"Have we... come full circle again?" A hint of unease crept into the voice of one of the Qiuz generals. "What exactly is going on?"
"Is it another empty city?" another Qiuzi man muttered to himself in confusion. "How come it looks exactly the same as the previous one?"
“It’s not surprising that the city gates are similar,” someone tried to explain. “Perhaps we should go in and take a look.”
"Similar?" General Qiu Zi's tone was full of doubt. "Even the rocks at the city gate are arranged exactly the same?"
Those who had still held onto a sliver of hope suddenly turned pale.
They knew they were lost.
The general's eyes revealed deep worry. He looked up at the seemingly familiar city, his heart filled with confusion and bewilderment. The soldiers around him began to whisper among themselves, fear and unease spreading through the ranks.
Suddenly, a cold wind blew by, stirring up the dust at the city gate, as if mocking their ignorance and stupidity.
"Make way for His Majesty!"
The crowd parted to make way for their emperor, Ammon.
As Amon rode his exhausted warhorse, his brow furrowed the moment he saw the city gate.
"Send men in to investigate and see if there are any Xia ambush troops!" Amon ordered.
"Your Majesty, this is the abandoned city from before," Amon's subordinate anxiously reminded him. "We...we're lost in this wasteland!"
Amon turned his head angrily. "What nonsense are you spouting?" he roared. "Guards! Drag this man away and behead him!"
"Ah! What?" The subordinate general was completely stunned. "What mistake have I made? Why are you trying to kill me?"
"Hmph, disrupting morale, death is the only punishment!" Amon announced. "What are you still standing here for? Drag him away and kill him!"
He gave the order in an unquestionable tone, and his subordinates had no choice but to obey.
"Your Majesty! Spare me, this humble servant..."
The subordinate was taken away, and with a swift stroke of the knife, his head fell to the ground.
Seeing this, everyone stared wide-eyed, not daring to say a word.
Ameng wasn't stupid or blind, so he naturally knew that the desolate city in front of him was the same one from before.
However, as Emperor Qiu Zi and the supreme commander of the three armies, he could not allow his troops to fall into despair.
They had been without water for two days. Admitting that their army was lost in the desert at this point would be tantamount to sentencing everyone to death.
"Someone, go in and investigate, then report back to me!" Amon continued.
"Yes, sir!"
His men quickly returned.
This time, near the orchard and well, the soldiers found some scattered bones and broken skulls, pale and desolate.
A Chuz soldier murmured, “Ghosts…this place is teeming with horrible demons. Your Majesty, we must leave; this is their territory.”
The reason for this discussion is that the arrangement of those bones is so bizarre and strange!
"Shut up!" Amon shouted. "I am the Emperor of the Holy Quz Empire, a descendant of Allah. What is there to fear, even if it is a ghost?"
With that, he took the lead and led his personal guards back into the desolate city.
Not long after, we returned to the orchard.
This time, Amon was surprised to find a large tree.
That was the largest tree he had ever seen in his life.
The tree trunk is nearly eight feet wide, and its branches and leaves are so lush and expansive that they cover the entire orchard.
“I told you this was a new desolate city!” another general laughed loudly.
Amon smiled slightly, "Perhaps it was Allah who protected them and helped them out of their predicament!"
However, in that instant, Amon's smile froze on his face.
His gaze was firmly drawn to an unusual sight in the tree.
It was a face, a face hidden among the leaves.
And the mouth on that face was even more terrifying. It wasn't an ordinary horizontal cut, but a jagged, serrated hole, large enough to easily swallow a lamb.
Amon's heart raced instantly, and fear surged through him like a tidal wave.
“Look at the tree hole!” Amon announced.
His men mustered their courage and peered into the tree hollow.
They found burn marks inside, and a skull inside the tree hollow!
"It's a sheep's head!" the subordinate reported loudly.
“Sheep’s Head…” Amon sat on his horse, his brows furrowed. “Xuanhua Palace, it must be their doing!”
"Your Majesty, this ram's head contains power." Amon's men could all feel this power.
The black-armored knight Habibula dismounted nimbly beside the ancient tree trunk, his gaze sharp as a hawk's, fixed on the terrifying face on the ground.
He declared in a deep voice, “Your Majesty, look, this is the horrifying mark left by the assassins of Xuanhua Palace.” He gripped the hilt of his sword tightly and pleaded, “Please allow me to sever the source of this evil.”
However, Amon's advisor quickly stopped his impulsive act. "Stop, Habibula!" He nervously glanced around, and seeing the soldiers listening, he quickly adjusted his words, "This skull is no ordinary object; unauthorized destruction could trigger unknown consequences..."
He almost blurted out the word "mechanism," but suddenly realized the potential panic that mentioning it in front of so many soldiers would cause. So he changed his words to, "Bring up that skull so I can examine it closely."
The soldier from Qiuzi acted decisively, immediately leaping off his horse and steadily walking towards the tree hollow. He crouched down, his heavily gloved hand slowly reaching into the dark opening of the tree.
Inside the tree hollow, the dried red sap had solidified into a charred black mass, resembling a charred remains.
The soldier's gaze swept downwards, and suddenly his eyes fixed on a skull. There, another, smaller skull lay silently, a horrifying crack running down its jaw, half-buried in ashes and shattered bone fragments.
He handed the skull to his advisor, who raised it with both hands and looked into the skull's empty eye sockets.
"I understand, Your Majesty, I understand!" the strategist exclaimed. "This is a bewitching trap!"
"What is a bewitching array?"
"It's an array of symbols, patterns, and incantations that can trap people in illusions or confuse them," the strategist said. "The directions, shadows, and sounds we see now are all illusions!"
Once you accidentally enter a maze, no matter which way you go, you'll feel like your direction is constantly changing, and you'll lose your sense of direction, leading to spatial and directional illusions. Escaping this maze is extremely difficult.
"So, you know how to get out of this confusing maze, right?"
Upon hearing this, the strategist's excited expression suddenly turned into one of utter bewilderment.
He had only heard of the Confusion Formation, but had never encountered it.
“This…” The strategist frowned.
"Tell me quickly, how do we get out?" Amon asked, raising his voice.
The strategist looked up at Amon. He knew that at this moment, the only way to stabilize morale was to use a white lie.
So he said, "Yes! But, it will be a bit troublesome!"
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