Yan Jiu struck out a few times from inside the red silk before stopping to conserve her strength.
Seeing Li Yuan still tearing at the red silk, she quickly tried to stop him. "This is a premium element of the absolute defense type. Without a breakthrough-type element, it will be incredibly difficult to force our way out. I'm afraid we can only wait until the person using this ability exhausts their strength and drops the red silk."
Premium elements were powerful, but utilizing them consumed an immense amount of energy.
Just like Li Yuan's freezing fingers, they could not be sustained for long.
However, Li Yuan's ice seal would not hold for much longer either.
The sixth floor had already begun to warm up. As long as those frozen people were not dead, they would all become their enemies.
Yan Jiu sighed internally. Their plan this time—she feared it was a complete failure.
She glanced at the somewhat panicked Li Yuan, her mind already spinning with alternative schemes. Right at that moment, the red silk enveloping the two of them suddenly vanished.
Thud! Lu Qinghe, who had just been fighting against Qiu She, passed out completely.
In the end, Li Yuan's 7th-tier strength had proven superior, outlasting his opponent.
But just as Yan Jiu was about to seize the opportunity to kill Du An, she saw that one of his hands had fully recovered at some unknown point.
His right hand gripped the long whip, Tendon Puller, and with a light flick of his wrist...
The whip was not aimed at Yan Jiu. Instead, it lashed into the crowd of Myriad Ancient Pagoda members, instantly coiling around Zhou Gu's neck and hoisting the still-frozen man directly into the air.
Yan Jiu knew that Du An, still partially frozen himself, would not waste his energy on something useless.
This meant there had to be something on Zhou Gu that could break the stalemate.
Thus, Yan Jiu decisively withdrew her palm, spun around, and prepared to kill Zhou Gu first.
By this time, Zhou Gu had been pulled into the air diagonally above her and Li Yuan.
Unwilling to waste a second, Yan Jiu threw the dagger in her hand.
Suspended in midair, Zhou Gu had just regained consciousness. Seeing the dagger streaking toward his heart, his eyes went wide.
But he was utterly helpless. He could only watch as the blade pierced the softening ice, sank into his chest, and burst out through his back.
After killing Zhou Gu with a casual strike, Yan Jiu caught sight of Du An out of the corner of her eye—he was actually smiling.
"Ah, he lost the bet."
What did that mean?
Just as Yan Jiu was about to frown, a sudden explosion rang out overhead.
Bang!
Zhou Gu's corpse abruptly exploded in midair!
Mutilated chunks of flesh, accompanied by a bizarre black-red liquid, sprayed in every direction.
Carried by momentum, the shower of gore fell squarely toward Yan Jiu and Li Yuan.
However, neither of them were ordinary people. Naturally, they would not just stand there and let such a strange substance rain down on them.
Yan Jiu immediately raised her gold-powder-coated arm to shield her head, simultaneously retreating to get out of the corpse's blast radius.
Li Yuan was far more arrogant. He simply scoffed and manipulated the surrounding wind pressure, ensuring that none of the falling debris could come near him.
Yet, something bizarre occurred.
As Yan Jiu retreated, two droplets of the black-red liquid still managed to land on her arm.
The moment the blood struck her supposedly invulnerable golden body, it immediately corroded two small holes into her skin.
Not only that, but when Yan Jiu lowered her arm, she discovered that the gold powder around the wounds had changed color.
It was no longer gold, gradually turning into a copper-red hue instead!
Did Du An know I was an enemy all along and prepare an element to counter my golden body?
Elemental counters were certainly troublesome, but they were not terrifying.
It was like how water could extinguish fire; if the fire was large enough, it could evaporate the water in return.
But just a few splashes of Zhou Gu's black blood had actually corroded Yan Jiu's golden body, even causing a qualitative mutation.
What the hell is that black blood?
It was infinitely more potent than the counter-element they had prepared for Wan Chengming!
Just as Yan Jiu's heart swelled with shock and suspicion, she suddenly heard Li Yuan scream.
Falling like rain, the black blood bypassed his wind pressure without the slightest resistance, landing directly on Li Yuan's head and body.
A sharp, sizzling sound of corrosion immediately erupted from his skin.
Shock reached Li Yuan's brain a split second before the pain did. The Grand Prince froze for a moment before unleashing a bloodcurdling scream.
He clamped his hands over his face in agony, which only caused the skin on his hands to begin corroding as well.
He opened his mouth to scream, allowing the black blood to seep into his oral cavity, and plumes of white smoke began billowing from his mouth.
Yan Jiu was completely dumbfounded.
Even if the black blood countered her gold powder, how could it simultaneously counter Li Yuan's wind pressure?
Not to mention, the sheer cold radiating from Li Yuan should have been enough to freeze the black blood solid again.
But the black blood acted as if it existed outside the rules of elemental interactions altogether. It splashed directly onto her and Li Yuan, bringing with it immense agony.
Soon, Li Yuan stopped screaming and raised his head, his eyes bloodshot.
The black blood had nearly flowed into his eyes earlier, but he had wiped it away with his hand.
The price for that action was yet another festering wound on his hand.
As bizarre as the black blood was, it had ultimately failed to take his life.
Yan Jiu, having dodged so cautiously, only had two droplets land on her body.
Still, as she stared at the wounds on her arm, a sudden sense of dread washed over her. Her breath caught in her throat, as if a far more terrifying fate was waiting in the shadows.
This dread only deepened when she noticed that both Wan Chengming and Du An had fully broken free of the ice—yet neither made a move to ambush them.
They kept their distance, as if terrified of touching them or that black blood. "This isn't poison, nor is it a curse," Li Yuan said viciously.
Having Bai Yuechan by his side, Li Yuan was rather familiar with the characteristics of curses. He looked up at Du An and growled, "What exactly did you do?"
Du An had already retracted his whip.
Surprisingly, the very tip of the whip that had coiled around Zhou Gu was also corroded.
Oddly enough, the ordinary stone bricks on the floor remained completely unaffected.
It seemed... the black blood only possessed corrosive properties against elements.
And it targeted all elements.
At that moment, Du An finally spoke in a slow, unhurried tone. "Didn't the Grand Prince claim that we were manufacturing Mutated Elements? Here is the damning evidence you have been searching for."
The Grand Prince, whose face was still twitching in pain, froze.
Hiding in the corner after evading the rain of blood, Yan Jiu also froze.
The ice sealing the sixth floor had already thawed prematurely when the Grand Prince's hands were corroded.
Every surviving person heard Du An's words.
Whether it was the Grand Prince's personal guards or the members of the Myriad Ancient Pagoda, everyone was stunned.
The sixth floor of the Myriad Ancient Pagoda fell terrifyingly silent.
Feeling the bizarre sensation on her arm, Yan Jiu asked in disbelief, "Are you insane?"
Li Yuan, meanwhile, was so shocked he could not even speak. The situation had completely spiraled out of his control.
A Mutated Element had actually been used on his own body?!
He desperately wanted to scold Du An for spouting nonsense.
But a faint, gnawing intuition deep inside told him that Du An was telling the truth.
Aside from a Mutated Element capable of single-handedly destroying an entire province, what other power could bypass all elements and indiscriminately corrode any element it touched?
The sheer thought that he might have been infected by a Mutated Element made Li Yuan begin to tremble uncontrollably.
Thwack!
At the sudden sound, everyone turned—only to be horrified by the sight of Yan Jiu completely slicing off her black-tainted left arm!
She had not just amputated the forearm; she had severed the entire arm all at once. It was an incredibly decisive move, proving just how ruthless she could be to herself.
And her doing so proved one thing: she believed Du An was not lying.
But while she could chop off her arm, Li Yuan could not exactly chop off his own head.
Yan Jiu's decisiveness only magnified Li Yuan's mounting terror.
At that moment, Du An spoke while peeling away the shattered ice covering his body.
Only, he was not addressing Li Yuan. He was speaking to everyone else in the room.
"You all should know about the Nihility State. If you do not want Yu Province to become a second Nihility State, then you had better kill Li Yuan before his mutation finishes. If you wait any longer, he will become a new Contamination Source, and you will all be buried right alongside Yu Province."
For the time being, no one made a move.
Li Yuan's identity and the oppressive aura of a high-tier Spirit Practitioner made everyone hesitant to act rashly.
One of the 4th Tier Spirit Practitioners brought by Li Yuan sternly rebuked him. "Bullshit! The Contamination Source in the Nihility State is something even a Priest cannot replicate. Only a Wizard Lord can control it. What gives you the right to claim that your Mutated Element is a Contamination Source?"
Du An chuckled. "Following the Prince, you certainly know quite a bit. However, if you do not believe me, you can just ask Li Yuan why his element failed to block that gore."
Li Yuan remained silent.
The wounds on his body were horrific. Smoking and blackening, his skin looked as if it had been doused in potent acid.
Furthermore, amidst the dead silence of the sixth floor, strange noises echoed from within his body—like the sound of something dissolving.
In an instant, all eyes shifted back to Li Yuan.
They desperately hoped that this Grand Prince, Prince Li, this 7th Tier Spirit Practitioner, could firmly give them a denial.
They wanted him to tell them that he was fine, that his wounds only looked scary, and that as a 7th-tier expert, he would fully recover in just a few days.
They wanted him to tell them that Du An was just bluffing, that a Contamination Source capable of annihilating an entire province was not something so easily manufactured.
But Li Yuan seemed completely consumed by terror, wholly oblivious to the hopeful gazes of his subordinates.
Gradually, the hope in their eyes began to sour.
It twisted into panic, then disbelief, and finally, into a savage ferocity.
The subordinates capable of following the Grand Prince into the Myriad Ancient Pagoda were certainly not cowards afraid of death.
However, none of these people were solitary desperadoes with nothing to lose.
They all had families, clans, factions, and powers backing them.
Whoever they were, absolutely no one wanted Yu Province to turn into another Nihility State.
Even though they were not the masterminds behind the Mutated Elements, if they let Li Yuan mutate into a Contamination Source and escape, they would be branded as sinners!
Whether their sentence was light or heavy, the end result would be death.
It was just a matter of how many people would be implicated in their downfall.
The crowd wavered.
A clamor of whispers broke out.
Li Yuan knew things could not go on like this.
Forcing down his inner dread and physical agony, he spoke in a dark, gloomy tone. "Don't listen to his nonsense! A 6th Tier and a 4th Tier actually think they can recreate the Contamination Source of the Nihility State? In their dreams!"
Standing beside Du An, Wan Chengming threw his head back and laughed aloud, mocking him. "Prince Li thinks this is just a dream? Then why did you use this very excuse to try and kill me earlier? Didn't you also find evidence in the Death Prison? It is a shame that your evidence was just a pretext, but ours is not."
Yan Jiu also spoke up. Her voice was trembling slightly.
"Don't forget! You—you are the ones manufacturing the Contamination Source! Neither the Wizard Lord nor the Imperial Court will ever let you off! They will make you wish you were dead and execute all ten generations of your families to be buried with you!"
She was still panicking.
Despite chopping off her arm, that lingering sensation of her insides being corroded had not completely vanished.
It sapped the confidence from her words.
Wan Chengming swallowed a vial of pills.
He had suffered quite a few injuries in his battle with Li Yuan just now.
"Has Hall Master Yan forgotten? Du An and I are both orphans who crawled out of the River of Forgetfulness. We have no clan."
Wan Chengming's relaxed smile gradually twisted into a savage sneer that even his full beard could not hide.
"If they aren't willing to kill you, then having a prince and a princess accompany us in fading into nothingness is still something worth celebrating."
"No, this won't do! We can't let Yu Province become a second Nihility State!"
Surprisingly, the first to make a firm decision was Wang Ying, a 3rd Tier Spirit Practitioner serving under Gao Jingyan.
His eyes were hollow, and he shook his head constantly, as if hypnotizing himself. "My entire family is here... my parents, my children. Yu Province absolutely cannot become another Nihility State."
Du An indifferently delivered a crushing blow. "Not just Yu Province. If the quarantine fails, the neighboring Langzhou and Tu Province will also be dragged down with it."
After saying this, Du An looked up at the panic-stricken Li Yuan.
"Your Highness, I know you hold immense wealth and power, but right now—it is your very power that wants you dead."
Li Yuan's expression morphed rapidly until, completely ignoring Wan Chengming beside him, he charged madly at Du An.
"I'll kill you first!"
"Kill him!!!"
"Kill them!!!"
Li Yuan's scream was instantly drowned out by the thunderous roars of countless people present.
Once a dam burst, the floodwaters were unstoppable.
Li Yuan's sudden outburst acted as the final spark that ignited the rest of the crowd.
Now, with the sole exception of Yan Jiu, everyone in the room had become his enemy!
Wan Chengming stepped to the side, shielding Du An.
Du An merely curled the corners of his lips. Fanning out the Tendon Puller long whip once again, he whispered, "Come on."
Meanwhile, Li Ban had never dropped his Invisibility.
He was waiting.
With the mission assistance system counting down the time for him, he truly understood what it meant for seconds to feel like years.
Seeing that the sixty minutes were almost up, the seventh floor remained unnervingly peaceful.
No one had attempted to breach the main doors, though the sounds of slaughter continued relentlessly outside.
None of them knew what was happening out there, nor who was currently gaining the upper hand.
Amid the tense standoff between Zhai Liu and Chen Dong, Li Ban's nerves were stretched taut.
He had no idea if Zhai Liu would suddenly snap in the next second and attack them.
Zhai Liu had always given off a very mild-mannered vibe, occasionally even coming off as a chatterbox.
But during their subsequent interactions, Li Ban had gradually realized just how dangerous this man was beneath that placid exterior.
He believed that if not for the curse weighing him down, the abilities of Zhai Liu's identity would not necessarily be any weaker than Li Yuan's outside.
Right now, the ocarina that Zhai Liu had schemed so long to obtain was resting in Li Ban's hands.
He was certain that as long as he completed the transfer of the Core Element, the mission assistance system would prompt that the task was finished.
In order to successfully extract the element, he had to log out immediately.
And Chen Dong, being a senior researcher and the Director's assistant, would certainly log out as quickly as possible as well.
The undercover agents gathered on the seventh floor would be completely unable to explain their actions; the only option awaiting them was a death-triggered logout.
Therefore, under normal circumstances, Zhai Liu would be able to claim the ocarina and Bai Yuechan's heart's blood after they logged out.
Given Chen Dong's temperament, he would not deliberately make things difficult for Zhai Liu over this. But if the Director wanted to keep the character of Bai Yuechan alive, Chen Dong would likely break his agreement with Zhai Liu without a second thought.
Compared to satisfying the Director's demands, Li Ban was far more inclined to preserve his relationship with Zhai Liu.
After all, no one ever promised that obtaining the Core Element meant they could permanently detach from the Wizard World.
Even if Li Ban had to switch accounts and start over in the future, this was still a valuable connection to leverage.
Keeping one hand pressed against the mist-like Core Element and the other stroking the ocarina, Li Ban made his decision.
His gaze then fell upon the Core Element right in front of him.
This smoky substance, resembling a cluster of grapes, was the very Core Element the Laboratory had sacrificed untold amounts of manpower and resources to pursue.
He did not know what the Laboratory intended to do once they acquired it.
Time ticked away, drop by drop.
Jiang Yue hobbled back into the room.
"The noises outside the doors have stopped."
Heavily injured by Zhai Liu, she was still coughing up blood. But since Chen Dong needed to keep an eye on Zhai Liu, only Jiang Yue and another person were available to check the situation outside.
Jiang Yue's nerves were so strained that she had no way to heal in peace.
This body was already ruined; she only wanted to wring the last drop of value out of this character.
Using the wall for support, Chen Dong stood up. "They must have decided a victor. But they will still need some time if they want to break into the seventh floor. Jiang Yue, go guard the entrance and do not leave your post."
Jiang Yue nodded and painfully trudged away.
Zhai Liu curled up in the corner, staring intently behind Chen Dong—staring straight at that patch of empty space.
If the person hiding behind Chen Dong was merely invisible, Zhai Liu was confident he could still kill them and snatch the ocarina.
His nails scratched lightly against his pant leg over his knee, gradually tearing a hole in the fabric.
Chen Dong had said he needed an hour.
If someone broke in during this time, Chen Dong actually expected Zhai Liu to help hold them off.
Zhai Liu certainly did not consider himself a good guy.
He was ready for the other party to go back on their word at any moment, and he was equally ready to strike during the chaos!
Nearly an hour had passed by now. This was the moment closest to success—and also the easiest time for a person to let their guard down.
The invisible person was definitely near that cluster of smoke, and Zhai Liu's power could effortlessly cover that small area.
Invisibility required circulating the power of the spiritual rhinoceros. As long as Zhai Liu used his water-controlling abilities to crush the man's heart, the other party would instantly reveal themselves, and Zhai Liu would be able to see the ocarina again.
This time, he would not let the ocarina slip away.
They were just a bunch of little bugs. Missing last time was merely a fluke; this time, he would easily squash every single one.
Since it was the 5th Tier Chen Dong standing guard against him...
...the invisible person inside was likely below the 5th Tier.
However, if he wanted to instantly kill a 3rd Tier or 4th Tier using just his water manipulation, Zhai Liu's current strength was not quite enough.
That was fine. Zhai Liu still had other methods.
The starving ghost curse suppressed him, but in certain aspects, it could also serve as a powerful aid.
Zhai Liu slowly rested his head on his knees, wrapping his arms around his legs and hiding his hands beneath his arms.
It was a closed-off, self-protective posture that would lead Chen Dong to believe he had no intention of attacking.
But under the cover of his arms, Zhai Liu slowly and firmly bit off his own middle finger.
He chewed on it silently.
After so many years, he finally had meat to eat.
Chen Dong kept his eyes locked on Zhai Liu without blinking.
With just five minutes remaining, the man suddenly shifted his posture.
Is he trying to look harmless? Or has he just run out of patience?
Or does he have some ulterior motive?
This concerned the Laboratory's ultimate goal. It concerned the Leader's orders. With victory practically in sight, he could not afford to relax even for a second!
Suddenly!
A strange noise echoed from the main doors, followed by panicked cries from Jiang Yue and her companion.
The exact moment Chen Dong's attention slipped, a blinding pain seized his heart!
It felt as though a hand had reached directly into his chest and crushed his beating heart.
Chen Dong involuntarily doubled over, gasping desperately for breath to relieve the unbearable agony.
At the same time, it dawned on him in a flash—this was Zhai Liu's doing!
How did this man suddenly become so strong?