Lin Mu continued onwards into the city from there and saw the scene.

'The number of people is actually high? No, wait… there are a lot of infants here?' Lin Mu was surprised.

His spirit sense could pick up that there seemed to be a lot of newborn infants in the city. All of them were less than a year old and all of them seemed to have been born around the same time.

Originally, Lin Mu had thought that the number of people in the city would be less, but it was evidently not so. 

"Why are there so few cultivators here in the city?" Lin Mu questioned, noticing another point.

This was extremely strange since the Iron bull city was supposed to be a military base. If anything, there should have been lot more cultivators living here, all part of the army. While Lin Mu was currently walking through the streets of the residential district, it was still easy for him to sense the situation in the rest of the city.

Though there was one place that was preventing his spirit sense from entering, this being none other than the Mayor's residence.

"The others… they're gone…" the man answered while trembling.

"Gone? Gone where?" Lin Mu asked more.

"I don't know… the mayor sent them off on some mission like the others, and they never came back." The man replied.

Hearing this, Lin Mu was quite sure what might have happened. 

'Though being able to keep all this hidden from the eyes of the empire… Gu Yao has certainly expanded his network greatly in this time.' Lin Mu thought to himself.

He looked back at the crippled man and probed him with his spirit sense once again. This time, trying to see what was different about him. His search gave him some interesting pointers.

'His spirit Qi is not stable… as if it is not his own. Something else is powering it,' Lin Mu noted.

Even the nascent soul of the man seemed to be strangely colored, being a shade of red and blue that was mixed together heterogeneously. It looked like pain splotches had been sprayed upon the normal white nascent soul.

"You… you didn't cultivate normally to reach the nascent soul realm, did you?" Lin Mu questioned.

Upon hearing this, goosebumps appeared on the man's skin. His eyes trembled while his teeth chattered.

"-h-how… who told you that?" the man asked, feeling scared.

"That doesn't matter. Just tell me if it's true or not." Lin Mu said in a cold tone.

"Eek!" the man felt terrified and found it hard to breathe by the second.

Only after Lin Mu looked away from his eyes did he feel any respite.

"He… the… the mayor… he gave us the pills… they allowed us all to breakthrough." The man answered hesitantly.

Hearing this, Lin Mu raised his brows.

"What kind of pills?" Lin Mu questioned.

"I don't know. We were simply told to use them if we wanted to get stronger." The man answered.

Hearing this, Lin Mu knew that it was useless asking this man anymore. There were probably a lot of things that the man did not know, or there was something restraining him from knowing them.

'Best to get them from the source directly…' Lin Mu thought and sped up.

The streets were empty, while the windows and doors of the houses were all tightly shut. It was evident that the activation of the barrier had scared all the citizens. Lin Mu's spirit sense could observe them hiding within their houses.

The shops were the same, with some of them even leaving behind their wares carelessly in open.

'So they are truly terrified of the barrier appearing.' Lin Mu noted.

Finally, after a couple of minutes, Lin Mu reached the residence of the mayor.

It was similar to many other opulent residences he had seen by now and didn't care for much, other than the invisible barrier that was surrounding it.

~SHING~

But the moment he got close, weapons appeared out of thin air and attacked him.

Lin Mu easily dodged them all, but the crippled man in his hands was not so fortunate.

~thud~

He couldn't even let out a cry before his head was skewered by a lance. The lance poked out from the back of his head and was barely a few centimeters away from Lin Mu's own neck.

Lin Mu felt danger all around him and directly used phase to disappear underground.

~THUD~ THUD~ THUD~

More weapons struck the place where he was at last and disappeared after a few seconds. It was evident that they were not material.

"An offensive formation array?" Lin Mu raised his brow.

He didn't feel any spirit Qi fluctuation in that moment that seemed to belong to that of a formation, making him confused. 

"No, a Qi skill. It's got to be…" Lin Mu guessed.

The speed of the weapons was very fast, and they papered just a meter or two away from Lin Mu's body, making it a very close call to dodge without blink. Of course, when Lin Mu was holding the crippled man, thus he dodged simply using his body as blinking with the man was not possible.

But even then, the man had ended up dying. While Lin Mu didn't care for the man's life, he did care for the fact that the speed of the attack made it hard to react to.

'The security of this city is certainly high in terms of formation array, even with this attack included. I doubt many Dao Shell realm cultivators would even be able to resist for more than a few minutes.' Lin Mu thought as he continued moving through the ground.

He quickly reached the mayor's residence and found a suitable formation node that could be used to open up a small crack in the formation.

~shua~

The invisible barrier materialized and an opening appeared right in the middle of the residence, looking a bit eye catching.

~step~step~

Lin Mu landed on the ground, slightly cracking the tiles, and spread his spirit sense around.

"Found you…" 

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