Alex's original time was 3 hours, 22 minutes, and 33 seconds. That was the worst time out of everyone yet, but that was the raw time. He still needed to get it reduced.
So, he slowly walked to the staff. Along the way, he could see Yang Ma's terrible smirk. He rejoiced about the fact that Alex got so much less score.
'God, he really is horrible,' Alex thought. He reached the staff and pulled out a stack of papers from his robes. In his stack, there were at least 50 talismans.
He dropped it on the staff's table and the staff started to calculate. As the staff was calculating, Alex reached back into his robe and pulled out another stack of the talismans.
He placed it on the staff's desk with a little sound.
The first 50 weren't surprising to anyone. The last 4 of the 5 people had around that amount. However, Alex had just nearly doubled that.
"What the— how does he have so much?" the participants started questioning.
"Brother Xi, how did you get 50, and why does he have so many?" a disciple asked his senior brother who was one of the final 5.
"The final maze had talismans hidden in the walls. I spent all my time searching for them. He must've probably spent longer than me to search for them," the man named Xi answered.
He spoke quite openly, so everyone in the area heard that. Murmurs started among the crowd and people started guessing how much Alex reduced his numbers by.
Some guessed 40 minutes, some guessed an hour. Some even guessed an hour and a half. However, most people were sure that it would be a ridiculous amount.
The staff counted all the nearly hundred talismans and was finally being done with it. Just then, Alex reached into his robes, took out another stack, and dropped it on the staff's desk once more with a gentle smile.
The staff's eyes were so wide that he forgot to count and only stared at the stack for a solid 5 seconds.
"Ahemm!" After a gentle reminder from Fu Zhen, the staff went back to calculating. Fu Zhen looked at Alex and said, "If you have more, drop them all at once," he said.
"Sure," Alex said and reached into his pockets to bring out another stack that was double of what he normally took out. Even Fu Zhen was surprised this time.
The participants had their eyes out for a while now, and this time it nearly fell off.
The staff did his best to count as fast as he could and when he got the result, he was both confused and surprised. He called Fu Zhen close and whispered something into his ears.
When Fu Zhen heard this, he was surprised and confused as well. He thought for a second and turned to Alex. "Junior, how did you get so many talismans," he asked.
"From the walls in the wooden maze," Alex replied.
"Yes, but how did you get so many of them," Fu Zhen asked.
Alex smiled and said, "I just did. If you are worried about me cheating, you can ask your staff member who was looking after me. He was up there all the time and saw everything I did."
Fu Zhen turned to one of the staff members still in the air, and that person shook his head indicating no foul practice.
"Hah~" Fu Zhen sighed and looked at the staff in charge of counting the results and said, "Do it." The staff member nodded and applied the reduction.
The group watched the numbers in Alex's result lower. From over 3 hours, it dropped to just 3 hours. With the change in number, it also started climbing the ranks.
Slowly, it climbed higher and higher as the time was reduced more and more, and before anyone knew it, the result reached 2 hours. With just a little more reduction, he jumped past Yang Ma.
Yang Ma's face got a little dark when he saw that. The result was still climbing, however. Without stopping, it climbed higher and higher until it was in 1st place.
Alex had dropped his result by nearly 2 hours now. However, that was still not the end.
The result reduced even more and soon it crossed the 1-hour mark.
"What's going on? How is it so low?" some of the disciples started to complain. But since they had seen the result take place in front of them, they couldn't keep complaining about it for long.
The result dropped lower until it was at the half an hour mark and still kept on dropping. After what felt like an eternity, everyone saw the result reach 0.
However, it still didn't end there. Even after reaching 0, it went down into negative. It kept on lowering for a few more seconds until it finally stopped.
The final result of Alex's maze run turned out to be Negative 45 minutes, and 26 seconds.
Fu Zhen started speaking to the crowd and announced the top 3 winners. The audience was way too far from Alex's eyes so he couldn't tell their reactions, but he knew in his heart that his masters must have been proud.
"Please follow us," a staff said and called everyone with them. The group of staff took them to a room with 120 of the rest of the participants.
They handed everyone a spirit stone, a Qi recovering pill, and told them to stay inside the Qi gathering formation until the next turn.
Alex found a relatively quiet place and ate the pill. Immediately, his body started working and directly gave him energy. Alex didn't have much use for the spirit stones, but he still kept them.
He was returned back his box with all his bags in it. Once everything was settled down and was quiet, Alex started feeling uncomfortable. The feeling was still there, haunting him apparently.
'Just what is it? Could it be a bug of some sort?' Alex wondered. So, he decided to log out and log back in to check.
