Train Survival: You're really trying to survive!

The high temperature completely destroyed the crab's brain, which had already been cursed into rotting flesh. It lost its soul, and its cursed body slid to the left and right. Because it had been dead for so long, the corpse didn't even have any odor.

Su Li sheathed her greatsword. The others came over and began looting the spoils. Ivan stepped aside to keep watch for his teammates.

It's better to carve up such rare monsters yourself, even though it's a bit more troublesome, because you'll get more materials.

Su Li first cast an Appraisal spell on the monster.

【Heavy Armored Embroidered Fist Crab】

[A monster that frequently uses its chelicerae to hold sea anemones, crinoids, and other monstrous creatures to enhance its survival abilities. Cursed and twisted, it cannot find peace even after its soul has dissipated.]

【Nail Ornament Sea Lily】

[A peculiar sea creature, cursed and twisted into this form. Fortunately, it never had a soul, so there is no question of rest.]

“Very good material, can be made into a shield or armor.” Ivan tapped the crab’s pincers, producing a sharp metallic sound under the resonance of his fingertip magic. “It has excellent compatibility with defensive abilities. Combined with the crab’s shell, it can be made into a shield, plus a complete set of heavy armor.”

"Then these armor materials are yours, Sophia. What about your side?" Su Li asked Sophia.

Sophia shook her head. "No, even a gold-level monster cannot be extracted to extract spiritual energy."

Song Mingyu sighed, "The monster flesh inside has been corrupted by the curse. Forget about bloodlines, we can't even extract DNA."

Sun Keke added insult to injury for Su Li: "We can't get all the materials, and we can't get the treasure chests either. We spend a lot of time hunting, but the results are meager."

"Sigh, this is a problem. I wonder if there's a solution." Su Li thought for a moment and came up with a general idea. "The refresh of the treasure chests involves the underlying code of the Eternal Game. As far as I know, the easiest way for us to potentially change the underlying logic is to change the settings of the Eternal Game through the Flame of Civilization."

Su Li picked up the handbook, contacted Zhang Qiang, and explained her situation.

While Su Li was waiting for Zhang Qiang's reply, Sophia also arrived at the gap in the crab, took out a cutting knife, and prepared to search for the crab's crystal core in the dark, dried meat.

However, the instant his blade touched the monster's interior—

"Zi...ZiZi..."

A wisp of black smoke seeped from the wound, and then the monster's corpse began to convulse violently!

"Back off!" Su Li suddenly retreated, and a beam of light shone from Ivan's shield, who was on guard duty.

Things happened too fast. Ivan only had time to shield Sophia at the front. Sophia retreated, her magical energy erupting and leaving a faint afterimage of magical energy in her place.

But it was too late.

The crab's corpse shriveled and decayed at a visible speed, replaced by a pitch-black sphere that hovered above the corpse, its surface writhing with eerie incantations.

“A remote control curse?!” Sun Keke’s expression changed drastically.

She had figured it out: the root of the curse lay in the ability to remotely sense and control it. In this world, even a Gold-level combatant was a rare find for the manipulator behind the scenes. Having lost a Gold-level opponent, she came to check on the situation and, incidentally, to make use of the curse power within the Gold-level crab.

Ivan used his magic again, creating a shield for everyone, and then held the shield up himself in front of them.

With a light tap of her finger, Song Mingyu sent several orbs of light into everyone's bodies. This rich life force would continue to release its power and heal everyone when they were severely injured.

The black sphere suddenly expanded, and Sophia fired a lightning bullet into it. Su Li's left eye also ignited the sphere with the flame of eternal destruction, aiming to deplete the magical energy inside the black sphere and reduce its destructive power.

However, the black ball did not explode as they had imagined. Instead, it spilled like ink into clear water and landed on the desert.

Darkness spread instantly, covering an area of ​​several kilometers! The sky was obscured, light was swallowed up, and even the air became thick and heavy.

Su Li and the others waited two seconds, and the eternal flames burned silently in the sand. The entire world consisted only of flames and sandstorms. It was as if what had just happened was merely an illusion.

Su Li didn't believe that her action just now was merely to scare them.

Sure enough, Ivan, who was familiar with the land, was the first to sense that something was wrong.

"The sand is moving!" Ivan warned sharply.

The sand beneath his feet suddenly softened and began to flow as if it had come alive. Su Li tried to activate his magic power to stabilize himself, but as soon as he tried to mobilize his energy, it was suppressed by an invisible force, as if a pair of giant hands were gripping his meridians, making it difficult even to circulate his magic power.

"Damn it, widespread silence!"

He had felt this familiar feeling when sparring with former players. One of the players in Lin Tongguang's team, who used to team up with him to fight the Platinum Man, had a skill called Wide-Area Silence.

The current feeling of having one's blood vessels and meridians blocked, making it difficult for magical energy to circulate within the body, is like being subjected to a wide-area silence, but with high resistance, which weakens the silence effect.

Su Li's brain started working at high speed, and the magic energy in her body quickly gathered all the information to assess the silence.

Silence is merely a consequence; there are many ways to induce silence. Based on her previous knowledge and personal experience, Su Li quickly sifted through the possible causes of the silence.

However, the professional Song Mingyu was even faster than him.

A steady mental fluctuation from Song Mingyu came through the mental link. [Wide-area silence caused by magic energy depletion]

Sun Keke then sent a message: [It's a silence effect caused by an aging curse. The primary effect is on magical energy; all magical energy is depleting, resulting in inertia.]

It cannot be purified in a short period of time.

Furthermore, Sun Keke noticed something amiss: "The sand around us has become active, actively releasing curse power to complement this curse. Damn it, we've essentially been inside the mastermind's territory all along."

The widespread silence effect temporarily prevented everyone from making precise magical maneuvers, especially Sun Lili. This desert environment was extremely difficult for spatial-type players.

Normally, spatial teleportation is already quite precise. If a mistake is made, the teleported item will overlap with the item at the coordinates. As a result, when a person is teleported, the item that was originally in the teleporter's position will be embedded into the teleporter's body.

Teleporting in the desert requires Sun Lili to first expel the sand from her original location before teleporting, a highly precise operation. Now that it's been interfered with, attempting to teleport again risks leaving her body riddled with holes and ultimately killing herself.

The freest person in the group has now lost his freedom.

Worse still, there was the quicksand beneath my feet. This unusual sand was now terrifyingly heavy.

The quicksand, like a ravenous beast, ripped at them relentlessly. Sun Keke, who was a little further away, tried to grab the remains of a sea lily beside her, but the moment her fingers touched the surface, the remains shattered with a crash, turning into fine sand and merging into the vortex.

"Hold on to each other! Don't get separated!" Su Li struggled to reach out, but Ivan grabbed his wrist and held onto Sun Lili's backpack strap tightly with his other hand. Sophia and Song Mingyu stood back to back, trying to use their weight to resist the suction of the quicksand, but the sand had already reached their waists.

But no one saved Sun Keke.

Ivan glanced back at Su Li, who nodded, released Ivan's hand, took Song Mingyu from him, and then pushed Ivan forward forcefully.

Su Li grabbed Song Mingyu, while Ivan struggled to swim in the quicksand towards Sun Keke.

The center of the quicksand is right next to Sun Keke. If Ivan gives up resisting and goes with the flow of the quicksand, he can quickly get close to Sun Keke.

Having been captured by Su Li, Song Mingyu mobilized the magical energy she could control, catalyzing the emergence of several seeds from her pocket. "Throw these to them!"

The wind was blowing from upwind of Song Mingyu's location towards the remaining two groups downwind. Su Li imbued several seeds with sword energy and threw them towards the remaining two groups.

The seeds began to multiply haphazardly in mid-air, turning into a clump of vines resembling living snakes. Due to the vast silence, their growth was unplanned, and some areas even withered and cracked.

However, the irregular growth of these seeds intertwined the team members in pairs, preventing the pairs from being separated.

The quicksand moved extremely fast. Before Su Li could even say two words, she saw Ivan and Sun Keke being pulled to the center of the quicksand and disappear from sight. Then came Sun Lili and Sophia.

Su Li hugged Song Mingyu tightly and glanced back at her own car.

This sight broke his heart. His beloved train had also been swallowed by quicksand.

Just how vast is this quicksand area?!

Su Li was taken aback. Then he pressed Song Mingyu's head against his chest and hugged his wife tightly.

The next second, his vision went completely black as he was swallowed by quicksand.