Asutaile A-Yu raised his hand, creating spiritual light for illumination. Under the spiritual-power glow, his face looked especially livid.
"Why had this happened?"
He could not understand it.
He stood beneath the giant tree, looking at the knots of rope upon it.
Many ropes threaded in through different caves, wound once around the giant tree, then passed toward other exits.
Many exits held numerous ropes.
But there was only one problem...
There should only have been two ropes.
One rope extended all the way in from the outside world, reaching this place, circling the giant tree's trunk once, then entering deeper into the maze.
The other rope was tied to the first fork of the giant tree camp, using this place as its starting point to enter another direction of the maze.
That was all.
When explorers had come here before, they had occasionally encountered situations where they "could not see the second rope."
But never had anything this bizarre occurred.
Countless ropes converged here, as though demanded by some barrier spell.
Even the ropes were different colors.
"I can't understand it."
Yun Shen Jigu spread out his mycelium, feeling along the ropes.
"I can't make heads or tails of these things at all—Wanyi, what do you think?"
The one called Wanyi was a mass of writhing black insects. He was the representative chosen by the Iron Wang Clan. It was hard to imagine that the Iron Wang Clan would have retainers other than Heavenly Gate Demon Spirits and Fire Folk. Yet that was the truth.
Strictly speaking, the civilization Wanyi belonged to was a retainer's retainer of the Iron Wang Clan. Their home planet was an enlightened rocky planet. It simply disliked cleaning its surface and did not much care to move westward, so it quietly cultivated around its