Every time the countdown sounded, the hearts of the teammates who had once gone through Instances with Li Xian tightened. Those brief sixty seconds seemed to stretch on forever, tugging at everyone's nerves again and again.
Several times, the collapse behind him nearly caught up with his footsteps. Almost as soon as he lifted his trailing foot, the ground crumbled the next second.
Yet Li Xian had the least time to be frightened, because he knew that wasting even a moment-even to look back and check the maze's collapse-would send him plunging into the endless abyss.
[30...] [29...]
More than half the time had already passed in this race between life and death.
The thin red line of blood before Li Xian's eyes had begun to double. He knew his body was warning him, but he still couldn't stop.
Li Xian forced his eyes wider and made out where the blood flowed at the next junction amid the blurry, swaying scenery:
To the right.
His steps already faltering, he rounded the corner and discovered that the blood stretched straight ahead along this path-and at its end was neither another corner nor a mirror, but a long stretch shimmering with white light!
And now, only ten seconds remained on the countdown!
Li Xian immediately summoned every last bit of strength in his body and sprinted toward that light!
The closer he got, the more the flickering white light reflected through the mirrors, turning everything around him into a white void. The image on the screen looked overexposed, draining the color from half his figure as well.
Behind him, however, lay endless darkness. The light and the collapse divided the image into two starkly distinct halves-one was life, the other death.
And Li Xian stood right at their boundary.
He