Lin Tian was very familiar with this kind of breath locking. It was indeed the prelude to being sniped, and he had been targeted by sniper rifles quite a few tis recently.
A smile appeared on the corner of his mouth as he took a step forward, but his figure appeared five ters away, and the locked breath on him also vanished.
Lin Tian swept his eyes around the surrounding trees and cursed jokingly, "You guys are really itching for a beating, even daring to aim at !"
As his words fell, several people jumped down from the surrounding trees, and a few more erged from what seed to be weeds on the ground, each heavily camouflaged, almost blending into the environnt.
All of these were from Ghost Team and Thunder Wolf Team in disguise; otherwise, Lin Tian would have taken drastic asures against them long ago.
Four people jumped down from the trees: Ghost, Thunder Wolf, Stone, and another sniper from Thunder Wolf Team. All four were snipers who had just been aiming at Lin Tian from the trees.
"Boss, you’re here," Stone said with a grin.
Thunder Wolf also gave Ning Luoxi a salute and called out softly, "Instructor good!"
"Don’t rush to say ’instructor good’," Lin Tian pointed at the four and scolded with a smile, "You guys, think you can aim at just because you hold fancy sniper rifles?"
"Of course not, Brother Tian, it was all Thunder Wolf’s lousy idea," Stone hurriedly explained.
"What lousy idea?" Lin Tian asked curiously.
"He said that if the four of us aid at you at the sa ti, we could see if we could lock you down. We even made a bet," Stone admitted sheepishly.
Lin Tian was completely speechless. Were these people overly energetic? They had been tracking all afternoon and still had the energy to place bets. It seed that their regular training tasks were too light.
However, Lin Tian was very confident that the four of them could not lock him down.
He questioned in jest, "So, did you lock down? Who lost, and who won?"
Ghost replied, "Anyway, I couldn’t lock down Brother Tian’s position. As soon as I sensed his vital force, Brother Tian noticed it right away. Unless you throw a missile, I don’t think anyone could lock him."
"I couldn’t lock it down either," Stone admitted honestly.
The other two from Thunder Wolf also nodded in agreent. Here, the best in technique was Ghost, slightly better than Thunder Wolf, and both Stone and the other team mber were far inferior to Thunder Wolf and Ghost.
Since even Ghost honestly admitted he couldn’t lock the target, the others felt no embarrassnt either.
"Thunder Wolf, see, both I and Ghost Captain say we couldn’t lock the boss down. You insisted on betting. Now you lost the bet, rember to keep that bottle of aged liquor for ; I’ll ask for it when I return to the country, hehe," Stone laughed gleefully.
"Old Ning took two bottles last ti, and I’m left with only the last bottle of aged liquor; you guys are just too cruel!" Thunder Wolf complained with a deliberately mournful face.
"Brother Thunder Wolf, don’t worry, we’ll call you when we open the bottle," Stone laughed.
Lin Tian did know about this. The Old Ning ntioned by Thunder Wolf was Ning Weiguo. Last ti at the Tianxuan Special Guard Training Base, Thunder Wolf lost a bet to Ning Weiguo and had two bottles taken away. This ti he lost again and had one bottle taken by Ghost and Stone. Truly an unlucky kid.
However, Lin Tian was more skeptical—how could one bottle be enough for this group? If each person just took a whiff, it would be gone.
"Alright, what’s the situation now?" Ning Luoxi spoke up, bringing everyone’s relaxed attention back to the matter at hand.
The instructor spoke, and Thunder Wolf dared not talk nonsense, answering seriously, "Since we withdrew from the grove, I and Ghost arranged for the brothers to be on guard, but so far, the entire forest has been quiet, not even a bird in sight, let alone those missing Japanese."
"This is expected, there’s definitely sothing wrong with this forest. Continue your vigilance here; Lin Tian and I will go check it out first. When you receive my notification, then co in," Ning Luoxi instructed.
"Understood," Thunder Wolf and Ghost agreed.
Lin Tian and Ning Luoxi exchanged a glance and then headed towards the forest together. As Ghost had reported, the forest was indeed small; Lin Tian had night vision, and at a glance, his sight could almost stretch through the entire forest, which ant that it wasn’t very deep.
By all logic, such a small forest really shouldn’t be easy to lose track in. Could they be experiencing the ’ghost hitting the wall’ phenonon?
"Lin Tian, have you noticed that the trees in this forest aren’t very dense, and there isn’t much underbrush either? What do you make of this?" Ning Luoxi surveyed the surrounding trees and asked softly.
As an Ancient Martial Artist, although she did not have night vision capabilities, she could still make out the surrounding environnt clearly with the help of the faint nightlight.
"Are you suggesting that this forest is not naturally grown but artificially planted?" Lin Tian asked, an idea striking him.
"Exactly, generally, unless the forest is made up of eucalyptus trees, there would be other small miscellaneous trees growing in the gaps of the forest floor, but this forest is almost devoid of such undergrowth," Ning Luoxi said.
Lin Tian was familiar with eucalyptus trees, which are prevalent in the south. Eucalyptus trees are highly aggressive; they extract a large amount of nutrients and moisture from the soil to sustain themselves, rendering fertile lands barren and depleted, unable to retain water or support other plants, thus eucalyptus forests are also known as ’green deserts.’
This forest was not a eucalyptus forest, yet it was scantily covered with undergrowth, clearly a result of artificial intervention.
"Out here in the wilderness, with no human habitation for miles around this forest, it’s certain that this forest was created by the Gu Cultivators, which ans their lair is not far from here," Lin Tian analyzed.
Lin Tian and Ning Luoxi did not speed up their advance but walked step by step. Not far into the forest, fog began to form gradually, just as Ghost and his team had reported.
The fog was peculiar; it was dense in so areas and sparse in others, creating illusions that made it seem like so places were passable while others were blocked.
Although the forest was small, this kind of fog would definitely cause ordinary people to get lost.
But Lin Tian and Ning Luoxi were not ordinary people, and Lin Tian didn’t even need to use his super perspective ability; the fog seed virtually nonexistent before him.
Soon, the two of them walked out of the small grove and arrived in front of the small hill that Ghost had ntioned.
Ning Luoxi turned to look back at the foggy forest, furrowed her brows in thought for a mont, and suddenly said, "Lin Tian, have you ever heard of Zhuge Kongming’s Stone Formation?"
"Are you talking about the Eight Formation Map? Of course, I’ve heard of it," Lin Tian responded, unsure of what she was trying to convey.
He had read many ancient texts and knew that the Eight Formation Map was not a fictional creation from the novel ’Romance of the Three Kingdoms’ but indeed a real tactic.
Lin Tian cited, "The ancient texts recorded this: ’Kongming was good at devising strategies, improving crossbows, and inventing wooden oxen and flowing horses, all from his mind; he deduced military tactics and created the Eight Formation Map, mastering its essentials.’"
The "Kongming" in those texts referred to Zhuge Liang, and the Stone Formation was what Ning Luoxi had ntioned!
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