Lin Wu got near the gate of the courtyard and could feel the wisp of aura that was placed on to him by the virtual interface to resonate with the formation array.

"Huh, so this is how it recognizes the owner of a key." Lin Wu muttered to himself.

Having a key to the formation array didn't mean that anyone couldn't go in and out. But rather they would be detected and an alarm would be rung. While it could be made so that the Formation locked the courtyard completely, that function was unavailable to Lin Wu.

Lin Wu extended his spirit sense and scanned the area around the gate, only to find it completely empty.

"Why is it empty? Shouldn't there be more guard here?" Lin Wu wondered.

But then when he scanned further with his spirit sense, he discovered the reason for it.

"Oh… the range of the formation array extends beyond the courtyard and reaches the end of the street." Lin Wu understood.

With the extended area of detection, the guards were standing outside its radius. This way, if someone were to enter the radius of detection, the owner would get a small notification. But unauthorized entry to the courtyard itself would cause the defensive measures to start up.

Lin Wu slightly pushed the gate of the courtyard open and peeked his head out, confirming with his own two eyes. Seeing that no one was really there, he exited and closed the gate behind him.

"Ooo! This feels like back when I used to sneak out at night in my past life. The warden was such an a*shole, getting us in trouble all the time, even if we were a minute late to enter." Lin Wu reminisced.

Lin Wu remembered the path he had seen when he was with Shirong and followed it. After exiting the radius of the formation array, Lin Wu saw the guard for the first time. They were standing around and would occasionally scan the area with their spirit senses.

Thankfully for Lin Wu, they were only at the qi refining realm and the maximum range of their spirit sense was only ten meters. Lin Mu easily found a blind spot and used that to get through them. Even though he had a very easy method of hiding, which was digging, he didn't use it.

The ground here was paved with flat stone tiles and thus would leave behind traces if he dug in. He could have also skipped the guard by going over the walls of the other houses, but that was problematic for him. All the houses in this area had formation arrays that protected them.

If he crossed the border of one, he would be detected again. Thus he had no other choice but to sneak past the guards.

Finally, having crossed the guards, Lin Wu arrived at the main crossroad. The path opposite to him went in the direction of the Xiong and Mu clan's mansions, while the one left of him took him to the main city area. This left him with the one to the right that went to the Lu clan mansion.

The streets were dimly lit with street lamps, which created plenty of dark spots, which made it easy for Lin Wu to hide in. Even at this time, there were occasionally people passing from the road while the guards would patrol the area too.

While he was a bit slower while crawling on the ground instead of digging, Lin Wu's speed was still faster than a cultivator that was sprinting. Five minutes later he had successfully reached the Lu clan's mansion. This area was well lit and a lot of people were coming in and out from the clan.

"Looks like they're getting ready for all the preparations of the Tribulation platform." Lin Wu muttered to himself.

Lin Wu circled around and found another smaller entrance that was used by the servants.

'This should be fine… but nows the moment of the test, let's see if it works for me too…' Lin Wu thought.

The test was none other than the key to the formation array. Lin Wu thought that he should have the same signature as Shirong did, thus he shouldn't have the problem in entering the courtyard, and that was exactly what happened.

Though even if that was not possible, Lin Wu reckoned that with the number of random people going in and out of the clan, he would be unnoticed. Thankfully now, the ground here was just simple dirt that Lin Wu could dig through.

He found a small bush to the side, which would be large enough to hide the hole he would dig and entered the ground from there.

"System, make a map of the area." Lin Wu ordered.

~Ding~

——

MAP FUNCTION ACTIVATED: Scanning the area.

SCAN COMPLETE: Map has been updated.

——

Lin Wu looked at the map window and saw that it only had the area that was inside the confines of the formation array. The formation array functioned the same for the system's scan as it did for spirit sense and isolated the signals.

Lin Wu had not made the map for the entire city yet, as he was not sure if others would detect it or not. But now that he had tested it on a smaller scale, he could do it freely when he left the courtyard later.

"Hmm, now where is the kitchen?… this part was the entrance that we went through and this was the main hall. If I remember correctly, the servants were bringing in trays of food from the lower two doors of the hall. Then the kitchen should be… right here!" Lin Wu observed.

"System, activate the navigating HUD." Lin Wu ordered.

~Ding~

——

NAVIGATION HUD ACTIVATED: Finding route

ROUTE FOUND: Plotting on mini map.

——

Having found his target location, Lin Wu began his journey. Digging through the ground, he reached the building that was the kitchen. There he came out of the ground from under a pile of chopped logs and looked around.

"Hehe! Time to Raid!"