Deep within the underground ruins beneath King's Campus.
Manipulating a Corpse Puppet holding a gas lamp to lead the way in the darkness, Dorothy continued to walk along the dark, spacious corridor; while getting rid of that dangerous bat-man, her path back was also blocked, so she could only keep moving forward, exploring deeper into the ruins.
Starting from the sixth level, these ruins had only a single corridor extending deep into the interior, with no branching paths, so Dorothy could only continue walking straight ahead.
After an unknown amount of time spent advancing in this dark, narrow corridor, Dorothy finally reached its end, and after entering through a stone door, she arrived in a wide, empty room.
This room, like the ones Dorothy had seen on the upper levels, was square and empty; not only was there nothing inside, but even the plaster on the walls had been chiseled off, leaving them pitted and uneven.
'What the heck? That's it? It ends here? The deepest point of these ruins is just this empty room?'
Looking at the scene before her, Dorothy complained vehemently in her mind; she repeatedly scanned and observed her surroundings, confirming that this room was only connected to the path Dorothy had entered from, with no other exits, meaning Dorothy now had no way to continue forward; she had nowhere to go.
The room before Dorothy was clearly an empty room that had been looted multiple times; even the murals and wall paintings had been chiseled away; having no gains was one thing, but the critical point was that there was no path to continue.
'Hiss... This is a bit troublesome... Doesn't this mean I can only go back? But the way back is blocked, and that bat-man is likely still guarding outside, so I can't go back at all...'
Looking at the predicament before her, Dorothy thought anxiously, and just as she was pondering what to do, another one of her distant senses detected a problem.
On the edge of the blocked path's ruins, Dorothy had left a Corpse Puppet specifically for lookout duty, specifically to monitor whether the bat-man on the other side of the ruins would suddenly break through and rush over; Dorothy also used the senses of this Corpse Puppet to constantly monitor the situation of the ruins while exploring.
And at this moment, Dorothy, using the vision of that Corpse Puppet, discovered that wisps of purplish-red mist were seeping out from the gaps between the rubble of the ruins, then settling and spreading across the ground; seeing this unusually colored gas, Dorothy couldn't help but feel a jolt in her heart.
'What's going on? Why is this stuff seeping over from that side... Is that bat-man behind this?'
Using the Corpse Puppet's vision to watch the increasing amount of the strange purplish-red gas seeping from the stone gaps, Dorothy couldn't help but become alert and had a bad premonition.
'This stuff... Could it be poison gas? Could it be that since that guy can't get through himself, he's trying to seep poison gas over to poison me?'
Dorothy guessed this, and the more she thought about it, the more possible it seemed; the reason was that this gas was too strange, and it was seeping from the opposite side of the ruins where the bat-man was, making the probability of it being poison gas extremely high.
'Oh no... If that poison gas spreads to my side, won't I be finished? I have nowhere to run now.'
Looking at the scene in the distance, Dorothy thought anxiously; the front was a dead end, and poison gas was spreading from behind; if she didn't think of something, she would be finished.
"What to do... Is there anywhere in this room that can block poison gas? It's empty everywhere..."
Dorothy murmured as she looked around; she controlled herself and the Corpse Puppet beside her to search everywhere in the room, trying to find a way to resist the poison gas.
And at this moment, Dorothy suddenly frowned, sensing something was wrong.
'Tsk... I just feel... There's something abnormal in this room... Something seems off, but I can't pinpoint what it is right away...'
Dorothy, sensing something strange, observed the surroundings again with her Corpse Puppet; although nothing seemed wrong at first glance, that strange sense of disharmony and unnaturalness still persisted.
'Hiss... Where exactly is this disharmony... What's wrong?'
Thinking this, Dorothy closed her eyes and used her Knower ability to retrieve all her previous search memories of this room in her mind, reviewing them carefully, attempting to find the origin of that strange feeling; meanwhile, the poison in the distance was spreading along the corridor towards this final room.
'Found it!'
Suddenly, Dorothy opened her eyes, and then, as if she had discovered something, she quickly walked towards a corner of the room, arriving next to a wall surface that hadn't been chiseled and was relatively smooth.
Arriving next to this wall surface, Dorothy first turned her head to the side, then used the Corpse Puppet beside her to observe the wall; under the Corpse Puppet's vision, this wall appeared normal.
Afterwards, Dorothy told the Corpse Puppet to close its eyes, and then she looked at the wall from her own perspective; the general situation was the same, but something extra appeared in the details.
Under Dorothy's own vision, several dense and tiny white marks appeared on this wall out of nowhere; these white marks looked very ordinary, like common scratches, and Dorothy wouldn't normally pay much attention to them if she saw them, but their special point was that only Dorothy herself could see them, while they were invisible from the Corpse Puppet's perspective.
One field of vision could see it, while the other couldn't; the sense of difference brought by these two fields of vision was precisely the reason Dorothy felt a sense of disharmony, and these few "scratches" on this wall were the origin of this sense of disharmony.
'So... Is this my problem? Or the Corpse Puppet's problem?'
To judge the problem more accurately, Dorothy created a few more Corpse Puppets and had them observe the wall through their fields of vision; the result was that, under the vision of these Corpse Puppets, Dorothy found that she couldn't see these few scratches at all.
"Interesting... Only my own field of vision can see this stuff; if Corpse Puppets can't see it, doesn't that prove that other ordinary people can't see it either?"
Dorothy murmured, saying that she already had an idea about this strange phenomenon before her.
"Perhaps this is... the secret left behind by the Xing Shu Xiu Shu Hui (Star Numerology Scripture Society), a secret that only 'Qi' (Awakening/Enlightenment) Extraordinary can see..."
Continuing to murmur, Dorothy reached out and touched those few scratches, and then, a strange thought arose.
After being touched by Dorothy, these few scratches seemed to come alive like snakes, starting to twist on the wall, then constantly writhing and changing, finally turning into an eye that seemed carved into the wall, staring at Dorothy in front of it.
After these eyes stared at Dorothy for a few seconds, these scratches twisted and changed again, and this time, they twisted into text, and it was text that Dorothy understood, which happened to be Prit script.
The text read:
"Verification passed, welcome back, Knower."
After this, the entire wall in front of Dorothy suddenly disappeared into thin air, revealing a hidden passage.
'Just as I thought...'
Dorothy smiled slightly after looking at this passage, then looked back and saw the purplish-red poison gas that had already spread to the room's entrance; then, without thinking, she quickly walked into the passage with her Corpse Puppet.
And not long after Dorothy stepped into the passage, the wall that had suddenly disappeared reappeared out of thin air, turning the entire room back into a sealed chamber with only one entrance; the inscriptions on it also changed back into scattered marks.
Afterwards, more purplish-red poison gas from the passage surged into the room, gradually filling the entire final room of these ruins; and the wall that could appear and disappear out of thin air was now connected to the entire room, forming a sealed whole, with not a single gap for the poison gas to seep into other places.