Eternal Cultivation of Alchemy

Alex ran away with the man's talisman and read it. He had noticed a few talismans in that there were writings on the talismans that belonged to the participants.

He had come to notice two different sets of writing.

One said [CCHASTWDPH] and another one said [ETWLFEONT].

Alex tried to make sense of the 2 types of talismans and didn't notice anything. His own 2 remaining talismans were of the first variety.

'Is this something random to f*ck with me?' he thought. He gave up on thinking about it for the moment.

Alex ran through some intersections, redoing his runs multiple times cause he ran into dead ends. Finally, he was done with that section of the maze and walked out of it.

"What the?" he thought as he saw the scene ahead.

Unlike the previous times, there wasn't an open space to walk through like the previous times. Instead, in front of him was… himself.

Or more accurately, a reflection of himself. As he walked forward, he saw the walls move as well. When he finally entered that section of the maze, he realized, the walls were mirrors.

He walked ahead slowly and suddenly slammed on a wall that was placed at a 45-degree angle. 'Sh*t, this is going to be hard,' he thought.

He tried walking in another direction and could see nothing but himself in all the walls. So he carefully moved. Dead ends were much harder to return from since he didn't know where the intersections were anymore. He couldn't remember the places like he could for the other mazes.

So he had to rely on intuition now. Thankfully, he had his spiritual sense fully working, so he didn't have to worry about accidentally hitting a wall anymore.

Finally, after nearly 15 minutes of scurrying around like a headless chicken, he managed to get out of there. However, it was simply him getting out of the fire pan and into the fire.

The place in front of him was nothing but fog. He carefully placed a foot inside expecting the whole land to cave in, or some sort of attack to just at him.

However, there was nothing. He carefully walked a bit more and there truly wasn't anything. 'Hmm, so there really isn't anything,' Alex thought as he freely started walking forward.

As he walked more and more, he couldn't help but get the feeling that this was familiar. 'Isn't this just like…' suddenly, his eyes went wide.

He suddenly started to look around with anxiety and confusion in his eyes. He turned his head around to check but no matter where he looked, he couldn't make sense of it.

"Where am I supposed to walk towards?"

He was stuck in a formation, and this was one that took away his sense of direction.

Alex wandered for a bit but he was still stuck inside the formation. "What do I do?" he thought. Even his spiritual sense didn't help as there was nothing to look at in the vicinity.

"Screw it," he thought and came up with an idea. He took his sword and threw it ahead of him, but only a small distance away. He slowly walked towards the sword and stopped with both of his feet stuck together.

He then picked up the sword and without looking anywhere, threw it straight ahead of him. While getting to his sword, his body would try to make him move in another direction, but with the spiritual sense, he knew where he was supposed to walk to.

He found a person in the fog once but didn't dare break his direction as he would probably get lost if he did that. Finally, after repeating that a few dozen times, he hit a wall.

He quickly walked to the sword and realized that he had hit a wall. When he saw where he was, he frowned. He was back in the mirror maze.

Meaning he would have to repeat the same thing for an entire length of the maze. "F*ck," he couldn't hate but shout.

He was about to throw the sword when suddenly, he felt a… weird sense that something was calling to him. He couldn't tell what it was, or where it was. What he could tell was the direction it was coming from.

It was behind him. He couldn't tell what this feeling was as it wasn't anything like when the alchemy ingredients called to him, or when his body reacted to materials it wanted.

This was something different, something that felt more… home. 'What's going on?' he thought. He knew for sure this had nothing to do with his knowledge of alchemy or his body, but there was nothing else to him but that.

'Whatever at least it will help me now,' Alex thought and ran straight ahead. He didn't bother with directions or people, as long as the feeling was coming from behind him, he knew where to go.

In under a minute, he reached the other side of the fog and looked at the top. It once again said that he couldn't change his choice of entrance later on.

So he carefully, but in the end randomly, chose an entrance and walked in. When he saw the maze, he couldn't help but be surprised.

"Is this real?" he asked himself. Ahead of him was a straight line for nearly 200 meters. There were no split paths, no intersection, or anything.

From start to finish he could see everything. "What's the catch?" he thought and slowly placed a foot in. He was expecting vines like the first time to pop out and lock him in place, but nothing happened.

Second foot, third foot. He walked more and more, but nothing happened. "Haha! There's nothing?" he thought and started running.

He hadn't taken 10 steps into the run when—

BAM

He hit something and fell on his butt. "Ouch," he said as he stood up and looked in front of him, but there was nothing there.

"What did I hit?"