It was obvious that there was someone or something on the second floor.

Drizzt became alert and took out his usual revolver to check the bullets.

Lu Ban materialized [Last Words], ready to find a way to strike it at any time.

Xia looked at the two of them, confused.

"What are you doing?"

She asked softly.

"We have to be careful when approaching each other..."

Before Drizzt could finish his words, he saw Xia raise her left hand.

Her small stature suddenly burst out with powerful strength, she jumped up, and hit the ceiling with her left hand at lightning speed.

Boom boom boom——

Along with the sound of something penetrating the ceiling and reaching the second floor, Lu Ban clearly saw several small holes as thick as fingers appearing on the wooden ceiling.

Bang, bang, bang, bang——

The next moment, a series of explosions sounded, shaking off a large amount of dust.

"Pfft, pfft, pfft...what are you doing?"

Drizzt spat out the ashes in his mouth and looked up at the second floor.

There was no movement up there.

"When you encounter something unidentified and there are walls blocking the way, you can directly use the Penetrating Explosion Technique to conduct a probing attack to detect the enemy's situation. This is what the Gray Tower's Agent Manual says."

Xia answered immediately.

"A probing attack?"

Lu Ban felt that this test seemed a bit exaggerated.

“…What if there’s an ancient capital up there?”

Drizzt asked hesitantly.

"Don't worry, I've prayed for a healing spell this time. As long as he's still alive, I can save him right away!"

Xia patted her chest, making a sound of metal collision, and she also glanced at Lu Ban deliberately.

"Shall we go upstairs and take a look?"

Lu Ban felt that it was definitely not the ancient capital, so he walked up the creaking stairs and saw the messy second floor.

This is the bedroom. You can see the cotton wool on the bed flying around. The explosion technique directly turned the wooden bed into pieces, and a creature was also shattered at the same time.

It looked like a hound or an octopus, lying on the ground, dying.

Lu Ban observed carefully and saw that it was a four-legged creature, about the size of a large dog, with a body as smooth as an eel, and its limbs were anti-jointed and had claws at the ends.

What is worrying is its head. Several tentacles extend from the neck. There are no eyes or ears. Only in the center of the tentacles, there is a mouthpart surrounded by countless fangs.

Just the sight of this creature was enough to make one wonder what the gods of this world had done, the slippery tentacles were still curling and stretching slightly, but the monster seemed no longer to move.

"You see, this is not the ancient capital."

Shia said, pointing at the monster.

"Is this a monster that is unique to the Wasted City?"

Lu Ban was curious. After all, he was not from the Wasted City. He had only seen rat people and flying fish in the Wasted City. He wondered what other strange creatures existed here.

"I have never heard of such a monster in the Wasted City."

Trist put away his revolver, took out his gloves, and subconsciously wanted to put them on, but after thinking for a while, he handed them to Lu Ban.

"Come and check it out."

Lu Ban took the gloves and quickly came to the monster. He poked the monster's body with his fingers and felt a slightly hard touch, like a balloon filled with stones.

He pinched the tentacles on the face with his fingers and pulled them apart. In front of Trist's grim expression, Lu Ban completely exposed the monster's mouthparts.

The moment he saw that scene, Drizzt felt an instinctive shudder. He took two steps back and held onto the wall. The dizziness almost made him kneel down, but fortunately Xia held him up.

[You witnessed an unspeakable evil monster]

[Sanity -3]

Drizzt couldn't even pay attention to the reminder that his sanity was decreasing.

He gasped for breath, and after a while, he finally stood up straight.

"Fortunately I didn't go to check it myself..."

Trist was still frightened. If this thing was still alive, he would have to fight it and examine the corpse with his own hands. His sanity would probably be reduced even more.

"Are you okay?"

Xia was not affected much, she just felt a little disgusted when she saw this scene. In the Black Forest and on the Agent's Road, there were many more bizarre beasts, and this monster could only be considered one of the ugliest ones.

Seeing this, Lu Ban seemed to be thinking about something.

It seems that if we judge by the degree of pollution, the degree of pollution in the Country of Darkness is definitely deeper than that in the wasteland. The same monster can cause a strong impact on Drizzt, but has no effect on Shia.

As for Lu Ban, he has lost all his sanity and can be left undiscussed.

Therefore, Lu Ban felt that perhaps the level of pollution in the world could indeed, to some extent, increase human resistance to these exotic monsters and indescribable existences.

At this time, Lu Ban discovered that the monster's abdomen seemed to be a little bloated, a little more expanded than before.

"Strange, is it bulging a little here?"

He prodded with his finger.

Then, Lu Ban saw that there seemed to be something wriggling in the monster's abdomen, rising and falling under the skin like a worm. At the same time, the abdomen swelled up like a sick person and gradually became unbearable.

"Leave now."

Lu Ban said something, and Xia immediately picked up Trist, whose legs were still a little weak, and left the bedroom.

Just as Lu Ban closed the door, the monster's body exploded.

The explosion lasted only a moment before there was no more sound. Lu Ban opened the door and saw an even more chaotic scene.

There were countless wriggling tentacles in the monster's belly, just like its face. There seemed to be cysts at the ends of those tentacles. It was almost imaginable that such creatures evolved from small octopuses the size of fingernails step by step into those hideous and weird monsters. There were hundreds and thousands of such monsters, still wriggling in this room, covering every corner.

Even Xia felt a little dizzy this time. She saw her sanity decreasing a little, then raised her hand and cast a spell.

Buzz——

All the squirming bugs in the room were dragged, sucked, and rolled into a ball by some force.

Snap——

The bugs were compressed into a mass and fell to the ground.

"Is this the magic of the Kingdom of Night?"

Drizzt had been to the Kingdom of Night before, but had never come into direct contact with the wizards of the Grey Tower. When he saw Xia's series of spells, he couldn't help but feel incredible.

This is an extraordinary power that far exceeds the imagination of the people in the Wasted City.

"It's quite convenient, but it's a pity that I can't learn it."

Lu Ban sighed.

At this time, he found that after the messy garbage and insects were cleaned up by Xia, there was a stack of scattered manuscript papers on the floor in the corner of the bedroom.

The manuscript paper was stained with unknown dirt, but the text on it could still be basically recognized.

Lu Ban bent down and picked up the stack of manuscript paper. He saw that there were excerpts from the novel on it.

"...Before heading to Beihan Town, the detectives decided to go to the novelist's residence to see if they could find anything..."