309 Four Hooded Men

Lin Mu let out a sigh filled with fatigue after he finished listening to Senior Xukong's words. He reckoned that it would be better to just focus on the task at hand and continue looking for a beast with an awakened bloodline.

"Senior, is there any easier way to find a beast with an awakened bloodline?" Lin Mu questioned curiously.

"There are of course, but I'm afraid none of them are possible for you to use. There are special spirit tools that can do help in searching beasts with an awakened bloodline, but I doubt anyone in this world even knows something like that exists not to mention having one." Xukong answered.

Lin Mu nodded in understanding and continued his hunt. He ended up hunting for about two more hours before deciding to head back for the day.

'At least now that spring is here, the sun doesn't go down as early.' Lin Mu thought to himself while returning.

He followed his routine and cultivated for a few hours before lying down on the bed and appearing in the Sleepscape. Lately, Lin Mu had been reading up on the records that Jing Wei had given him. He realized that there were a lot of things he didn't know, and as these things were native to this world, Senior Xukong could not help him in this aspect either.

He would practice the thousand armament blade scripture and then the nameless technique of the lost immortal before reading the records. He had learned quite a few things that included the history of the continent, the geography, and also the Powers of the continent.

Lin Mu also found out that there were around twenty five kingdoms in the great Zhou empire and that the number of sects was even more than this. The exact number of cultivation sects was difficult to say, as new ones would appear and disappear every few years.

But the one thing that remained constant was the top ten sects. Their numbers had stayed the same for the past thousand years, and they had always been ruling over the cultivators in a way. Lin Mu suddenly felt lightheaded and realized that he should probably sleep now.

Thus another day began, and Lin Mu went to hunt. This time he changed the location and went towards the North eastern part of the forest, seeing that he was having no luck in the middle or the North western part. Lin Mu wondered if he'll just end up practicing for the first time with the Great slumber bear itself if he was not able to find any beast with an awakened bloodline.

Two hours passed by in the blink of an eye during which he was able to Hunt three spirit beasts but sadly none of them had an awakened bloodline.

While walking, Lin Mu suddenly realized that he had reached the area that was rather close to the place where he found the Dual circle Ascension fruits. He decided to check up on it and wondered if the bewildering formation was still there or not.

Five minutes later Lin Mu reached the location and discovered there to be people there.

"Huh, what?" Lin Mu muttered before quickly hiding.

Lin Mu knew that the mercenaries had already stopped their mission and were no longer hunting any more beasts in the forest and the hunters would not dare come in this far deep into the forest either. This left only one option.

'Cultivators? But from where?' Lin Mu thought as he peeked from the side of a tree.

There were about four people in the area and all of them were standing near the tree around which the dual circle Ascension vine grew. All of them were wearing hooded brown cloaks which covered their clothes and faces.

'Seems like the bewildering formation finally dissipated or they would not have been able to enter this place, not to mention how I'm able to directly look to the center of the area.' Lin Mu further thought as he tried to listen to the four people.

Lin Mu was standing about forty meters away from the four but could still hear their fain conversation.

"Senior brother, did you really sense something good here?" Spoke one of the people. The voice seemed to belong to a young man.

"I did Junior brother, look," the man called as Senior brother said before showing him the bangle on his wrist.

Lin Mu could see that one of the gems on the bangle was glowing with light.

'Is that a spirit tool?' Lin Wu wondered.

The young man looked at the bangle and saw that it was indeed glowing.

"Senior brother, this is merely a spirit qi sensing bangle that too of a low grade, isn't it possible that it's just sensing a spirit qi fluctuation in the area? The accuracy of this spirit tool is quite low." The young man replied.

"Of course I know that, but do you really want to miss out on the off chance that there is something precious here?" The Senior brother spoke.

"Enough! We've wasted plenty of time here. Let's get back to the mission that we were assigned to." Spoke another man in a gruff voice.

The two bickering pair of Senior and junior brother immediately tensed up and zipped up their lips.

"We need to find a suitable gift to give to sister Yi Ze Jin, before the next week or our image in the eyes of elder Yi Deng will fall." Spoke the last remaining person.

While speaking, that person and slightly turned around because of which Lin Mu was able to get a look at his face and even the clothes that he had below the cloak.

The person looked to be in his early thirties and had a clean shaved face. His hair could not be seen because of the hood, but Lin Mu still spotted something on his clothes that made him identify who they were. There was a pattern of three cauldrons with a peony flower above them embroidered on the clothes of the man.

"The Tri cauldron peony sect? What are their disciples doing here?"