Chapter 569: Changing Black Walls

Chapter 569 -566: Changing Black Walls

“Why didn’t you say so sooner…” Xi gazed at the black walls that reached for the sky, his voice tinged with despair.

“I wasn’t sure… I’ve never seen the maze change with my own eyes,” Li Luo said apologetically. “And we were always moving forward before. The paths got wider, and even though we’d sometimes end up in a loop, we were still making our way deeper in.”

Li Luo pointed to the route on the digital screen. “Look, here’s the entrance. We’re already very far from it. I thought if we just kept going, we’d reach the deepest part. But I never imagined that the deeper we went, the faster the maze would change—until we couldn’t keep up anymore.”

Xi was still confused after hearing Li Luo’s explanation.

“If the maze is constantly changing, why haven’t we noticed? And now that it’s changing even faster, shouldn’t we be seeing it happen all the time? We’ve been walking for so long, so why haven’t we seen it even once?”

The high black walls around them stood perfectly still. If it hadn’t been for Li Luo, Xi would never have realized the maze was changing.

Not only that, but walls this massive should make some noise or leave some kind of mark when they shift. As it was, there were no traces whatsoever, as if they had always been this way. There was no sound, either. It was completely silent.

Hearing Xi’s question, Li Luo bowed her head in thought.

She hadn’t sensed the maze changing either. All her deductions came from the route log on the digital screen.

No sound, no traces… It was like being suddenly transported to a new scene, and they never saw the transformation itself. It was as if… ‘It’s deliberately hiding from us.’

A thought sparked in Li Luo’s mind. ‘Could it be that these high walls also possess intelligence?’

‘Or maybe, just like the rabbit, the walls are a kind of pre-set program. Since they’re all just aggregates of black spheres, it wouldn’t be strange for them to share the same properties.’

‘But if they can deliberately hide from us, does that mean the walls’ “program” is more advanced?’

Just as Li Luo was lost in thought, the Block flew in front of her and offered another hint.

A single word was written on its digital screen: “Observation.”

‘Observation? What does that mean?’

Li Luo looked from the digital screen to the motionless walls around her, and a possibility suddenly struck her.

“Are you saying that any wall I’m observing won’t change?” she immediately asked the Block.

The Block trembled in affirmation.

It all clicked for Li Luo in an instant. Anything observed becomes fixed, while anything unobserved is free to change. That’s why the transformations never happened in front of her—all the changes were taking place where she couldn’t see!

“It’s Schr?dinger’s Black Wall!”

If that was the case, then everything made sense.

Li Luo immediately told Xi what she had discovered.

“It’s fixed when observed, but changes when unobserved?” Xi was shocked to hear such a bizarre principle. He touched a nearby wall in disbelief. “So you’re saying that behind this wall, in the places we can’t see, everything is just uncertain chaos?”

“Yes.”

“There’s no way to prove if that’s true or not, I suppose, but it’s the only explanation we have.” Xi slowly came to accept the idea.

“But if that’s the case, how do we get to the center of the maze?” Xi wondered aloud. “To go deeper, we need to stop the maze from changing. And the only way to do that is to observe it…”

Xi looked at the walls stretching up to the sky and said with a note of despair, “I don’t think we have that kind of powerful observation ability.”

Just then, the Block’s digital screen appeared before her again. Li Luo quickly read it.

“I will observe. Proceed.”

It was only a few short words, but Li Luo understood the Block’s meaning immediately.

“Let’s go,” she said. “The maze is locked. It won’t change anymore.”

Xi stared, asking in disbelief, “Really?”

“Really. It’s the relic’s power,” Li Luo said confidently. She never considered the possibility that the Block would lie. If it said it would do something, it would.

Hearing it was the power of a relic, Xi didn’t probe any further.

“If you have to pay a price for this, be sure to tell me. I can heal you,” Xi said, concerned.

“Okay,” Li Luo replied. She then led the rabbit toward the next gap, the Block following silently behind her.

Meanwhile, Mo Ling had spread his vision to its limits, fixing his gaze on every single place within his sight. This ensured the maze would not change.

Mo Ling himself had only just discovered the secret of the maze’s transformations by chance.

After hearing Li Luo’s assessment, he had immediately begun observing his surroundings. He discovered that any area outside his field of vision would change, which prompted him to write “Observation” on the digital screen for Li Luo.

It seemed that any area covered by his vision would remain fixed.

However, his vision couldn’t be too focused. If he peered too deeply into the black spheres, they would collapse and rapidly dissipate.

Mo Ling was puzzled by this strange property of the black spheres.

‘It changes when not observed, but collapses when observed too closely. What in the world is this stuff?’

Mo Ling was starting to doubt if these black spheres were even a weapon at all.

‘If they’re a weapon, why would they have such a bizarre property?’

Mo Ling then thought of the other forms the black spheres had taken: the rabbit, the giant… ‘If those forms weren’t being observed, would they change into something else, too?’

‘Or are their transformations only related to the number of spheres, with observation having nothing to do with it?’

Mo Ling racked his brain but couldn’t find an answer. Entering the Black Wall Maze hadn’t solved any mysteries; on the contrary, it had only made the existing clues more confusing.

However, as Mo Ling’s vision spread out, he also discovered something unusual:

Big Eye wasn’t the only creature imprisoned within this maze…

Many hidden enclosures within the high walls held all sorts of strange creatures. They, too, bore traces of having been “healed.” Despite their bizarre appearances, Mo Ling could sense that something was very wrong with them.

Some were lethargic, cowering by the walls.

Others, as if driven mad, charged frantically back and forth within their enclosures, their energy seemingly limitless. Chains tore at their flesh, yet they seemed to feel no pain at all.

Some stared blankly at the sky, performing bizarre gestures.

Still others lay slumped on the ground, constantly clawing at the earth as if trying to dig a tunnel out of the maze. But as soon as a hole was dug, the creature would fill it back in, packing the dirt down tightly, only to start digging all over again a moment later.

No matter how these creatures behaved, Mo Ling had the same distinct impression:

None of these creatures were mentally sound.

‘Is it because they’ve been locked up for too long? Or is it the result of flawed healing?’

Mo Ling knew this maze was saturated with a flawed “medicine,” but he didn’t know if the creatures were being affected by it.

Perhaps that “medicine” was the very reason they had become this way.

However, Mo Ling couldn’t sense the medicine or any healing power on his own. Only by entering Xi’s Healing Space could he clearly see the medicine’s physical manifestation.

But for now, he was responsible for observation and couldn’t leave his post.

‘Once we get deeper into the maze, I’ll ask Xi about it…’