Chapter 474 - Palace (3)
As soon as they walked past the gate, they arrived in a long hall that was filled with pillars that reached the sky. However, other than those pillars, there wasn't much else that was in this hall.
The only thing that was surprising about this place was that it was filled with doors.
These doors lined both sides of the hall and every single door had a different design compared to the rest of the doors.
As Lin Fan walked into the hall, he wasn't in a rush to go into any of these doors and he just watched as the group of followers in front of him went to pick out their doors.
There were a total of 46 of them since there was a maximum capacity of 50 people in this round. Other than Lin Fan, Mo Ze Chen, Wang Jian, that other Myriad Sword Hall junior, and two other people, the rest were all followers, but that didn't mean that they didn't have their ambitions.
They had been forced to follow others because of their lack of talent, but with their cultivation, they could still be considered experts who had their own pride.
None of them were willing to toss aside this chance that they had been given.
So all of them were already moving through this hall and there were a few that had chosen doors.
Lin Fan had been watching them as they went into the doors and based on what he could see from behind them as they entered, it seemed like the doors all led to different kinds of places. Some led to rooms filled with snow, some led to rooms filled with flames, and there were all kinds of other rooms.
It seemed like there was a different trial that was hidden behind each door.
However, after the door was closed behind them, the doors completely disappeared from the hall.
It seemed like each door was only for one person or one group to undertake and it would close before anyone else could go in.
But in the end, none of that told him which door was the correct door to go through.
So Lin Fan didn't rush in picking any of the doors to enter first, rather he kept an eye on the people who went in while also looking around the hall. With how long this hall was, it took him a few minutes of walking before he reached the end.
At the very end of the hall, it wasn't as empty as it was at the beginning since there was a gate waiting for him. Above that gate, there was a giant countdown clock placed there.
Just like before, it was a countdown from 50, but there wasn't a single figure in the countdown filled. It was still at 0 out of 50.
Based on the fact that Lin Fan was here, it seemed like it wasn't as simple as just gathering enough people here, but rather there was another condition needed to open this gate. Then based on the fact that there were all these doors around them, the most likely conclusion was that they needed to clear 50 of these rooms before the door opened.
But Lin Fan hadn't been inside a room yet, so he didn't know how hard each room was. Based on just the cultivation of the people who had gone in, Lin Fan didn't feel that confident they would be able to clear it in the end.
As for him clearing out the fifty rooms himself, he was even less confident that he would make it in time…
If there wasn't something he could do to push that number up by himself or make everyone much stronger than they were right now, there was no way that they would be able to finish.
So Lin Fan turned back to the people who were still wandering looking for doors and was about to say something, but then there was a sound that came from behind him.
When Lin Fan turned around after this 'beep' sound, he saw that the countdown had already gone up by one. However, when he looked around, he didn't see a single person who had come out from their door.
He had left puppets at each of the doors that had disappeared just to make sure that he could monitor everything, so he knew that there wasn't a door that had appeared.
If that was the case, could it be…
Could it be that by dying inside the trial, it still counted as being cleared?
If that were the case, wouldn't it mean that he could move forward by sacrificing everyone here?
While that would definitely be the fastest way, Lin Fan didn't feel right doing it since these people didn't have any ill will towards him and he wasn't someone who killed people randomly. If he was going to kill someone, he would make sure that they deserved it first.
Since that was the case, it seemed like he would have to find another solution.
As he was thinking, Lin Fan began wondering what counted as a person taking the trial.
If it was possible, perhaps he would be able to substitute the people taking the trial with something else? Something where it didn't matter if they died or not?
As he was thinking, there were people that were about to enter the rooms, but Lin Fan sent Mo Ze Chen to stop them.
These people were confused as to why Mo Ze Chen was stopping them, but they also recognized Mo Ze Chen since he was the one who had been following Lin Fan the entire time. Mo Ze Chen also said that he was stopping them on behalf of Lin Fan, so they had no reason not to listen to him.
After stopping them, he led them all to the end of the hallway where Lin Fan was standing while looking up at the countdown.
The number was already higher compared to before, going from one to three. It seemed like there were three people who had failed their trials, but there were much more than that missing.
There were ten people missing from this group. These ten were the ones that had rushed into a door during the time that Lin Fan had been checking out this hall. However, even though there were ten people missing from this group, there were only seven doors that had disappeared.
That was because these doors didn't seem to have a limit on how many people could go in, it was just that once the door closed, it disappeared from the hall.
One of these doors that were gone contained a group of three that had gone in together.
It was unknown if this group of three died in the trial yet, but they definitely hadn't come back from their door yet. Not a single person had come back just yet.
While Mo Ze Chen explained everything to the rest of the people here, Lin Fan was focused on the door that was in front of him.
He had already drawn his conclusions, now it was time to see if his theory would work.
Lin Fan summoned out one of the dead rat puppets in front of him and opened the door for the dead rat puppet to go through. After the door was opened, the dead rat puppet went right in and Lin Fan closed the door behind it.
Once the rat puppet had gone in and the door was closed behind it, the door disappeared. Along with the door disappearing, Brainy completely lost its spiritual sense link with the puppet and wasn't able to control it anymore.
This would have been a problem, but Brainy had already given instructions to the puppet before sending it into the room, which allowed it to continue moving for a certain amount of time.
This was the main difference between live puppets and dead puppets, it was that live puppets still had consciousness. As long as these puppets were still alive, it meant that even without Brainy's spiritual sense controlling them, they would be able to move for a certain amount of time on their own. For the dead puppets, they wouldn't be able to move unless there was Brainy's spiritual sense controlling them. That is, unless they received instructions via spiritual sense before the connection was cut.
However, even if the spiritual sense link was cut, Brainy was still able to tell whether the puppet existed or not because of the parasite seed that was inside the puppet. It didn't matter if the spiritual sense link was cut or not when it came to the parasite seed because it was inherently linked to Brainy. It didn't matter the distance, as long as the parasite seed existed, Brainy would be able to sense it.
That also meant that if the parasite seed was destroyed, Brainy would immediately know. That was the main reason why Lin Fan was doing this experiment.
After the door was closed, it didn't take long before Brainy suddenly felt the destruction of the parasite seed that had been inside of the dead rat puppet that had gone into the door. However, the destruction of the parasite seed inside the dead rat puppet wasn't surprising, rather it was what Lin Fan had expected to happen.
As soon as Brainy told Lin Fan about this, the first thing he did was turn back to look at the countdown that was above the gate.
As he had expected, the countdown had gone up.
Lin Fan had waited until it had been at 7 out of 50 before doing this experiment and now it had gone up by one to 8 out of 50.