Louisa’s so-called intelligence naturally wouldn’t be limited to just saying “the Sacred Tome is dangerous.”
Not only did she reveal what Lin Jun already knew about the Yellow Book’s abilities, she also mentioned an additional point—the most crucial one: Don’t let the Sacred Tome absorb enough souls!
These souls referred to the souls of intelligent beings like humans, demons, and even tree spirits, excluding those low-intelligence magical beasts.
As for why, Louisa herself didn’t know.
It was simply something she had been specifically warned about as a precautionary measure before her mission.
The method to prevent the Sacred Tome from absorbing surrounding souls was quite simple—don’t open its pages.
Since Louisa was currently connected to the mycelial network and parasitized, Lin Jun could determine she wasn’t lying.
However, as for whether this matter greatly surprised Lin Jun, that wasn’t quite the case. He had never fully trusted the Yellow Book, and everything it said was merely taken as reference.
Regarding Louisa’s so-called defection, Lin Jun didn’t care much either.
This vampire merely wanted to improve her situation, rather than truly being willing to submit to the puffshrooms.
However, granting her an appropriate degree of freedom wasn’t impossible. Louisa might be useful as bait to make the Yellow Book reveal more things.
This matter wasn’t urgent; it still needed proper arrangement…
————
Recently, adventurers on various floors would occasionally see one or two puffshrooms carrying flowers and plants as they passed by.
Most outrageous of all, someone even witnessed five puffshrooms working together to carry an entire gray wood tree that had been uprooted!
Although the puffshrooms’ strange new behaviors were no longer particularly novel in the Purple Crystal Dungeon, moving entire gray wood trees was still too absurd.
Unfortunately, no one knew their destination.
Anyone who tried following the puffshrooms would find them constantly circling around until the pursuer gave up.
No one knew how the puffshrooms detected their trackers either.
Meanwhile, in secret places unknown to the adventurers—
Such as a certain cave on the second floor that was usually blocked by mimic puffshrooms; the underground space on the fifth floor; behind the new mushroom forest on the sixth floor.
The transplantation and cultivation project was underway.
Hidden places weren’t necessarily suitable for cultivation, so Lin Jun had put considerable effort into improving the environment.
If any idle person were to dig randomly on the second floor, they might uncover a mycelial water pipe buried in the soil, connected to underground water sources.
When water was lacking, they pumped water; when soil was needed, they transported soil. Lin Jun had even attempted to control temperature.
For high temperatures, he’d send over an ice stick puffshroom with [Frost Path LV3] for cooling. For low temperatures… well, they just stayed low.
Lin Jun did have burning skills, but their consumption wasn’t suitable for long-term use.
Among all this, the sixth floor was the most worry-free.
Lin Jun had discovered the greatest value of the tree spirits!
The tree spirits were practically plant experts. Under their care, not a single transplanted plant had died, and their growth was much better than on other floors. They were simply natural-born plant specialists.
With them tending the plants, Lin Jun only needed to channel some underground water, and they would solve all other problems.
Lin Jun almost wished he could share some dungeon master privileges with them, letting them help manage cultivation sites on other floors!
Additionally, Lin Jun had also moved the flower bud of that dead giant flower spirit to behind the mushroom forest.
Because Lin Jun discovered that after the previous flower spirit was killed, a new flower spirit had already begun growing after a month.
Although it was still very small and immature, maintaining a dormant appearance, it was obviously just a matter of time before it grew back to its original size.
Since he needed to collect materials from flower spirits anyway, he might as well choose this most exotic and largest one—its material yield would be higher than other flower spirits!
For the sake of magical formations, Lin Jun had invested considerable effort.
Naturally, he wouldn’t forget that there was still one place in the Purple Crystal Dungeon with the most magical formations—the eighth floor!
Teleportation arrays, things rarely seen outside, were scattered everywhere on the eighth floor like they cost nothing.
After confirming the seventh floor had no rifts, Lin Jun naturally extended the mycelial carpet downward.
However, this time he didn’t consume the glowgrass again—this stuff was actually one of the magical formation materials, so he needed to keep some…
But before he could even begin studying the magical formations, the mycelial carpet’s deployment encountered an epic-level major problem!
Lin Jun had assumed the eighth floor was a large maze, with countless dead ends within the maze, then connected by teleportation arrays to form a complete labyrinth.
One item in the original strategy for conquering the eighth floor was wall-digging.
By directly digging through passages, there would be no problem of teleportation arrays disrupting the mycelial network.
However, Lin Jun had been too naive. Only after the mycelial carpet actually reached the eighth floor did he discover it was far from that simple.
After a puffshroom entered a teleportation array, it directly lost connection with the mycelial network!?
Mind you, the mycelial network’s controllable range was within 300 meters, with vague sensing possible within 1000 meters.
The puffshroom’s direct disconnection meant this teleportation exceeded 1000 meters.
Lin Jun thought this was because the eighth floor maze was too large, so he used [Familiar Control] to control a puffshroom for teleportation. This time it didn’t disconnect.
Although it didn’t disconnect, Lin Jun couldn’t sense the puffshroom’s location at all…
So… just how large was the eighth floor?
Lin Jun tried digging walls. After digging through more than 20 meters of earth, he encountered the same “transparent wall” he’d found on the fifth floor.
It was the same in every direction.
Lin Jun had human strategies for the eighth floor—pass through 9 teleportation arrays to reach the ninth floor entrance.
The eighth floor obviously couldn’t be so large that even [Familiar Control] couldn’t sense direction, nor could it be so small that digging a few dozen meters in any direction would reach the boundary.
Then there was only one possibility.
The eighth floor wasn’t a unified whole—it wasn’t contiguous!
Lin Jun suspected it consisted of fragmented areas located who-knows-where, connected together through teleportation arrays.
If this hypothesis was correct, then some sections along the route might actually be buried deep underground in demon territory—that wouldn’t be impossible.
This had no impact on adventurers.
They wouldn’t dig walls anyway. Through teleportation arrays, regardless of where these areas actually were, there was no difference in the adventurers’ perception.
But for Lin Jun, this was the worst possible news.
The mycelial carpet couldn’t connect through teleportation arrays!
If you’re not connected, how can my mycelial carpet spread?
If the mycelial carpet can’t spread, how can the entire dungeon bask in the glory of the mycelial network?
How can the mushroom garden achieve greatness?
Understanding this situation, Lin Jun momentarily lost even the mood to observe and study the teleportation arrays.
Without the mycelial carpet, he couldn’t control large-scale puffshrooms. Without the mushroom sea advantage, should he send one or two elite puffshrooms to conquer the later floors?
That was impossible!
Who the hell designed this dungeon?
So disgusting!
However, he hadn’t reached the point of being completely out of options.
If the eighth floor was impassable, Lin Jun still remembered there was a fissure on the sixth floor that led directly to the deep zones!
Previously, due to the fissure being blocked by large numbers of [Thousand-Pivot Mayflies], and that location being far from Lin Jun’s homeland, the assault costs were too high, so he’d abandoned further exploration.
Now it seemed he’d have to go through there after all!
