Soon after, he saw the arrow he had carved earlier; he was back at the starting point.
“A ghost wall? A spatial loop?”
He tore a small strip of cloth from his inner lining, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it into the middle of the passage.
Then, he walked straight forward by feel, counting the distance in his head. After a certain number of steps, he turned around. The cloth ball was gone.
The passage looked the same, but his position had changed.
“Wait, I remember this kind of plot from novels.”
Recalling the stories in his mind, he closed his eyes and walked three steps forward, two steps back, and then one step to the left.
Finally, he shouted loudly, “Stop hiding! I see you!”
It was still deathly silent. Nothing changed as he had expected.
“I’m doomed...”
His physical and mental energy were being drained by the constant running and high tension. A sense of powerlessness began to erode his will; his sense of direction was long gone, and his sense of time had become blurred.
“Out of the frying pan and into the fire. If I knew I’d suffer this kind of torture, I would’ve just let that Ogre slap me to death.”
The Simple Lighting Orb in his hand emitted a pale light, illuminating the pitch-black passage.
He could already imagine himself being swallowed by this lonely despair, eventually starving to death.
Just then, Bai Xuan’s stomach protested again. “Stop growling. No matter how much you cry, I don’t have any food for you.”
His hand reflexively patted his stomach, trying to quiet it down. As his palm pressed against the thick fabric, he unexpectedly felt a hard, lumpy protrusion.
He reached into his clothes and brought the circular object before his eyes.
【Broken Compass that Always Points North: Except for always pointing north, it has no other function.】
The casing was rusty, and the trembling needle always pointed in one specific direction.
“Points north...” Bai Xuan looked at it, his thoughts turning slowly. “In this hellish place where front, back, left, and right could all be north... what use is pointing north...”
The words caught in his throat halfway through.
A light reignited in his pupils as he stared intently at the compass, then suddenly looked up at the infinitely extending passage before and behind him.
A thought surfaced in his stagnant mind!
“Wait... a normal compass would have its direction scrambled by magnetic fields. And the very concept of direction in this labyrinth is distorted, but...”
“The description for this compass says it ‘Always Points North’!”
“Always! That’s an absolute description! If it’s a Rule-Based Item, its priority might be higher than the spatial rules of this labyrinth!”
The more he thought about it, the clearer his logic became. The previously chaotic threads of thought were suddenly untangled.
“Then what it’s pointing to definitely isn’t north in a geographical sense! It’s a coordinate axis that isn't affected by the labyrinth's rules!”
Sometimes, hope arrives just that suddenly.
He stood up quickly, swaying slightly from excitement and weakness, but he immediately steadied himself.
“I was too shallow. You’re not trash at all—I’m counting on you to get me out of here!”
His hands trembling slightly, he cupped the compass and held it level at chest height.
The needle flickered briefly before pointing steadily toward his current “front.”
Bai Xuan took a deep breath and stepped in the direction of the needle.
One step, two steps, three steps... Just as he took his fifth step and his toe was about to touch the ground—
Shua!
Without warning, the compass needle suddenly rotated exactly 90 degrees to the left! It pointed straight at the stone wall on his left!
Bai Xuan’s foot froze in mid-air, and cold sweat instantly broke out.
In front of him was a seemingly indestructible stone wall, yet the needle told him: the path is that way.
He stepped forward and touched it. A cold sensation came from his fingertips; it was a solid wall!
“This...”
Trust the item, or trust himself?
He thought back to the countless loops just now and the disappearance of his markers.
In this place, he was likely the one most capable of deceiving himself.
Gritting his teeth, he closed his eyes, raised his arms to protect his head, and charged toward the direction the needle indicated—straight into the seemingly massive stone wall!
There was no impact or pain as expected. Instead, there was only a sensation like passing through a cold, viscous film of water, making his skin tingle slightly.
Opening his eyes, the scene before him had completely changed, and a bit of light filtered in from the surroundings.
He was no longer in that infinitely extending passage, but in a stone corridor of a similar style yet slightly different. There was a gentle upward slope ahead.
Looking back, the way he came was a simple arched entrance; the looping passage from before was nowhere to be seen.
“It worked! It seems this so-called labyrinth doesn't have physical walls. As long as I keep moving in one direction and leave this area, anywhere can be an exit!”
A surge of joy welled up, but he immediately suppressed it. “I’m not out yet. It’s too early to celebrate.”
Looking at the compass again, the needle made a slight adjustment and pointed toward the slope.
He looked around one last time and then started walking up the incline.
The rest of the journey was a repeated trampling of Bai Xuan’s modern common sense and a display of absolute trust in the compass.
Sometimes the needle would suddenly flip 180 degrees, making him turn around and walk back the way he came.
Yet after a few steps, the environment would have already switched to a brand-new stone path.
Sometimes the needle would shake up and down. Bai Xuan would hold the compass vertically, and the needle would eventually settle on the ceiling.
He would then climb a crude stone ladder that appeared on the wall out of nowhere.
Once, the needle even spun wildly for several rotations. Bai Xuan held the compass vertically as he had done before, and finally, the needle pointed at his feet.
He crouched down, only then discovering a low crawlspace that had appeared in the floor.
Every abnormal jump of the needle represented a subtle spatial transition.
Without the compass, he would have been completely lost in these unannounced forks, dead ends, and loops until he went insane.
Bai Xuan stopped thinking entirely and surrendered himself completely to the cold metal disc in his hand.
“Once I get out, you’ll be my most precious item, bar none!” Bai Xuan said to the compass.
After undergoing countless counter-intuitive turns and crossings, the compass needle finally stabilized, pointing toward a thick-looking wall.
This wall looked very ancient, blending seamlessly with its surroundings without any cracks or signs of a mechanism.
Bai Xuan stopped before the wall, seeing the needle pressing firmly toward it.
“This wall looks different. Is this the final door?”
He stepped forward and touched the wall; it had the same cold sensation.
After backing up a bit, he took a step and charged into the wall.
The moment he touched the wall, a dizzying sensation of being gently pulled and then snapped back into place hit him, accompanied by a faint buzzing in his ears.
The dizziness quickly receded, and Bai Xuan slowly opened his eyes.
What greeted his vision was a large, enclosed space.
The walls emitted a faint yellow light. Though weak, there were enough of them that the combined brightness illuminated the entire space.
The ground, however, was a different story. It was covered in cobweb-like cracks and huge pits, with rubble scattered everywhere.
Anyone seeing such a scene could guess that a fierce battle had taken place here.
“I knew it wouldn’t be that simple.” Bai Xuan’s heart sank.
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