Of course, Louisa’s so-called “intel” wasn’t just the one line, “The Sacred Tome is dangerous.”
She not only confirmed abilities of the Yellow Book that Lin Jun already knew, but also revealed one crucial detail—the most important of all:
Do not let the Sacred Tome absorb enough souls!
By “souls,” she meant those of humans, demons, and intelligent beings like treants—not low-level monsters.
As for why, Louisa herself didn’t know.
She only knew it was emphasized as a critical warning before her mission.
The method to prevent the Tome from absorbing nearby souls was simple: do not open its pages.
Connected to the fungal net and parasitized, Louisa could be judged as not lying.
Still, it wasn’t shocking to Lin Jun. He had never fully trusted the Yellow Book, taking its words as reference only.
As for Louisa’s so-called allegiance, Lin Jun didn’t care much.This vampire merely wanted to improve her situation. She had no true willingness to live under Puji rule.
But granting her limited freedom wasn’t impossible. She might even serve as bait, tricking the Yellow Book into exposing more.
That could wait—he’d arrange it carefully.
———
Recently, adventurers across multiple floors occasionally spotted lone Pujis carrying herbs and plants.
Most outrageous of all, someone even saw five Pujis hauling away an entire uprooted graywood tree!
While odd Puji behaviors were nothing new in the Violet Crystal Dungeon, uprooting and carrying whole trees still seemed absurd.
Unfortunately, no one knew their destination.
Anyone attempting to follow would only find themselves led in endless circles until they gave up.
How the Pujis always noticed pursuers remained a mystery.
Meanwhile, in hidden places unknown to adventurers—
A sealed cave on the second floor, an underground chamber on the fifth, the grove behind the new mushroom forest on the sixth—
The transplanting project was underway.
Of course, not all hidden areas were suitable. Lin Jun had to adjust the environments painstakingly.
On the second floor, if someone dug at random, they might uncover a buried mycelial pipe drawing underground water.
Lacking water, he diverted it. Lacking soil, he brought it in. He even tried controlling temperature.
For high heat, he sent in ice-stick Pujis with [Frozen Path LV3]. For cold… well, cold stayed cold.
He did have fire skills, but their mana costs made them unsustainable.
The most worry-free was the sixth floor.
There, Lin Jun discovered the greatest value of treants—
They were plant experts. Under their care, no transplant died, and growth exceeded all others. Truly born gardeners.
With them tending, Lin Jun only needed to provide water. They handled everything else.
He almost wished he could grant them “Hero Permissions,” so they could manage the other floors’ farms too!
He also moved the huge dead flower demon’s bud behind the mushroom grove.
Because after the previous flower demon was slain, a month later, a new one had already begun sprouting.
Though small and dormant, it clearly would regrow to full size in time.
And since he needed flower demon materials anyway, why not nurture the rarest, largest one—yielding more harvest?
All this effort, just for arrays.
And Lin Jun hadn’t forgotten—the Violet Crystal Dungeon had one more array-rich place: the eighth floor!
Teleportation arrays, rarities aboveground, were scattered there like weeds.
With the seventh floor confirmed to lack rifts, Lin Jun spread his mats downward.
But this time, he didn’t consume the firefly grass. It was a vital array material. He’d better save it.
Yet before he could even begin studying arrays, a colossal problem emerged.
Lin Jun had assumed the eighth floor was a vast labyrinth, full of dead ends linked by teleportation arrays.
His original plan: dig through the walls.
That way, the fungal net wouldn’t be blocked by teleportation.
But he had been too naive.
When a Puji entered a teleportation array, its link to the fungal net cut out instantly!
Normally, the net’s range was 300 meters for control, 1000 meters for faint sensing.
To lose contact entirely meant the teleport jumped over 1000 meters.
Perhaps the labyrinth was simply too big? Lin Jun tried [Vassal Control] on a Puji. This time, no disconnection.
But he couldn’t sense where the Puji was.
So—how big was the eighth floor, really?
He tried digging. After twenty meters, he hit the same “transparent wall” as on the fifth floor.
All directions were the same.
According to human guides, nine teleportations led to the ninth floor’s entrance.
Clearly, the eighth floor wasn’t so vast as to escape [Vassal Control], nor so small as to be boxed in within mere dozens of meters.
That left only one possibility:
The eighth floor wasn’t a single continuous space.
It was a patchwork of fragmented regions, linked by teleportation arrays.
If that were true, then some segments could even be buried beneath demon territory.
For adventurers, it made no difference. They never dug walls. To them, passing through the arrays was seamless.
But for Lin Jun, it was the worst possible news.
The fungal mat could not connect through teleportation!
Without continuity, how could he spread his net?
Without a net, how could he control masses of Pujis?
Without mushroom-sea advantage, how could a few elites possibly conquer the later levels? Impossible!
So who designed this dungeon?
Such cruelty!
But it wasn’t hopeless.
If the eighth floor was blocked, Lin Jun still remembered—on the sixth floor, there was a crack leading directly to the deeper layers.
He had abandoned it before because it teemed with [Thousand-Axis Mayflies], and it was too far from his base.
But now… it seemed he had no choice but to go that way!