Chapter 286: Inside the hanging painting
Lin Ye carefully sensed the structure of the chandelier and the spiritual energy shield. This spiritual energy shield was clearly much more sophisticated than his mutated spiritual energy shield.
By continuously attacking various positions of the spiritual energy shield, it only took Lin Ye ten minutes to figure out the structure of this spiritual energy shield.
The reason this spiritual energy shield was exceptionally resilient was because its composition included certain spiritual energy threads and spiritual energy nodes woven together from those threads.
This structure was not only more stable, but it also dispersed attacks from all directions, even canceling each other out.
After understanding the structure of the spiritual energy shield, Lin Ye used his mental energy to forcibly tear open the spiritual energy shield, then controlled his spiritual energy blade to destroy the chandelier inside that provided spiritual energy.
As the spiritual energy shield collapsed, Lin Ye hooked out the purple crystal box and stored it in his loot space.
As for the chandelier, it was merely a device that provided spiritual energy for the shield. Due to its oversized dimensions, Lin Ye discarded it after studying its structure.
Lin Ye ascended to the second floor along the spiral staircase facing the main door, but as soon as he turned into the second-floor corridor, his vision blurred and he found himself back at the first-floor entrance.
'Spatial teleportation?'
Lin Ye scanned the hall and noticed the crystal chandelier hanging intact from the ceiling, while the contents of the wall paintings seemed to have undergone some changes. "My Falling Materials? Why didn't they restore the Falling Materials too?"
Lin Ye felt somewhat frustrated. If the Falling Materials could also be restored, he would have filled his loot space to capacity right here.
No one responded to Lin Ye, and the hall remained deathly silent.
Lin Ye ascended to the second floor again, this time focusing his senses on the environmental changes around him. Yet he still found himself teleported back to the hall entrance.
He could clearly perceive the spatial fluctuations but had no method to prevent this teleportation.
Lin Ye made several more attempts to reach the second floor. On the fourth time he was teleported back to the entrance, he suddenly discovered the broken chandelier he had damaged lying on the floor in the center of the hall.
'Are there four identical halls here? No, it could also be two halls with random teleportation, or possibly more halls, and this time I just happened to teleport back to the first hall.'
Lin Ye didn't attempt the second floor again, as he didn't believe repeated teleportations would help him leave this place.
Pushing open the building's main door, Lin Ye tried to exit.
Once again, he found himself teleported back to the entrance.
'Since I can't leave, I'll have to study the surrounding wall paintings.'
Lin Ye observed the wall paintings from a distance and quickly discovered that the paintings in the four halls were somehow connected, as if observing the painted world from four different directions.
'Are these four spaces surrounding the painted world? No, each wall has multiple paintings hanging, are these spaces overlapping? And the orientations of the paintings on both sides are different too...'
Lin Ye's understanding of space wasn't profound, so he couldn't deduce the spatial structure here.
'It seems leaving this place might require passing through the painting spaces.'
Lin Ye approached one of the paintings depicting a six-legged beast with jet-black fur.
When Lin Ye stood still before the painting, he suddenly noticed the image within had changed, transforming into an extravagant hall with numerous paintings of varying sizes hanging on the walls.
Behind him, the heavy panting of a beast echoed.
Lin Ye didn't turn around, instead deploying a thin spiritual energy shield behind him.
The six-legged beast crashed into the spiritual energy shield, deforming it but failing to break through the thin protective layer.
The spiritual energy threads and nodes absorbed environmental spiritual energy, dispersing and canceling out the impact force of the six-legged beast.
Lin Ye still didn't turn around, continuing to observe the wall paintings while several invisible compressed spiritual energy blades stabbed into the six-legged beast's body, exploding within and completely tearing it to shreds.
'Spatial knowledge is too difficult, I can't understand it just by looking like this...'
The six-legged beast's flesh and blood automatically separated, with blood flowing into the Bloody Ring while the meat chunks reassembled into a large black dog that obediently crouched behind Lin Ye.
Lin Ye turned to survey his surroundings, finding himself in a relatively small, fully enclosed wilderness space. On the four walls of this space hung four paintings, all depicting that same luxurious hall.
'Do I need to enter all the paintings and eliminate what's inside to reach the second floor?'
Lin Ye approached another painting and was immediately teleported back into the hall.
Looking at that painting again, it now showed only an empty wilderness, with the six-legged beast gone.
This time, when Lin Ye stood before this painting, he wasn't teleported into the painting's interior.
Lin Ye scanned the surrounding paintings but didn't find his employer inside any of them.
'Would she still be waiting for me outside?'
Lin Ye opened the building door and teleported several times through it, but Xia La wasn't on the steps outside.
This time he marked the hall, confirming there were indeed only four halls, and the teleportation followed some pattern where four teleportations would return him to the initial hall.
'If she didn't jump down from the steps, then she must be upstairs... or in some monster's stomach. Forget it, let me try if I can go upstairs first.'
Lin Ye headed toward the second floor, with the large black dog stiffly following behind him.
This time Lin Ye didn't trigger any teleportation and successfully reached the second floor.
When Lin Ye tried to step back, teleportation triggered again, sending him to the other side of the corridor.
'As long as I maintain a certain distance, I won't enter the painting spaces.'
Lin Ye observed the paintings in the second-floor corridor and quickly spotted Xia La in one of them.
That painting depicted a nest of subterranean mawed worms, with Xia La being besieged by numerous subterranean mawed worms.
Lin Ye approached the painting but found he couldn't enter its interior.
'Can each painting only accommodate one person?'
Lin Ye stared intently at the painting. Space could isolate physical bodies but not spirit, otherwise he wouldn't be able to enter other Planes using mental energy.
Previously, he had experienced spiritual transfer once through the organization's equipment, and system simulation was a similar operation, though the system's operations were too advanced for Lin Ye to comprehend at his current level.
Xia La struggled to kill the subterranean mawed worms. She wasn't actually weak, but there were too many subterranean mawed worms here. The worm nest acted like a spawn point, continuously spewing out worms. She wanted to destroy the nest, but there was an exceptionally resilient spiritual energy shield around it that she simply couldn't break.
"I can only issue a Bounty Task now, hoping he sees it and comes quickly..."
Xia La issued a Bounty Task with a very clear location.
Right after she issued the task, the worm nest nearby exploded, along with the surrounding subterranean mawed worms being torn apart by invisible spiritual energy blades.
Xia La whipped her head around and immediately spotted Lin Ye standing within the wall painting.
"You weren't waiting outside for me to issue a task, were you?"
Xia La looked at Lin Ye suspiciously. The timing was just too coincidental - she had just issued the task when the nest exploded.