Monster Paradise

The courtyard in the middle of the tower was filled with greenery. Lin Huang had caught a glimpse of the stone tablet when he was walking into the room with Bai Gu, but he had ignored it as he thought it was just a piece of decoration. When he returned to the courtyard again, Lin Huang stood in front of the stone tablet and observed it carefully. The stone tablet was a charcoal grey without any inscriptions on it. There were only odd golden lines that looked like a complicated maze.

As Lin Huang was looking at the stone tablet, he suddenly felt woozy and found himself in a maze with gray stone walls surrounding him. He was standing at a crossroads with no idea what was happening. Just when he was trying to figure things out, a female voice came from above.

”The rules of the challenge are as below:

”Each time you’re sent into a random location, you’ll have to look for any of the exits in the maze within three minutes, and you’ll win the level. Flying, space manipulation, and detection abilities are prohibited.

”Please get ready. We’re counting down!”

A countdown timer appeared in the sky as the lady said that and the numbers were descending rapidly.

”10, 9, 8, … 2,1.”

When the timer counted to ’1’, gigantic words appeared in the sky: ”Go!”

Lin Huang stood where he was, frozen. He could sense clearly that his Territory ability was shutting down and he could no longer detect what was near him anymore. He looked at the four paths. It was fortunate that he did not have difficulty choosing, or else, he would not know which path to take. He was only given three minutes. Once he picked the wrong path, he would fail the test.

Suddenly, four telekinetic flying daggers came out of his body as he was thinking about it. He then controlled the four daggers to whiz down the four different paths. As long as any of them hit a wall, he would control the daggers to switch directions as well as summoning more and more flying daggers to go towards the crossroads that the other flying daggers had discovered.

In less than a minute, Lin Huang had summoned hundreds of flying daggers and eventually found where the exit was. As soon as he found the exit, he then recalled all of the other flying daggers as he charged towards the flying dagger that led him towards the exit. Finally, just as the timer flashed 2:08, he got out the exit.　

As soon as he got out of the maze, a white glow flashed in front of him, and he was back at the Sorcerer Goddess Tower, standing in front of the stone tablet.

”Xiao Hei, did I leave this place just now?” Lin Huang asked Xiao Hei immediately.

”No, your consciousness was taken away from the stone table for about two minutes. I think that’s the stone tablet’s test.”

Lin Huang looked at the stone tablet differently now as he found it terrifying that a god could remove and transfer his consciousness without him even realizing it.

”I didn’t expect you to pass the test,” The gigantic face appeared and boomed in surprise.

”I just happen to be lucky.” Lin Huang grinned.

”Sir, since I’ve already passed the test, what should I do to get to the second level?”

”That’s easy. Do you see the red dot on the stone tablet?”

Lin Huang noticed the red dot on the stone tablet that had not been there before.

”The red dot is the starting point of the maze that you were sent to earlier. Since you know where the exit is now, all you’ll have to do now is to insert your energy into the stone tablet to control the red dot and go through the path that you took earlier until the red dot leaves the maze.

”However, there are two things that I must remind you. First, your control of energy has to be accurate and mustn’t touch the lines on the stone tablet although the lines are just one millimeter away from each other. As long as you touch the lines, you’ll have to start all over again by going into the stone tablet with your consciousness and finding the exit again. Second, you’ll need to be fast when you control the red dot. You’ll have to use the same amount of time that you used to pass the test with your consciousness earlier. If you fail to do that, you’ll have to start all over again.”

”So, there are two tests on each level. One in the consciousness and one in reality. The second test assesses the accuracy of energy usage.” Lin Huang realized the breakdown of the tests.

The gigantic face smiled without saying anything. Lin Huang then looked at the stone tablet solemnly. The second test was just as difficult as the first one in which he had to look for the maze exit. It required a high accuracy in controlling his Life Power whereby he had to move across lines that were just millimeter apart.

Feeling up to the challenge, Lin Huang became excited. He wanted to know how much he could achieve. As he took his place beside the stone tablet and inserted his Life Power, the dark red dot then became bright red. He did not insert very much Life Power since the red dot rejected any more Life Power from him. A three-minute countdown timer appeared on the blank space on top of the stone tablet.

”3:00.”

”2:59, 2:58…”

Lin Huang only took a glance at the timer. Then, he focused on moving the red dot forward. He did not panic as he moved the red dot carefully as he soon got the hang of it. A minute passed, but he had only managed to complete a fifth of the path although he was accelerating. When the timer was only left with a minute, he was only halfway there.

After peeping at the timer, Lin Huang then put all his attention on moving the red dot. Because he was getting used to it, the red dot was moving faster and faster as time went by. When he only had ten seconds left, the exit was still a distance away from the red dot, and there were some turns in between.

”You’ve only got ten seconds!” The huge face reminded Lin Huang. He did not expect Lin Huang to be able to get that far without failing. As he noticed that the time was almost up, the large face was rooting for Lin Huang to pass the test. Lin Huang obviously heard the face’s reminder and accelerated when he was taking a turn. Although the gold lines were very close to each other, Lin Huang did not touch any of them. He did the same thing for the second and third turns, making his movements looked like drifting a car. After passing the three turnings, Lin Huang managed to control the red dot to get out of the maze with just three seconds left on the clock.

Lin Huang whooshed out a long breath and pulled back his hand that was placed on the stone tablet. Suddenly, the gold lines on the stone tablet faded away while the red dot that Lin Huang had controlled earlier transformed into three lines, forming three unique paths on the stone tablet. The three paths were clearly drawn using lava. Around ten seconds after they appeared, they then shrunk into a light dot and shot in between Lin Huang’s eyebrows.

As soon as that happened, Lin Huang realized what had happened immediately.

”That’s a cultivation method, and this is only the first level!”