Living.

After realizing that what Alice had stepped on was not mud at all, but some kind of living biological tissue, most of the people present felt a chill down their spines.

Duncan, on the other hand, found the substances wriggling on the floor rather…disgusting.

Immediately afterwards, he heard Nina's voice from not far away, "Here! And over here!" Shirley also exclaimed, "There's a large patch here, and it's still moving!"

In this mysterious and empty space, there was that dark, mud-like, yet slowly wriggling, strange "substance" everywhere.

"It's everywhere…" Vanna had silently taken the greatsword behind her into her hand, while surveying the extremely spacious "cabin" with a slightly furrowed brow, and said in an extremely serious tone, "Goddess protect us…what on earth is this stuff?"

Morris suppressed the discomfort in his heart, squatted down next to a patch of slightly wriggling "mud," and used a folding knife he carried to stir the edge of the viscous "slurry," his brows tightly knitted.

"I have never seen anything like this, nor have I ever seen similar records in any book," the erudite old scholar said, his voice filled with bewilderment and unease, "This thing looks like a living creature, but its texture is no different from mud, and…it doesn't seem to have any traces of intelligence."

"It's somewhat close to what Tirian described in one of the 'Submersible No. 3's' contents," Duncan said casually, while raising his head and looking deeper into the open cabin.

Nina came to the edge of the group. Illuminated by the faint firelight emanating from Ai, a clump of mud that looked particularly "energetic" was slowly rising and falling in a depression in the floor. She stood next to this depression, bending down and curiously looking at the disgusting substance.

She was a little nervous, but more than that, she had a stronger sense of curiosity.

And in the next second, the mud suddenly moved!

As if in response to Nina's gaze, or as if some blindly wriggling creature was finally disturbed by this large group of uninvited guests in the cabin, the surging speed of the mud suddenly accelerated. Immediately afterwards, a large amount of gas poured out from within, and the surface of the mud bubbled—Nina was startled, and before she could react, the mud suddenly…stood up!

As if a lowly soft-bodied creature had suddenly grown bones, the dark, viscous substance stood upright from the depression, its surface rapidly hardening, congealing, and changing color. In the blink of an eye, it took on an almost human outline, and in the next instant, something resembling a head differentiated from its top, even revealing a human face.

It was a face that resembled Nina's by sixty or seventy percent!

"Wah!" Nina was immediately frightened and let out a scream—even with her considerable courage and cheerful strength, she was still just a teenage girl. Of course, she was greatly frightened by such a terrifying and bizarre scene, so much so that her mind went blank on the spot, and without thinking, she instinctively raised her hand and waved, wanting to push the terrifying thing away from her eyes.

This was a slap with a temperature of 6000°C.

Shirley was the closest. She only heard Nina's scream, followed by a deafening bang.

A dazzling flash of light containing high heat then filled her and A Gou's entire vision—accompanied by this flash of light was a high-heat shockwave sweeping in, as if standing on an erupting volcano.

Nina actually only slapped it once, a very brief slap.

However, the fireball sent out by this slap almost melted and evaporated the entire spherical space with a radius of twelve meters in front of her.

Duncan turned his head and saw the blazing fireball rapidly dissipating in mid-air in front of Nina, while the ground in front of her was covered in bright magma flowing down after the metal had melted. The girl seemed to be still in a daze, standing motionlessly in front of that terrifying molten pit.

"What happened?" Duncan immediately came to Nina's side, placing one hand on her shoulder, the remaining heat waves rising and surging around him.

"Jus…just now tha…that clump of mud suddenly stood up, and turned into my appearance, I…I got a fright…" Nina only came back to her senses at this time. She shrank her neck, her face still showing lingering fear, and pointed in the direction of the strange object just now, "And then I hit it…"

"And then?"

"And then it was gone," Nina said with a mournful face, seeming a little scared, "I didn't hold back my strength, and this whole place turned into molten iron."

Duncan stared blankly at the molten pit on the ground and the molten metal flowing down the nearby walls, then glanced at the "Shard of the Sun" whose face was still full of tension.

No matter what the thing that popped out and startled Nina was, there was no doubt that it was the one who was hurt the most—a 6000° slap would probably leave a psychological shadow for life even for a god of the abyss…

But he still patted Nina's hair, comforting the girl who had been greatly frightened, "Don't be afraid, it's okay, that thing has been beaten away by you…"

While saying that, he turned his head back and glanced at the other people who were still in shock.

Shirley was hugging A Gou, trembling into a ball. Morris was silently pounding his chest. Alice had just picked up her head. Only Vanna was the most calm—she looked at Duncan and shrugged.

"I will never suddenly talk to Nina from behind again." The Inquisitor, who had once slaughtered her way through an entire city-state, said with a solemn face.

"Just a small accident," Duncan helplessly ruffled Nina's hair, then his gaze fell again on the mud nearby that had not been affected by Nina's "Sun Fist," and in the next second, his expression changed slightly, "Wait, these things seem a little off."

With Duncan's reminder, the others finally noticed the changes in the "mud" that covered the entire cabin. All the mud had stopped wriggling.

These things, which had been constantly wriggling and deforming like soft-bodied creatures not long ago, had all come to a standstill at some point, turning into dry lumps as if the mud had been dehydrated. And all the edges of the lumps had extended small, branch-like protruding structures, as if something had tried to escape from the mud, leaving a trace indicating the direction of its escape in the process.

Vanna's gaze swept around quickly. In just a few seconds, she discovered that the traces extending from the edges of all the mud seemed to point in the same direction.

To the deepest part of this dark and vast "cabin."

"There's something in that direction," Vanna said immediately, while tightening her grip on the greatsword in her hand.

At the same time, Duncan also cast his gaze towards the deepest part of the darkness.

A thin line of faint green fire quietly extended from under his feet. When this fire line touched the dry and solidified "mud" on the floor, it instantly burned brightly, turning into piles of "bonfires." Such bonfires were rapidly spreading throughout the cabin, instantly lighting up many originally dark areas!

Looking at the scene of the "bonfires" spreading, Duncan confirmed his initial guess—these mud-like things were a condensation of extraordinary power.

And in the spiritual flames that gradually spread, the cabin, which was too wide to be illuminated by the firelight on Ai's body, finally revealed more secrets to everyone.

They saw the pitted and uneven cabin walls in the distance, as if they had been gnawed by some kind of acidic substance or corrosive creature, the ropes, pipes, and suspicious dark red fiber bundles hanging from the top, a larger number of "mud lumps" that had lost their vitality, and the deepest part of the cabin—

A pile of huge, blurry things squatted there in an unsettling posture, its edges still seemed to be slowly wriggling.

After a little contemplation, Duncan stepped towards the huge and strange "pile."

He did not allow his spiritual flames to erode or burn the pile—although he knew that it should also be "extraordinary firewood" that could be burned, he did not intend to rashly destroy any clues before figuring out what it was.

The others hesitated slightly, but seeing Duncan had already taken big strides forward, they quickly followed behind him.

"Thump—"

Just as Duncan had walked halfway, a sudden sound made everyone stop in their tracks subconsciously.

Morris raised his head and looked in the direction of the sound, realizing that the thumping sound like a heartbeat was coming from deep within the pile of dark accumulations several meters high.

Duncan also stopped, and he stared intently at the strange pile, sensing the fluctuations of the aura around it.

It did not give him any sense of danger.

So he took a few more steps forward.

"Thump…thump…"

More obvious and powerful than before, the sound of a heart beating came from deep within the pile of things. Its edges seemed to be wriggling more obviously than before, and even the entire surface began to rise and fall slowly.

Duncan frowned, and just then, he heard Shirley's voice suddenly sound from behind:

"A Gou, A Gou, what's wrong with you?!"