"How could this be? Someone has already entered the Path of Bewilderment — that place is incredibly close to the core!"
The old wizard wearing ancient wizard attire stared at the pale yellow notebook in his hands and let out a low growl, his face full of exasperation.
On one page of the pale yellow notebook, a rough image had been drawn in faint black lines. Along a road marked as the Path of Bewilderment, a small black dot was slowly moving.
On this map, besides this small black dot, there were several others circling endlessly among the outer buildings.
The old man himself was represented by a white dot — though he was considerably faster than those blocked by the Secret Lock Labyrinth outside, he was clearly still in the middle layer, some distance from the core.
But the black dot representing Leilin was only a few steps away from the red core dot at the very center of the map!
"Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! How could a
The old man cursed, his face a mixture of urgency and frustration. "If only I had more than just the correct spell formula for entering the ruins — if I could also control all the magical mechanisms, then..."
Though the old man's ancestors had been members of the Crimson Arc Moon, they were only ordinary members. While they had participated in the construction of the ruins, they had no access to the more core secrets. Obtaining this map, the entry password, and some intelligence had already been the limit.
Leilin had unexpectedly accelerated the opening time of the ruins, catching the old man at a disadvantage. Rushing through blindly, even though he had been careful and hadn't triggered any traps, he was still lagging behind Leilin.
"Never mind all that! As long as I reach the core control room, there's still hope for a comeback!"
The old man angrily traced another route on the map with his finger. But just as he was about to set off, his pupils suddenly contracted sharply.
At the edge of the map, a massive black blot — several times larger than any of the other dots, surrounded by a ring of red light — had barged straight in.
The outermost traps and mechanisms were demolished outright in the face of the enormous black blot, their names vanishing from the map. The old man howled: "A Fifth-level Wizard is already heading here? Is there no chance for anyone else..."
Despite his lamenting, the old man's pace didn't slow in the slightest. If anything, he moved even faster.
If he was even one step too late and a Fifth-level Wizard claimed this place, there would truly be nothing left for him. Moreover, something in the core area was something he was determined to obtain — it was the primary purpose of this entire trip.
"Just you wait! Once I take control of the core control room!"
The old man stared again at the small black dot on the Path of Bewilderment, his face full of resentment.
……
Leilin, of course, had no idea he had been marked by someone. At this moment, he was walking along a path paved with grey-white flagstones.
On both sides of the road, white mist grew ever thicker, shrouding all scenery from view.
Tap, tap!
On the dead-silent, ethereal road, only his own footsteps echoed. The identical scenery on both sides made it easy to lose all sense of time, ultimately producing an intense feeling of dread.
This was especially true in combination with the unique power within the fog — even the iron will of a Wizard would find it hard to resist.
Were it any lesser Wizard, they would likely have suffered a mental breakdown long ago, crying and begging to turn back or surrender.
But Leilin's expression remained resolute, his steps unwavering, as though these were the most trivial of matters. Against a mind harder than steel ten thousand times over, this ancient trial specifically designed to test willpower was child's play.
As Leilin ventured deeper, the surrounding mist grew so thick he could barely see the road beneath his feet. Every step felt like walking through clouds.
Tap!
Leilin took one step forward, and the surrounding scenery changed abruptly.
Dark yellow wooden planks, a ceiling mottled with mildew, and from the corners came the faint squeaking of rats.
It was the sort of scene most commonly found in commoner slums across the continent. Not a single piece of furniture filled the small wooden house, yet bizarrely, right in the center hung a golden parrot cage, upon which sat a toad smoking a pipe.
"Hey! Brother, are you delivering a love letter from Miguo for me? Please tell her I'm too busy to make it to tomorrow night's date!"
The toad wore a pitch-black cylindrical top hat and carried itself with an air of utmost leisure. Ring after ring of white smoke drifted from its pipe.
"..." Leilin stared at the toad speechlessly, somewhat unsure of the situation.
"Could it be you're not Miguo's messenger! Oh! Then you must be from Elizabeth — she's truly the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. That skin, so full of wrinkles and spore-lumps, those eyes bulging to the extreme... oh! She is my angel..."
The toad babbled on to itself, but the words it spoke left Leilin thoroughly confused.
In the end, he couldn't help but ask: "Where is this place?"
"Quark's Cottage, End of the World, Number 232! Got a problem with that?"
The toad set down its pipe and glanced at Leilin with huge, bulbous eyes.
"Could the Path of Bewilderment be some kind of device like the Astral Gate? Was I teleported directly to another world by the Crimson Arc Moon's ancient defensive magical array?"
A preposterous thought suddenly arose in Leilin's mind.
In many ancient defense systems, when enemies proved too powerful for any magical array to handle, there was often one final resort — interdimensional exile!
This involved simulating the ability of an Astral Gate to teleport a Wizard directly out of the Wizard World. Since it was a one-shot mechanism with no fixed coordinates, the unlucky Wizard would typically be hurled into distant spatial turbulence or even into great storms. Finding any life-bearing alternate world was considered a stroke of luck — as for returning to the Wizard World? One could hardly even dare to dream of it.
The current situation forced Leilin to suspect as much.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
At that very moment, the ground suddenly shook violently, with massive seismic waves striking every few seconds.
"What's going on?" Leilin swept out with his spiritual power, only to discover that his soul force was severely suppressed here — his range couldn't even extend beyond the small wooden house.
"Oh, nothing. Just a new neighbor of mine — he's moving out..."
The toad hopped off the parrot cage with complete nonchalance and bounced outside. Leilin tilted his head in thought for a moment, then followed.
Opening the door of the wooden house, his entire body froze, and an expression of disbelief flashed through his eyes.
Before him lay a vast, earth-yellow wasteland. The sky was filled with black holes and twisted nebulae, and a colossal green silhouette — its roots seemingly anchored directly into the fabric of the universe — was slowly shifting its body.
It was an enormous ancient tree. Its green branches and leaves shed a radiant emerald glow. Leilin had seen quite a few ancient trees before, including the massive ones in Kulive City where houses could be built upon their leaves, yet even the entirety of Kulive City was like a speck of dust compared to this colossal tree — it couldn't even reach a single one of its leaves.
"Hey! New friend, need any help?"
Upon seeing the great tree, the toad happily bounced over and landed on one of its enormous roots, as massive as a mountain range.
Compared to the great tree, the toad's true form was like a speck of dust — no, ten thousand times smaller than a speck of dust!
Leilin stood speechless for a moment, then realized that the structure he had emerged from was indeed a small wooden house, but it was surrounded by the bottomless starry void of space — it was literally floating among the stars. On the bronze-colored doorplate, a line of crooked text read: "End of the World, Number 232! This dwelling belongs to Quark the Toad..."
And on that massive root, where Quark the Toad had landed, there was another crookedly built small house bearing the number 233. The name of its occupant was the Wisdom Ancient Tree. Leilin couldn't fathom how something of such immense size had fit inside that small house. Looking at the wooden house hanging from the root and the toad beside it, he found himself utterly at a loss for words.
But then his expression changed sharply: "The Wisdom Ancient Tree? That sage of the Wizard World, the great being who enlightened so many ancient Wizards, the crystallization of all wisdom?"
Rumble!
From the colossal trunk spanning the starry void, several enormous fissures split open, and violent spatial storms were sucked inward with a soundless howl.
Two vast, hazy eyes opened, followed by lips covered in wood-grain patterns.
"Lo... ng... time... no... see... old... friend..." The great tree's voice boomed outward; its sound alone nearly toppled everything. Quark the Toad frantically clung to the tree's root to keep from being swept away by the fierce gale.
The Wisdom Ancient Tree spoke with extreme slowness, taking nearly a full minute to utter a single syllable, as though every rotation of its thoughts required an immense expenditure of time.
"And... a... new... friend..." Bang! The earth erupted, and a mountain-like root flew up, lifting Leilin before the Wisdom Ancient Tree to meet its star-like eyes.
"I can smell... my scent... upon you..." The Wisdom Ancient Tree's words were labored and obscure, but Leilin immediately understood its meaning.
"Is it the essence of the Wisdom Ancient Tree? And this!" Leilin produced a wooden cup from his breast, though it was now completely empty.
It had once been filled with the liquid essence of the Wisdom Ancient Tree — a powerful catalyst for Leilin's advancement to the Third Rank. And the wooden cup itself was said to have been crafted from the Wisdom Ancient Tree's own wood.