After leaving for half a year, Hou Niao returned to Crab Claw Island. The scenery was unchanged, the island was unchanged, and the stone house was unchanged.
Even the Red Ru and her children were unchanged, except that there were many fewer of them.
Someone had left a message at the stone house's formation array. One of the island masters he had once visited had come to visit him in return, and an unfamiliar senior Sword Cultivator had also passed by on his way elsewhere.
Everything seemed calm and peaceful.
As a cautious person who always put his own safety first, and whose understanding of formations was still quite limited, he had no way to tell whether anyone had set a trap for him during this time.
A true expert would not casually leave behind traces that he could recognize as Spiritual Energy the moment he returned, allowing him to take precautions. He might be able to do that in the future, but not now.
But he had a method of his own, one that was unique to him: the Thousand-Li Earthwalking Map beneath the soil?
After searching all over Crab Claw Island and finding nothing amiss, he decided to make one final check.
He casually crouched down in a patch of grass, and his body instantly sank into the soil and disappeared. After several years of effort, his mastery of earth-element cultivation had grown deeper and deeper. Now, in ordinary soil, he could burrow three zhang beneath the ground-a very useful skill.
Once underground, he needed to thoroughly inspect the Thousand-Li Earthwalking Map, focusing mainly on its dozen or so nodes. Then he would be able to tell whether any unfamiliar Qi had come ashore on Crab Island in the past half year, and whether there might be a