Li Ban did a quick sweep outside and found no signs of an ambush.
Afterward, he used the "World Without Me" spell and returned along his original path.
He hadn't known this spell for long, but the more he used it, the smoother it flowed.
When he phased through the camp's perimeter wall and stepped back into the clearing, the monsters' assault was already drawing to a close. Only two beasts remained, barely clinging to the wall in a desperate bid to tear a chunk of flesh from the guards.
'The reason I grasped this spell so quickly... is probably because I truly believe I don't exist in this world,'
Li Ban thought as he walked deeper into the cliff.
'Whether I sneak in or walk in openly makes almost no difference to anyone else in this world.'
Li Ban suddenly understood the true conceptual core of this spell.
He was just a passing traveler in their world.
Entering Cliffside Camp, he immediately spotted Liu Yi and Xie Xiaowu standing in the passageway hall.
The two were deep in conversation.
Liu Yi was resolute, while Xie Xiaowu hesitated.
Passing by, Li Ban caught snippets of their exchange.
"He's marching toward his death, you know. He just entered the Recycling Station and still has hope in his heart. But in the Recycling Station, hope and death are one and the same."
In the Recycling Station, hope and death were exactly the same.
Zhu Yao had expressed a similar sentiment before.
"I know. I never thought about going to the fissure in the Continental Center, but... but you can see the end of a life at the border with a single glance. We just don't know exactly when that end will finally come."
"But once you choose to leave, there's no turning back. You might just end up like Zhu Yao and Lu Shi once did—" Liu Yi dropped his voice to a bare whisper, as if he didn't want even Xie Xiaowu to hear him clearly, "—crawling back like dogs."
Whether Xie Xiaowu heard him or not, her clenched fists slowly loosened, and her stiff neck slumped forward.
She had given up.
Li Ban didn't pause his steps in the slightest for their conversation. He quickly bypassed them and reached the soft rope leading to the Second Level.
The rope hung perfectly still, without a single sway, yet Li Ban had already arrived silently on the cliff's Second Level.
He bypassed the passageway housing the rooms of Lu Shi and the others, walked past camp leader Gu Sa's private corridor, and came to a steady halt before the one passage he had never entered—the one rigged with security systems.
Then—
He stepped inside.
There was not the slightest change in the passageway.
'My aura and spiritual rhinoceros are entirely concealed. The "World Without Me" spell is no longer just targeting individuals; it's beginning to affect objects and other spiritual rhinoceros as well.'
Li Ban strolled down the passageway bristling with surveillance and alarm triggers.
The corridor ran deep. He walked straight for hundreds of meters, rounding several corners.
Behind every corner lurked a hidden sentry, yet not a single one noticed his intrusion.
Li Ban didn't let his guard down just because he had comprehended a deeper layer of the "World Without Me" spell.
After all, the camp leader, Gu Sa, was once a Star Glow Priest. It was impossible for Gu Sa to lack defenses against a spell like "World Without Me."
It was just that such high-level countermeasures definitely couldn't be left active indefinitely.
There simply wasn't enough spiritual rhinoceros.
Li Ban pressed on. Whenever he sensed something abnormal, he would stop and wait for the eerie sensation to fade before taking another step.
Finally, he arrived before a small iron door.
However, the technological sophistication of this door was staggering. Its metal surface was perfectly smooth, and right in the center sat an operating interface resembling a combination lock.
'What's going on? Doesn't the Recycling Station lack electricity?'
'No, it might not necessarily be electrical energy. It could be some method of utilizing spiritual rhinoceros.'
'But even if it uses spiritual rhinoceros as a power source, this thing is still a keypad lock, isn't it?'
If it were just an ordinary heavy door, Li Ban could easily estimate its thickness and phase right through using the "Shrinking Ground to an Inch" spell.
But he could sense a faint, thin membrane of spiritual rhinoceros laced inside the metal.
'A dual-layered defense of iron and spiritual rhinoceros. People without spiritual rhinoceros can't pass the physical door, but if someone tries to use "Shrinking Ground to an Inch," there's no telling when the spiritual rhinoceros trap inside will trigger.'
'Furthermore, there might be someone inside. That layer of spiritual rhinoceros would also block a Priest's observation spells.'
Li Ban had already learned an observation spell from Zhu Yao called the "Spirit Eye Art."
It was just that his mastery of it wasn't proficient enough yet. He couldn't clearly pierce through the door to see the interior, and he highly doubted Gu Sa would let just anyone with the Spirit Eye Art easily peek inside anyway.
This specially forged iron door truly blocked out a vast amount of intel from within.
Suddenly recalling something, Li Ban raised a hand and gently brushed the combination interface on the door.
His body had fused with a powerful, top-tier element named "Virus." This Virus possessed the ability to tamper with operational commands.
However, elements couldn't be used inside the Recycling Station.
He had no way of using the Virus Element to breach the door's technological defenses directly.
But Li Ban remembered that, although he couldn't use the element itself right now, he did have a machine that had already been taken over by it.
He reached into his Cubic Space and pulled out a data reader.
Worried that the Trash Realm's Main Brain could hack into the reader, Li Ban had used his Virus ability to seize control of the device immediately after buying it.
Because of this, if any command didn't originate from him personally, the machine would instantly lock down and become unusable.
This wasn't an elemental ability; it was a technological function that had been modified by the element.
Bringing the reader out, he located its connection port.
He then scrutinized the iron door. Before long, he found a small cover plate and the circuit connection underneath it.
'Although this thing was heavily modified by a Technician, it's still fundamentally a product of a technological world. And it's not even impossibly high-tech—at the very least, it still has circuit ports.'
Li Ban hooked the reader's port up to it. Though the two interfaces weren't a perfect match, the reader he was using had been upgraded by the Main Brain, allowing its port to physically adapt as needed.
He quickly adjusted the interface and linked the two machines together.
Normally, without a power source, the reader would be dead weight. But as luck would have it, the device on the metal door had been activated by Gu Sa through some special method.
Connecting to the door essentially provided the reader with a power supply, booting it back up.
Seeing the screen flicker to life, Li Ban breathed a sigh of relief.
Data began streaming across the display. In a matter of moments, it cracked the password, decoded the local files, and prompted Li Ban, asking if he wanted to open the door.
'This is just an absolute technological crush.'
Li Ban didn't pop the door open immediately. Instead, he had the reader pull up the internal logs to check if the room was occupied.
After retrieving the door's access history, the reader confirmed that no one was inside.
Only then did Li Ban bypass the alarms and command the door to open.
He cracked the heavy metal door just a tiny sliver before slipping inside.
Just as he suspected, the room was rigged with spiritual rhinoceros traps. If he had recklessly phased through the iron door, he would have stepped directly onto the dense minefield of triggers covering the floor.
'They set it up like an infrared laser grid.'
The entire secret chamber was cast from the exact same material as the door. It was as if someone had jammed a massive metal vault directly into the cliff face.
Li Ban didn't doubt for a second that the entire Cliffside Camp had been built around this gigantic safe as its core.
Dodging every trap, Li Ban finally reached the deepest part of the secret passageway.
Upon seeing the scene before him, he drew a sharp, quiet breath.
This wasn't the secret rye plantation he had expected.
But something was definitely being grown here.
Three cylindrical glass vats stood at the very back of the room.
The vats were tinted a dark-brown color, designed to obscure the vision of ordinary people. But Li Ban could see right through them. Inside each of the three cylinders sat a naked human figure, their bodies thoroughly covered in lotus-like root tendrils.
It was as if they were no longer human, but aquatic rhizomes.
Thick patches of grayish-green fuzz grew all over them, making them look like moldy sweet potatoes.
But that wasn't the most terrifying part. What truly chilled Li Ban was the realization that all three of these people were still alive.
One of them even sensed Li Ban's presence and opened their eyes to look at him.
Except, there were no pupils beneath those eyelids—only a patch of rotting flesh dotted with dark brown spots.
Their cores had rotted away long ago.
'Priests... these three are all Priests! Gu Sa is definitely hiding a lot of things from me, and from the vast majority of the camp.'
Li Ban lightly vaulted on top of the three cylinders. Blooming there were white leaves and red flowers.
Some of the flowers had already withered, bearing grayish-white husks beneath them.
The husks had split open as they ripened, and Li Ban saw the incredibly familiar White Seeds inside.
They were the White Seeds used to store spiritual rhinoceros.
Li Ban closed his eyes, finally understanding where the Spirit Rhino White Seeds came from.
They were actually a mutation of the Spiritual Rhinoceros Fruit.
Except, true Spiritual Rhinoceros Fruits were formed when Priests or spirit practitioners actively extracted and condensed their own energy, creating a fruit that could be rapidly absorbed.
These White Seeds, however, were the product of passive, parasitic extraction.
'It seems that in the Continental Center, it's mostly humans fighting monsters. But out here at the borders, it's humans fighting humans.'
'If the continent is truly rotting like Gu Sa said, then ultimately, this whole world will devolve into humanity turning on itself.'
'A fight to the death.'
'And there won't be any winners.'
Li Ban had no idea whether the people sitting inside the glass vats had volunteered for this.
But regardless of those three Priests' intentions, it didn't change the fundamental nature of the situation.
This Recycling Station was designed to make humans eat humans, humans kill humans, monsters kill humans, and humans kill monsters.
In the end, nothing would be left. It would all be wiped perfectly clean.
All to achieve the true goal of wiping every piece of data across the different progress timelines.
This might be a top-level secret to Gu Sa and the others, but to Li Ban, it meant nothing.
He could easily just inject the spiritual rhinoceros he generated from absorbing waste elements directly into empty White Seeds.
But Li Ban also understood the grim reality.
He was just one person. No matter how hard he tried, he could never provide for everyone in the entire Recycling Station.
And he couldn't afford to dream about saving this world before he had even figured out a way to leave it himself.
The Recycling Station was a domain established by the Wizard Lord.
Though he didn't know the exact intent behind it, the rules here weren't something he could casually overthrow on his own.
Unless, one day, he could become the final Wizard Lord that the Black Robe Xiao Suo had once mentioned.
Perhaps only an existence of that caliber could effortlessly bend the entire world to their will.
Tearing his gaze away from the three glass vats, Li Ban turned to search for the room's energy source.
'Since a sealed environment like this was established, there must be something converting the spiritual rhinoceros into usable power.'
While carefully avoiding the room's remaining alarms, Li Ban scoured his surroundings.
However, the chamber was a perfect, barren square. There was no other machinery in sight.
Suddenly, Li Ban stopped and stared down at the floor.
'If the entire room is a sealed box, the core mechanism might be built right into the hull, rather than existing as a standalone machine dumped inside.'
Li Ban meticulously swept his gaze over the floor and ceiling again. Finally, tucked directly behind the three glass cylinders, he spotted an almost imperceptible seam.
He retreated out the door and used the reader to hack open the metal room's energy compartment.
A faint grinding of friction echoed from inside.
Li Ban slipped back in to find that a gap had opened in the middle of the back wall.
He approached, only to find another completely sealed metal box, roughly the size of two palms.
But just as Li Ban prepared to repeat his trick and unleash the reader's Virus to crack the energy box, he suddenly noticed a few lines of text etched into the casing.
[I am the Director.
If you know who I am, or if you're interested in this energy Conversion Box, you can come find me at Wanghai Cliff.
Opening this energy box by any means will destroy its internal structure.
Unless you are a Great Wizard.
Smile.]
'This energy Conversion Box was actually invented by the Director. This guy... he feels even more mysterious than Xiao Suo, who can just constantly resurrect from the dead.'
Li Ban found it incredibly hard to fathom how a single person's fractured spiritual bodies could manifest a "Director" and even produce a "General."
In the end, he didn't lay a finger on the energy box.
After meticulously restoring everything to its original state, Li Ban left the sealed metal vault.
Once outside, Li Ban used the reader to wipe all digital traces of his break-in, severed the connection, and tossed the device back into his Cubic Space.
He retraced his exact steps back out of the passageway, took another leisurely lap outside the camp, and finally walked back inside in full view of everyone.
He arrived just as the Guard Team was changing shifts. Among the current rotation were Chu Ke and Xie Xiaowu.
Spotting Li Ban, Xie Xiaowu reported to her squad leader and jogged over.
"Vice-Captain Li." She reached into her jacket's inner pocket, pulled out a small metal box, and held it out to him.
"What is this?" Li Ban looked down at it, making no immediate move to take it.
Xie Xiaowu lowered her voice. "This is a White Seed I've saved up over the years."
"You saved my life, but... but I don't dare to leave Cliffside Camp—" Admitting her cowardice out loud was agonizing. Xie Xiaowu gritted her teeth. "You're a Priest. You will definitely have more use for this than I ever will. Please, let it take my place and accompany you out there in the world."
Li Ban honestly had no need for the White Seed, but Xie Xiaowu's resolve was absolute.
What she was handing over wasn't just a seed; it was the physical weight of her surrender.
"Alright." Li Ban accepted the box. "This might not necessarily be a bad thing for you."
Xie Xiaowu offered him a deep bow, turned on her heel, and ran back to her squad.
Meanwhile, Chu Ke, who usually loved adventure, stood far in the distance. From beginning to end, she never came over to say a single word.
That, too, was likely her own way of giving up.