Chapter 141: Black and White in the Labyrinth

"Do you have any impression of this place?"

Ye Bai and Dao stood in place without moving around casually. They were lost; wandering blindly would not only waste physical energy, but might also lead them further astray, or even inexplicably into dangerous territory.

Dao looked Ye Bai up and down a few times, wondering why Ye Bai thought he should have any impression of this place.

"No, this is my first time entering a new space as well. Before this, I didn't even know a new space could be born within the main city of Green Forest."

"Then why...?" Ye Bai began, but before he could finish, Dao's words followed closely.

"Are you thinking that because I recognized the monster—what you call a fourth-dimensional creature—and because the engravings on the Black Blade are identical to the engravings on the giant castle gate, I must have been here before, or encountered a similar situation in the past?"

Dao looked at Ye Bai, and Ye Bai looked at Dao. Hearing Dao spell out his inner suspicions word by word, Ye Bai's throat moved, and he said nothing more.

"As for fourth-dimensional creatures, I heard about them from my master. I have never seen anything like a fourth-dimensional creature before this. As for the Black Blade, before coming to this space, I always regarded it as a blade without an edge, and I didn't even know the Black Blade could have so many transformations. Perhaps my master once came here, but simply never mentioned it to me."

In truth, Dao had no fewer doubts in his heart than Ye Bai. In his impression, his master was usually someone who loved telling stories and boasting, someone whose tongue could spin flowers, yet never translated words into actual deeds.

However, the events encountered in this new space this time, along with the various transformations of the Black Blade, all pointed to the fact that this place was intimately connected to the Black Blade. Since he had acquired the Black Blade, he had never encountered such events, which meant only one thing: the previous owner of the Black Blade—his master—had been here before.

*Could this be the location of the Abyss of Heavenly Demons?*

Dao looked at the Black Blade in his hand, feeling increasingly that his master was extraordinary. In his past ignorance, he always felt that his master laughed heartily every day and was very happy, but now Dao gradually understood the endless suffering hidden behind those smiles.

Ye Bai did not know that a single remark of his could cause such a massive change in Dao's inner thoughts. Of course, even if he had known, he still would have said it. If his memory served him correctly, this was already the third time they were standing in this exact spot.

He wanted to acquire more clues, and everything happening here seemed inextricably linked to Dao. Under such circumstances, Ye Bai had to voice the questions in his heart.

The two of them stood in the ancient castle's corridor, flanked entirely by castle rooms. Overhead, a red glow emanated from an unknown source, casting a faint reddish hue over the entire ancient castle. Suspended in the air right before them was a remnant of the Doomsday Vine, magnified countless times.

A Doomsday Vine remnant this large was more than enough to forge a dozen sets of bio-armor with plenty to spare, if only one knew how to retrieve it.

"How should we proceed now?"

Ye Bai reined in his wandering thoughts and began to observe the surrounding environment. Since it was a maze, there had to be a way to solve it. The master of the ancient castle must have designed the maze to prevent people from penetrating deep into the castle, rather than to lead them to their deaths.

"In your impression, how many times have we come to this place?"

Dao looked at the nearly identical doors before him, drew the Black Blade from his hand, and stopped in front of a door closest to him.

"This should be the second time, right?" The corridors beneath their feet were numerous, not to mention the doors. So far, they must have passed hundreds, if not a thousand doors. Every door they encountered was completely identical, making it impossible to tell any difference.

***

Watching Dao leave a scratch on the door with the Black Blade, Ye Bai felt no surprise. When they first realized they had walked into a maze, Ye Bai had already used the Bright-Dream sword to leave marks to avoid walking in circles.

Yet he had never seen the marks he left with the Bright-Dream sword again. The first time they left this place, they hadn't circled very far, and their brains still retained the route they had taken. It was only when they returned here and found the marks on the door missing that they realized they had fallen into a maze.

Dao scrutinized the door for a moment, then pushed it open and walked straight in. Unaware of what Dao had discovered, Ye Bai had no choice but to follow.

"Did you discover something? The marks left on the door are completely useless; they disappear in no time. If we wander too far, we might not even be able to find our original starting point."

As soon as Ye Bai followed Dao through the door, the castle room's door slammed shut tightly.

Stepping into the room, Ye Bai saw Dao squatting on the ground, carefully observing the three doors inside. Every corridor was dense with identical doors, and every time you stepped through a door, three more doors would appear in the room. Behind each of those doors lay another corridor, and he and Dao had walked back and forth between corridors and doors several times over.

There seemed to be countless doors and endless corridors here; the further they walked, the more wrong everything felt.

Every time they entered a new door, it felt like stepping into another space. Ye Bai wondered if Dao could feel it, but the maze architecture here seemed to defy the spatial characteristics of three-dimensional geometry entirely.

Here, every door led to three more doors, which would mean the space behind a corridor door ought to consist of four doors. Regardless of which door was pushed open, a corridor lay beyond; if that were true, the corridors behind every door should intersect.

Yet this kind of logic did not seem to apply here. Aside from straight corridors, there appeared to be no other passages.

Dao did not answer Ye Bai's question. His eyes remained fixed on the three doors, shifting from a squatting posture to standing right in the center of the space enclosed by the doors, scanning them over and over again.

In truth, Ye Bai desperately wanted to ask what Dao had discovered, but fearing he might interrupt Dao's train of thought, he dared not interrupt.

After a short while, Dao left a mark on the door to his left and pushed it open to leave. Ye Bai followed closely behind.

Thus, Ye Bai and Dao passed through several more doors. Whether because they were in a maze or due to some innate trait, it was the first time Ye Bai felt his sense of direction was so abysmal.

Following Dao through yet another door into a corridor, Ye Bai felt he was drifting further and further away from his original location, and finally could not help asking Dao: "What on earth have you discovered? If we just wander blindly like this, aside from wasting physical energy, it's completely useless."

If it weren't for the fact that there were only the two of them, he certainly wouldn't have kept walking with Dao, who was as tight-lipped as a gourd.

Whether Dao heard Ye Bai's somewhat angered words or had finally confirmed something, he finally stopped, stood by the door for a moment, and began to explain to Ye Bai.

"Do you feel that we are getting further and further away from our original location?" Dao turned around to look at the visibly disgruntled Ye Bai, speaking calmly.

"Isn't that the case?" His brain was telling him he was walking further and further away.

"Sometimes, not only our eyes, but even our brains can deceive us." Dao held the Black Blade in his right hand and showed Ye Bai the marks on the blade.

The various marks on the Black Blade intersected with one another, making it impossible to make head or tail of them. Ye Bai stared for a moment, shook his head, and said, "Could there be a map out of the maze on the Black Blade? Aside from the independent circle at the very bottom, the rest are just randomly distributed."

***

"No. It's just that the Black Blade is the key to our leaving this place. The map has been right before our eyes all along, but neither of us noticed it. If you hadn't reminded me with a single sentence, I think we might have been trapped here forever."

With that, Dao looked up at the Doomsday Vine still suspended ahead of them, while the circular mark on the Black Blade in his hand had vanished.

"If not for the Black Blade, I would feel just like you, thinking we were walking farther away. In reality, the very first time we looked at the doors before us, we stepped step by step into a hypnotic trance. The longer the time, the deeper the hypnosis, to the point where our brains made wrong judgments. It's not that we lost our sense of direction; our brains were simply deceived."

Following this, Dao walked up to the door before him, pressed the Black Blade against his palm, and felt around the door continuously until, right in the center, he pulled a thread of black ink out from the door.

"You asked me just now if I had been here before. I know I haven't, but that doesn't mean my master hasn't, or my master's master. How did they determine direction? And how did they leave the maze?"

"The Black Blade?" Ye Bai uttered in astonishment.

Dao nodded. "Actually, I should have realized it from the beginning: the Black Blade is related to this place. Your Bright-Dream sword is clearly no mortal artifact, yet it couldn't leave lasting marks on this door. Since the ink threads within the Black Blade can penetrate the grand gate, they can certainly do so here."

"This only confirms whether we've walked in vain. What about the map?"

"It's hanging right above our heads—it's that Doomsday Vine remnant. Look closely at all the doors around us, and every corner of the Doomsday Vine." Dao looked at the Doomsday Vine and said with absolute certainty.

"So that's how it is." Ye Bai watched the door for a moment. The originally dark red door actually began to rotate slowly, and a tiny black light spot appeared right at its center.

He had originally thought the scattered patterns on the door were randomly assembled, but he hadn't expected that staring at them for a long time would cause them to rotate, forming an inconspicuous black light spot at the center.

Then, raising his head to look up, he saw no anomalies. "It still just looks like the Doomsday Vine."

Ye Bai was somewhat puzzled, but immediately—

"No, there are light spots at these corners too, and there is more than one color—both white and black. Among them, the black light spot at the sharpest corner is much brighter than the others."

"If my guess is correct, that brightest light spot should be our current location. We should have just entered the maze now, and the other end should be our destination." Dao pointed to the very tip of the Doomsday Vine and said.

"Then how did you know this is a map?" Ye Bai looked at the magnified Doomsday Vine above and found it hard to believe this was a map.

"I trust my master."

Having said that, Dao lowered his gaze and began walking according to the path indicated by the Doomsday Vine.