Chapter 567: Light Pollution Level Off the Charts

His presence is extremely low, even arriving at Tianmian City before Bai Mu Yun, yet he happens to belong to the Mutation Department.

He had some dealings with Ying Duo, but since leaving Tianmian City, he has almost never seen her.

When Bai Mu Yun was alarmed, there was a person who was not pulled into the temporal rift, yet silently vanished from everyone's sight.

Because he is inconspicuous, he can infiltrate everywhere.

Because he is inconspicuous, even if he disappears, no one cares.

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【Luo Jinyou: This way is clear!】

Luo Jinyou's right hand is clawed, scales covering his arm, and his claws, as if cutting iron like mud, easily break the massive stone blocking the passage entrance.

Luo Jinyou is skilled in geology, so he knows how to apply force without causing their hard‑won retreat route to collapse, and finally uses his ability to form a jade block at the doorway to block spores from drifting in.

Shen Zexi asked him to find a way to inform Qi Junyi and the others of the evacuation direction, then began discussing with several people how to get across.

If we wait any longer, those spores will completely block the vehicle door, and that will be a true dead end.

Yang Yixie knows this clearly, but it does not stop him from not wanting to crawl into the worm tunnel.

Leaving aside why there are such a network of tunnels everywhere underground, just entering a place like this would require his equipment to be banned.

Overly narrow passages prevent the mech from being deployed, and fearing collapse, many high‑damage weapons and items cannot be used.

That almost nullifies most of the preparations he had made.

After all, any weapon with increased firepower is larger, and the Engraving Rune circuits and alloy materials inside cannot be extracted underground.

"Do we really have to go in?"

Hearing Ying Duo's low mutter, the few managed to hear his unwillingness in that completely flat tone.

Before they could speak, Xi Ren Sheng had already hooked a hand onto his shoulder and showed him the Team Channel.

"Partner, the other one outside has already turned into this miserable state."

Xi Ren Sheng showed Ying Duo Chi Jinan's current condition: Chi Jinan's Blue Bar is down to one‑third, the Blood Bar shows obvious fluctuations, but it's unclear whether he was injured or self‑inflicted.

But from the mini‑map, Chi Jinan appears to be moving at high speed, perhaps also looking for a place to take shelter.

Facing this level of light pollution, it's a miracle that Chi Jinan could fight the alien flora outside for so long.

Finally, they followed Shen Zexi's plan and decided to head to that passage for shelter.

Luo Jinyou tried exploring a section of the passage; it was bottomless, but at least it was fine for all of them to go in for shelter, and continuing deeper might even reveal another exit.

Since the transfer to that side was confirmed, Ying Duo didn't go outside into the blizzard with them, but headed straight to the endpoint to wait.

Anyway, they'll have to go deeper sooner or later, so it's better to let him and Xi Ren Sheng scout inside.

Ying Duo gave Xi Ren Sheng a look, Xi Ren Sheng understood instantly, waved goodbye to the few, and said, "Good luck, you guys~"

Xi Ren Sheng deliberately elongated his voice, and under the gaze of the few, turned into a playing card, hopping into Ying Duo's hand.

"Not crowding with you."

Ying Duo held the mischievous playing card in his hand, slipped it into the Game Backpack, then activated 【Teleport】; his whole body turned into a Data Stream and tunneled from under the vehicle into the ground. Though moving through soil and stone drained a lot of Blue Bar, the short distance made it fine.

Instead of transferring here with Shen Zexi and the others, Ying Duo plans to take Xi Ren Sheng to open a map first.

After teleporting into the passage Luo Jinyou had marked on the mini‑map, Yang Yixie released Xi Ren Sheng again, ready to explore deeper; with the mini‑map, they couldn't get lost inside.

The passage is dark, but these routes don't seem man‑made; they resemble naturally formed caverns.

Yang Yixie always feels that the underground here is certainly not a place they can use for temporary refuge; it's no longer just a matter of personal dislike, merely a plain deduction.

He didn't see with his own eyes how those gigantic, tree‑sized mushrooms suddenly sprouted; he only knows that Fang Zhiyan set him up, causing him to miss something.

Fang Zhiyan should understand his party system; even if he didn't cram the whole carriage into his backpack, he could still call for someone to pull him out.

But why did the accident happen precisely after he entered the carriage Fang Zhiyan had prepared?

That carriage was clearly a cage that Fang Zhiyan had a specialist forge; the material is sturdy, and everywhere on it are Engraving Runes of isolation and restraint.

As for those mushrooms, since they grew from underground, he leans toward another hypothesis of his own.

Those mycelia split, spread, and devour in places unseen by people, having long become part of the soil.

Only when some external stimulus—like someone using chemicals or spreading energy fluctuations—occurs, do the long‑rooted mushrooms fully erupt after receiving "irrigation".

What Shen Zexi found wasn't an escape route, but a path leading to a secret Core.

The ground beneath their feet seemed to emit a low hum, as if the subterranean mycelial network were resonating with each other.

"Does it feel like a toxin‑run?"

Ying Duo suddenly voiced the thought; he and Xi Ren Sheng kept moving along the passage, because they knew Ying Duo was contemplating the situation, and Xi Ren Sheng chose to stay quiet and not disturb.

"Huh? Indeed."

When Ying Duo said that, Xi Ren Sheng immediately nodded in agreement; it would have been fine if Ying Duo hadn't said it, but once spoken, it felt eerily familiar.

Those spores swirling in the air are the 'toxin circle' that pushes them deeper, shrinking bit by bit, leading them toward danger.

The two kept moving forward, and after a long while, they finally saw a glimmer of light.

At the moment they chose to go deeper, Ying Duo handed Xi Ren Sheng a mineral lamp from his backpack; the bright light immediately dimmed the eerie Ying Guang Lu ahead a bit.

On the rock wall, they discovered some 'scars'.

Rather than scars, they look more like marks left after something forced the passage open.

"I've been wanting to complain earlier—doesn't the light pollution level here seem a bit too high?"

Xi Ren Sheng couldn't hold back and spoke up; besides the light pollution, the uniform Ying Guang Lu color matches exactly what's on Ying Duo's head.

"I recall, partner, you fused that god's fragment, right? That god can't just be a lump of Ying Guang Lu, can it?"