Alex waited for a long time before he came to accept the fact that the man wasn't going to come around at all.
It had been at least an entire day, so it was obvious at it point.
There were a few possibilities. One was that the man had already entered one of the rooms before Alex had even come here. Another one was that the man was still back on his floor, waiting to find a way to come up to this floor.
But it was most likely that the third possibility was the most likely. The man had already changed his face back to his normal one and thus it would be impossible for Alex to find him.
"They only wanted to draw me in here," he thought. "I doubt they want to continue using my father's face since it would make them an obvious target for me. Especially since they know I can change my face."
In the end, there was nothing Alex could do right now. He couldn't find the man, so he needed to continue with the floors.
Since his father wasn't here, maybe it was better if he went up the floors quickly and left Sanctum. He had another lead, after all, one that was likely better than these assassins.
Alex looked around and decided to go into the room marked with the number 1.
He walked up to the bluish barrier on the door and passed through it. When he came out of the other side, he was greeted by a crowd of people who were… doing nothing?
He wondered why and he was immediately awarded the answer.
In front of the group of people, there were massive spider webs, or at least they looked like spider webs. Instead, they were silver cracks that had formed on reality itself. Like a broken mirror, the crack made it impossible to see the image behind it clearly.
Alex saw the fractured space and frowned.
The elders had told him that when he saw the crumbling space of the sanctum, he would've known it immediately. He didn't expect the crumbling space to look so… terrifying.
It wasn't just him. Every single saint that was here for the first time was transfixed by the shattering space. The ones that had been here before simply grumbled.
"Dammit, I will have to start all over again!" they spoke in frustration and left through the gate.
Alex watched them leave with a weird look on his face. He had to leave the same way too now that it turned out this room was unusable.
However, doing so would not send him back to where he had just come from. Instead, backing out of a room you had entered sent you back to the first floor, where you had to go through everything all over again.
It wasn't a simple reason why this place sometimes took months and months to leave.
'Fortunately, I'm just on the second floor,' Alex thought. It would have been even more annoying if I was higher on the floors.'
"In some ways, that's quite pretty, don't you think?" someone spoke not far away from him.
Alex looked at the plain woman in her gray robes with a weird look and ignored her.
"Oh, are you not going to answer?" the woman asked.
Alex frowned. "What do you want?" he asked. He didn't think it was possible for this woman to be an assassin since he had already changed his face, but he still couldn't help but be paranoid.
"I just want an answer," she said. "Do you think that is pretty too?"
Alex looked towards the cracked space in front of everyone and said, "Yes, I suppose it's quite pretty."
"Oh, really?" the girl asked with an excited look on her face. "You're not lying right?"
"Why would I be lying?" Alex asked.
"Then promise that you're telling the truth," she said in a playful manner.
"I have no reason to," Alex said and turned to look at the spatial crack again. He wondered if he could learn more about Space from this place. Although, for some reason, he was finding it hard to sense the aura in here.
It was a weird feeling for certain.
"Ehhh! Come on! It's just a simple promise," the girl said.
"Leave me," Alex shouted at her and moved away.
"Tsk! So brass. And here I thought I could give you some information about your father," she said.
Alex suddenly turned around and looked at her with a shocked face. "What did you say?" he asked.
"Hehe, that got your attention so easily. Do you want to know about your father, Alex?" the girl asked.
Alex's eyes turned dark as he glared at her. So she was an assassin after all.
"Gosh, you don't have to glare at me like that," she said. "What are you going to do? Cut me to pieces with your stare?"
"No, I'll use my sword for that," Alex said. "That I can promise you."
"Haha! You have a nice sense of humor, don't you?" the girl said. "Using a sword to cut me in this place? so funny."
Alex frowned slightly. That was right. He couldn't use his sword here, since he couldn't bring it out in the first place.
The rooms with crumbling spaces cut off his access to any of the other spaces as well. Unless he could force the spatial aura around him to move away, he couldn't bring out his sword at all.
At the same time, he was starting to realize that he couldn't use his Dao in this place either. At least not the external help of the dao.
He could still use the dao, but he would have to only use his Qi. Alex tried forcing the spatial aura inside of him to move around his ting to free it from the outside space's force.
'Will I run out of space aura if I do this?' he couldn't help but wonder. There was still a lot of it in his mental space, but that took a lot of time to use up. As for what was in his body, he wasn't sure.
He could feel his sword and be ready to pull it out when the girl spoke again.
"Well, I'm not here to fight you anyway," she said.
"What do you mean?" Alex asked.
"I'm here to make you a proposition, in place of my employer," she said.
"What proposition?" Alex asked.
"Stop looking for your father and forget about him. Make an oath that you will do so in front of one of us, and we Dark Phoenix will never target you again. Well, not unless we have another employer. You have 2 months of time to think about it, or until someone completes the sanctum if that comes to be earlier," she said.
"I don't need any time," Alex said. "My answer is simple. I refuse."
The girl shrugged. "As I said, you have time, just think about it," she said. "Also, don't try to fight me please, you are very weak. I might just kill you accidentally, which is not my plan."
Alex could see people turning to look at him and the woman, wondering what was happening. Should he shout it out? Tell them who these people are so that maybe they would help in the battle?
'No, they have my father. If I make a mistake…' He decided against it. Still, he continued staring at the woman. He was going to kill her himself.
Only, he wanted to figure out who she exactly was.
There were 5 assassins remaining. One was the older man that loved using explosives. Another was the leader, who he knew nothing about.
There was the red-haired woman, the one that he had truly taken notice of.
And finally, there were the twins. Was she one of the twins? He couldn't tell. She could also be the red-haired woman wearing different clothes, but that seemed impossible as he wasn't seeing any fire aura coming out of her body.
The one in the information was surrounded by fire.
Then… was this the leader?
"Where is my father?" Alex asked.
"Why do you even ask that?" the girl said. "You know there's no point, right?"
Alex frowned. "You were not the one that impersonated my father, were you?" he asked. "You said you had other people in here with you."
"Of course," the girl said. "We came prepared."
"Good," Alex said as he finally pulled out Midnight in the middle of the crowd surprising everyone. "Then I can kill you without hesitation."
The girl showed a look of surprise and even a bit of confusion, but she didn't show any fear at all. She still believed that she had the upper hand if they were to fight.
"Hey! What the hell are you doing?" one of the crowd shouted.
"He's trying to kill that girl," someone else said.
"If you two have a grudge against each other, go solve it outside. Don't make this place your battlefield," they said. "Or we will throw you in there."
Alex turned to look towards the spatial cracks where they pointed and making use of that opportunity, the girl ran through the gate.
"Shit!" Alex said as he ran through the gate, following her. He arrived on the first floor, his spiritual sense was immediately suppressed.
Still, he stood up and looked around. He barely managed to get a glimpse of the woman eating something as she entered Gate 3.
He wasted no time and followed her to enter Gate 3 as well. He wasn't planning on stopping before he killed her or got an answer.
