Walker Of The Worlds

Chapter 3943: An Array That Almost Fools Lin Mu

For a brief moment, Lin Mu almost wondered whether he had activated Phase as the sensation was remarkably similar. His body seemed to be passing through something that should have been solid.

Yet his Spatial Perception immediately told him the truth. ’This has nothing to do with space.’

Space remained completely stable. Instead, the formation had changed the physical properties of the matter surrounding him.

Lin Mu’s lips curled upward. "To think there was a trap like this."

He could not help admiring the creator as he had certainly expected a trap, that much was obvious. An array protecting something hidden for countless years could hardly have been left without safeguards.

Lin Mu had already anticipated self destruction, false paths, hidden restrictions, and perhaps even a backlash capable of injuring the person attempting to dismantle it. He had prepared himself for all of those possibilities.

’But this...’ It had exceeded his expectations.

The sinking earth was merely the most obvious portion of the trap. The actual purpose was much more troublesome. Lin Mu’s expression gradually became serious as his Spatial Perception penetrated deeper into the formation.

The encryption layer was moving and the nodes he had previously identified were shifting positions. At first, the movement seemed random but then Lin Mu noticed something.

’The nodes are flowing?’ He furrowed his brows.

And they were not moving according to predetermined routes. Their positions were being calculated continuously based on the changing conditions around him. The soil moved and the nodes moved with it.

"Hmm, just how much is this affecting it?" He wondered and then shifted his weight.

SHUA

Sure enough, the formation changed with it. He raised one foot and the surrounding structure adjusted again. A few seconds later his body sank another few inches and the nodes responded once more.

Lin Mu’s eyes widened slightly.

"So that’s it." He understood what was happening.

The formation was using his own movements against him, whether it be his weight, the shifting of his body, his movements and even the amount of soil being displaced by his body. All of those factors were being fed into the encryption layer.

The physical environment had essentially become part of a constantly changing mathematical equation.

The more Lin Mu moved, the more the formation changed. The more it changed, the harder it became to determine where the true formation nodes were located. And this, this was the real trap.

’It was buying time.’ Every moment Lin Mu spent trying to understand the transformation gave the encryption layer another opportunity to rearrange itself.

A Formation Master without sufficient understanding would probably panic at this point. If they attempted to counter the movement directly, the formation would respond again. If they tried to stabilize the soil, the nodes would shift.

And if they attempted to map the array normally, their map would become outdated almost immediately. It was an elegant defensive mechanism. The creator had turned the act of investigating the formation into part of the formation itself.

Lin Mu slowly smiled. "Whoever created this was certainly a genius at mathematics."

He had no doubt about that anymore.

The creator had essentially created a dynamic equation using physical matter as the variables. Every movement introduced a new value, every displacement altered another as the encryption constant changed the result and then the formation calculated the next configuration.

It was almost like watching a gigantic mathematical model operate in real time.

"Haha..."

Unfortunately for the creator... Lin Mu possessed something that made the entire mechanism almost meaningless: his Spatial Perception.

He closed his eyes and then he opened them again.

SHUA

The world changed and the ordinary appearance of the formation vanished from his perception. The flowing soil, the softened stones, the shifting ground, the moving reality, all of them became secondary.

Lin Mu looked past them and his Spatial Perception reached directly toward the deeper structure.

"There." Lin Mu saw one node after the other.

They appeared within his perception like brilliant stars scattered across an endless night sky. Their movement was irrelevant as the formation could make them move however it wanted but Lin Mu could still see them.

His Spatial Perception did not care about the physical transformation happening on the surface. It saw the actual spatial relationships beneath the deception.

Lin Mu’s smile widened. "You made a beautiful trap."

He raised his hand. "But you made it for someone who can’t see through it."

WHOOSH

His fingers flicked and a small surge of vitality shot forward. It disappeared into the earth and one of the moving nodes suddenly stopped. With another flick, a second node froze. Then the same happened to the third, the fourth and many more.

Lin Mu’s movements became faster. Each finger movement sent a precisely controlled strand of vitality through the transformed earth. There was no explosion or any sort of large scale shifting of power.

The vitality simply arrived at the exact locations Lin Mu had chosen and pinned the nodes in place. The encryption layer attempted to compensate and the nodes tried to move but they all failed as Lin Mu had already locked them down.

The entire formation suddenly trembled and a strange sound echoed through the underground forest.

Crack.

It sounded as though the sky itself had shattered.

Lin Mu looked around as the scene before him distorted. The trees stretched, the ground twisted, the rocks appeared to fold inward and for an instant, everything looked as though reality itself was collapsing around him.

Lin Mu remained completely calm as he knew what he was seeing. The formation was changing again and the false environment was being discarded. The encryption layer was collapsing as the hidden structure was revealing itself.

Crack.

Another sound echoed and then everything vanished. The strange flowing soil disappeared as the softened rocks returned to their original state. Even the forest disappeared from Lin Mu’s sight.

The sensation of sinking stopped and when the distortion finally settled... Lin Mu found himself standing inside a completely different place.