Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Chapter 2036  Maze of Guts

Pearl pulled back his spear and his distorted vision changed, going back to normal. He released the breath that he had been holding when he was finally done.

"Good job!" Alex said from the side, looking at the destruction. "What did you do at the end? Did you use your Dao of Shrinking Space?"

Pearl nodded. Alex looked back. He had sensed what had happened. The distortion to the space was great enough that he had noticed space folding it on itself multiple times until the man was within reach of Pearl's weapon.

From Pearl's perspective, the attack he had done had never left his spear. In fact, his spear had struck the man's back directly, despite the long distance.

It was an incredible feat of Space manipulation that Alex could only hope to learn soon in the future.

"My head hurts," Pearl complained in the end. "Manipulating space is so difficult in this world."

"You also overdid it a little. He had gone so far away, so you had to shrink more space."

Pearl nodded. "Yes, but it's fun to do that."

They looked around at the space where no one was at anymore and Pearl asked, "What's next?"

Alex shrugged. "I suppose it is time to go to the other side. The sabers may be on the other side."

Pearl nodded. "We should cultivate a little before we leave."

Alex nodded. He looked up at the darkening sky and said, "Let's stay here for the night. We'll leave when we are ready."

The night went by peacefully for the most part. Alex and Pearl could both feel the sensation in the surroundings that gave away the countless battles that took place over the night. Neither of them sensed as many teleportation aura though, so not all battles had ended up in someone's victory.

A few people walked by Alex and Pearl during the night, but no one had stopped to try and fight him. Not all of them were into making groups so quickly and were mostly just searching for the treasure.

Once morning came, Alex left the area, walking back toward the white hall where they had first been teleported to. Past the small brook, they arrived at its side not long after and were surprised to see that there were simply no more people around there.

Everyone who had been here yesterday had long since figured out what a useless task it had been to search for the treasure in this place.

Alex walked onto the white path laid down at the front of the hall and followed it with Pearl walking right beside him. There were fences not far from them on either side, that continued down the road. As they walked, Alex and Pearl both noticed the very first important location that came up while on the pathway.

A massive hedge of overgrown walls of plants created a large maze with a simple plaque next to its opening that read "Whatever goes in, must come out eventually. If you have the guts for it, enter."

Alex looked to the left and right and could only watch in stunned amazement to see that the maze was dozens of kilometers long on either side. He couldn't tell just how long it was on the other dimension, but even if it was just a square maze, that still made this a massive place. The white path that Pearl and Alex followed split at this point. However, instead of just splitting normally like a regular pathway would, this one split such that the path that led to the maze was about a sixth of the total width of the pathway they had been following.

The other two pathways that went on either side of the maze from around the outside were also similarly split in similar sizes. The one that went to the left was two-sixths of the actual size, and the one that went to the right was half.

This was a rather weird choice to split pathways in terms of actual size. The one that led to the maze couldn't even be called a pathway anymore given how small it was. It was barely wide enough for Alex to put both of his feet inside of it.

"Why is it split like that?" Pearl asked, noticing that as well. "Is it split in terms of importance?"

"I'm not too sure," Alex said, looking around. He tried to see where the people were going. A few people stood around like him, but most just walked into the maze with no issue at all.

"We shouldn't worry too much, let's just go in for now," Alex said and walked in. As soon as they passed the entrance of the maze and turned right, they were immediately prompted with several dozen more openings, each one of which could be the path outside.

"Where do you want to go first?" Alex asked. He looked at the white pathway to see if it would lead them, but that thing seemed unreliable. It went straight through the giant wall of the maze.

That was not the thing to follow here. "I can't use my Spiritual sense in here," Pearl said. He had tried to see which opening was the correct path, only to find his Spiritual sense didn't extend as far as it used to.

Alex spread his spiritual sense and realized Pearl was correct. There was some sort of formation running that forced a constriction upon their Spiritual sense to stop it from spreading further than a couple dozen meters.

Alex tried to force it with his Intent, just like he had done with the pressure back in the First Mountain's staircase, and found that to work, but not as much as he could've hoped for. "We're not meant to use our Spiritual sense here," he said. "Makes sense, given that this is a maze. Since we can't fly either, we can only choose one of the pathways and enter."

Alex chose one of the pathways at random and walked in. The path through the maze was wide, enough to fit nearly 5 people side by side. Pearl and Alex walked through it without any issue, choosing the next route at random whenever they came to a split pathway. They passed a couple of people along the way, most of whom had either stopped to decide what the next route they wanted to take or were making their way back from a dead end.

Alex too came across many dead ends and had to turn around, walking back the way they had come through beforehand.

The further they went, the fewer people they came across. Not everyone that had come had chosen the maze and even less of them had chosen the same pathway as him, so the journey through the maze was quite peaceful.

Then, they took a turn and were immediately surprised at what they came across.