Perhaps because of the drastic emotional shifts, Li Ban could sense that Ye's condition was noticeably deteriorating.
And the deterioration was accelerating.
But having unexpectedly found someone resembling a living person here in Nihility State, he didn't want her to dissipate meaninglessly.
"Priest Xiu Ye, I need to know what happened in Nihility State back then. Can you tell me?"
Xiu Ye slowly opened her eyes. "Even if I wanted to, there is no time."
She looked down at her hands. "There is no time left."
When Priest Xiu Ye first woke up, she had been desperate to go save people.
Now that she knew decades had passed, that there was no one left to save—and that she herself was already dead—the conviction sustaining her naturally collapsed.
Li Ban stepped forward. "Forgive me."
In the next instant, she appeared inside Li Ban's Cubic Space.
Li Ban was already a Dark Moon Priest. His Cubic Space was now eight units in volume, more than enough to accommodate a person.
Although for a Dark Moon Priest, a storage space of eight units sounded rather small.
But a Cubic Space was not merely a storage realm.
It was a small world belonging to the priest, the prototype of the realm that would form once their wizard embryo took shape.
If the Cubic Space was too large, the priest would be unable to withstand its laws and suffer a backlash.
Although Xiu Ye was only a Cloud Hidden Priest, she understood how the Cubic Space worked.
The moment she entered, she realized that this man calling himself "Zhong Ye" was also a priest—and a powerful Dark Moon Priest at that.
"Of course. I'm so confused. How could anyone walking in a place like this not be a priest?"
Xiu Ye realized that inside this space, the collapse of her soul had slowed drastically. Ambient spiritual rhinoceros was even actively entering her body to help repair her soul.
While it couldn't reverse her death, it would prolong her remaining time.
Xiu Ye looked around. Invisible barriers bordered the space.
She didn't disturb the items Li Ban had stored here, instead slowly sitting on the ground and hugging her knees.
"What is the point of consuming your spiritual rhinoceros to save someone who is doomed to die?"
Li Ban continued walking through the fog, communicating with her via the Telepathy Technique.
"Since you are doomed to die anyway, you might as well tell me about Nihility State before you go."
Outside, Priest Qian Que and the others were still in disbelief after seeing Xiu Ye's figure.
But right at that moment, a dense swarm of monsters emerged from the surrounding fog.
Priest Ai Jing sent out her divine sense and found the entire detectable range of over two hundred meters completely packed with them.
"We're surrounded," Priest Ai Jing warned the group. "These monsters aren't simple."
Priest Hao Yang, standing on the outermost edge, raised his longbow. Without nocking an arrow, he drew the string and fired.
A bolt of lightning formed into an arrow before rapidly shooting forth.
Bearing a blinding light, the arrow flew into the dense fog, dispersing enough of the mist to allow the others to clearly see the monsters.
Priest Qian Que spoke with a solemn expression. "These are the mud monsters Priest Ban showed me before. But at the edge of Nihility State, they had almost no offensive power and didn't attack unprovoked."
Chu Qi followed Priest Hao Yang's lead and began attacking. "It seems that as we get deeper into Nihility State, they gain courage."
Cat Girl didn't know many techniques yet, so she stayed in the center of the group, watching the priests from the Mist Realm and the Myriad Ancient Pagoda eliminate the monsters.
However, she no longer felt the sense of inferiority she once had.
As long as she had a goal to strive for and a path upward, she firmly believed she would climb to the top.
Meanwhile, Priest Zhan Yan, having already chopped apart many mud monsters, noticed something in the muck. He reached in and pulled it out.
"Wu Hai, look at this. What is it?"
Another Mist Realm priest, Wu Hai, turned to look. He furrowed his brows. "Is this... a finger bone?"
"Let me see." Priest Ai Jing reached over and took the bone from Priest Zhan Yan's hand.
She inspected it and quickly confirmed, "It's a human finger bone. Check if all the mud monsters have them."
The five combat priests began searching the remains of the fallen enemies while continuing to fight.
Very quickly, they recovered bones from inside a dozen or so mud monsters.
They weren't just human bones; there were animal bones as well.
These bones were located in the centers of the monsters. They looked ordinary, but if they truly were, they wouldn't be inside the creatures to begin with.
"Strange. We studied these mud monsters before, and they don't contain any special energy. So why are they so hard to kill here in the depths of Nihility State?" Priest Hao Ze gritted his teeth.
The mud monsters were incredibly numerous. They had arrived silently, entirely encasing the group.
They would shatter one batch and step forward, only to find layer upon layer still waiting beyond.
Because of the thick fog, they had no idea just how many of the creatures besieged them.
Cat Girl moved with the group. From time to time, she stepped on chopped-up chunks of mud underfoot, inevitably splashing it onto herself.
Unless she could fly, there was no avoiding it.
Glancing around, she noticed that everyone else was spattered as well.
The monsters didn't possess much lethal power; a single strike was enough to kill one.
"Could this mud be poisonous?" Cat Girl asked.
"There is no poison. But even if there were, we have nothing to fear," Priest Wu Hai reassured her. "I am quite adept with poisons, Priest Cat Girl."
"Even so, we still need to be careful," Priest Qian Que reminded them. "This is the depths of Nihility State. Some of the rules here might differ from what we know."
"Understood," the group replied in unison.
Thus, in the ensuing battle, everyone took care to dodge the mud and cleaned off the splatter already on their bodies.
They hacked and slashed their way forward for hundreds of meters, yet the monsters around them didn't seem to decrease in number.
Meanwhile, Priest Xiu Ye—whom they had pulled from the ice crystal—grew increasingly dazed.
She hadn't spoken a word since emerging. Priest Qian Que had been supporting her with a technique all along, bringing her along with the group.
Suddenly, after being in a daze for so long, Priest Xiu Ye reached out and grasped the arm of Cat Girl, who was closest to her.
Cat Girl failed to react in time. The instant she was grabbed, words like "spy" and "betrayal" flooded her mind, and her ears perked up in alarm.
But when she turned her head, she saw Priest Xiu Ye looking at her with a mournful, weeping expression.
"Save... save them!"
Before Cat Girl could even ask, Priest Xiu Ye breathed her last right in front of her. Her arm dropped to her side, and her head slumped.
Priest Qian Que glanced over. "Her life force was completely depleted. She wasn't going to survive."
Priest Ai Jing was equally unsurprised. "The ice preserved her life force, but breaking it brought about her death. A truly despairing fate."
Cat Girl bit her lip. She was usually a cold and aloof person, but in the moment she met Xiu Ye's eyes, she felt an indescribable sorrow.