Yet, the corpse seemed stronger than I was. As I slowly shuffled backward, it exerted a sudden force, pulling me forward again.

My heart sank, and just as I was panicking, Nie Chuan fortunately rushed over, braced my arm, and dragged me backward.

The combined strength of two finally overpowered the corpse, which only had flesh on half its face.

We hauled the body out of the pile of corpses through sheer effort.

When it emerged from the heap, we distinctly heard something snap with a brittle crack.

Simultaneously, the flailing, clawing corpse instantly went limp.

Nie Chuan and I sat on the ground, resting for a long time before we could catch our breath again.

At that point, Nie Chuan aggressively demanded, "What was wrong with you just now, walking over there without even checking if it was real or illusion? Do you know how dangerous that was?"

I glanced at him blankly and said nothing.

Seeing my reaction, Nie Chuan’s expression shifted to anger.

I knew he was anxious right now, eager to resolve matters here quickly and leave.

However, his attitude had never been this hostile before; something must have happened.

If it were any other time, I would have argued with him, demanding to know what was wrong, but now, my mood was truly terrible.

The incident with the long-faced man had left too deep a shadow on me, almost to the point of being unable to recover.

All I could think about was: if everything I just saw was real, then how exactly did I die, and how was I turned into an experimental subject by the long-faced man after death? Would I suddenly die like the others in that greenhouse, and would the world then turn pitch black?

Why didn't I even realize I was dead? Did I have any chance of coming back to life? What was the purpose of the long-faced man letting our consciousness remain in this world?

Countless worries, fears, and questions churned in my mind, almost making my entire head feel like it was about to explode.

Just then, Nie Chuan took a deep breath of the foul air, seemingly forcing his anger down, and said to me, "That corpse seemed connected to something. It only lost its vital signs after we broke that connection. Should we check it out now?"

I merely looked at him again, offering no words.

In the firelight, I saw my reflection in his eyes.

I looked gaunt, with sunken eyes, and the whites of my eyes were now completely bloodshot, appearing utterly terrifying.

I was startled by my own appearance, but ultimately, I remained silent.

I squatted to the side, fiercely running my hands through my hair and massaging my temples, trying to calm myself down.

Then, I said to Nie Chuan in a raspy voice, "Go ahead and check..."

Nie Chuan looked at me deeply, a trace of apprehension in his gaze. His lips moved, and finally, he asked, "Are you okay, ...?"

I still didn't answer, just rubbed my messy, bird's-nest hair.

After a while, Nie Chuan told me, "There’s a tube here entering the body through the coccyx, seemingly connecting through the entire spine. Do you want to take a look?"

I needed a full three seconds to process that before slowly leaning closer.

As I approached, Nie Chuan was using his military knife to pick at the rotting skin on the corpse's back.

He carefully sliced open the dark, decaying flesh, and I saw the tube entering through the tailbone—it was about as thick as a little finger.

Once inside the body, it plunged directly into the spinal cord.

Normally, we wouldn't be able to see the interior of a healthy person's spine, but this corpse had been rotting for so long that many fissures had formed in the vertebrae. Thus, we could see the tube passing through the spinal bones and extending into the brain.

Seeing this tube, I suddenly recalled the one inserted into our necks from behind in the illusion. A wave of inexplicable nausea hit me, and I began to retch.

Seeing me like this, Nie Chuan, who was otherwise fine, also started to dry heave.

We were both so thin, which meant we certainly hadn't eaten for a long time in the hallucination; I didn't know what sustained us for so long.

So, after a few bouts of dry heaving, nothing came up, but tears and snot flooded out, making us extremely uncomfortable.

After throwing up for a bit, I told Nie Chuan, "No, I can't take this. Let's get out. I don't care what this thing is; I just want to go back and sleep properly."

Nie Chuan grabbed me instead, saying, "No... We’ve finally found a clue; how can we just leave now... This tube definitely didn't grow out of the corpse, nor does it look like a parasite. It must be a tentacle belonging to some organism living in the corpse pit."

I retched a few more times and said, "Who cares what organism it is, let's leave here quickly! I don't want to stay a second longer."

With that, I staggered toward the direction we came from, my demeanor utterly resolute.

The former me had the strongest spirit of adventure; even if I were to die, I would see things through to the end. But this time, the psychological blow was too great; all I wanted was to escape this place quickly.

Hopefully, after getting out, I could find a safe place to sleep and then discover that everything that happened was just a dream.

However, things didn't seem to be going as I wished. Just as I took a few steps forward, I heard Nie Chuan shout behind me, "*! Wait! That egg-like thing seems to be slowly rising!"

Hearing him, my curiosity got the better of me, and I glanced back.

Then I muttered to myself, "My God, this isn't an egg rising; it's the corpse pit that was concave, slowly bulging upward."

Seeing this, I knew things were bad, and I shouted to Nie Chuan, "Stop looking! The thing underneath is coming out!"

But Nie Chuan refused to leave and turned back to me, saying, "Isn't this perfect! We don't have to go to the bottom of the pit to see what that giant egg is!"

I felt like I could no longer communicate with Nie Chuan; he was simply someone who would risk his life for the truth.

But just as I moved to pull him away, a withered hand suddenly shot up from the ground and seized my ankle.

The hand's grip was incredibly strong; the nail immediately dug into my flesh.

I screamed in pain and quickly bent down, slicing the hand off with my knife.

However, at that moment, I noticed that hands were continuously emerging from beneath the surface, forming a veritable thicket of human hands that made it impossible for me to move forward.

Nie Chuan's feet were also caught by hands, but he seemed completely unaware, staring almost catatonically at the giant egg slowly rising from the corpse pit, his expression growing more and more excited.

At this point, I saw all those annoying corpse flies that had been buzzing around scatter away, and a bone-chilling, ghostly wail echoed in the air.

The cry sounded like thousands of unjustly slain spirits weeping together, deafeningly loud, testing the limits of my sanity.

My heart clenched in terror; I didn't know what was about to happen and could only plug my ears with my hands for the time being.

By now, the black giant egg in the corpse pit had risen to a certain height. I realized this thing wasn't actually an egg.

Its shape resembled two plates clamped together, flat in profile, widening toward the bottom. From our side view, it looked egg-shaped.

As the object ascended higher, the depression of the corpse pile gradually became a convex mound, and the bodies on it began to tumble down from all directions, like rocks rolling off a mountainside during a landslide.

But halfway down, they were caught by a tube growing from the interior, left dangling and swinging wildly.

We were almost breathless watching all this unfold.

It was so bizarre, so soul-shaking, that the only sound we could make was a choked gasp of awe; we couldn't speak at all.

The thing continued to grow taller, rising to a height of over twenty meters.

Only then did we realize this thing was definitely not an egg.

It was a shell with white, linear markings.

The mouth of the shell was gaping downwards, forming a peak like a mountain spire.

And beneath that spire was a pile of human and animal corpses stacked twenty meters high.

It looked as if the shell had vomited up a mountain of bodies, which was utterly grotesque.

With the faint light of the flashlight, we couldn't see how the interior of the corpse pile was connected by those black tubes.

And just then, a beam of white light suddenly shot out from the open mouth of the shell.

Then, that light, branching out like a tree, slowly outlined the tubular structures distributed throughout the pile of corpses.

It was then I saw that all the tubular structures extended from the shell's mouth.

What started as a single, very thick piece of flesh gradually branched out, and each branch connected to a corpse.

I presumed these fleshy tubes had grown into the corpses' brains, granting them an undying vitality and compelling them to hunt all surrounding life to provide sustenance for each other, allowing the whole structure to grow larger and larger until it reached this scale.

What a brilliant symbiotic relationship! It was truly a miracle of nature.

As I was pondering this, a puff of white vapor suddenly jetted out from the rear end of the shell.

The white vapor was very light, slowly spreading through the air before dissipating until it vanished completely.

At this point, Nie Chuan turned to me and said, "I know what this thing is. Actually, we both do, but no one has ever seen it like this. It exists in this form—truly marvelous! This is a major discovery in the biological world!"

Hearing him, I searched my mind for all information regarding shelled creatures, and indeed, I quickly identified what it was.

Nie Chuan and I spoke almost simultaneously: "This is the legendary Shèn! An ancient creature capable of inducing hallucinations in humans."