332 Illusory
Alex rubbed his head a little and carefully looked ahead. He could still clearly see the end of the path, but he had just hit something.
He slowly extended his arm forward until his arm touched something. "A barrier?" he wondered and felt it a little more. The more he felt it, however, the surer he was that this was not a barrier.
He closed his eyes and tried to understand what he was feeling. "This feels like the walls of the maze," he thought as he felt the tiny leaves and branches.
He suddenly backed up and looked at the whole thing again. Only this time, he used his Spiritual sense.
"There truly is a wall," he thought as he saw the wall finally. To the right of him was an opening. He opened his eyes and looked at the opening. He could see a wall there.
He slowly moved to the right while extending his arms like a blind man finding his path. Soon he reached the wall and tried to touch it, but there was nothing there.
He walked straight in and the whole environment changed. It was like he was on the other side of the wall. However, he could go back if he wanted to.
"Illusions," he finally understood what was happening.
He sent out his spiritual sense and found his way ahead. Thankfully, there were no intersections with the illusions, they were just hard to find paths.
He 'felt' his way through the rest of the maze and walked out. The scenery changed once more, and he knew he was out of the illusion. During the entire illusion maze, he actually found nobody.
'Am I ahead or behind? Or did people just choose a different route?' he wondered. Ahead of him was an obstacle course, that didn't seem very hard.
'Even a mortal can complete that,' he thought. However, he knew there was going to be something weird about this place.
He walked forward into the empty landscape and suddenly felt a force attack him. This force reminded him of the force in the Forbidden Fields. However, it only attacked his Qi and not his spiritual sense.
Furthermore, Alex could feel that he could push back this force if he wanted to. The only problem was, he would have to expend a lot of Qi to sustain that push.
"Well, not like I need it," he thought and immediately ran forward. With his nearly Organ Tempering realm body cultivation, he didn't need to worry about anything.
He jumped through all the obstacles and crossed them in no time like it was child's play for him.
He finally reached the other side where the force disappeared and he regained his Qi. It felt good. Ahead of him was nothing but a very long stretch of land that inclined the further along it went.
However, he didn't trek on it as there were words floating in front of Alex that said 'Jump in the Hole'. Alex stepped forward and saw a hole in front of where he was. He wasn't allowed to cross the empty land but had to go through the hole.
"Ah, F*ck!" he was annoyed at how long the Maze was going on. It had been over an hour, even close to 2 hours, and yet the maze still didn't show an end.
However, he couldn't waste any time and directly jumped into the hole.
The inside was dark and he could only see anything thanks to the light that was coming from the hole. However, the further along he went the less light he got. Even if he was a cultivator, he couldn't see in places with truly no light.
So, he used his spiritual sense for guidance. Just as he sent it out, he felt someone waiting in the darkness on the other side.
Alex could see him with his eyes closed, listening to his footsteps. 'He wants to steal my talisman,' Alex thought. However, there was no way the man could do that here in a place with no light.
The darkness was Alex's domain.
Alex immediately disappeared and appeared next to the man.
PING
He swiftly grabbed the falling talisman and disappeared. The man had been listening to sound for echolocation to determine where Alex was, but he never expected Alex to simply disappear and steal away his talisman.
By the time the man looked behind, Alex had disappeared again. Alex didn't bother walking at all. He kept on using the teleportation technique as that was the fastest way to leave this place of darkness.
After not even 5 minutes, he reached the end of the underground tunnels and climbed a steady incline to walk out of it. When he finally came out, he was surprised.
"What?" he shouted out as he saw the most ridiculous field yet. In front of him, was a field full of nothing but monsters. He looked at the sword he was holding and thought, 'Am I supposed to fight them?'
However, just as quickly he shook his head. "No, at the end of the day, this is a race. I am supposed to walk out of here as soon as I can," he said to himself.
He decided to skip the monster, and just as he wished, the texts floating in the air also gave him an easy route out.
- The restriction of '1-meter flight' is lifted just for this one course. It will start the moment you enter the maze walls on the other side.-
"I can fly?" he thought happily. He could now easily skip the hundreds of monsters down below. He was about to fly and leave, but then he stopped.
He looked up and looked at the words again. "Why?" he asked himself. Why would the competition holders lift a restriction for just this one land?
Was it because it was dangerous? Was it because it was time-consuming? If one could simply skip it, why even have this be a part of the Maze run?
That was when Alex noticed something amongst the many monsters and thought, "I see. No wonder."
