After spending three hours running around the Leafless Dead Forest, Lin Mu and learned something new.
Apparently they had been running around in the same place and were back to where they had started. The surprising part was that, even Lin Mu's Immortal Sense had been fooled and he was unable to tell that they had lost their direction.
"How's this possible? There are no signs of an array or other tricks here…" Lin Mu wondered feeling confused.
His immortal sense had already scanned everything several times, and found everything to be normal in the aspect of immortal Qi and more. And yet, after looking at the trees and their unique markings, Lin Mu was 100% sure of being stuck at the same place.
Now it was a question of how to prevent the same thing from happening and reaching the ruins.
"Can you smell and see if anything is nearby?" Lin Mu asked little Shrubby.
"I can't." Little Shrubby responded. "Everything smells the same and there are no changes." He explained.
~Sigh~
"Guess the trees make that hard too…" Lin Mu reckoned.
While finding the ruins and the Violet Mystic Life Tree was going to be difficult, Lin Mu didn't expect that even finding them cultivators searching for it would be this difficult too.
'Hmm… I need to look at this from a different angle…' Lin Mu thought to himself.
There was no use in getting frustrated as it'll only make it bad for Lin Mu.
"Let's take a break little Shrubby. I need to figure out how we are getting lost." Lin Mu stated.
"Okay." Little Shrubby nodded his head and sat down.
Lin Mu did the same and sat cross legged. His immortal sense spread around and scanned the area.
He first started with the soil beneath him, checking its properties and whether anything was hidden in it. And after a couple minutes of searching, he found nothing. Everything seemed to be as normal as it could be.
Next thing he checked was the dead trees themselves.
'Maybe they are the ones hiding something?' Lin Mu wondered.
His immortal sense touched upon the bark of the dead trees, finding it to be quite tough. It was clear that after all these years of staying here, the trees had transformed to become tough.
If not for that, perhaps they might not have been able to exist after all these years.
Though Lin Mu didn't know if more trees grew from them or if their numbers had been same the entire time. He could roughly guess that most of the trees were of the same age, at least in the are that he was in right now.
He also sensed the vitality that was hidden within the trees. This vitality was the same in feeling as to the rest of the blood vitality of the Desolate Blood Battlefield, but there was still something unique in it.
'I can barely sense the Wood Qi in it too…' Lin Mu grasped.
But wood Qi wasn't the only thing it had as there was also blood Qi naturally mixed in it along with some other minor energies. Lin Mu also felt a faint mix of the baleful energies within it.
With a mix of six of multiple energies, it was only natural that the tress had turned into unique existences.
The longer Lin Mu observed them, the clearer their secrets became. Eventually he figure out something.
'Wait… the energies within them… they form patterns too…' Lin Mu barely witnessed the pattern.
It only presented itself for a moment before it faded away. This pattern was formed by the mix of the various energies and was complex. Since the energies kept on mixing and churning, it was hard for the pattern to exist for more than a brief moment.
It didn't help that the amount of these energies within the trees was also quite small, needing Lin Mu's full focus in even sensing them.
"I need to check the other trees too." Lin Mu moved his immortal sense, and checked the trees near him.
One by one, he sensed the mix of energies in all of them. And after a couple of hours he also sensed the pattern within them.
'Just as I thought… it's the same pattern.' Lin Mu grasped.
By now he was starting to understand what was happening here.
"Only one way to confirm it…" Lin Mu stood up.
~THUD~
He stomped on the ground and launched himself into the air.
Lin Mu ensured that he flew straight up and didn't change his trajectory at all.
~WHOOSH~
He kept on rising higher and higher until a large part of the Leafless Dead Forest was visible under him. The trees looked like small dots and could barely be made out. But if Lin Mu focused enough, he could see them all clearly.
He spent a few minutes observing the trees from here, and soon made some connections.
"Sure enough… the pattern is actually present here too…" Lin Mu noticed an interesting thing.
While the trees looked like they were growing randomly, it was actually not so. They actually grew in a specific manner that formed the same pattern that the mixed energies within them did.
And this pattern repeated in several patches of trees.
It was hard to sense this pattern since it was very large and the repetition was hard to see from the ground.
"This is an entire array… A Natural Befuddling array!" Lin Mu finally understood.
Lin Mu was familial with befuddling arrays and had made several of them himself too. Thus he would have been able to identify them if they were placed in some area.
But since he had not sensed the presence of any formation, it had left him confused.
Seeing the true reality of the forest though, Lin Mu finally washed away that confusion.
"Since this was formed naturally, I wasn't able to sense it. After all there was no abnormality within it for me to sense." Lin Mu muttered to himself.
