Inside this door that looks completely different from the others is a space resembling a storage room, but what’s inside made Xu Xin’s eyelid twitch.
The room’s facilities appeared to be very complete, with a wooden table, wooden chairs, a wooden bed, and a wooden cabinet. The cabinet’s door was tightly closed, leaving its contents a mystery.
Of course, these were not what most captured Xu Xin’s attention. In the corner of the room was a metallic facility resembling a workstation, with a round tabletop, and the entire contraption resembled an hourglass.
The most special thing about this facility was that there was actually a small screen standing upright on the tabletop.
Xu Xin was very familiar with such a type of workstation.
"...A Treehouse crafting station?" Xu Xin didn’t expect to see a treehouse workstation here.
Whether it’s a synthesis table or a weapon and armor crafting table, each tabletop had an upright screen for checking the crafting list, which matched the workstation before him almost perfectly.
The room contained neither statues nor mutant beasts. Xu Xin carefully stepped inside, approaching the workstation he’d never seen before, reaching out to touch it.
[Mutation Potion Synthesis Table (Blue): Can synthesize potions that cause beasts to mutate.]
"Is this for real?" Xu Xin had actually found a tool that could turn beasts into mutant beasts!
He immediately tapped to open the small screen. A familiar screen appeared, yet the entire synthesis table had only one crafting project.
[Mutation Potion (Blue): A potion that can 100% turn a beast into a low-level mutant beast, requiring 5kg of polluted mutant beast meat and 1 glass bottle.]
Using polluted mutant beast meat, a potion could be synthesized that would make a beast mutate with 100% certainty!
This polluted mutant beast meat was not referring to the meat of bats or rats outside. Xu Xin had only obtained such meat from the Blood Patterned Rabbit and Blood Patterned Cat he killed earlier.
This meat was enormously attractive to beasts, but extremely poisonous. Beasts that consumed it were highly likely to be poisoned to death, with only a tiny possibility of mutation.
Yet this synthesis table turned that mutation possibility into a certainty! Although it only mutated into a low-level mutant beast, the previously uncontrollable ability of the polluted meat became controllable, and he could completely use this ability to create mutant beasts to serve him in a contract!
Good stuff! Except for the glass bottle, which he seemed not to have seen before, glass is made by melting sand, but he hadn’t seen any tools capable of glassmaking.
Wait, a furnace! A furnace might be able to make glass. He should try it when he gets back.
Xu Xin turned his head to look at the tightly closed wooden cabinet nearby. Next to the synthesis table, inside this cabinet, could it be...
Xu Xin habitually turned sideways to open the wooden cabinet.
Three crossbow bolts shot out from the opened wooden cabinet, flying past Xu Xin, with a neat "clang" as the iron bolt heads embedded into the stone wall at the back!
Xu Xin broke into a cold sweat.
There was actually a mechanism here!
Fortunately, he was cautious and instinctively opened the door sideways, or else he would have been hit by these crossbow bolts head-on! There were no traps earlier, only here. If he hadn’t been cautious every time, he would really have fallen for it here.
"Keke, why didn’t you notice the danger this time?" Xu Xin rubbed Keke’s little head.
"Hmm?" Keke tilted her head and then shook it.
It seemed the little one could only sense danger related to living beings, unable to detect purely mechanical anomalies . Previously, when Xu Xin almost fell in the maze, Keke didn’t notice, but whenever mice or toads appeared, she always sensed the danger in advance.
Looking inside the wooden cabinet, it had three layers, each with a crossbow mounted in the middle, attached to the cabinet with a string. As soon as the cabinet door was opened to a certain distance, the string would pull the trigger, firing the three bolts just as it happened.
A very simple mechanism, not a professional trap, looking more like something set up by a survivor.
However, Xu Xin’s attention was quickly attracted by the resources in these three-layer cabinets.
"This is... mutation potion?"
On each layer of the cabinet, there were two bottles of faint red potion, stored in glass conical bottles, with a ground stopper sealing the mouth.
Xu Xin reached out and picked up a bottle of potion.
[Mutation Potion (Blue): A potion that can 100% turn a beast into a low-level mutant beast.]
Indeed, it was the mutation potion. There were six bottles of mutation potion in this cabinet.
Xu Xin immediately placed all six bottles into his backpack, along with the three green-tier crossbows. Then, he went to the mutation potion synthesis table, intending to put the workstation into his backpack as well.
Although the synthesis table was made of an unknown type of metal, it was relatively small in size, so not heavy, and placing it in the backpack wouldn’t affect Xu Xin’s movements at all.
But the moment he lifted the synthesis table off the ground to place it in his backpack, he suddenly felt the ground beneath him vibrate.
He looked at the original position of the synthesis table, where a stone had protruded. It seemed that it had been pressed down before.
"... No way, could it be that I’ve triggered another mechanism?" Xu Xin’s eye twitched.
"Yikes!" Originally feeling drowsy, Keke suddenly cried out sharply, leaping from Xu Xin’s shoulder towards the door to peer into the corridor.
Xu Xin also peeked outside.
The ground vibrations grew more intense, much like the stairway passage earlier.
"The mutant beasts and humans, could they have awakened and come to life... What?" Xu Xin widened his eyes, staring at the end of the corridor where he had entered.
There, was the first door he opened, the room with the male statue writing.
At this moment, under Xu Xin’s gaze, the male statue actually walked out from the door!
That’s right, the statue walked out!
It truly came to life!
Besides its body still being gray stone, from its movements, it was impossible to see it as a rigid statue; rather, it seemed no different from an ordinary human, natural and fluid.
The male statue turned its head, looking in Xu Xin’s direction.
Xu Xin’s pupils contracted, and before he could react, the second door opened, and that elegantly postured female statue also walked out from the room. She glanced at the male statue and then also turned to look in Xu Xin’s direction.
"Gargoyles!" Xu Xin blurted out.
In his sight, the two statues emitted a blue glow. Clearly, they were previously green-tiered [Humanoid Statues (Green)], suddenly became blue-tiered after being awakened!
His identification ability surely couldn’t be used on living beings; he could only infer the strength of those beasts and monsters from the size of the red dots on the map, yet these statues, which could move, were surrounded by a tier-representing glow.
What exactly were these two statues!
Keke had climbed back onto Xu Xin’s shoulder, baring her fangs at the gargoyles in the distance.
But the two gargoyles didn’t attack him as Xu Xin had imagined. The two statues glanced at each other, slowly approaching Xu Xin.
Xu Xin pulled out his crossbow, ready to fire at the gargoyles ahead.
"Don’t attack, we are not hostile."
In the corridor, even from afar, Xu Xin could still clearly hear the female statue’s voice. The sound was gentle and soothing, like a warm current, surprisingly easing Xu Xin’s tension.
Hmm? The gargoyle could speak, could communicate!