Behind the rock the tiger had passed was a gentle slope.
The slope was short, only a few dozen meters long, and ended at a stone gate. The gate was small, its two doors half-closed, with an eerie blue glow seeping through the gap.
Chen Siyao quickened her pace, eager to leave the dense forest. After a dozen or so steps, she suddenly felt everything around her change.
The sky changed. The gray, overcast sky turned deep blue, like the depths of the sea. The trees changed too.
Their blue-gray trunks and dark green leaves became translucent, like crystal, with something flowing slowly inside.
The ground changed. Gravel and dirt gave way to smooth black paving stones, icy beneath her feet, like the surface of a mirror.
"Brother!" Chen Siyao looked back.
Chen Hao was only three steps behind her, but he felt like a shadow, visible yet impossible to touch.
"This is a maze formation." Chen Hao's voice came from ahead, clear but seemingly separated from her by some invisible barrier. "Don't panic. Follow me."
Chen Siyao took a deep breath and followed. Yang Wanqing held Xiao Yue, whose ears stood upright and whose eyes remained fixed ahead. She showed no fear, merely watching in silence.
Chen Hao reached into the Qiankun Bag and rummaged around for a while.
There were far too many things inside the Qiankun Bag: gifts he had received during the Primordial Era, pills, magical artifacts, cultivation techniques, and beast materials, all piled into a small mountain. At the very bottom, his fingers found something.
A ruler. It was short, about a foot long, pitch-black and covered with dark gold runes.
This was the Cloudbreaker Ruler, a gift from a formation grandmaster during the Primordial Era, designed specifically to break maze formations.
He took out