Death... and me
chapter-2044

Rean approached the gate, which had several inscriptions on it. After touching them for a while, he quickly noticed. Those were not inscriptions related to formations. They were just marks carved with not much of a purpose. Nothing but aesthetic work. A small hole went deep inside the gate at the very center.

"Is this thing a keyhole?" Roan also noticed the hole before asking the others around him.

Rean tried to pic inside the hole with his Divine Sense and Soul Power Scan. Surprisingly, it did go through the hole, even though the material of the wall and gate could block them all. Unfortunately, it reached a small open space just a few centimeters in diameter inside the gate, where he couldn't see anything. "It doesn't seem like a keyhole to me, at least."

Rean then had an idea and quickly reached the Soul Gem Dimensional Realm. Right after, a small insect that looked more like a mechanical puppet appeared on his hand. "Good thing I bought some of those back in the Realm of Gods when we passed by the Puppets Guild. It is small enough to enter the hole, and its eyes will let me see what it can see through our connection with Divine Sense."

The Puppet Insect crawled from Rean's hand into the hole and went all the way inside the small empty space inside. With the help of the Divine energy stored inside its body, it shined with a yellow light, illuminating everything there. Rean then commanded it to take a look around so that he could see what the space looked like. Only then did he see a foam-like protrusion coming from the back of the small space.

Roan could see Rean's memories, so he couldn't help but ask. "What is that?"

Rean looked at Roan with the same weird expression. "No idea..."

Rean then controlled the insect to examine that protrusion. Too bad that the insect couldn't get close to it. There were no formations around, but there was some kind of energy that blocked anything that tried to get close to it. "Seems like the same Spatial Membrane is protecting that foam or whatever it is."

In the end, Rean couldn't find anything else. He tried a few other methods to examine that thing, but it was all for nothing. "What do you think?"

Roan shook his head. "It's not a formation, right? Since we couldn't get through the Spatial membrane here, I doubt we can get through the one inside the hole."

The two of them, as well as Kentucky and Luan, then tried to open the gate a few more times until suddenly...

*Bang!*

A loud sound came from the side, catching the twins' and Luan's attention. It was Kentucky who had simply kicked it with all his strength after losing his patience. "Ouch, my feet! This thing is hard as fuck!"

Roan's mouth twitched a bit. "What if there was something protecting this gate? We already have no way out of this place. Are you trying to kill us?"

Kentucky didn't seem to care too much. "Didn't Rean and Sister Orb already say that there are no formations in this place? What would kill us? If anything, I hoped that something would happen. At least we could figure something out."

Roan wasn't very happy, but he calmed down a second later. There was no point in arguing about it since nothing happened anyway. "Whatever. Let's try to figure out a way to open this thing."

Rean pondered a bit and began to take out several materials from the Soul Gem Dimensional Realm. "Let me try to use a formation to open it. Now that Kentucky has shown that there are no security measures in this place, I might as well see if it will work. Perhaps I can create a force strong enough to force the gate open."

Roan nodded. "Kentucky's kick was quite strong, but the gate didn't move at all. How much stronger will your formation be?"

"That's the good thing about formations, right?" Rean asked in response. "They take a long time to build, but they can definitely create an effect several times stronger than a cultivator's actions. Give me a few hours. I believe my formations will have a pushing force of at least ten times Kentucky's full body strength, and it will be a continuous force."

Luan, Kentucky, and Roan didn't have anything against Rean's plan and took some distance to let Rean do his thing.

Rean worked for over 13 hours, drawing a formation on both the ground and the gate itself. Whether that hole was a keyhole or not didn't matter. They didn't have a key to start with.

*Uoonnn...*

Rean activated the formation, which rapidly drained the several Rank Four Divine Stones' Energy he had placed inside. They could see that the force applied by the formation was indeed many times higher than Kentucky full strength kick.

*Crack, crack, crack...*

Too bad it was all for nothing.

*Bang!*

The formation reached its limit and finally broke apart, destroying all the materials used to create the force. As for the gate, it once again hasn't moved a single millimeter. "Sigh... brute force doesn't seem to work either."

Everyone came back and looked helplessly at the gate. "Let's try to attack the gate together. The pure brute force didn't work, but maybe it can't withstand Soul Origin Energy attacks."

Rean and the others nodded and took their weapons out. Not long after, the sounds of explosions could be heard from afar as their group assaulted the gate with everything they had. Well, it didn't work either. Not even a scratch was left behind after more than an hour of attacks nonstop.

Roan could only call it off. "Alright, that's enough. We are only wasting energy here."

Everyone had gloomy expressions on their faces. They couldn't go forward, nor could they go back. They were completely trapped in front of the gate. They stopped in front of it and looked at the gate helplessly.

Rean once again looked at the small hole in the gate before...

"OPEN SESAME!"

Roan almost vomited blood. "Why don't you go back to earth and ask Ali Baba to see if he changed the password? You might as well join his group and become the 41st thief."

Rean got angry as well. "Fuck you! At least I tried something. What about you?"

*clang, clang, clang, clang, clang...*

It was then that the sounds of heavy lockers being opened began to come out from the gate. A few seconds later, the gate started to open by itself.

Roan, Luan, and Kentucky looked at that with shocked expressions.

As for Rean, only a weird smile appeared on his face. "Errrr... Ahem! See? Ali Baba is an old-fashioned man. He never changes his passwords..."