Lost

Luo Shen City was even larger than Xiao Yan had imagined.

He followed the broad avenue straight ahead for a full hour. The shops on either side continued without end, and the statue of Luo Shen standing at the center of the city remained as distant as the horizon, showing no sign of drawing closer.

Xiao Yan stopped and looked up at the stone statue towering into the clouds, then down at the bluestone pavement beneath his feet. His brow furrowed slightly.

He couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.

On the Dou Qi Continent, with his powers of observation, he could never have lost his way even in an unfamiliar city. A brief sweep of his soul power would have been enough to take in the layout of the entire city.

But in Luo Shen City, his soul power seemed to be under some invisible suppression. The moment it reached beyond a hundred zhang, everything became blurred, as though veiled by a thick fog.

At first, Xiao Yan had thought it was because his severe injuries had yet to heal and his soul power had been affected as well. But after walking for so long, he increasingly felt that the problem did not lie with him.

After some thought, he turned into an alley on his right, intending to take a shortcut toward the statue of Luo Shen.

Tall courtyard walls lined both sides of the alley, with gray bricks and dark tiles lending it a secluded air. Xiao Yan strode through it, and after roughly the time it took an incense stick to burn, the space ahead suddenly opened up, and he emerged from the alley.

Then he froze.

A broad avenue met his eyes, lined on both sides with shops. On the street corner directly ahead of him, an old man in tattered clothes sat cross-legged on the ground. A beast hide lay before him with several dull gray medicinal pills on it, and beside them were the crookedly written words "For sale at low prices."

The corner of Xiao Yan's mouth twitched slightly.

This was the very place he had passed an hour ago.

He had gone in one great circle and come right back.

"Interesting..."

Xiao Yan narrowed his eyes. Refusing to believe it, he fixed his sights on the statue of Luo Shen this time, chose a street on his left, and walked straight ahead without taking a single turn.

Half an hour later, he saw the old man in tattered clothes once again.

The old man seemed to recognize him too. He lifted his cloudy old eyes and glanced at him, then grinned with a mouth missing several teeth and chuckled. "Young man, that's your second time around, isn't it?"

Xiao Yan was silent for a moment. Then he squatted down in front of the old man and asked, "Sir, what's going on here?"

"You're from out of town, aren't you?" the old man said unhurriedly. "Luo Shen City is divided into an inner city and an outer city. The inner city is the Luo God Clan's territory. The outer city is where folks like us stay. There's a great array outside the inner city, called the Bewildering Tracks Array or something like that. Without a Luo God Clan token, you could walk for your whole life and still only circle around the outer city."

"The Bewildering Tracks Array..." Understanding dawned on Xiao Yan.

No wonder his soul power had been suppressed, and no wonder he had kept going around in circles. An array was behind it all.

"Then is there no one who can get through this array?" Xiao Yan asked curiously.

The old man rolled his eyes. "Get through? That's one of the Luo God Clan's Clan Protection Arrays. Even a Sovereign expert has to obediently go around it. A youngster like you can forget about it. Just stay in the outer city and make an honest living."

Xiao Yan smiled and asked no more. He thanked the man, then rose and left.

But he did not give up.

He found a quiet street corner, stood with his back against the wall, and slowly closed his eyes. The power of his Emperor Realm Soul reached out bit by bit from between his brows.

This time, he did not try to scan the entire city. Instead, he gathered his soul power into an extremely fine thread and carefully spread it out in all directions, keeping it close to the ground.

Before long, he noticed something unusual.

Beneath the bluestone pavement, within the courtyard walls, and on the beams and pillars of the shops, countless lines had been engraved, so fine they were almost imperceptible. They connected to one another like a boundless net, enclosing the entire outer city.

Within those lines, a gentle, pure power flowed slowly. That power was the Spiritual Energy of this world.

Xiao Yan's soul power carefully traveled along the lines, and the deeper it went, the more astonished he became.

This array was far too ingenious.

On the Dou Qi Continent, although many traditions of array craft had been passed down, most were crude and simple. An array capable of trapping a Dou Zun expert was already considered top-tier. Yet the Bewildering Tracks Array before him, in the complexity and intricacy of its lines alone, far surpassed any array Xiao Yan had ever seen.

Rather than using brute force to block outsiders, it quietly distorted intruders' perceptions by drawing on the layout of the city's streets and alleys, the refraction of light, and even people's instinctive sense of direction, leading them back the way they had come without their noticing.

So this is what the arrays of this world are like...

Xiao Yan marveled inwardly, and a keen interest also arose in him.

He had always possessed an exceptional talent for comprehending such arcane things. Back when he practiced alchemy, he could grasp three things from one example. Now, faced with the Bewildering Tracks Array, he committed the paths of its lines and the flow of its power to memory bit by bit, with an almost voracious appetite.

Time slipped quietly by.

After an unknown amount of time, Xiao Yan slowly opened his tightly shut eyes, a sharp glint flickering deep within them.

He still could not break the array. With his current strength, even if he saw through every node within it, he was utterly unable to shake it.

But he had found a gap.

At a point where the array's lines intersected, there was an extremely well-hidden channel through which Spiritual Energy flowed. The distorting force was weakest there, and by following that channel, he could avoid the array's interference to a certain extent.

Of course, it was only to a certain extent. Actually entering the inner city remained impossible, but at least he would no longer go around the outer city like a headless fly.

"Hey, you!"

A cold shout suddenly rang out beside Xiao Yan.

Xiao Yan turned to see two members of the Luo Shen Guard in silver armor standing at the mouth of the alley. He did not know when they had arrived. They were staring at him with unfriendly expressions, and one of them already had a hand on the hilt of the saber at his waist.

"You've been standing here for over half an hour, acting sneaky. What are you doing?" the guard asked coldly, his gaze sweeping over Xiao Yan. Clearly, he took him for someone suspicious.

Xiao Yan's heart tightened slightly. He had been so focused on sensing the array that he had failed to notice the two approaching. It seemed he really was severely weakened now.

None of it showed on his face, however. He simply put on a somewhat guileless smile, scratched his head, and said, "Sirs, I'm from Bluestone Village outside the city. It's my first time here, and I couldn't find my way no matter where I went, so I stopped here to rest my feet."

The guard frowned and scrutinized him for a moment. Xiao Yan wore coarse cloth, his face was pale and his breath weak, and he did not have a trace of any appreciable Spiritual Energy fluctuation about him. He really did look like a sickly young man from the countryside, and only then did some of the wariness fade from the guard's eyes.

"If you're from the countryside, stay put in the outer city and don't wander around." He waved a hand impatiently. "The city's been unsettled these past few days. People from the Blood God Clan have been stirring up trouble in the outer city. If you run into them, no one will even collect your corpse when you die."

With that, the two turned and left, their silver armor gleaming in the setting sun.

Xiao Yan watched them leave, his eyes narrowing slightly as he silently committed the name "Blood God Clan" to memory.

It seemed Luo Shen City was not as peaceful as it appeared on the surface.

He withdrew his gaze, giving further thought to the cultivation methods of this world. If he could thoroughly master the art of Spirit Marks used in the Bewildering Tracks Array, it would likely be of immense help in both setting up arrays and refining pills in the future. On the Dou Qi Continent, he had made his start through alchemy, and in the Great Thousand World, perhaps pills and arrays would likewise be the foundation of his foothold.

Xiao Yan stretched and was just about to follow the route he had worked out when his stomach growled at an inopportune moment.

Only then did he remember that he had eaten and drunk nothing all day since having a bowl of wild vegetable porridge that morning. His body was no longer the Dou Di Body that could go without food, and with his severe injuries, hunger struck with particular ferocity.

Just then, a rich aroma of meat drifted into his nose on the breeze.

Xiao Yan looked toward the smell and saw a small stall by the street not far away. Charcoal blazed beneath skewers of beast meat, roasting them to a golden red. Fat dripped onto the coals with a sizzle, and the aroma filled the air. A long line had already formed in front of the stall.

Four characters were written on the stall's banner: "Crimson Feather Beast meat."

Xiao Yan swallowed, then remembered that he was penniless, and the corner of his mouth could not help twitching.

The dignified Flame Emperor, the strongest man on the Dou Qi Continent, had actually come to worry over a skewer of grilled meat.

If that fellow Zhu Kun found out, he would probably laugh for a whole year.

Xiao Yan shook his head with a bitter smile and was about to turn away when his gaze suddenly sharpened.

In front of the meat stall, a youth of about sixteen or seventeen in fine clothes swaggered past the people waiting in line, went straight up to the stall, and reached out to grab the last freshly grilled skewer of Crimson Feather Beast meat.

At the head of the line, waiting for that skewer, was a small, scrawny child. The child was clutching a tiny crystal tightly and staring longingly at the skewer in the finely dressed youth's hand, mouth turning down, on the verge of tears.