Alex was surprised at how crowded the 1st floor was. He couldn’t use his spiritual sense, so he couldn’t tell how many people there were, but there had to be at least a third of the people that had entered the sanctum.

That made sense too, given that everyone who failed was dumped back here.

He looked around and saw dejected people who had failed once again. Nearly 10 days had passed since they had come here, and they were still on the first floor.

Compared to the person that was said to have completed the entire thing in just 15 days, they were too slow.

Still, when compared to the average time taken, they were barely getting started.

Alex looked around carefully. Without his spiritual sense, it would be hard to tell if someone was looking at him or had a talisman in their hand. If they got the jump on him while he was distracted, it would be very bad.

He thought of leaving, but someone approached him. Alex nearly took out his sword before he realized that this was a very weak person.

“Hey, little brother. What floor did you drop from? I don’t think I’ve seen you here during the past few days,” the Saint Condensation realm female cultivator said.

“19th floor,” Alex said. “Why?”

“Woah! 19th? That’s tough, little brother. It must suck to reach so high and have to come back down here,” she said while she shook her head. “What sort of challenge did you lose to?”

“None. I entered a room with spatial cracks. Had to leave,” he said.

“Dear lord, that’s even worse. At least losing would mean that you did something wrong, but having to come down with no fault of your own is just… sigh,” the woman shook her head. “Anyway, let’s talk about the floors below the 19th floor.”

Alex was very confused by why the woman had approached him and was even going to ask her about it when 3 other people approached him at the same time.

He took out his sword this time, just to be safe, and the three people stopped in their tracks.

“Woah, Woah, Woah, we mean you no harm brother,” one of them said while holding their hands up.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Please don’t answer her. I will pay you 200 True spirit stones for the information,” someone said.

“What?” Alex looked confused. Just then, he saw one of the women in the group of three was someone he had seen outside in the group with Zhu Shaofan.

“You’re someone from the Insight Pavilion, aren’t you?” he asked. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be finding information on your target?”

“Oh, senior brother knows about me?” the girl said excitedly. She quickly brought out a talisman and waved it around. “I’ve already done what I needed to do.”

Alex looked at the talisman for a bit and asked, “does senior Zhu Shaofan find the target for you or do you do it on your own?”

“The other times we did it on our own, but this time around he found our target. Since you know about us so much, brother, does that mean you’ll answer me?”

“Tell me what you want first,” Alex asked.

“Brother, we are gathering information about the rooms and challenges on each floor. Do you think you can tell us what you know?” she asked.

“AH!” Alex spoke out loud as he finally understood what was happening. “Selling information huh? Even in such a place. Why aren’t you guys going up to find out yourself?”

The group looked at each other and shook their head. “That’s a bad idea. We know we will fail, so there is no point,” one of them said. “We came here to make money in the first place.”

Alex nodded when he heard that. “Well, I can’t tell you what to do or what not to,” he said. “What information do you have?”

“Uhh… we have most information until floor 22,” the girl from the Insight Pavilion said. “People from further above have come down, but they don’t share that information with us at all.”

“That’s understandable,” Alex said. “Alright, give me what you have information on and I will tell you all the floors I’ve been through.”

The girl’s eyes went wide with happiness and she thanked him while bringing out talismans to record.

Alex stared at her for a bit while the others reluctantly left, knowing that they wouldn’t get anything out of there.

The girl took out another talisman. “This costs 2000 True spirit stones, normally, but I will give it to you for free since you are going to tell me everything,” she said.

Alex nodded and started explaining all the rooms he had been to. He didn’t really have any reason to hold back, so he explained everything.

The girl recorded it all, some of which were new to her. She thanked him profusely and gave him the talisman before leaving away to sell her product or to gather some more information.

Alex looked at the talisman in his hand and read it a bit. From what he could see, 19 seemed doable, and 20 seemed special enough that he didn’t need to know about 21 and 22.

“Hmm, that was handy,” he thought to himself and left the 1st floor.

He quickly walked towards the 1st room to his left and grabbed onto a floating light the moment he entered. He was sent to the 2nd floor where his spiritual was usable once more.

He spread his spiritual sense around, but he didn’t look for anyone or anything. Doing so would alert anyone that was trying to find him.

Instead, Alex looked towards the door that was darkened and thought of waiting for it to open up.

That was the room with the tug of war, so he believed he could pass it easily. But, he also needed to cultivate, since he was lacking in Qi.

He could eat a pill to restore his Qi reserve, but it would not be as good as normal cultivation, which would make the Qi he had gathered to be crystallized.

So, he decided to cultivate for a bit. He went to the edge of the massive room and sat down as he closed his eyes and cultivated. He let his spiritual sense linger around, but he didn’t consciously look for anyone.

After a while, he even took his spiritual sense back as if he had fallen into a deep cultivation session, one that would only usually happen in closed cultivation.

He sat there in a deep cultivation base for nearly half a day, during which time many people came and left.

Alex was getting the rest he deserved.

As he continued cultivating, one man in a corner moved his eyes towards him from time to time. Until now, he had expected Alex to continue on to the upper floors in which case he would follow him, but it didn’t look like he was going to.

He was just a clone, so the main body had already given out the information to the leader of their group. So, all he had to do was for her to make a decision before doing anything.

And she had made one.

He was to take the opportunity to poison him. There was a poisoned needle with him that he could use to prick Alex. As long as he could stop him from going for some antidote afterward, he was set.

He looked around a bit and then stared at Alex as inconspicuously as possible. He then slowly stood up and walked around the room, never going directly in Alex’s direction but moving closer nonetheless.

When he was as close as 10 meters from Alex, he made his move. With this distance, Alex wouldn’t be able to stop him after being caught off guard. And with him being in deep cultivation, this was going to be easy.

The man suddenly dashed towards Alex as quickly as he could, but before he could reach him, a hand grabbed his throat, stopping him in his tracks.

“Such obvious bait and you still bite,” Alex spoke with disdain in his voice. Something landed on his shoulders just then and Alex looked toward it.

“Good job, Whiskers,” he said.

While Alex was presenting himself as the bait, Whisker was high up in the ceiling with his cultivation base concealed. He was looking down on all of them on the 2nd floor, and through his eyes, Alex was as well.

For the past 12 hours, he had been tracking every single person that came and left. But more than them, he was tracking those that simply did not leave at all.

This man had been one of them, so when he started moving towards him, Alex knew he was an assassin as well. The attack in the end wasn’t even needed.

Alex felt the man’s throat. “No heartbeat,” he said to himself. “Can you even be considered a human being without a heartbeat? You’re more a puppet than a clone.”

The man struggled, but he really wasn’t the fighting type. His cultivation base was very weak, and he was kept here just as an observer.

He took the man through the open gate to the crumbling room and tossed the man to one corner.

He crouched and looked the man in his eyes as he asked, “You can hear this, can’t you?” he smiled. “I’m coming for you all.”

That was the last thing the clone saw and heard before its head was caved into the tower’s wall and its body tossed into the infinite cracks in the room.

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