CHAPTER 900: CHAPTER 899: A FAMILIAR FEELING

Hou Niao didn’t know what kind of place he had entered.

The bizarre corridors, like a spider web, with countless entrances and exits leading in all directions.

But there was no one beside him!

The four of them entered almost at the same time. Why do it that way? It was to verify whether the place inside was random or fixed.

The answer came out, and it was the worst kind of random; in such a spider web structure, the probability of the four meeting again is not high; considering that the essence of a spider web is a space rift web, it’s hard to say the probability of even hundreds of people encountering each other.

A spider web is the biggest feature of cosmic space rifts, because of spatial instability and lack of energy support, over long periods, they gradually expand, form, disappear, and block, except for God, no one can possess a constantly changing map like this.

Hou Niao wore a troubled expression. He had been traveling for nine years. Would this final year also be wasted in travel? The kind with no clue?

He could sense the general direction of his target, but the problem was that there were several corridors leading that way, and he was almost certain that as he went, a few paths would turn into dozens, hundreds, thousands. How much time did he have to verify each one in such a maze with only one year?

Quickly recognizing his current situation, relying solely on judgment was futile. He could only find patterns through practical action, even though this possibility was almost zero.

A small Golden Core cultivator, without deep Great Dao perception, trying to figure out the internal space rift of an Innate Spiritual Treasure five realms above him, seemed like a fool’s dream. But even if it was a dream, he could only keep moving, placing his hopes on the ethereal possibility of luck.

His greatest awkwardness now was having strength with nowhere to apply it.

There was no life form in the corridor, it was dead silent. Without further hesitation, he chose one of the exits and quickly ran forward, until after a day, he encountered another fork ahead.

He started to backtrack, returning to the starting point, and then chose another among the exits.

This was his method: not blindly walking down a single path to the end, as it would be impossible to correct mistakes. The core of his method was, at the very least, to thoroughly understand the terrain from the starting point, looking for any discoveries in the process.

He was at a disadvantage in this environment, because before they came in, Fairy Fei Bai impatiently warned him that elites from the Upper Realm like them were thoroughly prepared by their Daoist sects before setting out, covering all possible aspects of a cosmic journey. A crucial part was spatial identification.

This was a field untouched in the Jinxiu Cultivation World, where they couldn’t even leave the atmosphere, let alone talk about space rifts, which were a foreign concept.

But, in those long-standing Daoist traditions, the extrapolation of spatial abilities had reached an extreme, especially after the Space Great Dao was assimilated by someone.

So, including her, each Upper Realm envoy had methods to find the right path in such a space rift environment, whether it be a special skill or a magical treasure — the ultimate guarantee for cosmic travel.

Though Fairy Fei Bai had a bad temper and looked down on the crude barbarity of Sword Cultivators, she was more willing to exchange a few words with this ignorant guy, because he was the only one with a traceable pattern, unlike the other two, who were like Daoist logs.

In her eyes, either Yan Guan or Qi Zheng was probably from the Daoist lineage of the Immortal who had harmonized with the Space Great Dao, so they were confident with good reason, while Hou Niao was purely an accidental participant, the least capitalized among all the cultivators who entered.

To quote Fairy Fei Bai, what Dao Heart, what courage, what will? The problem is simple, those with beefy Space Treasures dare to enter; those left wandering outside have no faith in their Space Treasures; it’s just that simple.

Fairy Fei Bai’s words were blunt, filled with conspiracy theory, but Hou Niao was still grateful. At least she was honest.

This was the last exchange before coming in. He initially didn’t pay it much mind, but once inside, he realized she wasn’t wrong; he was indeed quite clueless in such a place.

Wutiao explored every pathway he sensed leading to the destination, the longest taking two days before a fork appeared, the shortest not even an hour before a branch emerged; determining this took him ten days, only to return to the starting point, still uncertain of where to go next.

The corridors varied in width and had the same structure, so he couldn’t determine which was the main path or which were branches. Sometimes, it was like drilling through a mouse hole, then suddenly opening up into a broad avenue. The complexity of the terrain left his judgments baseless, and he sorrowfully realized his only option was to guess.

He couldn’t even rely on the simplest of methods, like always turning left or always turning right, because this wasn’t a flat maze; it was a three-dimensional labyrinth, with no concept of left or right!

He doubted how much of a role luck could play here. Luck might work once, but what about at ten forks? A hundred, a thousand times?

Damned maze!

Since he began cultivating, this was the first time he operated entirely on luck. After marking his starting point, he sorted the five channels based on width, starting with the widest path, returning if it led nowhere.

Always take the widest, returning to try the next one down.

He wasn’t sure how long his markings would last here, but with a search pattern like this, retreating to the previous fork for comparison at least prevented traveling in vain. The structures in space rifts were mostly similar, making them hard to differentiate after a while.

With a plan set, he pushed his speed to the limit. A year was too short, leaving no room for waste.

Three days later, while running through the corridor, he suddenly spun, narrowly avoiding a rushing giant axe; the half-human-sized rusty axe blade streaked past as a human skeleton roared at him.

Instead of fear, he was delighted; encountering a monster in a place like this was like finding water in a desert — it was his biggest clue yet.

He rushed in, staying low and flying close to the ground as he approached, slicing off one of the skeleton’s leg bones with a sword stroke. He wasn’t eager to kill it; ideally, they’d communicate, but if not, it could run, and he would then track it.

Luck wasn’t too bad.