Chapter 220 – Floating Door of Life
“I thought so as well,” Mu Zi earnestly said while nodding. “Let’s just head down and take a look. I still can’t say for sure that we’ll find nothing this time.”Fl
w.a.n.g Zhong made the intelligent decision to not speak his opinion. One shouldn’t act pretentiously if one didn’t know the situation. This was something Student w.a.n.g Zhong was very conscientious about.
As the ‘weak’ sphinx was dealt with, the white smoke surrounding them began to dissipate. The wilderness beneath them quickly collapsed, though the people standing atop it didn’t feel any tremors from the change.
Once the forest ground completely disappeared with the white mist, a path appeared before them once more. It was similar to the path they were previously walking, though the surroundings were a bit more illusory. Rune-covered walls gave the path a hazy and indistinct appearance, and although the path wasn’t long it still took them three minutes to reach the end.
At the end of the path, the hazy and indistinct feeling being emitted from their surroundings grew increasingly more prevalent. Suddenly, with an effect like ripples of water parting the way, three doors appeared before them.
The rippling doors appeared both incorporeal and illusionary. Even when they spoke, the formation of ripples undulated across this mirror-like surface. When they extended their hands, however, they were unable to feel anything.
As the ripples waved and traveled, blurry sections of writing appeared before the group.
The pieces of writing were of an extremely ancient language, one made up of individual symbols. It wasn’t of any symbol used in the Federation or the Empires and appeared closer to ancient Latin. At the same time, it was a language completely different from it.
Neither w.a.n.g Zhong or Aioros could understand it. Simba made a show of opening his eyes wide to a.n.a.lyze the symbols, but in the end he could understand a single bit of it. Only Mu Zi could make out something. “It seems a bit like the language of departed spirits…”
“What does it say?” Aioros displayed a rather strong interest in the symbols.
w.a.n.g Zhong also opened his eyes wide. Compared to ordinary citizens and the vast majority of people, he had dabbled in various aspects with language being one of them. The language of departed spirits that Mu Zi mentioned should be the Ancient Egyptian language of the eras long past.
Mu Zi tried to earnestly decipher the content and seemed to achieve some success as a very excited expression appeared on his face. “It’s actually the legendary Floating Door of Life!”
“The Floating Door of Life tests the souls of living beings. Everyone will eventually have to take its test. The number of doors that appear will correspond to the number of individuals that will enter its domain…” Mu Zi explained.
Simba rolled his eyes. Was this little baldy trying to hint that he wasn’t considered a person…? Well, I really can’t be considered a human. I am a n.o.ble Fate Trickster! As he came to this conclusion, Simba once more thought highly of himself.
Still filled with excitement, Mu Zi continued his explanation. “This is a test for one’s own soul. While the hyperdimension world is a spiritual world, the legends say the Floating Door of Life is a spiritual world on a deeper level than a normal spiritual world. If one lacks a sufficiently firm will, then it would be very easy for them to lose their sense of self within and forever be unable to wake up. To us who have entered the hyperdimension world with our souls and bodies of consciousness, this is probably the most dangerous place to be.”
It is commonly said that those with bodies of consciousness won’t die in the hyperdimension world. Even those dimensional beasts that devoured souls which Mu Zi had previously mentioned would at most cause serious injuries to the souls of those experts with bodies of consciousness within the hyperdimension world. While it may be quite the serious injury, it was still just a problem that required time to heal. Even the chances of instantly dying was in the minority of cases.
But once it involved deeper spiritual worlds, one could be permanently stuck in an illusion. It would be no different from dying, and frankly speaking the individual would end up as a human vegetable.
“So what this shows is that this pyramid should be the real deal.” Scorching hot flames sparked to life within Aioros’ eyes.
Genuinely powerful dimensional energy could give birth to treasures. Naturally, it was matched together with a similar degree of danger. This period of craziness gave w.a.n.g Zhong a completely new level of understanding. What Aioros and Mu Zi spoke of was a powerful realm that would also give birth to items of extreme value to humanity. It was also the representative of the strength of dimensions.
Aioros had already crashed into so many pyramids similar to this one and had even gone to other types of mysterious realms. Yet, of every ten locations, nine had led to failure. Those so-called mysterious realms didn’t give him the slightest bit of difficulty and there had simply been no reason for him to crash them from the start. They were instead treated as ‘fake’ mysterious realms to him. Even those items labeled as ‘treasures’ to those in the Federation were deemed worthless. The evaluation of treasures was simply different between those of the Federation and the Empire.
As for Mu Zi, this was the first time he had met up with others while exploring around, so everything was still very interesting for him. At times, making new friends was actually predestined by fate.
What Aioros cared about was getting stronger. To him, the moment humans came into contact with the mysteries of the dimensions and pa.s.sed through their mysterious veils was the moment they gained the ability to control their own fate. This was his path of valour, and also his determined fate!
“There are three doors, so one for each person.” Aioros glanced at w.a.n.g Zhong. As Mu Zi’s friend he was trustable, but Aioros didn’t understand his capabilities.
It was difficult to a.s.sess one’s strength within the hyperdimension just by determining the appearance of their bodies of consciousness. But good or bad, he was able to enter this world with his body of consciousness. Even though he was a person of the Federation, he really shouldn’t be so weak. The only thing left was to see whether or not he dared to take any risks. Put nicely, people of the Federation were a bit cautious. Put bluntly, however, and they just worried all the time and lacked an adventurous spirit.
“No problem!” w.a.n.g Zhong nodded in agreement. His decisiveness earned him a favourable impression from Aioros and Mu Zi. It was an instantaneous change within the two’s hearts.
“I’ll head to the left!” Itching to get going already, Mu Zi had already walked up. A circular ripple undulated out and devoured him without a sound.
“Then let’s go too.” Aioros smile toward w.a.n.g Zhong and patted his shoulder, saying, “Let’s meet on the other side, friend!”
As he stepped into the Floating Door of Life, w.a.n.g Zhong instantly felt a very strange feeling. Just that short step gave off a feeling as though they had taken very, very long to move.
It was completely dark on the other side of the doorway, and he could even see his fingers in front of him. When he stepped through, the door behind him disappeared in an instant.
“Such a strange feeling… w.a.n.g Zhong…” Simba held onto w.a.n.g Zhong’s ear tightly and was pasted to his head. He seemed to want to say something but after hesitating he kept his silence.
A moment after, w.a.n.g Zhong felt a faint tremble coming from Simba’s body. With a smile, he lightly patted Simba while saying, “Don’t worry, I’m here!”
Simba somewhat stabilized his emotions by a bit.
In his heart, w.a.n.g Zhong knew that Simba had paid too great a price for himself.
During his childhood, Simba that had taught him inside his soul sea had a powerful appearance, one full of spirit. The cowardly look he had now was only a recent change. For the sake of changing w.a.n.g Zhong’s fate, he had transformed from a size similar to w.a.n.g Zhong into this palm-sized figure he had now. He had even lost his immense strength. This was the price one paid to change fate. Now he didn’t even have the strength to pinch w.a.n.g Zhong’s nose.
As of this moment, it was w.a.n.g Zhong’s turn to protect Simba.