His legs were weak, stumbling, and Logan Bennett walked very slowly, falling several times among the gravel, his body covered in cuts and bruises, the pain unbearable, with blood even oozing from several wounds.

“Ahh.” Logan Bennett drew in a breath, enduring the pain, using the temporary clarity and strength brought by the pain to struggle over to that strange plant.

After this series of ordeals, Logan Bennett had lost much of his naivety and confusion. Without hesitation, he held his breath, carefully but resolutely reached out his right hand, and grasped the main stem of the strange plant.

Under his hand, veins pulsed, blood flowed like a stream—Logan Bennett felt as if he were holding not a plant, but a living creature. Then, with a sudden jerk to the side—

“Ah!”

All the branches and leaves of the strange plant contracted at once, emitting a sharp and mournful scream, like a dying person.

He didn’t manage to tear it off in one go, so Logan Bennett continued to pull with all his strength. The strange plant, while letting out its wretched cries, extended its branches and leaves again, wrapping them around Logan Bennett.

A wet, slimy, disgusting sensation spread across his skin, countless tiny barbs piercing into his body. Logan Bennett forced himself to suppress his fear and terror, and pulled again with all his might.

“Oooh...”

The crying abruptly stopped. Logan Bennett was sprayed on the chest with pale red liquid from inside the plant, the stench of blood overwhelming him, making his limbs even weaker. He had to lean against the stone wall beside him to avoid collapsing to the ground.

As the plant was torn in two by Logan Bennett, the pale red mist in the surrounding air grew even thicker, almost condensing into liquid.

On the nearby desk, the three books that glimmered with a faint light, upon sensing the dense pale red mist, began to corrode rapidly. From the first page to the last, it took only two or three seconds for them to completely vanish—so quickly that even someone as close as Logan Bennett couldn’t see what was written inside.

Of course, given Logan Bennett’s current state of numbness, there was no way he could have stopped it, not even taken a single step forward.

The desk was immediately left empty, but strangely, aside from the spots where the three books had been, there were no traces of corrosion anywhere else. After a brief moment of puzzlement, Logan Bennett realized the key: “Looks like it’s another magical trap. When the concentration of the red mist reaches a certain level, the magical traps on those magic notebooks activate automatically, destroying themselves to prevent them from falling into enemy hands.”

“What a pity about those magic notebooks.” Logan Bennett sighed regretfully in his heart—those were magic notebooks that could be used to learn supernatural powers!

Suddenly, Logan Bennett froze. He noticed that the library within his soul was emitting a strange faint light.

Curious, Logan Bennett sent his mind inside, and his eyes widened as he saw a brand new bookshelf appear in the library, labeled “Magic (Arcane),” and on the shelf were already three books—the very same three magic notebooks Logan Bennett had just seen.

“Could it be that this library also has the ability to collect books? But where did the content come from?” Logan Bennett was astonished. “Or maybe I have to see the contents with my own eyes. Hmm, although those three books were corroded very quickly just now, if the process was slowed down, it should still have been page by page. Could this strange library record the contents from start to finish, and that’s why there are projections of these three books? Otherwise, it would be impossible to fabricate the content out of thin air.”

For now, Logan Bennett could only speculate. He would have to experiment with other books in the future to be sure.

Looking at the three magic notebooks, Logan Bennett, who had just been feeling regretful, now hesitated: “If I study magic, in this world where divine arts are powerful and mages can be openly burned at the stake, wouldn’t it be too dangerous?”

Unable to make a decision, Logan Bennett set the matter aside for now. After all, he and the others were still in the secret chamber and not yet out of danger, so Logan Bennett began to gather his strength.

With the strange plant gone, the pale red blood mist gradually faded. Corey Allen and Hudson Grant slowly broke free from their hallucinations, staring at each other in shock, but it was already too late for them—both were on the verge of death.

※※※

On the ground above, Benjamin Wright, at the same moment that Logan Bennett used his spirit to activate the “Emblem of Truth” and trigger “Holy Light Strike,” let out a muffled groan, lowered his right hand, and looked at the secret passage with a mixture of surprise and doubt.

“Lord Benjamin Wright?” The guard Paul Baker, seeing Benjamin Wright’s strange behavior, hurriedly asked.

Under the silver moonlight, Benjamin Wright’s face looked very grim. He said in a low voice, “Something’s happened below. My spiritual imprint in the holy emblem was triggered. Damn it, just a magic apprentice, and it’s come to this—useless! Paul Baker, wait here for me. If I’m not back in five minutes, go ask the bishop for help.”

It was precisely because of the spiritual imprint in the holy emblem that Benjamin Wright had felt at ease handing the Emblem of Truth to Logan Bennett. Otherwise, even though the holy emblem, as a standard divine artifact, was much weaker than Benjamin Wright’s own power and his other divine artifacts, he would never have given it away so casually. Who could have known that his spiritual imprint would be triggered, and that he would fail to prevent the divine art from being activated at a critical moment.

Negligence and carelessness have always been the companions of arrogance and prejudice.