Reunion
Although the old man had not entered the maze with Zhang Heng, he could clearly hear the constant rumbling coming from within as he stood outside. He knew it was the sound of those red earthen walls shifting position.
Before long, the intervals between the rumbles grew shorter. The old man had served as a guide here for more than fifty years, so of course he knew what that meant. He simply had not expected Zhang Heng to complete half the maze in only three and a half minutes. At least in the first half, his speed was unprecedented, even surpassing the person who had once completed the maze in ten minutes.
In the past, such a situation often meant that the person in the maze had an exceptionally close mental connection with Jörmungandr. Yet this time, the old man seemed somewhat lost, because that flying machine was still hovering above the maze. He did not know whether Zhang Heng had achieved this result because of his mental connection with Jörmungandr or because of that strange machine.
Meanwhile, Zhang Heng did not slow down. Although the maze was changing faster, the amount of calculation he needed to do decreased as he continued forward. Once he had passed the halfway point, he only needed to account for changes in the latter half of the route, so at least for now, he could still manage.
However, everything changed again after he advanced another four hundred meters or so. The maze's transformations accelerated once more, and this time, the intervals between the red earthen walls shifting had shrunk to fifteen seconds, leaving Zhang Heng almost no time to think.
Zhang Heng did not know whether this was an inherent rule of the maze or a chain reaction caused by his cheating with