Wow! The item-dropping rate is really high!

After swallowing a No. 3 throat lozenge, Bai E sat quietly in the darkness to recuperate.

The howling wind above his head, the dark environment, was constantly trying to mire him in a quagmire.

However, having just gone through the most intense battle, the fervent emotions were still echoing in his chest, preventing the gloomy negative emotions from affecting Bai E in the slightest.

He was just contemplating to himself—

Is the ultimate enemy, a demon?

The remnants of the Blood God's words didn't reveal more about the source of his power or the types of demons.

Bai E could only speculate based on the information he already had.

In the depths of the nest, was it a Believer chosen by the demon, endowed with power? Or... the true form of the demon.

If the Blood God, not even the true chosen of the demon, possessed such power, how terrifying was the being that lurked deep within this nest?

Whether it was the true chosen of the Demon God or the demon itself, both likely possessed unimaginable power.

Bai E was not an expert in this field; the little he knew about demons came from asking due to the ratman incident.

He knew that there were many types of demons and that they had different abilities due to different birth emotions; this was the most important intelligence he had gathered.

For example, the uncontrollable plague in the ratman and the blessing of never suffering from disease...

So, judging by the powers demonstrated by the Blood God, the demon power in the depth of this nest was... strength?

Turning fear into strength?

Unilateral authority or a diversified one?

Everything was unknown.

The unknown bred fear more easily...

In the quiet, Bai E listened closely to his own heartbeat.

The seed was still there...

It's impossible to deceive oneself; he still harbored fear towards that unknown entity deep in the cave.

If he didn't overcome it today, every deep night in the future, when recalling this wind-eroded land and its dimness, occasionally hearing the breeze blowing over the plains... would cast him into the deepest abyss.

This is the demon!

Every slight emotion at the beginning will eventually become the loophole for them to invade!

They are omnipresent.

Bai E reached towards his waist, where there... was a 99ml bottle of Exorcism Essential Oil.

A precaution taken before coming, which he hadn't expected to truly come in handy.

Demons... demons!

Feeling almost fully recovered, Bai E stood up, feeling the walls.

It was pitch black in the darkness, and he could not see a thing.

In battle with others, he could rely on blind fighting to sense his opponent's location, but in the face of an unmoving environment, he was truly a blind man...

The Blood God didn't have night vision goggles on him, and it was unknown whether the power granted by the demon allowed him to see in the dark.

Fortunately, the final battleground was not far from where he had encountered the fallen night vision goggles, and Bai E groped his way back in the dark, guided by memory.

It still worked...

The moment he put the night vision goggles back on, the familiar ghastly green perspective returned to his eyes.

The traces of the hourglass left on the ground also returned to his vision.

Following the path he had taken in pursuit of the Blood God, Bai E retraced his steps in the opposite direction.

Before truly entering the depths of the cave, he needed to determine the status of his teammates first.

If possible, he intended to first carry their bodies out to a state of physical safety; only then could he truly open his mind and make an all-out effort.

With the Exorcism Essential Oil, said to truly harm demons, Bai E felt he wasn't without a chance.

True strength was the resolve to act against any adversity, not high-level specialized skills or high-tech weaponry.

Several rigid bodies appeared in his line of sight—

Dashan, Song Ying, You, Tiger...

Facing the fear that surged from within, they were still struggling in the vast sea of the psychic world.

All darkness and eerie howling turned into otherworldly fantasies seeking human lives, and those things they feared the most seemed to bubble up from the depths of consciousness, becoming terrifying illusions that were both real and unreal, tangible and intangible.

When could they escape? Could they escape at all?

No one could provide an answer, and all Bai E could do was carry their bodies out.

Approaching Dashan, who was at the back of the team, Bai E reached out to pick him up by the waist without any guard.

However, the moment his hand touched the body, a surge of darkness instantly flooded into Bai E's mind.

It felt as if he was being tied down with heavy stones and cast into the deep sea that gradually suffocated him.

The boundless gloom, along with the terrifying pressure, compressed every inch of his skin and even seemed to squeeze out the air from his lungs bit by bit.

In the silence, the only sound was his own heart beating wildly in his chest, throbbing as if it could break free from the confines of his ribcage...

"Huff~"

Bai E suddenly stepped back.

His body was numb and cold as if electrified.

The vision he glimpsed was chilling to the bone; was this the psychic world in which Dashan was now immersed?

After taking a deep breath, Bai E, mentally prepared, reached out again without hesitation.

Darkness assaulted Bai E's will, but a trace of clarity always reminded him of his responsibility.

He had to leave this place with his teammates, and he could not fall at this moment or abandon them.

After grabbing hold of Dashan, Bai E didn't hesitate to reach for Song Ying...

Endless darkness twirled overhead, unspeakable unknown fears chased him from behind, and the world seemed to shrink into a chessboard-like square, leaving only the comparatively tiny "self," eternally fleeing from the unknown "fear" that pursued from behind.

Darkness, pursuit.

Completely different from the overwhelming pain of the mountains, underneath Bai E's slightly furrowed brows was a mind besieged by unimaginable spiritual assault.

Yet the hands that tightly embraced the two never loosened in the slightest.

Any change was worth attention.

Compared to when everyone first succumbed, what changes occurred when he made contact with Hu and You's bodies?

Had he defeated the Blood God?

Had he attracted the attention of the "Lord of Fear"?

Did he intend to use the suffering felt by his teammates to bring me down?

Manipulative lowlife!

You, are not worthy yet!

"Bang~"

"Bang~"

Two bodies were thrown inside the carriage...

And then two more bodies were thrown inside the carriage...

Even with comrades on his back, the familiar partners of the past could not offer him any consolation for his spirit.

Every teammate touched by Bai E shared their fear with him; Bai E saw their innermost irrational, illogical, and unruly fears, changing reality and illusion.

He also saw more...

After transporting all members of his team back, Bai E set out again to search for the members of the other two teams.

Everyone was equipped with a special hourglass to record their movement routes, which was not too difficult to track.

Rescuing the bodies of teammates was a natural duty.

If he were to hold a grudge and refuse to help because of their past ridicule… that would be planting a flaw in his heart akin to the Blood God's.

Someone mocks you sharply, and you mock back just as sharply;

Someone looks down on you, and you immediately scorn them in return;

Someone boasts in front of you, and you quickly prove that you are even better;

Someone is indifferent towards you, and you immediately become distant and aloof.

The things you detest can easily turn you into the very thing you once despised.

This is the greatest damage an "enemy" can do to you.

There are demons in this world...

Those heart-manipulating demons await their opportunity at all times.

Bai E absolutely… absolutely will not allow any opportunity that could be exploited by demons!

Not to mention, he needed controlled experiments to verify some suspicions in his heart.

Following the previously agreed-upon exploration areas, Bai E traced the left-behind paths of each warrior and found every scattered member.

This also meant sharing the "fear" of each comrade during the process...

A total of 12 people were recovered.

There were 16 people on the mission in total, minus Bai E, there were three corpses—including the Blood God and two unfortunate soldiers who were killed by the Blood God before Bai E took action.

"Bang!"

"Click..."

As the carriage's side door was about to close, it was stopped by a feeble, delicate palm.

Looking up along the arm, Bai E saw the slowly awakening You and her eyes struggling to open.

"You… where are you going?"

In the endless darkness, a cold sun had risen in her heart, unknown when.

The not-too-blinding light scattered those nonsensical, undefined fears, allowing her to finally, with difficulty, awaken in the real world.

She did not know where the cold sun came from, only that upon awakening, the first sight of Bai E was the one who had once again saved everyone.

Bai E smiled gently, and explained softly, "I'm going to help you break free from the nightmare..."

"Take us… let's leave, just getting away from here will be enough," said You, her voice still trembling, her soft, continuous voice made one feel pity, like a lost and frightened stray kitten.

"We can't leave," responded Bai E, shaking his head gently; his voice was mild but his tone determined.

Compared to the last confrontation with the Bug Race's mental domain, the current spiritual attack had a more enduring impact.

One was simply a violent, unreasonable suppression by force.

But demons took root in emotions; once fear existed in the heart, no place was different.

Even if he led everyone away from that cave, they could not completely emerge from the darkness of the spiritual world.

Just as he had initially speculated, geographical escape had lost its significance.

When facing a higher-dimensional demon that could ignore space, only by truly facing and defeating it in the spirit could one be truly liberated.

In the hearts of all the soldiers present, a seed of fear was likely planted.

No matter where they went, they remained pawns of the Lord of Fear.

More soldiers who were waking up weakly lay in the carriage, looking at Bai E outside the door, "Don't risk your life for us, you're not affected..."

"Yeah… just take us away.'

"The enemy here… is not something you can deal with."

"Tsk!" Several hands pulled open another car door that had already been closed, and those weakly awakened soldiers learned who it was that saved them from that dark cave.

"I apologize for what I said before… you are the bravest soldier."

"Don't enter that cave again, we'll just go back and report the situation."

"Wait for me on the truck, if I don't come back, you guys go back and send a message…" Bai E said, shaking his head with a smile, gently stepping back and slowly, yet resolutely, closing the carriage door.

"I'm not just doing this for you…"

'It's also for… cultivation.'