Chapter 73: Thirteen beats
Ethan lunged forward. Laira stayed close beside him, and Ruo Yan and the three puppets didn’t fall behind by half a step either. The crowd behind hurriedly picked up speed, the chaotic sound of footsteps quickly ringing throughout the corridor.
The span of time the spatial wind vanished was very short.
No one dared conserve their strength.
When the whole team had gone nearly fifty meters, a young Beastkin suddenly saw a silver light flash in a crack in the wall.
It was a bracelet inlaid with crystals, its energy oscillation reaching at least rank B.
His eyes lit up. Without thinking, he immediately left the formation, reaching out to grab the bracelet.
Ethan noticed the action, his expression immediately turning cold.
"Don’t touch it!"
But the warning was too late.
The instant the Beastkin’s fingers touched the bracelet, the wall beside him immediately opened. A metal arm reached out, gripping his neck tight then yanking him hard inside.
The Beastkin screamed, his two legs kicking wildly on the ground.
Brakk immediately turned, wanting to rush to save his own, but Ethan had already sensed the wind cycle beginning early.
"Keep running!"
Brakk roared: "My man is still there!"
"He can’t be saved anymore."
"You—"
Fwsh!
The first wind blade appeared behind the formation.
The Beastkin’s body was pulled entirely into the rock wall. His scream immediately stopped, blood flowing out from the cracks, while the silver bracelet slowly returned to its original position.
It had never been a treasure.
Only a trap used to lure the greedy.
Brakk gritted his teeth, but in the end still had to turn and keep running.
The spatial wind blades chased close behind. An Elf running slowly had a wind blade graze his cloak, the entire back panel of fabric immediately cut away.
When the distance was less than three meters left, Ethan saw a membrane of energy ahead.
"Jump!"
He kicked hard against the ground, lunging through the membrane. Laira immediately wrapped an arm around his waist, opening her healthy wing to shield behind them. Ruo Yan and the others crossed over one after another too.
The wind blades stopped right outside the membrane of energy.
The whole team dropped into a square hall.
Many people sat down heavily the moment they touched ground, gasping for breath continuously. Brakk still stood near the entrance, looking at the traces of blood left behind the membrane. His two hands gripped the haft of his battle-axe tight, but he didn’t blame Ethan.
Ethan had warned him.
The other had still chosen to leave the formation out of greed.
Aldren stepped over beside Ethan, the smile on his face clearer than before.
"You truly can see the rules."
Ethan turned to look at him. "Are you disappointed that I’m still alive?"
Aldren stopped short for a moment, then burst out laughing. "Why would I be disappointed? With you here, our chances of leaving the labyrinth are much higher."
"Perhaps."
Ethan turned away, but the Eye of Truth hadn’t completely closed yet.
The blue stone on Aldren’s forehead flashed. A new thread of energy immediately appeared, quietly attaching itself to the back of Ethan’s cloak.
This time, Ethan didn’t destroy the mark.
’Want to track me? Then go ahead and keep it.’
As long as this thread of energy still existed, Aldren could pinpoint Ethan’s location. But conversely, Ethan could also use it to know where Aldren was.
A mark that could track both ways.
Aldren thought he had grasped a knife.
But he didn’t know which way the blade was pointing.
...
At the same time, in an entirely different land, Ryan was kneeling amid a thick layer of gray ash.
One of his hands braced against the ground, the other clutched his chest. His fingers had been burned by the Void Flame to the point that black bone was exposed in many places. Beneath his torn clothes, purple-black lines crawled along his chest and neck, continuously twitching like living things.
Each time the Void Flame flared up, Ryan’s whole body trembled violently.
He bowed his head, cold sweat running down his face, his two jaws clenched so tight that blood spilled from the corner of his mouth.
"Stop... Just a little longer..."
No one answered.
The monster stitched from six corpses stood behind him. The warped faces on its body all opened their mouths at once, letting out broken groans.
Ryan felt very clearly the Void Flame eroding his body.
The rank S fire ability that had once made him arrogant had almost been dyed purple-black. If he used his power, the flame would destroy his body faster. But if he tried to suppress it, it would burn his organs from within.
To live, he had no choice but to keep using it.
The more he used it, the more the Void swallowed him.
A wolf-shaped monster crawled out from a rock crevice ahead. Its body was over three meters long, its mouth full of sharp teeth, its aura reaching Silver.
Ryan slowly lifted his head. In both his eyes, the purple-black flame immediately blazed up.
"Get out of my way."
The wolf roared, its four legs stamping hard against the ground then lunging.
Ryan reached his hand forward.
The Void Flame shot out like a stream of black liquid, immediately swallowing the monster’s head. The flame didn’t burn the outer layer of skin but bored straight into its mouth, eyes, and ears, then blazed up inside its body.
The howl lasted only three seconds.
The wolf collapsed to the ground.
Ryan spat out a mouthful of blood too. The skin on his right arm cracked open, exposing blood vessels burning with purple-black fire.
He looked at the wolf’s corpse, his trembling hand raising up.
"Get up."
The Void Flame immediately bored into the corpse.
The wolf’s bones let out a cracking sound. Its four legs were twisted into abnormal angles, its head also tilted to one side, but in the end it still slowly rose to its feet.
Ryan looked at the two monsters bowing their heads before him, the corner of his mouth twitching into a smile.
The pain still hadn’t lessened at all.
But he didn’t care.
Just imagining the day he burned Laira to death in front of Ethan, seeing the older brother he hated forced to his knees in despair, Ryan felt all this pain was worth it.
A vague direction appeared in his head again.
Ryan turned to look toward the horizon.
Very far away, behind the mountain ranges shrouded in black mist, a flash of purple light flickered then quickly vanished.
Ryan slowly stood up. Every movement made the Void Flame bite deeper into his flesh, but his gaze only grew more crazed.
"Ethan... I’m about to find you."
The two monsters immediately followed behind him.
...
In Ethan’s space, the square hall had no exit of any kind.
After the last person passed through the membrane of energy, the corridor holding the spatial wind behind them immediately vanished. The stone wall sealed into a complete solid mass, no crack of any kind visible anymore.
Brakk walked a circle around the hall, then swung his battle-axe hard into the wall.
Boom!
A crack immediately appeared, but only a few seconds later, the destroyed stone had automatically sealed shut as though it had never been struck.
Korr stepped over and placed his metal hand on the wall’s surface. The energy core on his chest glowed, wave after wave of oscillation transmitting deep inside.
A long while later, he finally withdrew his hand.
"This isn’t real stone."
Aldren looked at the wall then asked: "Condensed space?"
Korr shook his head. "Not entirely. It has a structure like matter, but its core isn’t in this hall. Even if you destroyed the entire wall, you couldn’t open a path."
The people around immediately turned to look at Ethan.
After witnessing him lead the whole team through the spatial wind corridor, no one saw him anymore as someone who had merely happened upon the False Wall.
Ethan paid no attention to those gazes.
He was looking at the large circle carved in the middle of the hall.
The circle was formed from thousands of small symbols. At first they were completely dark, but after everyone entered, the symbols on the outer ring began to glow, then the light slowly spread inward.
Laira stepped over beside Ethan and asked softly: "Do you see something?"
"Wait a moment."
Ethan activated the Eye of Truth.
The symbols beneath the ground immediately turned into flowing currents of energy. They didn’t form an attacking array but continuously extended to every creature in the hall.
’An identity verification gate.’
Each thread of energy touched a person’s soul, checked the mark within, then quickly withdrew.
Brakk was recognized.
Aldren was recognized.
Korr and all the members of the Stone Heart tribe were recognized too.
Laira was recognized through her link with Ethan.
But when the current of energy touched Ruo Yan, it immediately stopped.
Ruo Yan was a Partner.
But she no longer had a link with her old Awakened, nor did she have the independent mark of a creature summoned directly into this space.
In the eyes of the rules, she wasn’t a participant.
Nor a free creature.
Lines of notification quickly appeared before Ethan.
[Verifying participant qualification.]
[Partner unit detected.]
[No soul anchor point detected.]
[No linked partner detected.]
[Status: Old link severed.]
[Classification: Unregistered foreign unit.]
[Switching to reclamation process.]