The blacksmith seems to be in a deep nightmare, and like a man drowning in the depths of the sea.

Around him, there were countless stones and mud and sand, as if countless strange mouths were ready to devour him at any moment.

When people are down-to-earth, there is always an inexplicable sense of security, as if they have something to rely on. But when you go further, when you are in more intimate contact with the earth, when you go deep into the ground, and are surrounded and squeezed in all directions by the stones and dirt beneath the ground, that sense of security will be squeezed out like water in a sponge, leaving only the darkness of panic and powerlessness.

The blacksmith struggled, fighting against the whole earth that was trying to crush him, and he knew that he could not stop, like the last sprint of a run, and once he slackened a little, he was out of control, and there was no chance of reversal.

In more than ten years of fighting between the blacksmith and the Near-God Army, he has experienced countless dangerous situations, and he has repeatedly brushed shoulders with death, dancing among the knives to this day.

But this time, the blacksmith felt an unprecedented pressure, one that came from his years of fighting instincts warning of danger to his life. Aside from the confrontation with the Child of Light, this was the closest the blacksmith came to death in his life.

I don't know if it's a coincidence, but when the blacksmith faced the Children of Light, he was also surrounded by an almost incomparable force. It was a kind of blazing heat that could melt everything, and there was light everywhere in the eye, and the whole person almost melted into it, assimilated into a part of the light.

Now the situation is the opposite, the cold stones are squeezing in from all directions, the darkness in front of the eyes, and the metal scale armor wrapped around the body is like a second skin, through which the blacksmith can only perceive the situation outside.

The blacksmith didn't know how long he had been sinking in the earth, but he could sense that the effect of the land's weight on the surrounding mud and rocks had disappeared, and was replaced by the all-pervasive pressure of the earth itself.

Rikuzhong sends the enemy underground, leaving the rest to the earth itself.

Although the scale armor can be invulnerable under the careful control of the blacksmith, the air that can be locked in is limited.

The blacksmith's breathing became more and more difficult, his voice grew heavier, and a feeling of suffocation began to feel in his chest. The hot breath he exhaled spat onto the surface of the metal, then condensed into tiny droplets.

As the scale armor was squeezed more and more strongly by the outside world, the scale armor itself began to make a squeaking and rubbing sound, but this sound was almost inaudible in the wriggling and collision of stones and dirt outside.

The space left inside the scale armor for the blacksmith was getting smaller and smaller, and the blacksmith could almost feel the water droplets inside the scale armor touching the tip of his forehead and nose.

The blacksmith knew that time was running out for him, but he had not found a way out of his predicament.

As time passed, the blacksmith's heart, which should have been panicked, was inexplicably calmed down at this time, just like the silver mist splashed when a waterfall flowed, but it would eventually return to calm in the pool.

The blacksmith's mind seemed to light a lamp, glowing with a yellowish hazy light, illuminating the past that had been sealed in the corners of his memory.

In the faint light, the blacksmith saw a face that was most familiar, and it was his own. But this face is different from now, it looks younger, more neat, no more messy stubble on the chin and lips, fresh and smooth.

The young blacksmith—his name was Yuan Yuan at the time—was talking and laughing with the person in front of him, and the blacksmith followed Yuan Yuan's gaze, and his heart skipped half a beat.

It was a mother and daughter who could only appear in dreams.

The blacksmith's heart was empty, and not long ago, he had seen them in the illusion that Fang Zhuge's power had created for him.

At this time, the wife was wearing a goose-yellow dress from the time they first met, and the blacksmith remembered the floral appearance on the skirt.

The daughter was carrying the rabbit schoolbag from kindergarten, jumping and jumping among her parents, and finally threw herself into Yuan Yuan's arms. Yuan Yuan held his daughter with one hand and his wife with the other, and the family was happy.

The blacksmith looked at the familiar and unfamiliar scene in front of him, his heart was full of mixed feelings, he wanted to reach out and touch it, but it was like reaching into a cloud of mist, and the warm scene in front of him was like a reflection in the water, shattered at the touch of a touch, and was stirred into a mess of ink.

The scene in front of the blacksmith changed, and his front was filled with black-gray smoke, which slowly dispersed after a while, revealing a large area of burning fire within.

In the midst of the flames, the almost hoarse cries of women and children were distant and near, almost inaudible at distance, but almost close to the blacksmith's ears.

The blacksmith looked up, and in the billowing black smoke, the mother and daughter, who were still smiling just now, had been smoked beyond recognition at this time, and their skin had eroded and fallen off due to the high temperature, revealing black and red flesh. The flames around the two people were like poisonous dragons, roaring in a low voice around them, sticking out their tongues from time to time and licking them, leaving a scorched trail.

They cried and cried out to Yuan Yuan, who was their husband and father, but their throats were already smoky, and the more desperate their struggles became, the more intense the flames reacted, and the dragon of fire was like a cat teasing a mouse, taking pleasure in the despair of the trapped people.

The blacksmith was not present at the time, he had not experienced it in reality, but in his imagination, in his dreams, the scene was repeated and repeated, exactly as it was at this moment.

"No...... No ......" The blacksmith took two steps forward, he knew what was going to happen next, and he wanted to stop it, even if he could only stop it in his illusion forever.

But as the blacksmith walked, the image before him receded at the same time, and the blacksmith and the painful mother and daughter in front of him were two parallel lines, which could never intersect.

The blacksmith couldn't accept this, and he took a few steps forward, trying to grab the arms of the two men and pull them out of the fire.

But the scene in front of him did not give the blacksmith a chance, and he still retreated, just showing his cruelty in front of the blacksmith to the fullest.

Satisfied with the despair, the flames stretched out, and the flames burst open, devouring everything in front of the blacksmith.

The screams of the mother and daughter instantly pierced the blacksmith's eardrums, and the blacksmith wailed, as if he felt the same way.

"No!!" The blacksmith covered his ears, closed his eyes tightly, and shook his head frantically, trying to get all this out of his mind, but the scene of two figures, one large and one small, gradually shrinking in the flames until they turned to ashes, seemed to be imprinted directly on his eyes, and he couldn't get rid of it.

Just when the blacksmith could not bear to lose his beloved again, the figure in front of him disappeared, the flames went out, the black smoke dispersed, and everything was calm.

As the picture faded, the mournful cries faded away, leaving the blacksmith with only a deathly silence and memories of grief that he did not look back.

The blacksmith crouched down slowly with his head in his hands, and he cowered in the darkness like an ostrich hiding in the sand, wanting nothing more than to be cut off from the outside, even if it was just to deceive himself.

A familiar voice sounded from the endless darkness, it was the blacksmith's voice, but it was younger and more energetic, it was Yuan Yuan.

"You can't save them. Yuan Yuan repeated, this is a description of what has happened.

"I can't save them...... blacksmith slowly lowered his hands, he knew that his younger self was right.

Yuan Yuan's voice was silent for a moment, the blacksmith's eyes suddenly opened up, the darkness was dispelled by the light, and the faces of Yu Sheng, Left and Right, Tang Tang, and Ding Qing appeared in front of him.

"But you can save them!" Yuan Yuan's voice was like a sledgehammer shattering the image in front of the blacksmith, and it also woke him up.

The blacksmith awoke from his vision, and when he opened his eyes, he found that he was still in the scales, and the muffled sound of the outside was endless.

The blacksmith exhaled softly, in a desperate situation, but his strength had never been so full, and his perception had never been so sharp.

In the originally blank earth, countless slender or thick veins appeared at this moment, some places twisted together, and some places stretched for miles, like human blood.

Despite their different colors and shapes, they all echo with joy under the blacksmith's perception.

It is a vein of metal that lies underground.

When the blacksmith is cornered, he finally unleashes unimaginable potential.