"Sister Yin! You're here!"

"Shiyin! You're only arriving now!"

Lin Beiyue and Gu Changge exclaimed in surprise.

"I'm not your nanny, how could I be wherever you are?" Shi Yin leaped down from the sky and landed steadily in front of everyone: "You can't survive by relying on others, including me."

"What you're saying is ridiculous. We were supposed to be linked together with skewers, but we ended up like a string of candied hawthorns, and the skewers just left on their own." Gu Changge retorted, "No matter what, we were part of the Shadow Squad that formed around you."

"It's not about me, it's about the country," Shi Yin corrected.

"Okay, I know." Gu Changge pouted and muttered under her breath, "A waste of talent."

Qin Jin smiled helplessly.

He is actually biased towards the country, after all, he served in the military and retired as a special forces soldier, so he has some feelings for the country.

But Gu Changge is different. She grew up without parents and spent most of her life with those lousy relatives. No one ever helped her. While she was independent, she had no sense of belonging to any group.

"So, you're not here to rescue me, are you?" Song Yunshan asked weakly, standing to the side, looking rather honored.

"What do you think?" Shi Yin asked in return.

"I believe it holds strategic significance for Yanlong Kingdom." Song Yunshan chuckled, "How about having another vassal state?"

"Are you planning to become king right away?" Yan Qi retorted.

"This is a metaphor, a metaphor," Song Yunshan quickly said. "It's called a buffer zone for a major power, do you understand?"

"Don't ask us if we understand, we've all been soldiers." Yan Qi grinned. "How many years of effort did it take you to come up with such a word?"

"Alright, alright, let's go." Lin Beiyue said helplessly. The atmosphere in the team seemed to have become much more relaxed as soon as Shi Yin appeared.

Without much hesitation, Shi Yin chose a hole and went inside.

It's not an exaggeration to say that this place resembles an apple core gnawed by insects. Each hole is nearly circular, with pits and bumps spreading inwards. It's dry and cold, and the further you go in, the stronger the strange smell becomes.

In the silent space, only their footsteps and one's own heartbeat could be heard. After a while, even the slightest movement made one's heart race. Before long, several more forks in the road appeared ahead.

Lin Beiyue and the others looked at the intersections on both sides, then casually picked up a steel ball and threw it into a hole. A sound came from the hole, but it was no different from the previous one.

Shi Yin glanced at the two forks in the road, randomly chose one, and stepped into it.

"Sister Yin, is there anything special about this road?" Lin Beiyue asked.

"No, I just picked it randomly," Shi Yin said calmly.

"Huh? What if we go to the wrong place?" Gu Changge was almost choked by Shi Yin's self-righteous tone.

“In the absence of knowledge, it doesn’t matter whether you go the right way or the wrong way, right?” Shi Yin glanced at Gu Changge: “Each cave entrance has a strong aura, which means they have used each path repeatedly.”

So, if you put it that way...

"Snap!"

The sudden, unusual footsteps made the already highly alert people tremble. Yun Ce swallowed hard and cautiously looked down at his feet.

The headlamp on the protective suit illuminated an area in front of them, and everyone then realized that Yun Ce had stepped into a liquid. When he lifted his foot, the liquid even stretched into a string, which looked rather disgusting.

Qin Jin took out a detector from the prop bag on his protective suit and put it down. Soon, it produced various detailed data and compared it with all the terrain data in the world. The comparison result was that it was a swamp.

"How come there's a swamp here?" Qin Jin asked, puzzled. "It's been snowing for so long, the weather should be dry."

"Getting closer and closer to the big boss, huh?" Gu Changge clicked his tongue lightly. "Honestly, if I hadn't been dragged into the national team in this lifetime, I would have run away long ago."

That's absolutely true. Gu Changge was able to live so long in her previous life because she knew the principle of seeking advantage and avoiding harm. But now that she's become a member of the national team and the exploration team, she really has no choice but to push forward.

After all, she was already a member of the city wall.

"I don't know how far we've come, these swamps..." Hearing that these were just ordinary swamps, Yan Qi breathed a sigh of relief, as long as they weren't some kind of corrosive venom.

But as soon as he looked up, he was so frightened that he jumped in fright.

Holy crap!

Everyone tensed up immediately and looked in the direction of Yan Qi's gaze. They all shuddered.

Suddenly, a person stood in front of us, or rather, it wasn't a person at all.

The dark cloak was only faintly visible in the darkness, revealing a stark white skeleton beneath. The empty skull stared straight at them, its sudden appearance in the darkness truly enough to terrify anyone.

"Be on guard!" Lin Beiyue and the others immediately tensed up.

It wasn't that they were startled; it was simply that the aura emanating from the person in front of them was far too dangerous.

This wasn't their first time killing people or zombies; they'd seen plenty of high-level berserkers and brutal manipulators. But the aura of this person was different from those zombies; it was as if they'd encountered some ferocious beast.

It was like navigating a small boat across the waves, only to be suddenly hit by a wave five or six feet high. The suffocating and oppressive feeling made it impossible for them to breathe for a moment.

"Is it really a good idea to confront me directly?" Shi Yin calmly looked at the old skeleton in front of her and sighed softly: "One of the Seven Stars, Wenqu, I thought that with your intelligence, you wouldn't come to face me directly."

“I know that you humans only use your full strength to guard against mirror zombies.” Wenqu’s mouth opened and closed, but the skull made it impossible to tell whether he was crying or laughing. “Even you wouldn’t only use 30% of your strength against me.”

"Besides, those behind you are nothing but weaklings." The pale white skull pointed at the people behind Shi Yin: "Copying 30% of your power is enough to wipe them out."

"That's hard to say," Shi Yin sneered.

"snort."

Wenqu snorted coldly, but the next moment he raised his hands and waved them to the side like a commander. Instantly, Lin Beiyue and his group felt as if their bodies were being torn apart, and the surrounding space was squeezing their bodies so hard that their bones were cracking.

"Hold on, it's not time to break through to level 3 yet." Shi Yin waved her right hand, put away her cane, and a golden double-headed spear appeared out of thin air: "Remember, before today, either use it to reach level 10 and fully activate it, or suppress it to below level 3, otherwise you will be punished when you go back."

“Hey, even though you say that…” Gu Changge gritted her teeth, leaning against the wall to barely lift her head, only to be shocked to find that the wall she was leaning against had also twisted.

This is... space folding!

"spread!"

With a wave of his hand, Gu Changge immediately felt his wind-based abilities increase significantly. At the same time, everyone felt the wind on their bodies lighten again, and their speed increased dramatically once more.

"Avoid areas where space is distorted, and find a foothold in a flat space!" Lin Beiyue also recognized this ability: "Be careful not to get folded!"

"Holy Lance, Glory".

Shi Yin raised his spear, a simple golden spear, and the fiery red banner fluttered without wind. Wen Qu seemed to see golden stars leaping on the fiery red banner.

Looking at the golden spear tip, Wenqu felt a chill run through his bones.

You'll die!