Chapter 24: Teleportation Array

Darren led Eric into a small, inconspicuous looking room at the back of the manor. Eric noticed his surroundings and didn't feel anything particularly odd about it. There were only a couple couches and a bookshelf in the room, along with a glowing orb placed on a stand of sorts, acting like a source of light.

'This won't just be some random place; there has to be a catch here: something that creates a secret passage or something like that.' Eric thought as he started sensing the nearby room with his qi.

Darren smiled at Eric as he noticed him trying to observe the room and tapped his shoulder to grab his attention.

He put his hand over the orb and injected some of his qi in it. As Darren did this, the bookshelf started sliding out towards its side. Once it had stopped moving, it revealed a dimly lit corridor with only a couple torches on the sides of the walls which looked empty except for a lever near the entrance.

Eric watched this whole process in amazement; he had never been in any sort of secret corridor like this before and he was pretty astonished to see something he had only seen in movies and novels for himself in person.

'If you're intrigued by just this, you won't be prepared for what's coming next.' Darren said to Eric as he nudged him inside the passage and followed right after.

When they were both inside the passage, Darren pulled the lever behind him and the bookshelf realigned itself, covering up the entrance to the passage.

Eric and Darren walked through this empty hallway for about a minute and then arrived at another room. This room, however, looked vastly different to anything Eric had seen.

The room was pretty small, but there was a rather large circular array like formation on a slightly risen platform on the ground. Except for this peculiar looking structure, there was nothing else particularly noticeable in this room.

As Eric looked at the formation on the ground, the only thing he could assume was that it was an array of sorts. Since he hadn't really delved much into arrays and formations in the past, he didn't have many memories or knowledge about them.

"This is a teleportation array." Darren told Eric, seemingly reading his mind.

"Once we step into this and I activate it by injecting my qi into it, we will both be teleported to an area in the Treasure Pagoda. Pretty cool, isn't it?"

Darren smiled at Eric as he gestured him to stand inside the formation.

As Eric stood inside it, Darren gave him one final warning.

"By the way, Eric, since you have just become a cultivator recently and this is your first time using a teleportation array, you will feel some mental pressure while you teleport. To minimize that pressure, try to calm yourself and steel your mind. Don't worry, it won't be very serious. You will only feel a bit dizzy if you do this. Otherwise, you might end up feeling a bit sick and queasy."

Unbeknownst to Darren, Eric was a cultivator of the path of the mind and had a strengthened mental sphere; such mental pressure would already amount to almost nothing for him.

Once he had said this, Darren also stood in the formation and in a couple seconds, it had fully lit up.

In a second, Eric felt a very slight mental pressure, which he was able to withstand easily by closing his eyes and focusing on his mental sphere. By the time Eric opened his eyes, he could see that the scene around him had completely changed.

Eric was totally amazed when he saw this. He knew teleportation was a thing in this world, but it was way more exciting to experience it for himself.

Eric looked around him to judge his surroundings. He was inside a seemingly identical looking room, but the hallway that it extended into was way shorter than the one at Darren's house.

Darren started walking forward and Eric closely followed suit. After reaching the end of the hallway, there was a similar lever which Darren pulled.

As the stick on the lever moved to the other side, a similar scene unfolded as the structure in front of him moved to the side and revealed a luxurious looking office.

"This is my office. The route I took you through previously was a secret entrance; I added the thrill of going through a hidden teleportation array to your reward." Darren told Eric with a slight smile on his face.

As the two of them walked into the spacious, luxurious looking office, Eric turned backwards and saw that there was an identical looking lamp to the one he previously saw, but this time instead of a bookshelf, there was a cupboard that blocked the secret entrance.

Darren inserted some qi into the orb and the cupboard put itself back in place, completely covering up any tracks of the hidden pathway.

Now, it was time for Eric to collect his rewards.

The way the Treasure Pagoda was structured made it so that it had two major parts. The first one was the actual shop, which Eric had entered and scammed the shopkeeper in, to initially unlock the Scam System. The other was the treasury, which was sort of like a storage with all the stuff stored in it.

Some of the products were kept on display or were in the shop directly to sell and purchase, but if someone requested an item that wasn't in the shop at that moment, the shopkeeper or an assistant would check in the large treasury for that item.

It was basically like a large storage room which had all sorts of high quality stuff in it, with the shop displaying only the most basic and commonly bought items.

The treasuries were all connected to the shops outside, but were also connected to the building where Darren's office was.

As Darren walked out of his office room and opened the gate, there were a fleet of stairs visible.

He walked down the stairs and after reaching the bottom, he opened the door on the opposite site to his office.

'This is it, this is it.' Eric said to himself, in anticipation for what rewards he would get from this endeavor of his.