Under Bando’s lead, Zhou Bai followed him into the laboratory. Bando looked at the Bando inside the cultivation tank that only had its upper torso and said coldly, “That was the old me.”

“Practicing primordial spirit power requires breathing Spark, but nowadays, the Heavenly Tao has been distorted, and the Spark has been contaminated. Breathing Spark and conforming to Heaven means gradually synchronizing with the distorted Heavenly Tao. If your will is not strong enough, you might end up like that….”

“So that’s why,” said Christina. “No wonder you’re fine, Zhou Bai. Your primordial spirit power is raised directly by the system. You didn’t practice it yourself.”

Zhou Bai’s mouth twitched as he looked at Bando with caution. The situation is unclear right now. He’ll increase some Primordial Spirit Value later to calm down.

“Teacher cut off an undamaged part and replicated a new me.” Bando sighed after glancing at the deformed person inside the cultivation tank and then turned to look at Zhou Bai.

Halfway through his sentence, he paused and stared at Zhou Bai, who was lying on the floor. He sounded very perplexed. “What are you doing?”

Zhou Bai said casually, “Nothing, I’m tired, so I’m resting. Don’t mind me. Please continue.”

“Looks like you’re about to go mad too…” Bando shook his head. “The cost of obtaining primordial spirit power is too great.”

As he said this, he walked over to a spot on the wall, which opened into a secret door. “When Teacher sliced me off, he didn’t expect I still had a lingering consciousness and saw the secret he tried so hard to hide.”

As the secret door opened, Zhou Bai’s vision focused.

In his sight, dense corpses filled the secret room.

Children’s corpses were piled neatly in the secret room.

Zhou Bai could even see several corpses of Elsa, Alice, and Bando.

Bando said eerily, “Teacher has been using us to experiment with primordial spirit power secretly.”

“During demon class, without us knowing, he made us directly face the extremely dangerous distorted Heavenly way. Just by being in contact with the sculptures made based on twisted, evil, fallen Heavenly way makes us practice subconsciously.”

“And as soon as we mutate, he will slice off the undamaged portion, and use it to cultivate a new clone person, which inherits the memories from before they mutated.”

“But is the cloned me, still me?”

“Zhou Bai, you and Alice leave with me. Staying here means certain death.”

Zhou Bai looked at the contents of the secret room in horror, many clues linked together in his mind.

‘The crazy talk in the diary…what the professor said about madness…and Bando’s situation.”

‘Christina also said practicing randomly could turn you mad. Is this the situation she was talking about?’

Christina began tossing about in Zhou Bai’s mind. “I think what this Bando said is true. Let’s run away. That Professor Zhuang looks so scary. He’s definitely not a good person.”

Seeing Zhou Bai was still hesitating while lying on the ground, Bando said, “It’s up to you whether you want to leave or not, but I have to take Alice with me. I won’t allow her to continue living in this hell-like world.”

At that moment, shrill cries came from the direction of the hallway. Bando and Zhou Bai’s expressions both changed, and they ran in the direction of the hallway.

In the hallway, under the flickering lights, children’s bodies lay in a pool of blood. None of them were breathing.

Alice was trembling. She stood in the center of the hallway, looking at Bando and Zhou Bai, who rushed over. Her lips were tightly pursed, holding back tears, an expression of fear on her face.

“Alice!” Bando reached out his hand, his primordial spirit power bursting.

But before his primordial spirit power could reach Alice, he saw Alice’s expression freeze. Her head fell to the ground with a thump.

“Ahh!!” Bando raced over, roaring.

…

The little boy walked up to the little black-haired girl who was crying. “My name is Bando, what’s your name?”

The little black-haired girl wiped the tears on her face and said, “My name is Alice…I’m so hungry….”

Bando took out a piece of hardtack from his pocket. “Here, have this.” He watched Alice wolf down her food and said, “Don’t cry. I’ll give you some of my food every day.”

“Really? Then what about yourself?”

“I’m grown up now, and I eat less. And it’ll get better in the base in the future. I’ll bring everyone out to look for food. No one has to go hungry again.”

“Really?” said Alice. “You’re amazing!”

…

Invisible blades shot through the darkness. Bando had already turned into a lump of indistinct flesh, spraying all over Alice.

A hissing sound came from the shadows.

Zhou Bai watched this scene in shock, quickly enclosing his body with primordial spirit power, then controlling it to reach outwards.

Primordial spirit power passed over the corpses on the ground.

Bando, Alice, Elsa…familiar children lay in a pool of blood.

After passing over all the bodies, Zhou Bai’s primordial spirit power came in contact with a rigid, cold, and slippery thing.

Hiss~ hiss~

In the darkness, it slithered on the ground like a snake monster. The monster shrouded in a faint black smoke slithered out, a pair of yellow snake eyes looking at Zhou Bai. It said with some surprise, “Hiss~ hiss…A kid with a high Primordial Spirit Value? I guess this trip wasn’t fruitless.”

Zhou Bai trembled as he looked at the snake, saying coldly, “What are you?”

“Rescue team. I’m the rescue team…Weren’t you the ones who called us over?” The snake monster sized up Zhou Bai curiously, the black smoke around it continuously rolling. “You’re angry? Or scared? Given that you’re pretty strong, I’ll let you have a few last words.”

“Run!” In Zhou Bai’s mind, Christina’s voice began screaming wildly. “Mara! It’s Mara! I remembered! Run away! You can’t beat it!”

Zhou Bai smiled bitterly. The snake monster had already blocked off the path to the door and vent duct. Even if he wanted to run away, he couldn’t.

“You’re Mara?” Zhou Bai tried to buy some time. “Why did you kill them?”

“Does killing…need a reason?” The snake monster laughed. “Just a bunch of useless pigs. I can kill them as I please. You too, just a pig. Why am I even talking to you?”

Whoosh!

The black mist turned into countless blades, stabbing towards Zhou Bai.

His primordial spirit power reached its peak immediately, forming a shield-like barrier that stood in front of Zhou Bai.

In the cracks of explosions, Zhou Bai’s body flew out with the primordial spirit power, then split up into pieces, dropping on the ground.

Zhou Bai’s eyes were wide open, looking at the world that got dimmer and dimmer. Finally, he lost all signs of life.

—

Number of survivors: 1