Samsara Paradise: Dream Weaver of Connections.

Lin Yi retreated more than ten meters away before stopping. Looking back, he saw that the area where he had just stood had become a death zone filled with sharp blue crystal shards.

Faced with this situation, Lin Yi didn't rush forward; who knew if this thing would explode a second time.

Sure enough, just as Lin Yi was considering whether he should take a detour, the two horses whose blue crystals had just exploded on their bodies wobbled to their feet.

At the same time, blue flames flickered in the eyes of the two horses.

Suddenly, Lin Yi felt a dizzying sensation as the world spun around him.

The scene before his eyes began to flicker violently, as if the color contrast of the world had been artificially adjusted to the limit, and all the scenery presented an unnatural vibrancy and darkness.

[Note: The hunter has been mentally corrupted; soul strength assessment passed.]

With the prompts from the Paradise of Reincarnation, the distorted world before Lin Yi's eyes seemed to be recalibrated by an invisible hand, and the colors and light quickly returned to normal.

At the same time, a sound of bones grinding together reached Lin Yi's ears.

Almost at the same time as the neigh was emitted, the skeletal remains of the lead horse kicked off the crystal-covered ground with its hind legs and charged wildly toward Lin Yi.

Its speed far exceeded that of its previous life, and its massive skeleton appeared even more ferocious under the crystal. With each step it took, the thin layer of crystal covering the ground made a soft cracking sound.

Lin Yi raised his left hand, flicked his index and middle fingers upwards, and several strands of dark soul silk appeared in the path that the horse was bound to take.

At a distance of about ten meters from Lin Yi, the horse crashed into the ethereal Dark Soul Silk at high speed. It continued to run for a few more meters before its massive body disintegrated instantly, turning into dozens of neatly cut pieces of bone and flesh that scattered with a crash.

The remains of a horse, cut into dozens of pieces, were scattered on the ground, covered by clusters of eerie blue crystals that flickered violently, like dying stars.

The scattered bones and the crystal clusters encasing them were not completely "dead." Instead, they trembled irregularly on the ground as if attracted by an invisible magnet, attempting to reassemble.

"Immortality...is more troublesome than expected."

Lin Yi took out an incendiary bomb and threw it directly into the body parts. Soon, a raging fire broke out, and the intense flames engulfed the body parts. At the same time, the blue crystal clusters in the flames also made a cracking sound under the high temperature.

Unlike before, these crystal clusters did not eject fragments; instead, they disintegrated into grayish-black residue, just like ordinary ore.

"It seems they're afraid of fire, which is actually good news."

Lin Yi turned his gaze to another horse in the distance. This horse had not charged directly at him; its eyes, made of blue flames, were staring intently at Lin Yi.

[Comparing intelligence attributes of both sides... Comparison complete. Our intelligence attribute far surpasses the enemy's. We have obtained 100% of the enemy's data.]

【Beast-like Parasitic Species】

Category: Void Infected
Health: 100%
Mana: 500/500
Power: 67
Agility: 51
Stamina: 71
Intelligence: 10
Charisma: 1
Skill 1: Void Race (Passive, Lv.21): Possesses low-level undeadness, +2000 HP. Has mental corruption properties; those with low soul strength will be infected.

Skill 2: Clan Call (Active, Lv.28): Summons parasitized creatures within a 100-meter radius.

Skill 3: Crystal Cluster Parasite (Active, Lv.25): Implants fungal spores into the target organism, generating blue crystal clusters after 5 seconds. The target organism loses 0.1 HP per second, with no upper limit on duration.

技能4：爆裂传播（主动，Lv.18）：消耗20%当前生命值引爆自身，对周围8米内所有敌人造成（体力×1.2）范围伤害，被击中的目标有50%概率被植入种子。

"Void race? How did this thing get here?" After examining the other party's attributes, Lin Yi was completely dumbfounded.

When Lin Yi first saw these blue crystal clusters, he felt that they looked strangely familiar, as if he had glimpsed a similar record in some document.

Soon, Lin Yi recalled that those parasites on the horses were not ordinary mutants at all, but terrifying calamities from the void—the Crystal Devourer.

This is a bizarre existence that lies between living organisms and minerals. The essence of Crystal Devourer is closer to that of a certain fungus, yet it is one of the terrifying parasitic calamities in the void.

If the Hermit Crab is a behemoth that destroys civilization, then the Crystal Devourer is a plague that devours the world.

It has no intelligence, no emotions, only the most primitive instinct to devour and expand, like a cosmic cancer cell, spreading silently, yet more deadly than any natural disaster.

He had seen images of a planet that had been completely "crystallized" in the records of the Zhen tribe—a desolate, eerie blue crystal graveyard.

Once its spores invade an organism, they begin to frantically drain the host's life force and irreversibly alter the host's body structure.

Muscle fibers crystallize, bones are gradually replaced by homogeneous material, and nerve networks transform into crystalline clusters that conduct energy.

What's even more frightening is that this process isn't instantaneous.

The host will clearly feel their self-awareness being gradually eroded, yet powerless to resist, ultimately becoming a walking corpse controlled by the fungus, continuing to spread death spores, until one day—

boom!
The host's body will burst like an overinflated balloon, turning into countless crystal fragments carrying spores, spreading this endless infection to even more distant places.

This race reproduces in a very cruel way. They are like plague messengers in the void. Once the crystal-devouring spores invade the atmosphere of a planet, it means that the death sentence for all living beings on that planet has been signed.

However, this was a slow and magnificent execution.

Initially, the infection was asymptomatic.

It could simply be that the trees in a forest begin to show an unnatural crystalline sheen, or that a group of animals suddenly develops unusual blue markings.

But as time goes on, crystal erosion will infiltrate every ecological niche on the planet like the most sophisticated virus.

Crystallized blood flows in the veins of birds and beasts, and deep blue veins are embedded in the annual rings of towering ancient trees. Even the moisture in the atmosphere begins to condense into tiny crystal clusters.

When crystallization develops to the middle stage, the entire planet will exhibit a strange and eerie beauty.

Under the sunlight, the mountains and rivers refract thousands of blue halos, as if the whole world is sealed in a giant crystal.

But beneath this beautiful facade lies the painful transformation that countless lives are undergoing.

Their consciousness is imprisoned within their crystallized shells, watching helplessly as they become a breeding ground for fungi.

In the final stages, the crystals will form a global crystal network.

From space, the planet appears as if it's encased in a growing crystal cocoon, emitting an unsettling, eerie blue glow.

Ultimately, when the internal pressure reaches a critical point—

boom!
The entire planet will burst into a deadly blue firework in the void.

Hundreds of millions of crystal fragments, carrying active spores, were shot at astonishing speeds to every corner of the universe.

These fragments drifted through the void for tens of thousands, even millions of years, until one of them crashed into the atmosphere of another habitable planet.

And so, a new cycle began.

“No wonder the farmland withered…” Lin Yi stared at the writhing bone fragments on the ground and finally understood the root cause of the land’s anomaly.

The meteor that the villagers witnessed months ago was not a celestial body falling at all, but a fragment carrying crystal spores that pierced through the world barrier.

The spores of these fungi have contaminated the land and have begun to parasitize surrounding organisms through water, air, and even direct contact.

The crystallized skeletal horse seemed to sense a deadly threat. The blue flames in its eyes suddenly blazed fiercely, and it raised its head, letting out a piercing, silent shriek! This shriek was not a physical sound wave, but a vibration that directly impacted the energy of the void! Visible, eerie blue ripples spread rapidly in all directions from its center!
[WARNING: Target 'Beast-type Parasite' has activated the skill: Call of the Pack (Lv.28).]

[Warning: Strong void energy fluctuations detected; the activity of all infected life forms in the area has increased dramatically.]

The cluster of blue crystal pillars, about half a person's height, closest to Lin Yi suddenly exploded. A crystallized giant rat, its body swelled several times its original size and completely enveloped by the crystal cluster, darted out. Its scarlet eyes were replaced by blue flames, and corrosive slime dripped from its fangs. It lunged straight at Lin Yi's calf.

"Pfft!" Further away, the half-buried corpse of a farmer was forcibly "awakened".

The soil was pushed aside, and a skeletal arm covered with thick crystal clusters burst forth from the ground, followed by a head and torso similarly enveloped in crystal clusters.

Its movements were stiff yet powerful. It grabbed a rusty iron rake lying on the ground and staggered toward Lin Yi.

This was just the beginning. In the ditches of the farmland, the turbid water surged, and several strange fish, parasitized by crystal clusters, with twisted bodies and covered with sharp spines, leaped out of the water, opening their mouths full of crystal cluster fangs.

In the withered thicket, several birds, their wing membranes torn apart by clusters of crystals, swooped down, screeching.

In just a few seconds, the area seemed to come alive from all directions.

The creatures that were originally ordinary or even weak, parasitized by the crystal, have now been transformed into puppets of various shapes, surging towards Lin Yi like a tide.

Just as the group of crystallized golems were about to pounce on Lin Yi, the shadow beneath his feet suddenly began to tremble, and the next second, Lin Yi abruptly sank into the ground. This caused all the crystallized golems that had attacked to miss their target, but these crystallized golems did not possess much intelligence.

In their minds, it was as if Lin Yi had suddenly disappeared. These crystallized puppets began to wander around, trying to find traces of Lin Yi, but they found nothing.

About fifteen minutes later, the restless puppets gradually calmed down.

Like robots whose power has been cut off, they fell into a state of stillness one after another—some curled up into a cluster of crystals, while others merged directly with the crystal veins on the ground.

Only the occasional flashes of eerie light on their bodies hinted that these monsters could be reactivated at any moment.

In the shadowy plane, unobservable by the material world, Lin Yi's figure slowly emerges from the monotonous gray background.

There is no color, no warmth here; the whole world is like a faded old photograph.

It's obvious that if Lin Yi doesn't deal with these ghostly things, even if he develops the town, they will grow rapidly.

"Forget it, I'll just use Apollo to clean the ground." After thinking for a while, Lin Yi decided that it would be best to just use Apollo to clean the ground.

Although Lin Yi's Dark Surge Lightning could also devour these things, it couldn't guarantee the complete eradication of those tiny spores.

In comparison, the all-around, flawless Apollo is still more useful.

The next moment, a fist-sized metal sphere with fiery, magma-like patterns flowing across its surface appeared in Lin Yi's hand.

Thanks to Su Xiao's improvements, Apollo has now gone through several generations, and its damage and explosion range are more than twice as strong as the first generation. The only drawback is that the explosion time is relatively long.

However, this is not a big problem for Lin Yi. Apollo currently has two activation methods. One is to detonate it slowly through mental power. This method takes about ten seconds to detonate. The advantage is that the detonation can be stopped at any time. The disadvantage is that the time is too long and it is easy for the enemy to notice.

The second method is to directly stab Apollo with your palm. This method can instantly destroy Apollo without any delay.

"Twenty minutes later, take this to the center of the farm and detonate it."

The reason Lin Yi wanted to wait twenty minutes before detonating was because he needed to go out and take away the guards he had brought with him, and the area where they were located was also within the blast radius of the Apollo explosion.

Nowadays, population is a very important resource for Lin Yi's territory, and Lin Yi is not prepared to let these people die in the Apollo explosion.

A makeshift warning perimeter marked the edge of a rye field.

The sheriff and his young guards watched intently at the desolate, withered area.

Time passed second by second, and the lord had been deep inside for almost an hour, but no news had come back.

Anxiety, like cold vines, coiled around everyone's heart.

“Captain. The lord…” a young guard couldn’t help but speak, his voice trembling.

"Shut up!" the sheriff hissed, forcibly suppressing his anxiety as he gripped his spear tightly. "The magistrate told us to wait! Be alert! Keep your guard up!"

Even so, his calloused palms were covered in cold sweat.

Just then, an incredibly fast figure, like a black lightning bolt tearing through the night, suddenly burst out from the edge of the withered area and landed steadily beside the carriage.

"My lord!" The sheriff and his guards were both surprised and delighted, and their hearts finally settled down.

But Lin Yi's face showed no relief, only urgency: "Everyone! Get on the carriages immediately! Return to the castle as fast as possible! Now! Right now!"

"Sir? What happened? Inside..." The sheriff subconsciously looked at the strange blue light area behind Lin Yi.

"Don't ask! Follow orders! If you don't want to die, leave now, full speed ahead. Get out of this area, the farther the better!" As he spoke, he leaped onto the carriage shaft, taking the driver's place.

The crowd, who had never seen their lord in such a hurry, were instantly gripped by immense fear.

No one dared to ask another question. The guards hurriedly grabbed their weapons, while the sheriff jumped onto another horse.

"Giddy up!" Lin Yi suddenly jerked the reins, lashing the horse's rump hard.

The two draft horses, in pain, neighed and began to accelerate, pulling the heavy carriage faster.

"Quickly, keep up with the lord!" The sheriff spurred his horse and led his guards to follow closely behind.

The caravan, which had arrived slowly, was now speeding madly along the road leading to Bloodclaw Fortress in the cold autumn night.

The wheels screeched as they rolled over gravel, and the horses' hooves pounded like drumbeats. The guards had no idea what terror lurked in the darkness behind them that could make their lord flee in such a hurry.

Lin Yi stood on the carriage shaft, letting the cold wind blow against his face, silently calculating the time in his mind.

Five minutes...ten minutes...fifteen minutes...

...

In the heart of the farmhouse, clusters of deep blue crystals continue to glow slowly.

A shadow silently rose from the ground, and the ninja soldier, carrying Apollo, appeared at the designated location.

As the countdown reached zero, the ninja soldier mechanically raised the hand holding Apollo, following the second method set by Lin Yi, while his other hand, with fingers pointing like a knife, pierced Apollo's core without any hindrance, carrying shadow energy.

"Pfft..."

There were no signs of an imminent, earth-shattering explosion.

Just as the ninja soldier's palm pierced Apollo's core, a golden-white "sun" with a diameter of several hundred meters was born without warning in the core area of ​​the farm.

The darkness was completely torn apart, leaving only pure white light between heaven and earth.

The light was so intense that it even temporarily blinded the soldiers watching from the walls of Bloodclaw Fortress.

Everything within a radius of several kilometers centered on Apollo evaporated instantly upon contact with that extreme light and heat.

Immediately following was a devastating energy shockwave.

Like a massive, golden-white wave, it spread wildly in all directions in a perfect sphere at a terrifying speed exceeding the speed of sound.

Wherever the shockwave passed, the huge crystal clusters on the ground were instantly vaporized like paper.

Several meters of soil were forcibly scraped away from the ground, revealing the charred rock layer underneath.

Further away, the withered forest, as if struck by a category 18 hurricane, was uprooted in large swaths and then ignited in mid-air by the intense heat, turning into ashes.

The extreme heat caused the space in the farm area to distort violently, and the air was completely ionized, forming a brief but deadly plasma storm.

Any remaining crystal spores were instantly decomposed, purified, and annihilated in this absolute purgatory, which was hotter than the core of the sun.

Rumble, rumble—! ! !
About ten kilometers from the explosion's epicenter, Lin Yi shouted sternly, "Close your eyes! Bow your head!"

"boom--!"

The train carriage shook violently, almost falling apart!

The horses pulling the cart neighed in fear, and their speed involuntarily slowed down.

Even with their eyes closed, everyone could feel the terrifying light that seemed to melt everything.

The shockwave that followed crashed in like a tsunami, causing the carriage to shake violently, and the scorching air, carrying the pungent smell of ozone, filled everyone's nostrils.

A few seconds later, the light began to fade, but the destructive roar and the tremors of the ground continued.

The area that was once the "Rye Field" farm has now been transformed into a huge pit with a diameter of nearly a kilometer and a depth of tens of meters.

The pit walls and bottom were completely vitrified, reflecting a cold yet scorching luster under the faint starlight and moonlight, like a hideous scar that the earth had been branded with a hot iron by a god.

[Hint: The hunter has successfully eliminated the dangerous species 'Crystal Devourer' and obtained a treasure chest (growth equipment) x1.]

[Note: Due to the Hunter's successful elimination of 'Crystal Devourer,' the Hunter has received the blessing of the World's Will (temporary). When the Hunter negotiates with native creatures, Affinity +20 points, Luck +5 points, and the current world's treasure chest drop rate is increased by 20%. Duration: Current world progress.] (End of Chapter)