Apotheosis

Zen had no idea how deep this passageway was, but he reckoned that he might have already reached the core area of the maze.

The spirals were surging toward him one after another from the path ahead. Even if he managed to dodge the spiral right in front of him, he would fail to avoid the next one.

In such a situation, the Time Jade Seal proved to be essential. Without it, Zen might have died many times.

Or, in other words, in the countless periods of time that he had erased with the Time Jade Seal, he had already been killed.

Now, he could only use the power of the Time Jade Seal once more in the near future, so he couldn't waste it casually.

As the next spiral surged toward him, Zen suddenly turned to his right and entered the space-time on the wall of the passageway.

The moment he stepped into the space, he felt like he had entered a different world altogether. This experience was nothing like how he had felt after entering the world inside the Time Jade Seal. A strong gust of wind blew on his face, carrying many grains of sand with it.

These grains of sand were actually colorful particles, each of which contained astonishing cutting power. When they hit Zen, his face contorted in pain.

He immediately brought his hands up to his face to protect himself. Then, he looked closely and discovered that he was in some sort of small desert formed by countless colorful grains of sand.

"The sand..."

He slowly crouched down and reached out to touch the sand. He immediately felt a sharp pain in his fingertips, like they had been pricked.

If he had not had a strong and sturdy body, he might have been hurt by these strange grains of sand.

'What is this weird place?' Zen wondered.

Just then, he heard a loud cry from the middle of the desert. The sound seemed to be coming from a baby.

As soon as Zen heard it, he associated it with the laughter and the breathing he had heard in the passageway. If there was really a baby in the desert, it was probably the same one that had been in the maze too.

Whoosh!

Zen leaped up and saw an astonishing scene in front of him.

In the middle of the desert was a low basin surrounded by a circular sand dune. There was a golden cross hovering in the air, beneath which

the Time Sea fell from the sky and poured down on the baby.

Zen shook his head and returned to the passageway.

For the time being, he didn't know what this meant, but it didn't matter. The important thing was that he could use the space-times on both sides of the passageway to dodge the spirals, so he could still move forward following the instruction of the Infinity Ruler.

"Heh heh…"

As Zen moved along the passageway, the baby's laughter continued to sound in his ears.

When he encountered the spirals again, he unhurriedly entered the space-times on the walls. Once the spirals were gone, he once again returned to the passageway.

As he continued to move forward, Zen became more and more proficient in traveling between different spaces.

Although the baby's eerie laughter became increasingly frequent and more and more spirals came from the end of the passageway, they didn't affect Zen's speed.

As for the scene playing out in the spaces on both sides of the passageway, Zen couldn't be bothered to observe it again and again, because he had realized that it was almost the same every time.

An hour later, Zen suddenly heard a whistling sound coming from ahead.

As soon as he heard the whistling sound, a single colorful grain of sand was blown out from the end of the passageway and brushed past Zen's face. He immediately felt as if someone had cut his face with a sharp knife.

Was this passageway leading to the desert? Such an idea suddenly popped into Zen's mind.