I’m Trapped in a Cube - Chapter 171

Shen Ping picked up a tree branch and poked it toward those strange immortals.

The branch passed through the “immortals'” robes and came out the other side.

“Whew~”

As expected, they were illusions. Shen Ping breathed a sigh of relief.

When the rainbow lights stopped flickering, these immortals’ bodies also completely solidified, becoming incredibly detailed with no difference from real things.

Just then, Shen Ping noticed dazzling golden light emerging from the wooden pavilion above. Looking closely, he saw that all the roof tiles had turned completely golden, appearing incredibly mystical.

At the same time, all the immortals suddenly looked up at that glittering golden roof.

Their steps were very synchronized as they climbed the final stone steps toward the pavilion.

As they walked, this group of immortals made strange mixed sounds, like a combination of bursting bubbles and scraping scales, slowly forming a kind of rustling whisper.

Shen Ping monitored his physical condition while following these immortals onto the pavilion, arriving before a large door carved with countless patterns.

The door was also wooden, with patterns on top that, though chaotic, appeared very mystical when combined, possessing a strange beauty.

The immortals lined up one by one toward the door, raised their hands, crossed their index fingers and thumbs to form a neat oval shape, then passed directly through the door accompanied by a flash of golden light as they entered the pavilion.

Shen Ping stood at the back, curiously observing these immortals’ strange behavior.

He didn’t act recklessly just because these were illusions, but obediently queued up. Only after all the immortals had entered did he approach the door.

Reaching the door, he discovered that the mystical patterns on it weren’t text or anything strange.

They were various sea creatures.

This door was like a painted scroll, depicting countless patterns of sea creatures.

They formed circles like ripples on the sea surface, constantly spreading outward from the center, with blank spaces dotted with small patterns Shen Ping couldn’t identify.

Shen Ping observed carefully and found that many of these sea creatures were ones he didn’t recognize, they looked very strange.

He looked from the center all the way to the edges, circle after circle, but these creatures seemed endless, never reaching a border.

Shen Ping’s gaze approached the door’s edge, passed beyond the door’s edge, and looked into the distance, those patterns continued to exist.

On the pavilion’s pillars.

Before the tightly closed windows.

On the stone mountain outside the pavilion.

In the sky.

……

This was an infinitely extending painting!

It wasn’t until Shen Ping was flashed by golden light that he suddenly snapped back to awareness.

“What just happened to me?”

He remembered seeing fish swimming beyond the universe!

This door had a problem.

The more he thought about it, the more wrong it seemed. Shen Ping quickly took out his Relic to monitor his body.

No mutations, no distortions—everything was normal.

He breathed a long sigh of relief and focused again on the center of the door. In the middle of those concentric ripples was a strange oval pattern, like an olive.

Shen Ping suddenly understood, the hand gestures those immortals had made earlier were meant to represent this pattern.

Having found the key point, Shen Ping quickly lowered his head, no longer staring at the door.

He raised his hands and, imitating the previous immortals, formed the olive shape with his hands.

Suddenly, the circle formed by his fingers became blurred, and Shen Ping seemed to see a blue sea through his hands.

Then he felt a sudden attractive force from ahead, like the feeling of being sucked in when climbing out of water.

Unable to control himself, he stepped forward, passed through the door, and dazzling golden light flashed across his eyes.

When Shen Ping steadied himself and recovered from the blinding light, he was standing in a brightly lit, enormous pavilion.

“Why is it nighttime?”

Shen Ping immediately saw the starlight outside the windows.

Countless immortals gathered in the pavilion. The high pavilion’s lamplight illuminated their strange heads, the air filled with woody incense, and the whispering sounds here had become a kind of hoarse music, similar to some damaged ancient zither.

For a moment, Shen Ping couldn’t tell whether he had arrived in another space or whether everything before his eyes was an illusion.

The tangible experience of passing through the door just now hadn’t felt like an illusion either.

Thinking this, he used the tree branch he still carried to poke at a nearby crab immortal. As expected, it passed right through.

The immortal showed no reaction whatsoever, completely ignoring him.

“Still an illusion,” Shen Ping sighed in relief.

Perhaps passing through the door earlier was just because he had imitated those immortals’ gestures, triggering some mechanism that pulled him into the pavilion.

The stars outside should also be illusions.

As Shen Ping was thinking, he noticed the broken zither sounds growing louder. After a while, all the immortals looked up toward the top of the pavilion at the same time.

Shen Ping followed the immortals’ gaze and saw an oval void appear in the high air at the pavilion’s center.

Then the oval void suddenly filled with water, becoming a huge blue olive.

Shen Ping again felt that sensation of being drawn into the water surface, though fortunately this feeling wasn’t very strong now.

A lobster-headed immortal stepped forward, raised his hands, and once again formed that olive shape.

Just as Shen Ping was puzzled, he witnessed a shocking scene.

The sea surface in the void rippled and expelled a golden, glittering Relic.

The Relic slowly descended, arriving before the lobster-headed immortal.

The lobster-head changed to a cupping gesture with both hands, received the Relic, then slowly backed away to let another immortal step forward.

“Are they distributing Relics?” Shen Ping suddenly had this wonderful thought.

Sure enough, Shen Ping’s guess was correct. These immortals stepped forward one by one and received Relics in their hands.

They queued unhurriedly, carefully putting away their Relics after receiving them, then silently walked toward the door, leaving the pavilion bathed in golden light.

“How can this blue olive have so many Relics?”

Watching these immortals leave one by one with Relics, Shen Ping felt very frustrated.

Why were these all illusions?

It was like seeing a treasure mountain but being unable to dig, Shen Ping could only silently take out equipment to record the appearance of these Relics.

“I hope this data can also sell for some money, so much Relic data.”

He could only comfort himself this way.

It wasn’t until all the immortals had left the pavilion that Shen Ping reluctantly put away his recording equipment.

However, the blue olive in the sky hadn’t disappeared, still floating quietly in the air with waves surging.

Looking at the blue olive that still existed, Shen Ping was possessed by some impulse and walked beneath it, making the same gesture as those immortals before.

He quickly laughed at his own behavior, mocking himself, “What am I doing? It’s all illusions, could it really give me one too?”

However, things didn’t go as he expected.

The sea surface rippled, and a glittering Relic appeared from nowhere, slowly falling.