Chapter 508 - Sneaky Jiao Fang
Lin Mu saw that weird disciple who was in tattered clothes when he first met him, near the Treasure Pavilion. He seemed to be a bit tense and was alert. His head would swivel around to take a look every so often and he would ruffle his sleeves.
"What is he doing here?" Lin Mu wondered.
He kept on looking and saw that Jiao Fang was actually heading to the Treasure pavilion too. The man hid behind some trees when he got near the security so that they would not see him.
"Is he even trying? They can very easily find him with spirit sense." Lin Mu said.
But then the opposite of what he thought happened. Lin Mu could tell that the spirit sense of the guards passed over the position of Jiao Fang but didn't stop there.
"Huh? What?" Lin Mu felt strange.
Jiao Fang then took out a small pouch from his sleeves. The pouch was small, about the size of a poplar leaf. He carefully loosened the drawstrings of the pouch and poured out the contents of it into his hand.
There was now a translucent white powder in his hand.
"Wait a second, isn't that… Memory confounding poison?" Lin Mu recognized.
"No… if it was normal memory confounding poison it would not work on these guards who are all at the Qi refining realm. This is a higher grade version of it." Xukong corrected.
Lin Mu silently listened to senior Xukong's words and saw how Jiao Fang blew the powder towards the guards. He seemed to be using some kind of a Qi skill to spread the powder, as it would have affected him too if the natural wind blew it back towards him.
~whoosh~
The wind generated by his Qi skill blew the powder towards the guards, who all breathed it in.
Then about ten seconds later…
~thud~thud~thud~
One by one, all of the guards collapsed onto the ground, unconscious.
Lin Mu's brows narrowed as he realized this weird disciple might not be here for good reasons. An idea appeared in Lin Mu's mind and he got closer to the building. The treasure pavilion was an octagonal building with five floors, with the doors being at one of the sides.
Jiao Fang went to one of the guards and frisked his body, taking out a small piece of a medallion. He then took out another piece of the medallion from his own pocket and matched the two together.
As soon as he did, the formations on the treasure pavilion became active.
"Yes!" Jiao Fang exclaimed under his breath.
Lin Mu didn't miss this opportunity and quickly observed the movements of the formation. Because he had already done this a few times, his experience had gone up and he didn't miss any part of it. He was able to memoirs the finer nodes that were hidden between the different formation layers.
It was these nodes that gave him the most problems as they would only appear when he was finally done unraveling the upper layer of the formation. If that node was not taken care of quickly it would cause another alarm formation to activate which would then lock down the entire treasure pavilion.
It was here that Lin Mu was seeing the superiority of the Dao script over the common tongue and rune script that was used by cultivators. Dao script had countless permutations and combinations, while the common tongue and rune script was more rigid.
The same character in Dao script could mean different things depending on how or where it was used. While for common tongue, it was fixed and flexibility was less. Using Dao script in formations could not only allow one to make more complex formations in less area but also make them harder to break.
Lin Mu had learned a lot of Dao script from senior Xukong back in the Sleepscape during the past two years, and while he would not say he was an expert, he was definitely not a novice. Being used to a higher difficulty made it easier for one when it was lower.
Though Lin Mu did not get to observe it for long as the formations unraveled rather quickly and within thirty seconds the doors of the Treasure pavilion were unlocked. Lin Mu couldn't enter the building with Phase as the defensive barriers were still in place, thus he waited for Jiao Fang to go in before he used Blink to quickly enter through the doors.
After getting in, he hid behind one of the large pillars and observed Jiao Fang with his spirit sense. The man in question was completely unaware that there was now a second person in the building with him.
'Now let's see what he is here for.' Lin Mu thought.
Jiao Fang ran around the entire first floor in a circle, unable to find whatever it was that he wanted. He climbed the stairs and did the same on the second, third and fourth floors.
~Sigh~
"It better be on the fifth floor or I would have risked this all for naught." Jiao Fang muttered to himself, which was heard clearly by Lin Mu.
The man then climbed to the fifth floor and checked each bookshelf carefully until finally stopping at the sixth one. His eyes went wide as his hands trembled lightly. He extended his fingers and pulled out a thick book from the shelf.
Lin Mu raised his brows in interest and read the title that was written on the spine of the book.
'Yulong's Mnemonics'
"Hmm… what is this?" Lin Mu wondered.
He had never heard of this book nor knew about its contents. Jiao Long though, looked really excited about it and flipped through the pages until stopping on a certain page.
~tear~
Then suddenly the man ripped out that page and carefully folded it before hiding it in his sleeve. He put the book back on the shelf before going downstairs and closing the door.
"What was in that page?" Lin Mu wondered as he didn't get enough time to see it.