"Hiss..."

The group saw the sudden flash of red light and subconsciously took a step back.

On the surface of a large, lifeless tree, a ring of red light abruptly appeared. The scene was rather eerie.

CRACK... CRACK... CRACK...

The surface of the decaying tree began to tremble slightly, and it actually started to stand up, bit by bit.

"A Tree Spirit? A dead Tree Spirit?"

Under everyone’s watchful gaze, the Tree Spirit moved its massive body and walked toward them, step by step.

Yin Yi floated at the very front, a wobbling orb of green light coalescing before it.

Behind it, more than a dozen pairs of emotionless eyes stared fixedly at the Tree Spirit.

"WHOOSH..."

Just as everyone was preparing to order their Soul Beasts to attack...

...the Tree Spirit, which was hidden behind the dense white fog with only its pair of red eyes showing, suddenly stopped its slow advance. Its red light flickered violently, and it stealthily retreated.

’It left? Its intelligence isn’t low; it actually knows how to assess a situation...’ Han Ning didn’t relax just because the Tree Spirit retreated. In fact, he found the whole thing even more bizarre.

Everyone had originally thought the valley floor would be similar to the forest outside, home to various beasts. They never expected to see no beasts at all, but instead a scene resembling a mass grave.

He turned his head to look at Lü Xiuning.

"Teacher Lü, should we continue deeper?"

"Same as always. Let’s send up a drone and see," Lü Xiuning said, taking a drone from his backpack. "The fog is thick and will seriously affect the footage, but maybe, just maybe, it can record some kind of clue."

Last time, all their drones had crashed in the Mushroom Forest. The one he had now was from the academy’s remaining stock.

Soon, the drone took to the sky, flying toward the dim, sparse woods.

However, before the drone had flown more than a hundred meters...

...a faint sound of flapping wings suddenly came from ahead.

Immediately after, a ball of fire erupted in mid-air.

"It crashed..." Lü Xiuning’s expression turned grim, and he already felt like retreating. "Forget it. The danger ahead is unknown. We should head back."

Han Ning, standing to the side, had seen it clearly. As the drone was flying, a puff of black smoke had suddenly appeared, obscuring his view. Then, the drone had burst into a ball of fire and fallen.

And that puff of smoke vanished without a trace.

"Alright." Han Ning patted Egg Pancake’s back, signaling it to turn around.

Seeing how strange the situation ahead was, the group lost their desire to explore any further.

Just as the group had walked about 100 meters back up the path toward the summit...

Han Ning suddenly stopped in his tracks.

He frowned, looking up at the still-dense, gray-white fog. "We’ve walked about a hundred meters, right? I remember the area where the fog thinned out was only 20 meters away at most. How have we walked 100 meters, and the fog ahead is still so thick?"

WHOOSH... WHOOSH... WHOOSH...

Unwittingly, the once-white fog had taken on a grayish tint.

"Are we caught in a ’ghost wall’?" The people around him also noticed something was wrong, warily scanning the gray, rocky mountainside.

"In situations like this, it’s usually because your senses are being deceived, or you might have fallen into an Illusion Realm." Having been affected by the Brain-Eating Spider before, Han Ning immediately closed his eyes and sent out his Spiritual Power, trying to use it to find the correct path.

Gradually, a rough topographical map of the surrounding area appeared in his mind.

Right now, they were still at the bottom of the valley, about 50 meters west of where they had been standing before.

"This way. Back," Han Ning said, opening his eyes.

With Han Ning leading the way, the others said nothing more. Under Yin Yi’s protection, they followed Han Ning into the dense, gray-white fog.

Their figures were quickly swallowed by the thick fog.

Han Ning closed his eyes and, following the senses of his Spiritual Power, led the group backward for about ten more minutes.

A tall mountain cave abruptly appeared just five meters in front of them.

’A cave?! Don’t tell me even my Spiritual Power led us the wrong way?’ Han Ning’s expression turned ugly as he stared at the massive cave entrance, which was over ten meters high.

He raised his head and looked around.

Other than the cave in front of them, the paths behind, to the left, to the right, and even above had all unknowingly turned into solid rock walls.

"What is this place? Even Han Ning’s Spiritual Power is being affected," Lü Xiuning said, taking out a flashlight and shining it around.

"Teacher Lü, Han Ning, what should we do now?" Seeing that not even Han Ning could lead them out of this bizarre "ghost wall," the expressions on the others’ faces grew increasingly grim.

"All we can do is head forward and see. Maybe the exit is up ahead," Lü Xiuning said, sizing up the enormous cave entrance, which looked like a giant, man-eating maw.

"That’s our only option. Everyone, stay safe," Teacher Zheng chimed in.

"Everyone, stay close," Han Ning instructed, gesturing for the others to move closer to Egg Pancake. Then he whispered to Egg Pancake, "Activate Mimicry."

Their figures, as if erased by an eraser, quickly vanished inside the cave.

The effective range of Egg Pancake’s Mimicry was a two-meter radius around its body. By huddling close, they could just barely fit everyone, people and Soul Beasts alike, within its field.

Since his Spiritual Power was useless for navigation, the group resorted to observing the terrain with their own eyes, sticking close to the stone wall and advancing cautiously through the cavern.

Yin Yi floated ahead, scouting for any potential dangers.

As the nine of them ventured deeper, they began to get a clear picture of the cave’s environment.

It was a vast cavern, roughly half the size of a soccer field. The rock walls were embedded with stones that emitted a faint fluorescent glow, so the visibility inside wasn’t complete darkness.

The bodies of numerous unknown Soul Beasts were scattered across the hard, rocky ground.

There were ugly monkeys, Copper-Feathered Falcons, and some corpses that were mangled beyond recognition.

"Ling!"

They had only taken a few steps when Yin Yi, who had been floating ahead to scout for danger, came to a sudden halt.

Han Ning’s expression changed slightly. He immediately made a hand signal to stop. "Halt. An unknown creature is approaching from the front."

The other eight people exchanged glances and instantly froze.

The rustling sound of a massive creature crawling reached their ears.

They pressed themselves against the stone wall, not even daring to breathe.

In the dim environment, three monstrous snakes, each at least 15 meters long and covered in purple scales, slithered past less than twenty meters in front of them.

The contact of their scales against the rocky ground produced a dense, rustling sound that made one’s scalp tingle.

Han Ning vaguely recalled that creatures like snakes relied entirely on their infrared-sensing eyes and forked tongues to perceive the outside world.

He didn’t know if Egg Pancake’s Mimicry could filter out the sounds they made.

From the looks of it, the snakes hadn’t detected their presence, so the ability must be working.

This also meant that the power of the three giant snakes passing by couldn’t be that much greater than Egg Pancake’s.