Chapter 29: Do You Recognize This Formation?

As the night slowly descended, because of the lack of light, it was as if Jifu Village was entirely immersed in black ink. It could be said that one couldn’t even see one’s own hands stretched out right in front of their face. It formed a stark contrast against the bustling night market of Luoxia Town.

And in this pitch-black darkness, a figure jumped over the fence of a courtyard and went up to the back door of the house, seemingly familiar with the way.

Carefully poking a hole in a layer of window paper, the figure pulled out a bamboo pipe from his waist and inserted it through the hole.

“Phew!”

As he blew out a light breath, gray smoke gushed into the extreme darkness through the bamboo tube.

About five minutes later, the figure stood up and opened the window, then entered the room through it. His whole set of operations could be described as smooth and without delay. When he came out from the window again, there was a little boy about three years old in his arms.

Not far away on a roof, the expression of Fang Qiuyao, who had witnessed the whole process, was full of surprise. She had to bite her tongue to force herself to hold back from asking, “Brother, how do you know he will definitely come to steal this family’s children today!?”

Then, when the figure ran out of Jifu Village, Jiang Beiran gestured for the five junior Sisters to follow him, and together they quietly went after the figure.

This was Jiang Beiran’s plan to capture the culprit. That was, they would follow the child thief straight to their headquarters the next time they committed a crime. It was much faster than setting up an investigation, and it could be said that such a method of solving the case was brought about by the low cost of crime.

When the child thief entered the village, Jiang Beiran had already found that he was just an ordinary person who had not practiced cultivation before. Because of this, as long as the six of them kept a slight distance and concealed their breathing, it was impossible for them to be discovered.

But although the thief was not a cultivator, he could run quite fast. In just ten minutes, he had covered five kilometers on foot and made his way into some woods.

Jiang Beiran and the others followed after him immediately. Although bushes and trees were blocking their line of sight in the woods, it was still easy for them to keep up with the thief because they had targeted his scent and the sound of his breathing.

‘Eh? His scent and the sound of his breathing have disappeared?’

Just as Jiang Beiran made his way around a large tree and was about to continue the chase ahead, he suddenly found that the thief’s scent and the sound of his breathing had disappeared before him.

Liu Zijin and the rest of the girls also discovered the same thing. They all stopped to look at Jiang Beiran with a baffled expression.

“It seems that we have entered a formation,” Jiang Beiran replied after looking around.

“Entered a formation?” Fang Qiuyao was surprised. “Someone set up a formation in these woods?”

“Yep.” Jiang Beiran nodded while picking up a stone and throwing it into the distance.

“Then, Brother, what should we do now?” Liu Zijin asked, having become somewhat accustomed to it.

“Having entered someone else’s formation, naturally, we must break it. Are any of you good at formations?” he asked.

The five junior Sisters shook their heads in unison.

The Order of Water Mirror specialized in music and did not teach about formations, so one could say that they knew nothing in this respect.

“Then we’re dead. I don’t know how to break formations either, so we’ll have to wait and starve to death here.”

“Eh!?” The five junior Sisters exclaimed in unison, “Brother, you actually don’t know formations?”

“What’s so strange about that? I’m a disciple of the Order of Blue Heart. We don’t learn about formations either,” he replied.

Fang Qiuyao couldn’t help but mutter in her heart after hearing this, ‘If you really want to put it that way, the Order of Blue Heart doesn’t teach about weaving or medicine either.’

“This formation… is probably set up by those children-stealing thieves, right?” Yu Guishui asked, hugging her two sisters. At the moment, she was really a bit scared.

“There is no need to doubt that. If it isn’t them, the thief just now would not have been able to escape the formation so easily,” Jiang Beiran said.

Actually, Jiang Beiran also did not expect a mere group of human traffickers to actually be capable of setting up a formation. The craft of formations was a rather sophisticated discipline that very few were good at, even among cultivators.

But Jiang Beiran was not worried about encountering any major challenges. After all, if there really was a highly skilled person here, then options would have popped up in the system to remind him about it. Since nothing had popped up at the moment, it meant that there was no major problem with the situation.

At the moment, Fang Qiuyao, who had been thinking for a while, said, “Since the thief can run out of here, we can run out as well as long as we find the right route. Correct?”

After hearing what she said, Jiang Beiran said with a grateful expression, “Smart. Then let’s split up to find the way. It’s better than just standing at the same spot and waiting for death anyway.”

‘So, the senior Brother is actually also capable of complimenting people.’ Fang Qiuyao thought. She felt a bit pleased in her heart.

After assigning the direction that each of the five would go in, Jiang Beiran also walked towards the area he had selected.

‘Door of Du (Prohibition)… Door of Sheng (Openness)… Jiachen (41st sexagenary cycle), in conjunction with Tianchong Star (third star of the big dipper), Tianfu Star (fourth star of the big dipper), Tianying Star (a star slightly above the tail of the big dipper)… How impressive, the 174th combination, corresponding to Jingzhe (Waking of Insects, the third solar term). These thieves have actually set up one of the nine combinations of the solar terms of Yang (from the 22nd solar term of the previous year until the end of the 9th solar term of the current year) [1]. This is a Mind-Controlling Formation of Small Multiples of Six,’ Jiang Beiran thought to himself.

After observing the surrounding arrangements for a while, Jiang Beiran quickly recognized the formation set up by the thieves. He could not help but be a little surprised in his heart, as he had initially thought that it was just an ordinary maze formation. However, he did not expect it to be a mind-controlling formation capable of depriving the target of sensory perception. It could be considered quite a high-end formation.

It was a pity that the person who set up the formation was too inexperienced. The Qimen Dunjia [1] techniques used were obviously not good enough, so it was just a defective product that only looked well done on the surface but lacked real substance.

Otherwise, if this Mind-Controlling Formation of Small Multiples of Six was completely set up well, Jiang Beiran believed that he would have been possessed as soon as he entered it.

Picking up a small stone on the ground, Jiang Beiran aimed it at a tree in the [Dui] position (eighth trigram of the eight trigrams) and threw it.

A bird’s nest shattered with a poof, frightening Yu Guizhui, who was searching the route below. It startled her so much that she wrapped her hands around her head and squatted down on the ground, shouting, “Bro… Brother! There are traps! Just now there a trap tried to shoot me.”

After hearing this, Jiang Beiran replied, “It’s okay, just be careful. It won’t kill you.”

After hearing this, Yu Guizhui wanted to go up and punch Jiang Beiran twice with her fists. She didn’t even know where the attack had come from just now. It was obviously a very powerful concealed weapon. If it hit her, half of her body would probably have gone missing.

Hearing that her sister was attacked, Yu Guishui shouted, “Second sister, pay attention to every step you take. It’s definitely very dangerous here.”

“Got it!” Yu Guizhui answered, then continued to look for the way forward.

After knocking down the bird’s nest, based on the change in the field of the formation, Jiang Beiran could be considered as having obtained a preliminary understanding of how it was set up. Then, he took out a bronze toad from the storage ring, held it in his hand, and shook it twice.

“Clang! Clang!”

Hearing the sudden sounds of metals clashing from not far away, Fang Qiuyao pulled out the Sword of White Rainbow and said, “Who is the scum out there!? If you are capable, come out and fight!”

She held the sword for quite a while but did not see any figure come out. So, she asked in a low voice, “Brother, what was that sound just now?”

“I’m not sure. It’s probably a ghost demanding a life. Have you ever heard of a ghost ringing a bell? It’s that sound,” he replied.

Fang Qiuyao’s small face turned white with fear when she heard it. She quickly squatted down and begged for mercy in a whisper, saying, “The Omnipotent Heavenly Father protects everything, everything… waaaaaa.”

Listen to Fang Qiuyao cry out, Jiang Beiran almost laughed out loud. He really had not expected the righteous Fang Qiuyao to be so afraid of ghosts.

At the same time, three options popped up.

[Option One: Go up, hug Fang Qiuyao and comfort her, telling her not to be afraid. Completion reward: Star-Shattering Dragon Palm (Earth Grade Middle Tier)]

[Option Two: Tell Fang Qiuyao that there are no ghosts in the world. Completion reward: Shifting Steps and Form (Yellow Grade Middle Tier)]

[Option Three: Mock Fang Qiuyao for being so timid. Completion reward: Random basic skill point +1]

[1]: All the terms here are technical terms in Qimen Dunjia, an ancient form of divination from China.