Chapter 4260 — The Ghost Mist Formation

The group silently buoyed their own spirits like this, and after walking for the better part of an incense stick's time with nothing untoward happening, their hearts grew steadier by no small measure, and their steps were no longer as hesitant as they had been at the start.

Yet after another moment, Wei Zhao suddenly sensed something amiss. The jade pendant began to give off a faint warning, and his heart gave a sharp jolt. Something was wrong!

"Xiaotao!" Instinctively, Wei Zhao tightened his grip on Huang Xiaotao's hand and turned to look both ahead and behind—only to find that, aside from Huang Xiaotao, whom he still held, everyone else had vanished without a trace, he knew not when.

Even before, no matter how thick the mist, they had been only a step or two apart and could always make out a blurred silhouette. But now there was not even a shadow. Guo Dengtao and Wang Feng ahead, Chu Bubai and Feng Hongyu behind—all of them had suddenly disappeared.

So there really was something wrong! Wei Zhao was greatly alarmed, and at the same time could not help feeling somewhat fortunate. Thank goodness he had been holding on to Huang Xiaotao all along; otherwise she too might well have vanished along with the rest.

"Wh-what's going on... where did everyone go..." Huang Xiaotao had finally noticed as well, and her voice could not help but tremble. She was a girl, after all, and stranded in such an eerie place, she was still very nervous.

"Don't do anything rash for now—let's see how things stand first!" Wei Zhao said in a low voice, turning to scan ahead and behind, and cautiously extended his divine sense to probe. But it was just as before: his divine sense, which had never failed him out in the world, sank here like a stone into the sea, giving not the slightest response.

Just then, a familiar voice suddenly rang out from not far behind them—none other than the vanished Chu Bubai.

"This is the Ghost Mist Formation! We can't stay here long. Everyone, charge forward—just keep charging forward and we'll get through!" The moment the words fell, a series of swishing sounds followed, clearly someone racing forward at speed.

At the sound, Huang Xiaotao instinctively made to charge forward, but before she could take a single step, Wei Zhao pulled her back with one yank.

"Xiaotao, steady!" Wei Zhao barked in a low voice.

The shout was not loud, yet it struck Huang Xiaotao's heart like the evening drum and morning bell. Her whole body gave a sudden shudder, and only then did she snap awake, her face blank with astonishment.

"I... what happened to me just now?" A wave of lingering dread washed over Huang Xiaotao. Chu Bubai's voice just now had seemed to carry some bewitching magic that clouded her mind, and only then had she obeyed his command without thinking. Had Wei Zhao not pulled her back in time, there was no telling where she would have charged off to by now.

"You must have had your mind ensnared just now. There's definitely something strange about this Chu Bubai!" Wei Zhao said, warily watching everything around them, on his guard.

Only at this moment did he begin to understand Chu Bubai's design. All along the way, everyone had followed his lead, and thus sufficient trust had been built up; at the same time, they had unconsciously let down their guard, growing somewhat blindly obedient to his commands.

Especially along this stretch after they entered the mist—almost every step had been taken under Chu Bubai's direction, which only reinforced that unconscious habit. Add to that the fact that the man's voice just now, by some means or other, clearly had the power to bewitch the mind—and that was how he had made them all unconsciously do as he said.

This was a trap laid from the very beginning. From the moment they agreed to join up, they had in fact already fallen into Chu Bubai's rhythm of hypnosis. This Chu Bubai—his scheming ran that deep!

Fortunately, Wei Zhao had harbored doubts about him from first to last, always keeping an eye out for the various oddities, and so had not taken the bait as easily as the others. And how could a will as tempered as his be bewitched by any ordinary means?

Yet although Wei Zhao had sensed something wrong, in this place he could not see the situation clearly at all, nor did he dare act rashly. At this moment he could not look after the others either—he could only mind Huang Xiaotao beside him.

"Ensnared my mind? No wonder I felt like I couldn't help myself just now, like my body wasn't my own..." Huang Xiaotao was badly startled by Wei Zhao's words, and at the same time secretly counted her blessings that Wei Zhao was beside her. Then she asked nervously, "So what do we do now?"

"We can't see the situation clearly, so we can only hold our position for the time being. Let's stay here a while first and see," Wei Zhao said, even as he pricked up his ears and strained to listen to everything around them.

In their present straits, neither eyes nor divine sense was of any use—only the ears were somewhat better off. If there was any movement nearby, at least they would still hear something.

"Mm." Huang Xiaotao nodded, still shaken, one hand clutching Wei Zhao's tightly, and like him she kept a careful watch on everything around them.

The two of them waited quietly for a while, yet there was not the slightest stir around them. In Wei Zhao's reckoning, whatever tricks Chu Bubai might play, Guo Dengtao and Wang Feng were, after all, genuine mid-Golden Core experts; even if they had fallen foul of some scheme, they should still have had some room to put up a struggle—surely they could not have been finished off just like that, without a sound?

Of course, if one thought the worst, Chu Bubai had gone to such pains to bring them all here, and with his depth of scheming he would hardly leave anyone any room to turn things around. That Guo Dengtao and the others might simply have been snuffed out, silent and without a trace, was not beyond the realm of possibility.

But the question was: why would Chu Bubai expend such effort to bring a bunch of people who had nothing to do with him to a place like this, only to kill them?

Wei Zhao could not yet make sense of this question, but he could vaguely sense that it must be connected to the infant ginseng. After all, the medicinal fragrance of the infant ginseng could not be faked—though just what the connection was, that was hard to say.

"Have they gone far? Or..." Huang Xiaotao clutched Wei Zhao's hand tightly and dared not finish the sentence, because even now she could still catch glimpses of ghostly shadows flickering at the edges of her vision.

If nothing had happened to Guo Dengtao and the others, then once Chu Bubai realized the two of them had not followed, he would surely have some countermeasure. Even if he did not come back to look for them in person, he should have found some way to send a signal. Yet at this moment, there was no sign of anything at all from up ahead.

If Wei Zhao's guess was right and Chu Bubai truly meant them harm, then Guo Dengtao and the others had most likely met with disaster. At the thought, Huang Xiaotao's hair stood on end. If Wei Zhao had not held her back just now, she would surely have been dragged down with them!

"I don't know. For now, all we can do is take it one step at a time," Wei Zhao said grimly. He too had no confidence in his heart, and for the time being could only wait and see how things developed. R1152