Lin Mu spent some time pondering about the intricacies of the forest.
He didn't worry about the other powers coming here either now. After all, it no longer mattered if they arrived early or later, they would be faced with the same thing.
'Unless they too can figure out the secret of the Leafless Dead Forest, they wouldn't be able to find the Ruins.' Lin Mu thought to himself.
And while he was thinking all this, another thought presented to him.
'The Leafless Dead Forest should have existed for a long time, there is no way the presence of this Natural Befuddling Array wasn't discovered by others.' Lin Mu thought. 'And yet… there were no records of it. Alchemist Ruoxian would have surely told me about this and there was no information in the other intelligence set either.' He wondered.
After thinking over this, Lin Mu came to a conclusion that was a bit shocking.
"All this would only be possible if… this array didn't exist back then." Lin Mu muttered. "No, more accurately the array always existed. It just didn't activate!" he analyzed seeing that the trees had been there since the start.
This made him curious about who would make such an array, if one even made it. Though it was unlikely since this was a natural befuddling array. For one to have made it, they would personally need to plant all the trees and make sure that they had the perfect mixture of the baleful energies.
But if that was the case, the array wouldn't come into being either. After all, the baleful energies were only born after the legendary battle had and the Desolated Blood Battlefield became what it is today.
It was a complex question that could not be answered directly. Lin Mu could only hope to look for it himself in this.
"Now then, let's see if my first method works…" Lin Mu said and stood up.
~BOOM~
He directly punched out and blasted apart one of the dead trees. The wood shattered into splintered timbers and scattered over the area. During this entire sequence, Lin Mu kept his Immortal sense spread and scanned for the changes in the area.
He couldn't sense anything though and knew that it was on a far smaller level than he had expected.
"I have to check the other trees directly…" Lin Mu walked to the nearest tree and put his hand on it.
Chanting the Calming Heart Sutra Lin Mu used his Immoral sense to probe the tree and observed the mixed energies within it. He looked for the pattern that would appear in it momentarily.
After a few minutes, he saw it again and found it to be the same as before.
"That can't be it… there must be some change." Lin Mu decided to look through the other trees.
One by one, he checked the trees finding all of them to be the same. This made Lin Mu furrow his brows as it didn't seem to be normal.
"Looks like this crude method won't work then… the natural array must be able to adapt to it somehow." Lin Mu reckoned.
But he wasn't disappointed as this was just the first method he had devised. The next one was what he was more confident about.
Lin Mu closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again. His Spatial Perception activated, allowing him to glance at the fine changes in the spatial fabric that were hidden to the naked eye.
He saw the fabric that extended all over the place, overlapping and folding with the different voids. This was something Lin Mu wasn't able to see before.
'Back in the Kong Plane I wasn't able to see such overlapping of Spatial Fabric even if it was an anchored plane. Guess my Spatial perception has certainly improved.' Lin Mu thought to himself.
The folding and overlapping of the spatial fabric was something that was unique to minor planes that were anchored to a normal world. For fully independent and floating planes, the spatial fabric would not touch each other and would be like two balls of yarn rolling round.
But in the case of the Desolate Blood Battlefield it was similar to a knitted sheet that was being enfold to form two divisors.
In all this though, what Lin Mu needed to search for was something that would help guide his way.
"There's nothing… It is far to stable for there to be any flaws…" Lin Mu was at another impasse.
After a bit more thinking, he understood the reason behind it.
'The Natural Befuddling Array's advantage is that it is along with the will of nature and does not cause any disturbance. It is aligned with the natural order and thus there wouldn't be any reason for spatial disturbances to arise either.' Lin Mu analyzed. "My original thought itself was flawed." He grasped.
By this point, Lin Mu knew that he held the capability of figuring out a way to proceed. But to do that he would have to spend a lot more time analyzing the Natural Befuddling Array and the unique repeating pattern that constituted it.
But doing that would require a lot of time that he didn't wish to spend here.
After all, even if the other powers would be delayed too it didn't mean that they were helpless. Lin Mu was sure that the other powers would have experts who would be able to figure out a way too, or use some tool to get through it directly.
With all this in mind, Lin Mu decided to change his route of thinking.
'I don't necessarily need to find a way to overcome the properties of the array, I merely need a way to bypass them!' Lin Mu concluded. "The array changes one perception and makes them lose their way by the virtue of the trees that constitute it. But what if I never have to see the trees? Or what if I don't walk amongst them at all?"
Lin Mu smiled before activating one of his skills.
"Fade." With that Lin Mu entered the parallel plane.
