. Troublesome as it is, it can quickly search all paths."

This wasn't hard to understand.

After a bit of thought, Li Ku nodded: "But this requires more recording orbs."

"Players and monsters don't need to be added anymore; we can use the recording orbs as eyes to achieve multi-path exploration..."

As he spoke, he looked at Li Hongbin and Gong Cheng.

Gong Cheng flipped his hand and took out a pair of recording orbs, saying helplessly, "Only this pair left."

Li Ku directly stated: "This pair is far from enough."

"If the staircase maze has enough branching points, the number of recording orbs needed should be quite large."

"Can you get more recording orbs?"

Li Hongbin's expression turned somewhat ugly, but after glancing at Guan Ce, who was still in a dazed state, and the increasingly bizarre Guan Gong tattoo...

After a moment of silence, he let out a breath: "I can probably exchange for a few dozen pairs. If that's not enough... do you have any survival stones on you?"

He originally wanted to ask Li Ku for some survival points, but quickly remembered that Li Ku hadn't seen the Nomadic Merchant and didn't have a Survival Jade Token yet.

So, his survival points couldn't be transferred or traded.

Thus, he could only pin his hopes on survival stones.

Originally, he thought Li Ku had just arrived at the apartment and was unlikely to have survival stones on him.

But unexpectedly, Li Ku directly flipped his hand and took out a full 10 survival stones!

He even asked: "10 Heavenly-grade ones, is that enough?"

Li Ku still had Year-grade survival stones on him, but he was a bit reluctant to part with them.

And in Li Hongbin's cognition, survival stones were all measured in days.

He was directly stunned by Li Ku's question: "What Heavenly-grade? You've seen survival stones of other grades?"

Li Ku was also taken aback: "You haven't seen Year-grade survival stones?"

"Year-grade?" Li Hongbin was surprised, but quickly reacted, "You mean Heavenly-grade survival stones are measured in days, and Year-grade survival stones are measured in years??"

His tone of questioning was as if he'd seen a ghost, particularly horrified.

Li Ku frowned: "Is there a problem?"

"This... this isn't a problem?" Li Hongbin retorted speechlessly, "Apartment time is all measured in 'days.' How could there possibly be Year-grade survival stones?!"

However, he soon also reconciled himself: "Maybe the time in the apartment and the time in the mist for you have different units..."

"The apartment indeed doesn't have the 'year' unit, but the mist might..."

"By the way, can I see your Year-grade survival stone?"

Li Hongbin looked very curious.

However, Li Ku directly refused: "Sorry, I don't have Year-grade survival stones."

"..."

"Just use those 10 Heavenly-grade survival stones; find a way to get more recording orbs."

Li Hongbin nodded silently and left with the survival stones.

Jiang Ye secretly sent Li Ku a message: [Aren't you afraid he'll take the survival stones you gave him and run off with the goods?]

Li Ku replied: [When we agreed to gather on the 1st floor to explore the underground palace together, I was worried they might break their promise and not show up.]

[But since they didn't break their promise and chose to gather, then this kid is unlikely to run off with the goods.]

After a bit of pondering, Jiang Ye also understood the subtext of these words.

Regarding exploring the underground palace, the three tattooed guys probably had someone behind them giving orders.

That's why they gathered on the first floor on time.

Since they were acting under orders, they were unlikely to give up halfway.

Sure enough, after waiting less than 10 minutes, Li Hongbin appeared with a large batch of recording orbs.

After a slight hesitation, he said, "Here are 100 pairs of recording orbs. There are 5 survival stones left. If it's not enough, we can exchange more later to avoid wasting them by exchanging too many at once."

Li Ku didn't say much and began the extreme operation—

One thread, binding one recording orb.

Then one by one, lowering them towards the underground palace staircase.

Lowering the recording orbs wasn't difficult to operate.

Actually, the truly difficult part of the whole process was the images corresponding to the recording orbs.

To avoid situations where the recording orb images corresponded incorrectly, Li Ku temporarily only released 10 recording orbs.

Ten corresponding images, marked with ten fingers.

To make it easier for others to help him record, he simply numbered the 10 recording orbs from one to ten.

For the first step, the 10 overlapping recording orbs had roughly similar images.

When they reached the first branching point discovered earlier, Li Ku operated while announcing:

"Now, I'm going to send the five recording orbs numbered 6 to 10 into this branching point. You guys help me pay attention to the images of recording orbs 6 to 10."

Jiang Ye nodded in agreement: "No problem, take your time."

Li Ku didn't speak again, but soon it could be seen that the images of recording orbs 6 to 10 changed.

While numbers 1 to 5 were still on the original staircase route.

Li Ku continued announcing: "Now, the route where recording orbs 1 to 5 are located is recorded as A. The route taken by recording orbs 6 to 10 is recorded as B."

"In Route A, the five balls explore downward."

"In Route B, ball number 6 explores upward, balls 7 to 10 explore downward."

"Jiang Ye, you keep an eye on the five balls in Route A. Li Hongbin, you watch ball number 6 in Route B. Gong Cheng, you watch balls 7 to 10 in Route B."

"Anyone who discovers a crack on a step, report to me immediately."

Up to this point, it was still orderly.

Li Ku operated threads 1 to 5 downward, thread 6 upward, and threads 7 to 10 downward.

The images of the three groups of recording orbs each changed.

They all looked like staircases, but there were subtle differences.

The first to discover the second step crack was Jiang Ye, not long after balls 1 to 5 went down.

So, Li Ku kept balls 1 to 3 in Route A and moved balls 4 to 5 into branch Route C...

And so on.

10 threads, 10 balls, really gradually differentiated into 10 branches!