Mayartis wept for a long time until he finally calmed down slightly. With a slight catch in his voice, he said, "Luo Lian, I am truly happy to see you all again." He then looked around, asking, "Where is Li Zeng?"

Old Li spoke from the shadows, "I'm here."

Mayartis looked around frantically and asked me, "Why can't I see him?"

I managed a couple of wry smiles but said nothing; it was better not to let him know the exact situation for the time being. Old Li, shrouded in darkness, adopted an air of profound mystery and asked Mayartis, "How did you end up wandering over here?"

Mayartis’s former arrogance was completely gone. Facing the invisible Old Li, he was exceedingly deferential. "I don't know, either. Not long after I came down, before you and Luo Lian had arrived, I just took two small steps back to give you room. Who knew that just those two steps would leave me completely unable to see anything? At first, I could still hear you talking. I thought something was wrong with me, so I tried walking forward a few steps to find you. The result was complete chaos—not only could I not see you, but I couldn't even hear your voices... Then I was entirely enveloped in a vacuum, with no sound whatsoever... I was on the verge of a breakdown, going mad." As he spoke, Mayartis became agitated again. "Luo Lian, you have no idea how terrifying it is to be in a vacuum state; it makes you break down, truly it does."

How could I not know? I had only just experienced that exact condition myself and nearly lost my mind. If he hadn't appeared in time, I might have already gone insane.

After chatting for a while longer, Mayartis inquired about the whereabouts of Hans and the others. Old Li and I both claimed ignorance. Mayartis likely assumed Hans and the rest had met with misfortune. He said in a heavy voice, "Rest in peace, my dear companions." Yet, there was no trace of sorrow on his face; a hint of satisfaction was subtly discernible.

I couldn't worry about their affairs. The most crucial thing now was to get out! To find the exit and return to the normal human world. I cared nothing for whatever immortal life this place offered. I just wanted to go back to being an ordinary person; I had endured enough!

"Mayartis, you are a geologist; do you have any idea what's going on here?" Old Li asked gravely from the darkness.

Mayartis was clearly still unused to not seeing Old Li, yet being able to hear him speak at such close range. He replied vaguely, "What's going on? I... I don't know... Let me think..."

For some inexplicable reason, a spark ignited in my mind. "Is it possible this place is divided into many separate spaces, each existing independently, and that's why... why we can't see things from other spaces?" Like the situation between Old Li and us right now.

Upon hearing this, Mayartis immediately agreed. "Yes, that must be it. Didn't I mention earlier that the magnetic field above was chaotic? It’s not strange for spatial-temporal distortions to occur here. This is just a natural phenomenon."

Synthesizing our two perspectives, along with the prior visual and auditory disorientation, the analysis seemed to align closely with what Mayartis had described. My tension eased; as long as it was a natural phenomenon, we could find a way out. Since Mayartis could accidentally stumble into the space I occupied, we could surely figure out a way to reunite with Old Li in the same space.

Old Li's tone also lightened. He told us to keep walking back the way we came, saying that everyone would naturally converge once we got there. Mayartis was somewhat reluctant to go back, fearing that if his companions Hans and the others weren't dead, they might cause him trouble. "They had a fight... I heard gunshots and screams... But... they never treated me as a comrade; they were always trying to kill me! Let's go somewhere else. There should be an exit elsewhere," he suggested.

I interrupted him bluntly. "What if we encounter a situation somewhere else where Old Li and I can't even hear each other's voices?"

Mayartis fell silent, looking chastened. He was extremely respectful towards us now, having completely shed his former opportunistic arrogance.

Old Li didn't say much, continuously directing us forward in the dark, still maintaining a single-file formation, afraid of accidentally stepping into another space.

This time it was strange. Old Li and I had walked for only about half an hour, but now we had been walking for nearly an hour and still hadn't returned to our starting point.

A prickle of fear started in my gut. I repeatedly asked Old Li, "Are you sure you didn't get turned around?" Old Li had a compass; how could he mistake the direction? Knowing my question was foolish, I couldn't help asking anyway.

Old Li answered a couple of times, but as I asked more frequently, he simply grunted in response. Mayartis shadowed me closely, not daring to fall behind even a step. We walked like that for a while longer when, out of the darkness, a sound like a yawn drifted over, as if someone had just woken up.

Fearing I was hallucinating, I quickly asked Old Li if he had heard it. He confirmed he had, repeatedly urging us both to be cautious. No one knew what might be here. The second level had that cocoon; now on the third level, we hadn't encountered any monsters yet. Based on past experience, encountering monsters was normal; not encountering them was abnormal.

Thinking of this, my heart hammered violently again. I was truly scared, or perhaps just numb. If a monster appeared now, we had no idea how to fight back. Currently, besides a dagger, we had no other weapons for self-defense, let alone enough to fight our way out.

But after that single yawn, the sound didn't repeat. I suspected both Old Li and I had experienced a shared auditory hallucination.

Old Li continued to guide us using the compass, but in this darkness, we were all like headless flies—no reference points, no sense of orientation. Walking ten miles felt no different from walking ten meters—other than the physical exertion.

I gradually grew weary and tired of walking. "Old Li, walking like this is pointless," I stated.

Old Li sighed helplessly. "I know it's pointless, but we can't stop. Right now, the only hope is that I might accidentally stumble into the space you two occupy, just like Mayartis did..." Before he could finish his sentence, Old Li suddenly cried out in alarm, followed by a scream that tore through the heavens: "Engineer Luo—!"

Startled, I rushed toward him, shouting anxiously, "Old Li! Old Li!"

"Run—!" A hand grabbed me in the dark, shouting, "Run!" It was Old Li's voice.

Just as I was about to mention that we were in the same space, the area abruptly brightened before me, and I saw Old Li’s face, his features distorted in terror. "Go... Hurry up and get back!" He frantically pushed me aside, following closely behind. Before I could grasp what was happening, I asked, "What is it?"

"The Cocoon Man! There's a living person inside the cocoon!" Old Li spoke while continuously shoving me.

Acting purely on instinct, I glanced behind him. Indeed! A massive white cocoon had cracked open, and a person's torso was sticking out, staring blankly at us, swallowing convulsively, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down. He looked like a Tibetan person, but strangely, something extra was growing on the left side of his body.

Old Li kept pushing me sideways, urging escape. I hadn't seen it clearly, but the look in that person's eyes—once seen, no one could forget it—was like a demon who hadn't eaten in centuries suddenly spotting delicious food delivered right to its doorstep.

But he just watched our frantic scramble silently, making no move. Not even the shell of the cocoon on his body shifted. Even so, it was enough to scare two-thirds of our souls away.

Furthermore, strangely, as soon as it appeared, the spatial distortion we had been experiencing vanished. Mayartis smoothly saw us and joined in our desperate flight.

We hadn't run more than a few steps when something whipped through the air behind us, trailing wisps of cold wind. Turning back, we saw it: the Cocoon Man. The remnants of the cocoon shell on its lower body had extruded countless strands that were chasing us!

The three of us bolted away, running for our lives.

After spitting out the strands, the Cocoon Man slowly, slowly began to stand up. It didn't pursue us itself but relentlessly spat out silk threads in an attempt to ensnare us. No matter how fast we ran, those strands seemed to advance unhurriedly, yet they closed the distance in an instant, nearly tripping my feet several times. We had already witnessed the lethality of the silk-sucking cocoon; we dared not let ourselves be entangled. I was reduced to nothing but desperate flight, my ears filled only with the rushing sound of the wind, and my mind consumed by the image of what happened when those threads wrapped around someone and drained their blood...

After running an unknown distance, the sensation of those cold threads pursuing me ceased. I turned my head to look. Behind us, the air was filled with countless fine, snow-white filaments dancing wildly, but they were no longer advancing, as if their reach was limited and they couldn't catch up.

I didn't even have the strength to breathe, feeling as though I could only exhale but not inhale. "Old... Old..." I tried to call for Old Li, but I couldn't form a complete word. I could only gasp, and once I regained a little strength to turn my head, I checked my surroundings. Thankfully, Old Li and Mayartis were nearby, both panting heavily. It was a relief to see them; I was terrified of suddenly being plunged back into the chaotic, disjointed space. Compared to being alone in a complete vacuum, I would rather run to the Cocoon Man and let it kill me.

"Engineer Luo..." Old Li recovered the fastest and spoke first. "If... if that thing suddenly gains the speed of a zombie again, we can't outrun it."

I shook my head. I didn't know. Now we had nothing; we were utterly defenseless, like fish awaiting the butcher's knife. Having two legs that could run was already a blessing.

However, Mayartis, as if inviting disaster, uttered another sentence that pushed us toward an abyss. He said, "Who knows if there are other Cocoon Men here, or what other monsters exist..."

I gave Old Li a wry look, and he returned one just as rueful. "He's not wrong..."

Before I could reply to Old Li, a burst of gunfire suddenly rang out, followed by a muffled roar from the Cocoon Man, which then began to stride heavily toward us!