Sustainable Sheep Shearing

Somewhere in the maze, behind a corner, lies a lush flowerbed, bursting with colorful blossoms.

In the center of these flowers, there is a high platform, on which sits a huge treasure chest.

The appearance of such a place deep within a labyrinth seems like a reward for adventurers. But if you recklessly venture there...

A Mechanical Dog strode lightly into the flowerbed. Halfway there, it was suddenly entangled by a large number of vines that surged out from the flowerbed. The colorful flowers, which had been so beautiful before, began to writhe and grow several times larger. Sharp teeth emerged from the center of the flowers and began to bite the Mechanical Dog.

With a creaking sound, the metal armor couldn't withstand the strange flower's teeth and was about to be completely devoured when a red light suddenly flashed on the Mechanical Dog's head, followed by a loud explosion that blasted a scorched clearing in the flower field. But soon, the empty space was filled by the surrounding flower vines.

"It seems these Man-Eating Flower are the Guardian this time..." Sun Xiaowei looked at Old Yuan: "Plants are most afraid of fire."

"No..." Luo Jun shook his head. "Do you remember the last treasure chest? After Ma Qiao's qi smashed it, the contents disappeared. This treasure chest isn't invincible either; setting it on fire is too dangerous."

"What should we do then?" Sun Xiaowei looked around. "This Sea of Flowers is so vast, it can even bite through steel. If we rashly walk in, our protective energy might not be able to withstand it."

"I'll go," Old Yuan volunteered. "Ordinary internal energy won't work, but my Gathering Origin Protective Qi can definitely withstand it."

"No way!" Luo Jun immediately objected. "Let me do it."

"You're even worse off!" Old Yuan hurriedly stopped him. Although he knew that Luo Jun's Gathering Origin Protective Qi was stronger than his own, he believed that Luo Jun had not yet revealed his true strength. Therefore, along the way, Old Yuan and Ma Qiao dealt with the monsters they encountered, and he tried his best not to let Luo Jun Luo Jun to take action.

"Don't worry, Old Yuan." Luo Jun gave his Master a look, went to the flower field, took out a pair of shoes from the Hundred Treasure Box and put them on, then looked at the treasure chest on the high platform in the center of the flower field and suddenly stomped his foot.

Brush!

Luo Jun's figure disappeared, and almost simultaneously appeared on the central high platform, standing next to the treasure chest.

As soon as he appeared, the flower field around the treasure chest immediately surged, and countless vines began to grow wildly, spreading towards the high platform. But Luo Jun did not give them a chance. He picked up the treasure chest, stomped his foot, and in a flash, teleported back, placing the treasure chest on the ground.

"You can Teleportation too!" Sun Xiaowei exclaimed in surprise. "There aren't many magical artifacts that can teleport, especially not at close range. It must be of a very high grade, right?"

Luo Jun chuckled, "Found it on the black market..."

These Instant Step Boots were taken from the Hell Creek Family. They allow him to Teleportation three times in a row, each time covering a maximum distance of one hundred meters. He hadn't had much of a chance to wear them before, but this time they came in handy.

"Come and see what's inside!" Ma Qiao said excitedly, rubbing his hands together.

They found three treasure chests in total. The first one contained three Silver Ingot and a pile of copper coins, nearly four thousand. The second one was accidentally broken by Ma Qiao, so it's unknown what it will contain.

Luo Jun opened the treasure chest, and a beam of light shone out. Inside was a palm-sized transparent Crystal Ball with a pointer floating inside, pointing diagonally in one direction. Below the pointer was a string of numbers.

"What is this?" The group looked at each other in bewilderment. There was a note underneath the Crystal Ball explaining its function.

Origin Point Pointer: No matter where you are, this pointer will always point to the starting point where you entered the Endless Maze and indicate your distance from that point.

Injecting vital energy can activate it, consuming five breaths per minute, and can guide you to the shortest path to the Origin.

"Indicates the starting location?" Sun Xiaowei frowned. "Isn't that the big room with twelve doors? What's the use of indicating this? Can we even go back?"

"At least it makes it easier to locate yourself." Luo Jun fiddled with the Crystal Ball. "It gives you a rough idea of your relative position in the maze..."

Luo Jun looked at the numbers below the pointer, "So, that large room with twelve doors is over 80,000 meters... more than 80 kilometers away from us in this direction?"

"And that's after we've searched a really long way back," Sun Xiaowei said. "If you include the more than 100 kilometers we ran before, the furthest we've ever been from the Origin might be over 200 kilometers... Just how big is this maze?"

"Endless, endless, maybe it really really is infinite." Luo Jun put away the pointer and took out the camera. "Let's continue, there are still a few monsters to clear."

To make a long story short, the distance they covered in an hour took them two whole days to clear out the encounter points, and they ran out of all the supplies they had exchanged.

But Luo Jun wasn't in a hurry. He waited until the generous shop was about to refresh before arriving at the last shop on an empty stomach.

After knocking on the window, without waiting for the Fat Merchant to exchange pleasantries, she threw a large pile of silver ingots and copper coins in front of him.

"Exchange all of it for cash!"

Upon seeing the mountain of treasure, the Fat Merchant's eyes widened. He quickly calculated the amount and ultimately exchanged it for over 12,700 banknotes for Luo Jun.

At this moment, Luo Jun took out his Generous Person Badge and exchanged it for 3,000, which he then used to buy ten sets of supplies. Once the cooldown was over, he exchanged for another ten sets before finally leaving the store satisfied.

From then on, the team had a total of twenty supplies, more than 14,000 banknotes, seven relics, two Wishful Map, a Origin Point Pointer, and a Gold Ingot of unknown purpose.

These things would make a huge pile when laid out, and they wouldn't be very convenient to carry around normally, but Luo Jun has Smart Equipment Pack, so storing items is not a problem at all.

Looking at the abundant supplies, the group was momentarily dazed.

The Endless Maze, an extremely difficult challenge that no one has yet succeeded at, has been turned into a farming Game? This isn't survival; it's clearly a sustainable way to exploit the maze!

Although the maze seems endless and there's no hope of getting out, at least with Luo Jun's strategy, there's basically no need to worry about survival.

Even so, we can't stay here forever. The Endless Maze is just too vast, and finding the exit seems like a distant dream...

"It seems that there's no other way but to save up money to exchange for Exit Indicator." Sun Xiaowei looked at the food in front of her. Although each supply had a rich variety of delicious food that was frequently changed, she had no appetite at all.

"Don't worry, Senior, we'll get out eventually," Luo Jun said encouragingly, taking a bite of his chicken leg.

"But I want to take a shower..." Sun Xiaowei complained.

She's been on this mission for over four days now. Although she has plenty of food and basic toiletries, not showering for more than four days is still torture for this clean-loving girl.

Although the men didn't seem to care much, she had a feeling that she was starting to smell bad...

"We'll just have to work out of this," Ma Qiao laughed. "Of course, there's plenty of water here. If you want to take a bath, we won't stop you. We promise we won't peek." "You wish!" Sun Xiaowei glared at him.

"I did hear Caroline mention that there seems to be an inn-like place in this maze," Old Yuan suddenly said. "She seems to have seen it, a luxurious inn where you can stay and take a bath, but the entrance fee was very expensive, and she missed it because she didn't have the money. When she came back after killing a few monsters, the inn was gone."

"Huh? Really?" Sun Xiaowei's eyes lit up when she heard this.

"Senior, do you still want to go out?" Luo Jun poured cold water on her enthusiasm. "Didn't you hear Old Yuan say the tickets are expensive?"

"Please, junior..." Sun Xiaowei pleaded, "Just buy me a ticket... Once we're out, if you need anything from Senior, Senior do anything you ask!"

Luo Jun waved his hand. "Don't be too sure, let's wait until we encounter it. Besides, whether we can even get out is another matter..."

Luo Jun refused while examining the camera footage.

"What are you looking at?" Seemingly trying to get closer to Luo Jun, Sun Xiaowei moved closer and discovered that he had cut the video he recorded earlier into small segments and was flipping through them.

"What's going on? Haven't we already confirmed all these places?" Sun Xiaowei asked, puzzled.

"We only confirmed the special locations marked on the map," Luo Jun explained. "You forgot that the map's instructions mentioned that it can't mark the location of exits. What if there are exits in the places we pass through?"

"Then what's the point of dividing the video into these small segments?" Sun Xiaowei continued to ask.

The error-free version can be read at 69 Book Bar! 6=9+shuba is the first site to publish this novel.

"I divided it into small segments and screened them one by one. If I found any suspicious parts, I marked them so that it would be easier to find them later," Luo Jun explained.

"Wow, junior, you're so reliable!" Sun Xiaowei gave Thumb up. "So, such a reliable junior, could you grant your Senior's small request?"

Luo Jun glanced at her sideways. "Let's talk about it when we run into each other."

"Then I'll take that as a yes!" Sun Xiaowei returned to her seat with a grin, picked up the chicken leg again, and suddenly it tasted much better.

Luo Jun sighed, his fingers scrolling through the video clips...

He divided the video into so many segments not for the sake of easy searching. As mentioned earlier, the map doesn't show any exits; even if you were blind, you wouldn't see something that isn't there. The reason he divided it like this is for other purposes.

Luo Jun swiped his finger, and the dozens of video segments began to scroll rapidly along the list. Moreover, he had set it to loop continuously, so it wouldn't stop when it reached the bottom.

"The Dice of Heavenly Secrets!"

"Clicking on the map reveals a video showing the location of the exit!"

That's right, Luo Jun's real goal is to find a way out by relying on the Heavenly Secrets Leader!

If, by chance, he happened to pass by the exit on the map while running, then this method could pinpoint the exit's location to within a few kilometers!

It will be much easier to find one then!

However, things did not go as smoothly as he had imagined.

"Ding, this event is Mandatory Event and cannot be determined."

It seems finding the exit isn't so easy if you haven't been there before...

Luo Jun sighed and put down the video recorder.

By this time, everyone had basically finished eating and drinking. Looking at the leftover food and the abundant supplies in the storage space, Old Yuan suddenly raised his eyebrows. "Let's contact the others."

"What are you doing?" Ma Qiao asked.

"We've been here for four or five days now. We've had food and drink, but we don't know anything about the others. Even if Cultivators have stronger stamina than ordinary people, they'd be very weak after four or five days without food." Old Yuan sighed. "I think we should share some of our supplies with them. Anyway, with the map and Little Luo's tactics, we don't have to worry about supplies for now."

Everyone agreed on that, since every survivor meant a better chance of finding a way out. But the key issue was that so many days had passed, and nobody knew where they were anymore. How were they going to rejoin the others?

"Don't we have Origin Point Pointer?" Old Yuan said. "Use the pointer to return to the Origin. This is the only rendezvous point that everyone has a chance to find."

No one objected. After a quick cleanup, Old Yuan took out Talisman Paper, lit it, and sent out the message.

Specifically, they currently have ample supplies, and if they lack food or water, they can return to the Origin to collect them. However, from now on, they will only wait at the Origin for forty-eight hours; after that, they will not be waited for.

In two days, at most eight portions of supplies will be consumed. In fact, considering individual differences, each portion of supplies is very economical, ensuring that even those with large appetites can eat their fill. So, if you're careful, one portion of supplies won't be finished in a day. Moreover, if you're just waiting, there won't be that much consumption; you might only use four or five portions in these two days.

After sending the message, Old Yuan activated the Origin Point Pointer, and a green line immediately appeared on the ground, corresponding to the shortest route back to the Origin.

The group immediately set off, with Sun Xiaowei and Ma Qiao riding their bikes at breakneck speed. After a while, they discovered that the route often contradicted their intuition. The pointer was initially pointing diagonally upwards, but the route told them they should go down the stairs and then go backwards, circling around before finally returning to the direction the pointer indicated.

However, according to the item's description, it should indicate the shortest route, which means that if you choose a route based on intuition, even if you specify a direction, you may not reach your destination.

This reminded them of the Exit Indicator... It seemed that even if they spent 100,000, the chances of getting out were extremely slim, casting a shadow over everyone's hearts.

"Don't be discouraged," Old Yuan said, noticing the others' dejection. "At least we now have a stable way to survive. As long as we keep exploring, we'll eventually find a way out."

"I hope so..." Sun Xiaowei pouted, "Old Yuan, how far are we from there?"

"The straight-line distance is still over 30,000 meters..." Old Yuan glanced at it and said, "It should be soon..."

Old Yuan paused mid-sentence, then gestured for everyone to stop.

The convoy, traveling at high speed, braked suddenly, nearly causing a rear-end collision.

"What's wrong?" Ma Qiao finally managed to stop his bicycle.

"Look over there!" Luo Jun also noticed the problem and pointed to a diagonal fork in the road ahead.

"That's..." Ma Qiao and Sun Xiaowei were both taken aback when they saw it clearly.

At the end of that fork in the road, a black plaque hung...

(End of this chapter)