The burning third floor was left behind, and the four quickened their pace to rush upstairs. Just then, Zhou Xiao, who was at the back of the group, suddenly felt his feet sway.

He saw the staircase in front of him distort and shift backward, the depth of field suddenly converging from one plane into an extremely distant point. As his field of vision deepened, the three people in front of him were also stretched into thin strips of color and scattered into different places.

Shekh bent down to pick up the broken golden rattan, tied it around his wrist, and continued upstairs without panicking.

The illusionary space is what Zheng Jingjing wants to break through one by one.

She walked quietly, unaffected. In the dimly lit stairwell, Sher heard a sound coming from the sixth floor, from room 602.

The heavy security door wasn't closed tightly, leaving a gap through which warm, bright yellow light shone, forming an extremely thin straight line that slanted across the corridor, sharp as a fishing line.

Shech approached the sixth floor but didn't step into the corridor; instead, he stood at the top of the stairs listening to the conversation inside.

"Jingjing, I really like you. I know it's difficult for you, but I'm willing to do anything to be with you!"

"What about Xiao Zhao? What are you going to do with him?"

The cold, hard voice sounded strangely familiar, quite different from Zheng Jingjing's voice I had heard before.

Sher's lips tightened as he recognized his own voice.

"She loves you very much."

"I'll figure something out. You have to believe me. I know you like me too, otherwise you wouldn't have accepted my letter and given me those bookmarks in return."

"There's nothing written on the bookmark. I'm just dealing with you. You don't need to say any nice things to deceive me. I know exactly what you've done and what kind of person you are. You even have a pen name, Gu Fang, right?"

The rustling of newspapers filled the air, and the artsy young man's voice suddenly rose, "How do you know all this?!"

"Someone will eventually find out the truth. I'd like to know, aren't you afraid that the people you killed will come looking for you when you're sleeping at night?"

"I…"

His guilty conscience betrayed the artsy youth. He believed that if you do nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear, but he did, and now he's afraid.

The room fell silent over the topic. After a while, the artsy young man spoke up, "Since you already know these things, I have nothing to hide from you. I will find a way to get you to be with me."

Footsteps sounded, and after a couple of steps, a crisp slap followed, followed by a heated argument.

Amid the noise, Shekh turned his head slightly and caught another set of footsteps behind him.

She didn't move, but a blackish-gold liquid seeped out from under her feet, corroding Wu Li's face.

Clang.

A crisp metallic clang echoed from the ground.

The silver ring rolled around to Shekh's feet and fell to the ground with a thud.

Looking at the ring, Sheh's face fell completely. It was a pair of spatial rings that matched the one on her hand; she had one, and Shi Jinzhe had the other.

She bent down and picked up the ring from the ground. She took out a piece of chocolate from it to verify that it was a real ring. She slowly turned around and saw half of a face on the ground that had not yet melted.

His brows and eyes were melancholy, his gaze unfocused, staring at her lifelessly.

Those were the eyes of a man who had suffered a severe blow.

Suddenly, it felt as if a rope had been drawn within Shekh, and some emotion was being pushed and piled up in her heart by that gaze, making it difficult for her to exhale.

She lowered her eyes, her expression unchanged, but her hand was already gripping the ring tightly.

Shi Jinzhe's defensive formation wouldn't be so weak and ineffective as to be unable to stop the corrosive liquid she used to kill just an ordinary person.

This is an illusion, a deception by Zheng Jingjing using logic to make her believe that the person behind her is Wu Li, who, according to her deduction, should be following Xiao Zhao.

Shekh knew it was fake, but that didn't stop her from being angry.

She closed her eyes, letting the black-gold corrosive liquid engulf the remaining half of her face.

The arguing behind her continued, and in the corridor, a sliver of warm light was silently approaching Shekh, about to sever her nape.

Just a hair's breadth away, Shekh opened his eyes and pulled the string with his other hand.

The sudden force dragged Zheng Jingjing out of the door. Before she could react, Sher threw her to the end of the corridor, slamming her against the wall and leaving it dented and covered in spiderweb-like cracks.

Under the violence, Zheng Jingjing, who had no physical form, vanished into thin air, leaving only a blood-red thread embedded in the wall.

Shekh tightened the thread, causing the calamity to turn black with blood in an instant, exuding a heavy sense of despair and malice.

She unleashed all the emotions that could break a person's spirit: resentment, hatred, destruction, and torment, filling the air with a suffocating sense of oppression.

These pervasive emotional catastrophes, under Sher's control, burrowed into Zheng Jingjing's wounds along the threads of her being, gnawing at her heart and darkening more and more areas.

Overwhelmed by intense grief, Zheng Jingjing's heart clenched, leaving her no choice but to disconnect from the internet to prevent her reason from being completely consumed by despair.

Seeing the thread break, Sher took out a button. Unfortunately, the bloodstains visible on the button could not be caught. Only the part that Zheng Jingjing deliberately exposed was a tangible object that could be caught.

Shekh indifferently put down the button and smashed the wall beside him.

Since we can't catch it, let's destroy Building 3. The system can't just let the dungeon boss escape; it will definitely take countermeasures.

Shattered stones flew everywhere, and Shekh destroyed the corridor in a few steps. Surprisingly, the walls of 602 were unusually hard, and no cracks appeared even after several hammer blows.

It's one thing that an explosion wouldn't destroy it, but now even she's having trouble breaking through it; there's definitely something strange about this wall.

Shekh refused to believe it and applied pressure, trying again, but still couldn't break through.

At this moment, the broken golden vine that was coiled around her wrist climbed up the wall through the back of her hand and began to grow. As the vine expanded, a crack appeared in the wall.

Shekh took a step back. The golden vine was a tangible manifestation of life force; in addition to storing energy, it could also absorb it.

The fact that it can recover on its own, even though it is not broken here, must be because it has absorbed life force.

A wall that couldn't be broken by any external force was destroyed by the Golden Vine...

This wall has a life of its own.

Sheh let Jin Teng do as he pleased, and in the corner of her eye, she saw a few streaks of blood on her side.

With lightning-fast reflexes, Shekh clenched the few bloody strands into a tight knot and slipped them onto the gold vine ring on his hand.

The blood streaks that had been attacked were imprisoned by the life force. The vibrant energy caused Zheng Jingjing's judgment to falter, and she hesitated for a moment before not immediately severing the blood streaks.

In that instant, the calamity hidden beneath the golden vines struck, erupting like an avalanche into the enormous heart on the other side.

The hallucinatory space trembled, the plaster on the walls peeled off rapidly, and countless double images flickered and overlapped around Shekh.

She waved her hand, scattering the fragments one by one. When the illusory scene disappeared, only half a broken wall remained in front of her.