"Senior brother, are you really sure the Little Bamboo House is this way?"

Su Youyi looked at the increasingly desolate surroundings with suspicion and turned to Liang Yi.

"Senior brother, could it be that you're lost?"

Back in the forest when senior brother was a mere mortal, he was always getting lost, so it would make sense if he's still getting lost now.

"What nonsense are you talking about? How could I possibly get lost?"

Liang Yi lightly slapped his hand onto his head, not even turning back as he hit his younger sister's little noggin.

"Ouch, senior brother is bullying people again."

Su Youyi stuck out her tongue and shrank her neck slightly, feeling that next time she might need to complain to their master about her senior brother's misdeeds.

"Planning to tattle to master?"

Liang Yi knew his younger sister too well; with one shifty look in her eyes, he knew she was up to no good.

"I'm not, I didn't, don't frame me..."

Surprised, Su Youyi quickly crossed her arms and denied it thrice in a row—this absolutely could not be admitted.

"Oh?"

Liang Yi cast a doubtful glance at his junior sister, who had all her inner tension written on her face. He didn't expose her but continued to search for the Little Bamboo House based on the directions given by Feng Shuyi and the memories of his past life.

The guidance given by Feng Shuyi was vague and unclear, only mentioning a general location; finding the place still required Liang Yi to search step by step.

In the previous life's game, after players became familiar with the game, they started to take an interest in the so-called "hidden professions" and "hidden sects," but such things didn't really exist.

The path one walked was completely up to the player's choice, with no divisions between higher or lower status; in fact, if you were brave enough, you could pursue all paths without anyone interfering.

And the so-called hidden sects, well, Liang Yi had never seen one.

Players' expectations for hidden sects were nothing but hopes for high entry difficulty, sparse membership with a focus on elites, and various strong and rare sect-specific skills.

But nothing on the Mystical Mechanism Continent really met those criteria.

As a result, players gave up on the idea of finding hidden sects for a long time, until a player accidentally joined the main branch of the Little Bamboo House.

It was a well-known fact that the Little Bamboo House was widespread throughout the world, recognized both on player forums and among native inhabitants searching for it.

During the early stage of the game, there were players who joined various branches of the Little Bamboo House, but they found it wasn't much different from ordinary sects.

It was only after a lucky player joined the main branch of Little Bamboo House and revealed a bit of information about it that other players became intrigued, believing that the main branch of the Little Bamboo House finally fit the characteristics of a hidden sect.

However, when players wanted to learn more about the main branch of the Little Bamboo House, that player clammed up, unmoved by any offer, leaving the others at a loss.

"It should be somewhere around here."

Feeling the concentration of spiritual power nearby, Liang Yi found it slightly more active than other places and, combined with the guidance from Feng Shuyi, it should be the correct location.

"But there's just a canyon here..."

Standing on the edge of the cliff, Su Youyi cautiously peeked her head out to look down into the endless darkness below and didn't spot anything unusual.

This canyon, of unknown origin, was extremely narrow and deep. Su Youyi and Liang Yi had to expend some effort with their divine sense to probe to the bottom. Even though the spiritual energy at the bottom of the canyon was rich, with many rare spirit plants growing there, the various potential dangers were just as plentiful, Liang Yi and the others discovered quite a few poisonous gases and monsters.

Those exotic grasses and spirit plants were indeed not bad and would be quite profitable for an average cultivator to risk collecting, but for Liang Yi and Su Youyi, they were far from tempting, and did not interest them at all.

"Mr. Orange, have you found anything?"

Liang Yi scratched his head, his face also showing some confusion, as the spirit light given to him by Feng Shuyi didn't react at all.

"Meow..."

Mr. Orange rolled his eyes; that's when Liang Yi would remember him in times like this.

"There's definitely something mystical about this place, let me sniff it out, meow."

With his acute perception, Mr. Orange could easily detect things beyond the awareness of ordinary people. In his senses, there indeed was the scent of a divine artifact lingering in the nearby space.

Mr. Orange's tail stood up like an antenna, his pink little nose sniffing around, his eyes closed as he searched adorably - a sight that gave Su Youyi the urge to pet him.

"Whoa, it really is down there, meow."

Following the scarcely traceable scent in the void, Mr. Orange darted about and eventually set his gaze into the canyon.

"So it seems we must make a trip down to the bottom of the canyon..."

Liang Yi stood with one hand on his hip, feeling resigned; searching in such a vast canyon would not be easy.

"Who told you it's at the bottom of the canyon, meow."

Mr. Orange leapt back onto Liang Yi's shoulder with a swift jump, his fluffy tail swinging in front of Liang Yi, tickling his nose.

"Oh, I see now."

Su Youyi took another careful look at the narrow, winding canyon beneath her feet, and suddenly came to an enlightenment.

"Hmm? You figured it out?"

Liang Yi was somewhat surprised; his junior sister Cultivator was actually not confused this time, amazing!

"Sister, look at those clouds!"

Su Youyi glanced at Liang Yi with playful reproach, always feeling that there was something odd about the way her brother said that, which annoyed her a bit. However, Su Youyi didn't dwell on it, continuing to excitedly point out her new discovery to her brother.

Following the direction indicated by his junior sister's slender, jade-like finger, Liang Yi looked over to the opposing cliffside where wisps of pale white mist had gathered, drifting aimlessly in the wind.

Because of the sheer vertical distance of the canyon, water vapor naturally condensed into mist near the cliffs, which Liang Yi found to be perfectly normal.

But it was only after his sister's reminder that Liang Yi gradually began to perceive the subtle intricacies hidden within what seemed to be aimlessly drifting mist.

"It's actually an array..."

It took Liang Yi a moment to realize that these mists were moving about in a pattern completely imperceptible to the average person.

And the traces left behind by the drifting mists, when connected, formed an incredibly profound and hidden array!

"Amazing, you discovered this!"

Liang Yi arched an eyebrow, admiring his junior sister's sharp perception.

"Hmph."

Su Youyi put her hands on her hips and slightly elevated her beautiful face, a hint of pride swirling in her expression. Not because she discovered the Mystical Mechanism, but because she felt satisfied from being praised by her brother.

Mr. Orange swished his tail, feeling rather helpless about these two who, when left alone, seemed to decrease each other's intelligence.

"Ah, let me see..."

Liang Yi focused his gaze on the countless mists - roughly thousands of them - his deep pupils shimmering with Divine Sense, memorizing the various motion patterns and meticulously deducing the array's rules.

"This is a bit troublesome."

After a brief assessment of its complexity, Liang Yi furrowed his brows.

The sheer number implied an extreme multitude of variables, and Liang Yi's prowess in Divine Sense deduction was not particularly strong; this would have been a more suitable task for He Zhiqing.

"Help me out."

With a wave of his hand, a grand Array Map appeared in front of him and Su Youyi, the myriad points of light representing the trajectory of the mists.

After eliminating any distracting elements, even Mr. Orange could easily discern traces of an array within it.

"It's a pity, your lordship can't help, meow."

Mr. Orange sighed, content to simply watch the excitement from the side. It wasn't that he was unwilling to help; he just wasn't adept at dealing with such things. Devouring was his forte, not brain-racking tasks.

Su Youyi had already entered a state of concentration by the time the Array Map appeared; she had a much deeper understanding of arrays than Liang Yi and had also received targeted instruction from Chen Hua.

Sword Cultivators were not all mindless brutes swinging their swords at everything. In battle, they often had to consider more possibilities than regular Cultivators,

Since they needed to pinpoint the enemy's weakness to unleash a decisive and fatal blow, Sword Cultivators had to be more knowledgeable.

"One unable to use their brain alongside their fists won't survive long as a Cultivator."

These were the words Chen Hua taught Su Youyi, but she always took them with a grain of doubt, as she had never seen her master use his brain in action; everything was resolved with a sword.

With the junior sister's assistance and the tacit understanding between them, Liang Yi's speed in deciphering the array greatly accelerated, and in merely the time it took an incense stick to burn, they had already made sense of the array.

"It seems this is but the first test."

Liang Yi retracted the Array Map, gazing thoughtfully at the lingering clouds before him.

"This array wasn't too difficult to solve; its main purpose is to hide the entrance. We've been here for quite some time, and there's been no reaction from Little Bamboo House; it looks like a kind of test."

Su Youyi nodded, her thoughts aligning with her brother's.

"The array is solved, meow?"

Mr. Orange poked his head out from the side, not expecting it to be resolved so quickly.

"Yes, the entire Great Formation is like a lock hanging on the door; behind it lies the essence of Little Bamboo House, and the key has already been given to me by Elder Feng Shuyi."

Liang Yi nodded and took out the shimmer of light that Feng Shuyi had given him in that strange Void.

The moment the shimmer of light made its appearance, as if sensing a specific aura, the light in Liang Yi's hand transformed and eventually became a vibrant, green, vitality-filled bamboo leaf.

Liang Yi pinched the bamboo leaf between two fingers and gave it a light toss.

As the leaf danced above the canyon, guided by Liang Yi's Spiritual Power, it drifted towards an ordinary-looking white cloud on their left front, eventually merging into one with it.

Click, click, click—

The sound of a lock opening echoed through the canyon, reverberating continuously.

All the drifting clouds halted at that moment, and a beam of light burst forth from the cloud that had absorbed the bamboo leaf, linking together nearly a thousand clouds in the sky, eventually forming a gigantic light gate in the canyon.

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