BXBX NOVEL Chapter 789: A Decision
What was the point of all that hard work if this shortcut was given?
Bai Yunfei surveyed the door with the image of the mountaintop with pursed lips. He had sent his soulsense into the door a moment ago, and to his surprise, it had gone through!
That meant this door really was leading him to the top of the mountain!
“The Soul Sentinel Scarf and Charm Bracelet aren’t reacting, that means...this isn’t a trick?”
At last, Bai Yunfei came to a conclusion. This portal was the real thing, and it was allowing him direct passage to the actual mountaintop...
His lips couldn’t help but throb a few times with glee, though Bai Yunfei quashed the sensation down a moment after. “Doesn’t matter why it appeared for now. But in any case, since a channel is there for me to take...should I go for it?”
His eyes flickered to the portal on the right. “Where does...this portal take me to then?”
Studying the image on the portal, Bai Yunfei couldn’t really see anything special about it. The ground was filled with crushed stones and pebbles of all sizes, and it looked very much like the stream of stones outside the pocket.
“A river of rocks?” He raised an eyebrow, “Is this Crushed Stone River?! Can I exit from here?
“But if this portal really does take me to outside to Crushed Stone River, then...what’s the point of it?”
Confused by the two portals presented to him, Bai Yunfei stared at the two for a while to think.
“Is it giving me two choices??” He realized, “The option to take the Extreme King Pills I’ve fought hard for, or the option to have an immediate and safe passage out from this place?!”
His guess felt a little outlandish at the thought. How could such a ‘humanistic’ option be presented to him in such a case?
“But...I’m clearly stuck here in this one part of the pocket. Does this mean I need to make a decision if I want to leave this place? Are the others in a similar situation then? Is this some sort of special reaction the array has in cases like this?”
“If that’s the case...” He muttered and swept his eyes to the portal on the left. “I don’t need to think about which portal to take...”
He was decided, but even before he made a motion to step towards the portal to the mountaintop, Bai Yunfei’s eyes flew wide open and he froze where he stood!
He swung his head over to the portal on the right, “This feeling is...”
————
On the other side in the mist, several others were being presented with the same set of choices as Bai Yunfei.
Zheng Kai stared at the two portals with shining bright eyes. As he was thinking about his situation, something registered in the corners of his eyes.
“Someone made their choice already?!”
In the image on the portal to the left, a figure could be seen darting to the top of the mountain!
Clearly, there was someone that had already decided to go left straight to the top!
The actions of the first person were like the starting signal for everyone else to go. In practically seconds, a second figure followed suit, but this person appeared a hundred meters closer to the top of the mountain than the first one for some strange reason. Surprised for a brief second, the person took it in stride and ran for the top of the mountain.
Like a chain reaction, people started to run through the portal one after another. Alarmed, Zheng Kai dove straight through to the portal on the left!
—————
“Damn that Lin Dongxiao! I’ll never forgive him!!”
There was another person who was currently being presented with these two options. A young man wearing white was seated on the ground as he groused and complained while healing from his wounds.
This person was one of the people Jing Mingfeng introduced Bai Yunfei to prior to entering the pocket. He was the strongest student of the strongest school in the Southward River Province, ‘Bai Han’ of the Flying Snow School.
As mighty as he sounded, the person looked nowhere as impressive right now. His clothes were in tatters and his hair a mess. His breathing was labored and his face twisted in pain and anger. What used to be a powerful and elegant man was now withered away into someone completely different. His waist had three deep marks that cut deep practically into his bones. Clearly, some sort of giant beast with sharp claws had done this, and parts of his ribs had been broken.
From what he was grousing about, the person he was angry with was most definitely Lin Dongxiao from the Beast Taming School.
“Damn...even if I were to try and grab the Extreme King Pills, I’m only going to fail in this state...”
Sighing in defeat, Bai Han stared at the portal to the right with just a small amount of hesitation.
“Eh?!” Something caught his attention. He turned his head, “Who’s there!?”
As injured as he was, Bai Han managed to slam the ground and leap to his feet to stare at the right. A white scaled soul armament appeared in front of him protectively and a layer of ice formed around his person.
“Clang...”
No sooner did his double-layered defense appear in front of him did Bai Han hear something striking against his white soul armament. Then a black streak of light broke through and stabbed straight in between his eyebrows!
“Pcht...”
The black streak of light exited through the back of his head with a black-colored gas at its tail. Turning around, it flew the other direction back to where a figure in black stood.
“Thud.”
Bai Han’s body collapsed to the ground, his eyes vacant and unmoving. The man was already dead.
The young figure in black recollected the black needle without even a glance at the corpse. Curiously, he glanced over to the portals in front.
“So even something like this can appear? Is this the work of an ancient array? If it is, then why has it decided to ‘reject’ only me?” The figure muttered to himself, “If it’s ‘intentional’, then could...could it be ‘that’?”
As if thinking about something utterly inconceivable, the normally calm expression on the young man’s face looked stupefied. Smiling, he muttered, “If that’s the case, then today’s harvest will be a splendid one...”
He was already moving towards the two portals as he spoke to himself...