Entrance

Thumb?

Luo Jun frowned slightly. During this time, he had encountered more than five Black Shop in the maze, and often met the same Finger Merchant. However, he had only ever seen the index finger, middle finger, ring finger, and little finger, and had never seen the Thumb.

At first, Luo Jun thought that which finger he encountered was entirely a matter of luck, but now it seems that the Thumb has a special status and cannot be seen through normal means.

Luo Jun followed the ring finger into the Teleportation Gate. After a moment of spatial distortion, the two arrived at a dimly lit and empty space. Before them was a huge circular altar, intricately carved with patterns and surrounded by torches that illuminated the center. In the very center of the altar sat a strangely shaped stone chair, upon which sat a Finger Merchant. Due to its unusual shape, its posture was quite bizarre, with its Thumb at the top and the fingertip depicting an old, bearded face.

Is this the Thumb? It looks completely different from the other fingers. Although it's not moving, it exudes a subtle sense of pressure.

"Why did you bring outsiders?" Thumb looked at the ring finger and asked in a deep voice.

"He's no ordinary outsider," the ring finger nodded slightly. "He's already helped his teammates clear the Infinite Maze!"

Thumb frowned slightly. "I sensed that someone cleared the game not long ago... but I didn't expect that someone with the ability to clear it would choose to stay."

"He's not just staying, he's going to change this labyrinth," the ring finger said. "He's immune to the replacement of Chaos Substance!"

"What?!" Thumb also showed a look of surprise. "That Chaos Race that invaded the labyrinth has an extremely strong innate corrosive ability. You were able to resist even that. Could you be a Feather Transformation One?"

"No..." Thumb immediately dismissed the guess. "Only Immortal Qi and Saint's Body can resist replacement, but neither of these levels of existence are included in Tier A Mission. What method did you use to resist the erosion and replacement by the Chaos Race?"

"I have my own way," Luo Jun said with a smile. "You just need to tell me how to restore this maze to its original state."

The Saint's Body and the Immortal Qi?

Luo Jun shook his head inwardly. How could he have known these things in the first place? His confidence to try to capture a monster with a large capacity with his own body came from the result of the dice.

Remember when he determined the chicken wing was problematic, the dice roll gave it Severity Coefficient of six. If he were really going to be replaced, it should have been twelve. Even if there were a solution to the replacement, there would still be a risk of death, so it should have been at least ten. A six-fold increase means that eating it would only cause vomiting and diarrhea for a few days...

While others would almost certainly die from consuming the Chaos Substance, Luo Jun only experienced physical discomfort. This demonstrates that his resistance to Chaos replacement far surpasses that of others.

After digesting the two monsters, Luo Jun could feel that his vital energy did have a suppressive effect on the Chaos Monster, but it was difficult to completely eliminate them. His physical body was also strong enough to resist the monsters' replacement to a certain extent, but it could not completely eliminate the effects, and it would remain in a stalemate.

If he only had vital energy, Luo Jun would probably end up like Ailongtan, his mind stagnating, relying solely on his vital energy to resist, until it was depleted, at which point he would have to replace it and continue.

If he relied solely on his physical body, Luo Jun would likely linger in the agony of replacement, as if he had a serious chronic illness that was neither curable nor worsening, leaving him to live in misery.

Luo Jun could sense that he had not reached the standards of Saint's Body and Immortal Qi, but he had barely touched them. The combination of the two gave Luo Jun the ability to completely kill the Chaos Monster!

This gave Luo Jun a glimmer of hope.

Since the Immortal Qi is the same as the vital energy of the Ascension Realm, then the concentration of my own vital energy should not be too different from that of the Feather Transformation. And according to my Master, apart from the legendary rare races that have disappeared, the physical strength of other races is limited. In other words, those who are currently in the Ascension Realm only have the Immortal Qi, but do not possess the Saint's Body!

So, if I could truly advance further, would I have the chance to simultaneously obtain both the true Immortal Qi and the Saint's Body?

In that case, wouldn't one be considered a supreme being, surpassing all those who have ascended to Feather Transformation? Perhaps even reaching an even higher realm?

Thinking of this, Luo Jun felt a surge of excitement, but this flame of hope was quickly extinguished.

He has already reached the highest level of both the Foundation Establishment stages, with no possibility of further advancement. Moreover, he has not shown any inclination towards the Heart Refining Realm. It is very likely that he will be stuck at this final threshold.

What made him even more desperate was that after breaking through to the Foundation Establishment Realm Ninth Layer, his cultivation progress plummeted.

At first, Luo Jun was quite excited because the last time this happened, it was when he went from the Seventh Layer to the Eighth Floor of the Body Refinement Realm, and his cultivation limit was raised!

Could it be that there's Tenth Floor to break through in the Foundation Establishment Realm?

But this flame of hope was quickly extinguished.

Luo Jun discovered that the progress of his cultivation this time was not simply slow, but rather constantly shrinking.

With each point of progress gained, the cultivation speed would slow down. Following this trend, his cultivation progress would eventually hit a bottleneck, and he would never be able to advance any further.

His path of cultivation seems to have truly come to an end.

However, Luo Jun was still unwilling to give up even after trying it... The Maze Time Flow Rate was much slower than in the real world. As long as there was no pressure to survive, this place would be a perfect training ground. Luo Jun could continuously improve his cultivation progress here without worrying about the passage of time.

This is another reason why he chose to stay!

"End all of this?" Thumb chuckled. "Without the diary's help, you wouldn't even be able to find an exit, yet you dare to spout such grandiose talk?"

"You even know about the diary?" Luo Jun got his diary from the White Shop; he shouldn't have mentioned it to the Black Shop.

Thumb chuckled and said, "Who do you think wrote the diaries you're reading?"

Luo Jun frowned and looked at the Thumb: "Are you Zhuge Gan?"

"Yes... no." Thumb shook its head and said, "The Black Shop and Thumb already existed before Zhuge Gan entered this mission. Thumb is the central hub that exists to maintain the function of the Black Shop, and it must have enough power. So, we will try to absorb the strongest challengers who died in the maze and integrate them into Thumb."

"You could say that the current Thumb is an amalgamation of many powerful individuals," Luo Jun analyzed upon hearing this. "Then what about the diary? Why is it damaged? Who tore out the crucial parts?"

Thumb laughed and said, "Of course it's me!"

"After Zhuge Gan died, he used his last strength to leave behind this diary. But after integrating it into my Thumb, I realized that the last part of this diary was actually wrong."

"The four people, Zhuge Gan, were completely trapped by the Chaos Creature in the later stages. A Liang among them was replaced by Chaos Substance and attacked by the Black Shop, which caused them to completely distrust the Black Shop. Moreover, they believed until their deaths that eating food made of Chaos Substance and completing the challenge on the second floor of the rest area was the correct way to pass the level. They even regretted eating the food from the Black Shop... If this diary were seen by later generations, it might mislead challengers and turn them into more and stronger Chaos Creature. That's why I tore up the last part."

"But I soon discovered that without this diary, later challengers were still easily misled by the rules and seduced by the Chaos Creature. This diary was, in fact, our only means of passing on information to future generations. So I picked up the torn-out diaries again, but due to the rules, I couldn't restore them to their original form. I could only make some selections from these diaries, deleting the most misleading ones and throwing the rest into the maze, letting you find and piece together the useful information yourselves."

"I don't think the ones I found were any less misleading," Luo Jun shrugged. "For example, that last page, which solemnly warns against eating food from Black Shop, I believed it for a long time."

"But you did find the key to clearing the game through this page, didn't you?" Thumb chuckled. "I struggled for a long time with which page to keep, this one or the second-to-last one. In the end, I kept the last page."

"The second-to-last page, while detailing the challenges on the second floor of the rest area, contains a completely distorted understanding of the truth behind the challenges by Zhuge Gan. The extensive subjective assumptions will only further mislead you. It would be better to vaguely state 'don't eat the food from the Black Shop,' giving you room to think. If you're smart enough and think carefully about why you can't eat it, there's still hope of breaking the deadlock."

"Then why not just tell us directly?" Luo Jun countered. "Wouldn't it be faster to just tell the challengers the truth about the maze?"

Thumb shook his head. "Although we've formed our own power base, we're still bound by the rules. As a business, even information must be exchanged for something of equal value; we can't reveal it even if we wanted to."

Luo Jun recalled the time he exchanged Gold Ingot for information. And this time, the woman had also accepted two Gold Ingot smeared with saliva before bringing him to this hidden space.

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

"Of course, if you've guessed the key points yourself, we can still add some simple details," the ring finger said. "Moreover, fundamentally, our positions are different from the challengers'. They want to get out, while our goal is to prevent Chaos Creature from invading the Main World. If necessary, we might even prefer to trap all the challengers in the labyrinth."

"I understand your difficulties." Luo Jun nodded. "Now, back to my question: how do we end all this? I think we're on the same page now, aren't we?"

"Is this the end...?" Thumb sighed. "Fine, we've tried countless times already. One more or one less won't make a difference... Do you still have any Gold Ingot?"

"You have to pay money to exchange for information here too?" Luo Jun asked curiously.

"This is a space we created ourselves, but it's still bound by the rules of the maze," Thumb said. "Consider the information I gave you before a discount, but what I'm about to tell you, you'll have to pay for."

"We're out of Gold Ingot..." Luo Jun shrugged, then suddenly pulled a card from his Equipment Pack: "But do you buy back items here? Even a discount would be enough, right?"

"Void Pass?" Thumb's eyes widened slightly; this was a top-tier item that required ten gold coins to exchange for.

"Alright, I can make an exception this time." Thumb nodded, and with a wave of his hand, the pass in Luo Jun's hand slowly floated up and automatically flew to Thumb.

"Everyone who enters this maze has been searching for the exit, but very few people have thought about this question..." Thumb looked at Luo Jun and slowly said, "Where is the entrance to this maze?"

"Entrance?" Luo Jun was taken aback. "Isn't that the Origin?"

As he spoke, he took out the Origin Point Pointer, but found that the tool seemed to be malfunctioning here; the pointer spun randomly, and the value representing the distance was also jumping around erratically.

"The Origin is just where you were teleported in." Thumb shook his head. "That location is random, not a fixed entrance. Just like the exit connects to the Main World, the entrance to the maze should also have a door connecting to some location in the outside world."

"The outside world..." Luo Jun's eyes darted around. Besides challengers doing missions, what else could possibly enter this maze from the outside?

"You mean, the passage through which those Chaos Creature entered this labyrinth?" Luo Jun's eyes widened.

Thumb nodded. "That's right. Although we don't yet have a precise location, all indications suggest that there is indeed an entrance that continuously lets in Chaos Creature. We even speculate that it might be constantly changing location, just like the exit."

"So, if I can find the entrance and destroy it..." Luo Jun's eyes lit up. "I can cut off the source of the Chaos Creature?"

"You've already seen the exit, so you should know how difficult that door is to destroy," Thumb said. "The entrance is likely something of the same level, and it might not be able to be destroyed... But at least, if we can really find the entrance, it should be of great help in eliminating these Chaos Creature."

"Do you have any leads?" Luo Jun asked.

Thumb shook his head. "We've been searching for years, but we've only managed to find some Blur clues. We're still far from finding it. After all, the existence of the entrance isn't within the rules of the maze; it's practically a bug. There are almost no items or hints related to the entrance in the maze, so there's no way to even begin searching."

"We haven't found it after all these years..." Luo Jun sighed slightly, feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the size of the maze.

Thumb sighed, "We are, after all, dead people. We seem to have merged into this labyrinth, become part of the rules, and gained certain powers. But from another perspective, we are also firmly restricted by the rules of the labyrinth. There are many things we cannot do or interfere with... But you are different!"

As he spoke, he pointed his Thumb at Luo Jun: "You are free in the maze, and you possess enough power to break the long-standing balance. Perhaps, with your help, we really do have a chance to end all of this!"

"However, finding a place that shouldn't exist in this boundless labyrinth will likely be a protracted and arduous task!"

"That's alright!" Luo Jun looked at his Thumb: "As long as there's hope, I have plenty of time!"

(End of this chapter)