Michael's departure from Redster was secretive and swift. He travelled through the roads disguised as an emperor realm expert. Michael had a very strong body due to his blessing. Thus, passing off as emperor realm expert did not take much of his soul power.

Acting as a guard to the caravans he could find along the route, he travelled with merchants, mortals and other emperor realm cultivators. He listened to their conversations usually filled with different juicy rumours about important characters of the kingdom like different nobles. There were some stories about himself as well claiming how he was the greatest genius in the kingdom, how there were thunder and lightning in the sky at the time of his birth and whatnot.

Michael liked spending time like this. He found those conversations very interesting and also enjoyed the simple lives the general populace lived. In his past life, he never bothered himself with such people. But now, he found that he truly liked living like a mortal. They did not have to worry about devils and upcoming war, schemes of other nobles and threat from other races. With them, Michael could also place down some of his worries.

After travelling like this for a month, he reached the edge of forbidden forest. It was around the same time the different races were holding the conference in the city of Dawn.

Michael just went inside the forest without taking anyone else. He broke the illusion array quite easily and travelled inside. There, he practised hunting vicious beasts and monsters. He was able to use them as resources for his cultivation. He also practised the Flowing River Art continuously. For the first 15 days, everything went well. But one day, he got entangled with a peak emperor realm beast. It was at the same level that even Dracus Ming had not been able to handle by himself. Michael decided to run using illusion techniques but found out to his surprise that the beast had incredible senses. It would not be fooled! There was another problem that his expertise lied in changing his appearance to look like someone else and not masking his presence.

Michael had to fight for his life and was badly injured. He did manage to kill the beast as it did not know soul defence. But, the fight left him gravely injured. It took him an entire month to heal himself. He was certain that he had overestimated himself. He was currently not at the level of adventuring in the forest. Thus, he decided to wait. He hunted only when necessary. The rest of the time, he studied the illusion energy in the array and how to use it. He learned for a long while and started creating a technique based on it. This was a disorientation technique.

Suppose that in a battle of experts, one person feels his senses distort. That would probably be fatal. Thus, this technique would have some great advantages. It was just that creating the technique was easier said than done.

Thus, Michael settled in the forest practising and polishing his skills waiting for the expedition to arrive.

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The expedition started from the city of Dawn with great festive and fanfare. Many people came to see off this historical expedition. All the races expressed their good wishes and the 9 immortals led several other experts and mortals towards the forbidden forest. They travelled a full 15 days before reaching the forest edge where they took a break and made the soul artists learn the illusion breaking technique.

While these soul cultivators did not have great power and did not understand the essence of the technique, just repeating the instructions was not very hard. Thus, in just 3 days, all of them managed to grasp the technique.

After this, the expedition went inside the forest. Leading the expedition was Lord Astang who could feel his heart beating faster as they progressed.

The expedition hunted many monsters. There were so many monsters killed that it was sufficient for the expedition army to survive for years! The army went around scouting several places and kept on progressing toward the centre.

Michael also kept up his routine cultivation while progressing toward the centre. As the entry points for both were different, they would not meet before reaching the central region.

Around three months after the army had entered and about 6 months after Michael had been living in the forest, he reached the edges of the central region. Michael could feel the change in illusion array ahead. The monsters inside this region were very powerful and the weakest were also in saint realm. This was not an area that Michael could enter right now.

Thus, he set up a small hut before the boundary of the central region and began to live the life of a hermit!

The expedition travelled almost at the same pace as Michael. While they had more pathfinders, they did not know the correct way, unlike Michael. Thus, after another 3 months, they too reached the central region boundary.

At that point, Astang was already extremely rushed. He ordered the non-combatants to set camp and the combatants to make preparations. They were going to kill their way into the ruins!