The main walls were inlaid with large panes of blood-red glass.

At the stone entrance gate stood two completely nude, female-shaped stone statues.

The whole scene looked both eerie and bizarre.

For some reason, the moment Han Ning laid eyes on the entrance to the Black Tower, he felt a strange sense of familiarity.

"Eeeeee!!"

Just as he was wondering about the source of this familiarity, Fei Lin, who was in his arms, suddenly began to struggle violently.

She stared intently at the Black Tower, trying to squirm out of Han Ning’s embrace.

"What’s wrong?" Han Ning loosened his arms and placed the little one on the ground.

"Eee!" Fei Lin pointed toward the tower, a look of terror on her delicate little face.

Seeing the expression on Fei Lin’s face, Han Ning finally remembered where this strange sense of familiarity came from.

The environment he had been in when he first sent his Spiritual Power into Fei Lin’s eggshell to fight that shadowy figure... it was at least ninety percent similar to the architectural style of the tower before him.

The embossed patterns on the walls were so similar.

’Fei Lin is terrified. She must have recalled some bad memories...’

Han Ning fell into deep thought.

’The necrotic aura is thickest here. There must be something hidden inside.’

He reached out and gently stroked Fei Lin’s back to soothe her. "It’s okay, don’t be scared. We’ll head back. We’re not going over there."

"Eeee~" Fei Lin hugged Han Ning’s arm, her body trembling slightly.

Han Ning scooped her back into his arms and retreated several hundred meters, back into a patch of withered, decaying woods.

To find out if there were any Shadow Reapers inside, he had the Ghost Bee he controlled fly toward the eerie, towering spire and slip in through a hole in one of the blood-red glass windows.

Below, a space roughly the size of a soccer field came into view, filled with dozens of large and small oval pods.

Without making contact, Han Ning couldn’t yet tell if the pods were made of glass.

The largest of these enclosures were nearly ten meters tall, and even the smallest was a head taller than him.

To Han Ning’s surprise, the enclosures—all of which were at least a person’s height—were completely empty. The surfaces of some were covered in spiderweb-like cracks, and a few were even shattered entirely. Strange, colorful drag marks stained the ground, and a pungent, foul stench permeated the air.

Of course, he couldn’t smell the stench himself; it was merely information transmitted by the Ghost Bee.

’So this is a Soul Beast incubation chamber... How come there isn’t a single Soul Beast?’

As a transmigrator, Han Ning quickly deduced that the enclosures had likely been used to incubate Soul Beasts, but the containers were now clearly empty.

The shattered "glass" of a special material, the filth on the floor that had long since solidified into multicolored stains, the faint but pungent odor in the air.

As the bee flew past the enclosures, Han Ning became increasingly certain that this incubation chamber had suffered some kind of unknown accident.

Soon, following the system’s directions, Han Ning guided the bee to an area in the southwest corner of the incubation chamber.

Here stood two enclosures, about two to four meters tall.

The enclosures were filled with a strange, light-green liquid, and inside each, a creature floated silently. The two were completely different in size and appearance.

’This is...’

When Han Ning saw these two peculiar creatures, his pupils couldn’t help but dilate slightly.

He first looked at the huge, four-meter-tall enclosure on the left.

A jet-black skeleton, over two meters tall and resembling a warhorse, was curled up inside the enclosure like a baby sleeping on its side.

The enclosure on the right was just over two meters tall, and a Soul Beast was also curled up inside it.

Unlike the warhorse, this was a small snake, likely less than 30 centimeters long, with pale, grayish-white skin. Its eyes were shut tight, and its slender body was coiled into a tight ball.

Just as Han Ning was about to maneuver the Ghost Bee closer for a better look,

a faint noise suddenly echoed from the shadows all around the hall.

Immediately after, the sound of dense, frantic crawling followed.

He directed the Ghost Bee to shift its view.

He saw only a few flashes of scarlet light.

The Ghost Bee’s vision abruptly shattered.

Before its vision shattered, he vaguely saw a group of ugly, six-eyed monsters with sharp limbs.

’Shadow Reapers?’

’I can’t believe the Shadow Reapers are the security for this tower... In that case, what kind of Talent do those Soul Beasts soaking in the enclosures have?’

Outside the tower, Han Ning frowned.

Although the Ghost Bee was a Puppet Soul Beast used for scouting, its strength was at the Extraordinary Level. An ordinary, small-fry Soul Beast couldn’t have killed it in one hit.

For the Shadow Reapers to kill the Ghost Bee so effortlessly meant their strength had to be at least at the Extraordinary Limit, or perhaps even the War General Level.

And... they had appeared in a group.

’But since I’m already here,’ Han Ning thought, ’I should at least get something out of these monsters.’

’They’re strong, sure, but not so strong that I can’t fight back.’

After a moment’s thought, he approached the Black Tower again and commanded the All-Encompassing Spiritual Silkworm to form a new Ghost Bee.

He then took out some of Fei Lin’s blood and smeared it on the Ghost Bee’s body.

Next, he directed the Ghost Bee to fly back toward the entrance of the Black Tower.

This time, he didn’t have the Ghost Bee fly inside. Instead, he had it linger by the tower’s entrance, using the scent of Fei Lin’s blood to lure out the Shadow Reapers within.

’As long as the enemy drawn out by the blood isn’t too strong, I’ll have the Ghost Bee lead it over here.’

’If it runs into an opponent that’s too much to handle, I’ll just abandon the Ghost Bee and scrap the plan.’

Cradling the trembling Fei Lin, Han Ning switched his full attention to the Ghost Bee’s vision.

Time ticked by, second by second...

「About two minutes later.」

Through the Ghost Bee’s senses, he "heard" a faint footstep slowly approaching from behind the tower’s stone gate.

Immediately after, an ethereal figure bizarrely materialized out of the old stone gate, which was covered in strange patterns.

The pale Soul Body gradually solidified, transforming into an ugly, six-eyed monster.

’It can even pass through walls?’

This trait displayed by the Shadow Reaper took Han Ning quite by surprise.

The Shadow Reaper that had phased through the stone gate swiveled its six faintly glowing green eyes and quickly locked onto the invisible Ghost Bee.

Although the Ghost Bee had "Ghost" in its name, it didn’t possess the traits of the Undead and couldn’t shift its body between corporeal and incorporeal states like the Shadow Reaper.

Seeing that the Shadow Reaper had taken the bait, Han Ning quickly commanded the Ghost Bee to gain altitude and fly in the planned direction.

"CHIII..."

Meanwhile, the Shadow Reaper below saw the Ghost Bee trying to escape. Its recently solidified body began to flicker again as it tensed its sharp limbs and leaped violently into the air.

On his end, Han Ning had the All-Encompassing Spiritual Silkworm use every ounce of its strength to control the Ghost Bee, trying to keep it from being killed by the Shadow Reaper before it reached its destination.

Fifty meters... thirty meters... When it was just ten meters from the designated area, the Ghost Bee was finally overtaken by the Shadow Reaper.

A red line glowing with a bloody light streaked across the sky, and the Ghost Bee, which had no intention of resisting, was struck down.

Just as the Shadow Reaper was about to pick up the Ghost Bee’s corpse and devour it,

it suddenly felt as if the air around it had frozen solid.

An invisible Gravity suddenly pressed down on its body.

As a C-Grade Soul Beast, its intelligence wasn’t low, and it immediately sensed the approaching danger.

But in the next second, a dense storm of Emerald Flower Thorns had already enveloped it.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The Undead might be able to ignore physical attacks, but it seemed unable to withstand Yin Yi’s torrential assault of Spiritual Energy.

This Shadow Reaper didn’t even have time to react before Yin Yi riddled it with holes, and it crashed heavily to the ground.

A long, slender vine shot out from the Darkness, dragging the pale Body on the ground into the withered forest.

On the ground, only a puddle of dark purple blood remained, evidence that creatures had just fought here.

In the distance, the Black Tower still stood silently upon the land, the creatures within seemingly having no reaction.