But when Feng Ze slowly pulled himself up from the ground, I was utterly convinced that this was actually happening.

I strode quickly toward him, telling * and Da Xiong to hold Feng Ze down, lest this thing suddenly lash out and hurt someone.

But before I could reach them, Feng Ze spoke: "Where is this... Didn't I die..."

He looked at his own hands with an expression of utter disbelief.

Then he looked at Da Xiong and * again, frowned, and said, "It seems all this is real. Professor Nie succeeded..."

Hearing Feng Ze speak, the three of us were stunned speechless.

This wasn't a case of a corpse coming back to life, nor was it possession by the Shu Re Algae; this was genuine resurrection!

How was this possible? Once a person dies, the brain decays; thoughts, intentions—everything vanishes. Even if the body's vitality could be restored, the soul would long be gone. Why could a person truly be brought back to life? This defied all science!

Yet, no matter how unwilling we were to believe it, the fact lay right before our eyes.

But the most unexpected thing was that after Feng Ze was resurrected, he didn't look happy; instead, a look of terror crossed his face. He clutched his hair, raving like a madman, "No, no... let me die, none of this is real..."

Then he lunged for Da Xiong's hand, muttering incoherently, "Kill me, quickly kill me... I shouldn't exist in this world anymore..."

Da Xiong grabbed Feng Ze by the collar and demanded, "Tell us quickly, what in the world is going on!"

Feng Ze's face was bloodless, his whole body trembling as he stammered, "Kill me, kill me, it's too late."

As he spoke, he soiled himself completely, and then promptly fainted.

I frowned deeply. Although I knew Feng Ze was timid, to be so frightened that he lost control of his bowels—what a terrifying ordeal that must have been?

In this situation, we hadn't even managed to ask a single question before the fellow passed out. It seemed I would have to investigate myself.

Da Xiong gritted his teeth, dropped the limp Feng Ze, and told us, "Let's go! We need to see what's happening up there!"

Saying this, Da Xiong started rummaging in his back pocket again.

When I asked him what he was doing, he pulled out that almanac and waved it in front of me, saying, "The map..."

"What map?" I asked, confused.

Da Xiong grumbled impatiently, "Haven't you heard the classic saying from Mr. Zhuge Kongming? What is real, feign illusion; what is illusion, feign reality. I drew the map right here in this almanac. You're just too dense to realize this isn't just a simple almanac. Who would have thought an ordinary almanac held such a profound secret..."

I was speechless; I truly gave up on Da Xiong sometimes.

Da Xiong had * shine a flashlight for him, then flipped to a certain page of the almanac and pointed it out to us: "Look, this is the map of this place!"

I glanced over. That page was covered in squiggly, crisscrossing lines, like countless earthworms tangled together. Yet, despite the apparent chaos, there was a certain pattern, a pattern I felt I had seen somewhere else.

So I asked, "Is the terrain here really this complicated?"

Da Xiong nodded and replied, "Of course! If I hadn't gone undercover next to the Old Man, there’s no way I could have gotten this map. If we didn't have this map, you two would have wandered in this tree-hollow labyrinth until you died."

"To tell you the truth, the Ling Yu Temple took extreme measures to prevent outsiders from prying into this secret base. They layered traps and even employed metaphysics and the techniques of Qimen Dunjia—methods that could take a life."

Seeing Da Xiong preening, I wanted to slap him, but I didn't want to alienate him right now. Instead, I asked, "Then how did my grandfather get the map to this place?"

Da Xiong gestured with his chin toward the unconscious Feng Ze lying on the floor and said, "See? They were the advance team. Old Huang's group came here a month ago and brought this map back."

"Old Huang? You mean the leader of the international thieves, Old Huang? Is he really still alive?" I asked in surprise.

Da Xiong replied, "Of course he is. Old Huang was your grandfather's trusted subordinate. See that broken hole in the Crab Monster's secret chamber? Old Huang, Feng Ze, and the others were trapped in that chamber. Everyone else died; only Old Huang blasted a hole and escaped."

"You mean the international thief was also one of my grandfather's men? I never knew Grandpa had such vast influence growing up..." I exclaimed, astonished.

Da Xiong gave me an impatient look and barked, "These are minor details! I'll tell you everything when we have time. The most important thing right now is finding the Old Man, or something far worse might happen."

Just then, * interjected from the side, "Hey, take a closer look. Doesn't the map Da Xiong drew of this place resemble the neural pathways of a human brain?"

Hearing him say that, I looked, and indeed, although the lines were jumbled, upon closer inspection, they bore a striking resemblance to the convolutions on the human cerebral cortex.

At that moment, * and I seemed to realize something simultaneously. We both looked at each other and said, "Could it be..."

spoke before I could: "Do you remember the trap we set in the room with the statue of the young girl?"

I replied, "Of course, I remember! Beneath the floorboards, there was something like the black skin of some kind of animal, and that viscous... slime..."

Da Xiong listened, dumbfounded, and asked, "What slime... What are you guys talking about..."

We didn't have time to acknowledge him. * continued his speculation, "If that's the case, that slime carrying the scent of trees could very well be an exudate from an organ, just like human brain fluid."

Analyzing this far, goosebumps erupted all over my body, because this conclusion was horrifying.

looked at Feng Ze lying on the ground and said, "This fellow probably fainted because he figured this out..."

Da Xiong was utterly bewildered, but he was worried about his grandfather and urged them on, "Alright, are you done talking? If you don't hurry up, I'm leaving without you."

and I snapped back to attention, but our expressions were unusually grave.

Da Xiong pointed to a red line on the map and said, "This is where we just came from; I marked it down. If we follow this line, we can get upstairs."

So, we stopped talking, conferred briefly, and began sprinting forward along the passage.

Although Da Xiong was stout, he ran like a small whirlwind, leading the charge. * trailed behind us due to his injury.

We ran tirelessly, flanked by monotonous wooden corridors that wound endlessly forward.

Da Xiong's route was bizarre; sometimes it felt like we were circling back, but after two loops, a new fork appeared. He would occasionally push open hidden doors or crawl through extremely low openings. If we had tried to navigate this alone, we would surely never have found these hidden mechanisms.

We ran hard for about thirty minutes, only stopping at junctions to confirm the route. Finally, the corridor began to widen, and not far ahead, a flight of stairs leading upward appeared.

The staircase was also constructed entirely of wood, each step about five or six meters wide, with about a hundred steps in total. They looked ancient and weathered, blending seamlessly with the surrounding wooden structure.

At the very top of the stairway was a square exit, radiating a faint blue light. Some vines snaked in around the doorframe, creating a scene that was both mysterious and vibrantly alive.

We looked up, and Da Xiong looked puzzled, murmuring to himself, "That's not right. I remember when I came here with the Old Man and the others recently, there was no light above."

We couldn't concern ourselves with when the mysterious blue light appeared above. We scrambled up the stairs, taking two steps at a time.

In the passage, silent for millennia, the sound of our hurried footsteps echoed and reverberated.

We wondered what lay ahead, waiting for us...