Chapter 221: The first puzzle!

Whooshh..

As if a gust of smoke was being blown over, the pitch black space that Duan Li was in after he entered the door gradually turned bright, eventually turning white all over, with the iron door behind him disappearing without a trace.

'This is.. I entered an empty Crafted Space?'

Similar to the Principal's Crafted Space from before, the nature of the place he was in felt strangely familiar yet foreign at the same time due to its flatness and emptiness.

A Crafted Space was an alternate space created artificially for various purposes. For the Principal's, it was a place where he trained and cultivate in isolation, whereas for this place, it serves to act as a place to conduct trials for cultivators.

In a sense, even the entirety of the Eternal Maze could be considered as a Crafted Space, albeit an advanced one. Duan Li theorizes that a Crafted Space was divided into many levels, but he was still not sure what those levels were.

However, even though this Crafted Space was similar to the Principal's, the starking contrast was that the latter's total size was quite small. When compared to this, there seemed to be no end in sight, appearing to extend all the way into the horizon indefinitely!

Therefore, it was apparent that the level between the two Crafted Space was far in between, with this Crafted Space being far more advance in nature!

Tap! Tap!

Duan Li walked in one direction without stopping, but after a while, he felt as if he was going around in circles, because there was nothing to be seen yet.

Cupping his chin, Duan Li pondered for a moment.

"Hmm.. I guess I should let everyone out and let them test out my theory?"

With a wave of his sleeve, Di Rou, Daelius, Cucko, and Bulu appeared. Bulu was actually quite reluctant to leave his tribe's members initially due to being separated away from them for so long. But since he had already swore an oath to follow Duan Li and acknowledged the latter as his master, and his father-in-law as well as the rest of the tribe urged him to represent them in serving Duan Li, he made the decision to stick with the latter.

When they each came out, Di Rou was the first to react to her surroundings.

"Now that I am outside, I'm pretty sure this is a Crafted Space.." she said.

"En, that's right. I want the four of you to walk in four different direction away from me for 100 meters or until I said stop." Duan Li instructed.

Then, with Duan Li as the center, Di Rou moved to the North, Daelius to the East, Cucko to the South and Bulu to the West.

Tap! Tap!

After they reached 100 meters away from Duan Li, they stopped and waited for his further instructions.

After thinking about the matter for a moment, Duan Li then decided for them to continue walking and stopping for every 100 meters.

200 meters..

300 meters..

400 meters..

As soon as they reached the 500 meters mark, something bizarre happened!

The four of them had switched position without them even noticing!

Di Rou from the North switched with Cucko on the South, and Bulu from the West switched with Daelius on the East!

Not only that, they were even facing into his direction, such that if they continued to walk, they would eventually reach him once more which was the center!

"This is.." Duan Li furrowed his brows. His theory was correct. He was indeed walking around in circles before.

Seemingly to notice Duan Li whom was suddenly in front of them when he should be behind them, the four of them were caught in confusion.

"Eh master? How did he move in front of us?"

Then, they noticed the others from the distance as well and slowly realized that their positions had been switched!

How can this be?

"Calm down everyone. Move a step back and see if you can return to your original position." Duan Li said.

They nodded and did as was told, and once more, as if it was natural, they returned back to their original spot!

Incredible!

What made them feeling even more awed of this phenomena was the fact that their transition from one position to the other felt like nothing has happened at all, which made them unaware that their position was changed!

While not all of them were cultivators, since they were a mix of different species, each of them had already honed their senses to detect miniscule changes to their surrounding as part of their awareness.

Thus, it left them extremely befuddled on how even their senses and instinct failed to notice this peculiarity. Perhaps, only after walking a long distance would their thought process be able to suspect that something was in fact amiss.

"Stay right where you are everyone and don't move." Duan Li said as he summoned the spectral body of Dilong and Zhulong.

Weng..

"Dilong, Zhulong, it seems that this Crafted Space has a radius of 500 meters before looping back, can you both confirm this?"

The reason why he asked this question to these two Elemental Spirit Origin was because they were experts in things related to space as part of their natural abilities of the dragon species.

"Okay" they both replied at the same time and began to scan their surroundings.

Not too long later, these two dragons began to voiced out the results of their analysis.

"Strange.. this Crafted Space is indeed looped together.. but there exists some tunnel pockets that connected to another Crafted Space which was too small for anything to even enter.." Zhulong said.

"Hmm? Explain more." Duan Li said as he listened to them.

"Usually, Crafted Space is an entirely isolated space that could only be entered and exited through an external portal, like the Eternal Maze outside connecting with outside world via the vortex gate." Zhulong replied.

Dilong nodded and then continued, "That's right, however this Crafted Space's four cardinal directions was looped together, but at the same time connects to somewhere else which made it even more strange."

"Therefore, even if one were to walk a thousand miles ahead in any direction, they would still be in this same space and would not be able to pass through those tunnels." she explained, "Unless.."

Duan Li cupped his chin and nodded to this as he had already experimented on the theory with those four.

"Unless?" he asked impatiently.

"Unless.." both of them looked at each other as they agreed on the outcome with a single glance on each other.

".. this Crafted Space is actually a.. Compounded Space!" they said at the same time.

Compounded Space?

This was the first time Duan Li had ever heard of such a term, thus he could not help but to inquire further, "What is this Compounded Space?"

"Compounded Space is a highly advanced technique of Spatial manipulation.. consisting of multiple Crafted Space that was compounded against one another!" Dilong answered as she stared towards a certain direction.

"For example, in the North direction, it was looped to the South, but with the correct means, one would be able to escape that loop and enter the next Space!"

Zhulong then added, "The reason why we found it strange was because we have already scanned the surrounding, but found no mechanism or whatsoever that could be used to escape the loop.."

"Indeed. However, having no mechanism to escape is impossible as well, because if one could enter, then one should be able to exit too! There can never be a space without connection at all because that would violate its existence!" Dilong continued.

Her explanation was derived from the absolute law that all space were interconnected regardless if they were in a different realm, dimension or time. There would always be some sort of a connection between them.

However, this was a topic that their master hadn't yet been able to learn, so until he has a grasp on these laws, he wouldn't be able to make sense of it even if they explained it to him in more detail.

'Hmmm.. by the sound of it, this Compounded Space is extremely complicated..' Duan Li pondered as he brainstormed for the correct solution to their current predicament.

I guess the only way out is to find the mechanism in one way or another?

The only question is.. how to find it..

Duergar, the little sword on Duan Li's right earlobe whom was silent all these while, decided to speak up at this moment.

"Young master, I have seen numerous Compounded Space before, and the space like this one, while rare, isn't anything too special in my experience. However, finding the mechanism is quite tricky usually. Luckily, this place is empty and is not filled with any danger at all." he said.

Hearing this, Duan Li shot up his brows, "What? You know of this Compounded Space? You should have spoken earlier little sword! Then how can we find the mechanism?" he said with a hint of annoyance in his voice.

"We.. disrupt the space!"

...