Novel Full Chapter 116 - Illusion Array
With the understanding of how to use his spiritual sense, Adam would walk 300 metres, then stop to use his spiritual sense in the area around him and see whether there was a lake nearby.
It was a very mentally draining process and also required quite a lot of Internal Energy, but Adam was doing it to train and practise the use of his spiritual sense and it was also helping him find the lake that his master had spoken of.
"It seems that the kid has learnt how to roughly use his spiritual sense. But he won't find it that easy to navigate around this forest that is not as simple as it seems" stated the old man to himself as he sat above his dojo and observed Adam from a distance.
Adam had been searching for 10 minutes, but it was to no avail and one thing he realised was that he was never getting closer to the small mountains around him and although he felt he was moving, it was as though he wasn't actually moving.
He knew the rough size of the forest and the few small mountains in the area, as he had seen it online, but he still wasn't able to find a lake in the area and it was as though he was being tricked into thinking that he was moving when he wasn't.
"What the fuck is wrong with his place" exclaimed Adam in frustration.
The only thing that Adam could compare what he was feeling to was the corridor that led into each floor of the dungeon where both time and space seemed to work differently, but he still felt that it was a different experience.
It was just as Adam had suspected, it wasn't an ordinary forest, otherwise, how could a weird dojo be found in a forest without being noticed by the public for such a long time.
Adam's master was manipulating the forest around the dojo and had made it so that it would be almost impossible for an ordinary person to find the dojo unless he wanted them to.
One day when he was bored, he allowed someone to enter and luckily that same person wrote a blog about it, that Adam had stumbled upon and led him to visit the forest.
As soon as Adam stepped into the forest, the old man sensed that he was a low-level cultivator and he was curious as to what he was doing there and what he wanted, so he allowed him to find the dojo and everything else is history.
His master was capable of doing that using an array that he had placed around the area, which he was in control, of and being an array master was a very rare occupation to have.
Arrays were different formations that were inscribed onto different materials or in different locations to carry out different functions when provided energy.
The array that he had placed around the forest was quite a simple one and it didn't require much energy, but it would be very difficult for somebody that wasn't an Advanced Cutlviator to forcefully break past.
It was an array that tricked the mind and the eyes and made the individual move in circles towards their target using an illusion, or would make the person avoid and not see a specific area.
With it, he had managed to keep his dojo hidden for such a long time until he got bored and allowed somebody in.
The old man knew that it would be quite hard for Adam to figure out exactly what was going on and how to bypass it, but he wanted to test out how perceptive Adam really was and whether his capabilities would allow him to surpass the expectations that his master had of him.
He was also doing it to test just how well Adam had grasped the use of his spiritual sense and how skilled he was in its use.
Adam was confused with what was going on, but the only thing he could assume was that his master had something to do with it.
His master despite having an outwardly nonchalant and reckless nature seemed very careful and paranoid and it didn't make sense to Adam that he would reside within an unguarded forest that could be accessed by anybody.
[So it seems there is still so much that I need to learn and I am somehow being tricked by this place into staying in the same position. If it is as I thought and my master is in control of this, and this must be some sort of test] thought Adam to himself.
[If this an illusion that is tricking my senses, maybe I should stop relying on my physical senses and should only use my spiritual sense to navigate around the forest] thought Adam to himself who had watched many movies and read many novels that had similar situations.
He could feel that it wasn't something that was physically restricting me or changed the environment around him, like the weird corridor that leads into the dungeon, so the only other possibility was that it was an illusion.
The illusion was more effective on External Cultivators, who would find it much more difficult to see past and be able to get out of the illusion, but it shouldn't be very difficult for Internal Cultivators to be able to overcome. Luckily for the old man, there were much more External Cultivators than Internal Cultivators.
His master would be furious and shocked if he was told that Adam was able to figure out the way of navigating past his prized Illusion Array from watching movies and reading novels.
Closing his eyes Adam was attempting to completely block all his physical senses, that might have been tricked by the illusion array, and started off with his touch, sight, smell and hearing, then attempting to constantly sustain his spiritual sense.
It was very difficult for Adam to sustain his spiritual sense constantly to use it to replace his physical senses, but after a few minutes of practice and the assistance of his Hunter's mind that helped him to focus his mind and stay completely calm, he was able to sustain his spiritual sense constantly.
"Incredible, within a few minutes this kid was able to realise that his physical senses were being tricked and had not only found the solution, but was capable of following through with the solution" exclaimed the old man as he watched Adam from above the dojo.
Adam was also surprised and amazed by what he was experiencing and it was as though he was looking at the world at a different angle.
It could take weeks, months or even years for an Internal Cultivator to become accustomed to the use of their spiritual sense, yet within a matter of minutes, Adam was able to do so, all because to the Hunter's mind that he allowed to take complete control currently.
He couldn't see, hear, smell or feel anything, which he was only capable of doing because of the Hunter's mind, but could still sense what was around him and had a rough image of what was around him within his mind.
Despite the image being hazy and his spiritual sense only being able to sense large things around him, Adam felt that it was more sensitive towards movement or changes in the energy around him.
Using only his spiritual sense, he would be able to sense whether somebody was cultivating near him or if somebody was approaching him at high speeds, but he wouldn't have a clear image of who or what was moving or absorbing energy from the atmosphere.
After he was comfortable in sustaining his spiritual sense, Adam reduced his range to 100 metres around him, as it was too straining and difficult to sustain as he moved around using his spiritual sense to navigate around.
It was just like he had guessed and he felt as though he was actually moving as he could feel that he was nearing the mountains through the spiritual sense.
However Adam was still unsure how the Illusion Array worked as he genuinely felt and thought that he was moving around the forest previously, but he was actually moving in a small circle and hadn't covered much ground.
"It seems that he has figured out the advantages and disadvantages of using his spiritual sense as a pose to his physical senses and he has done much better than I thought he would" stated his master to himself who was amazed by Adam's ability to quickly adapt and learn new things.
Seeing that Adam was able to move past the Illusion Array using his spiritual sense, there was no point in his master wasting energy to use it on him and he returned to the dojo.
He was surprised by how easily Adam was able to find the way past the Illusion Array, but that wasn't the only defensive measures that his master had set up over the years and he had no reason to use the other arrays he had set up yet.
Seeing that Adam had figured out what was going on and that he had learnt more about his spiritual sense, the old man allowed him to head over to the lake and clean himself up as he wondered who and what Adam really was.