CHAPTER 2161  A COLLABORATIVE PUZZLE

It was a new kind of puzzle that Lin Mu hadn't seen before. Though he could still understand the theory behind it on some level.

'It's similar to large scale arrays that need multiple formation masters to control. Since they have multiple aspects to be controlled which can be too much for a single formations master to bear or control, it is a good way to distribute the workload.' Lin Mu thought to himself. 'What do we do now?' Everyone heard a voice.

"Huh? Who said that?" Lin Mu asked out loud.

"I didn't." Crown Prince Feng Shun replied.

"I didn't either." Lady Kang replied.

The others said the same until it came to Ziran. "I did say that… but in my mind." Ziran said with a slight smile on his face. "I think this puzzle is a bit more interesting than I thought." He added.

"Wait… It's connecting our thoughts too?" Lin Mu understood. "But it can't be all thoughts right?" he wondered before attempting something.

'Can you all hear this?' he thought intentionally.

"We do." They all replied.

~SHUA~

And when they did, a new rune appeared on the structure.

"It responded too." Ziran said looking at the new rune that was above Lin Mu's interface sphere.

"Huh… Looks like this needs some kind of mental interaction for it to work. All of us would have to try stuff to see how it works." Lin Mu said after thinking for a bit.

This time his thoughts weren't heard, which proved to them that only those thoughts that they wished to convey would be heard by others.

"Let's see what this thing holds…" Daoist Chu said, and the group started testing things out.

They talked to each other with their mind and saw different runes appearing on the interactions. These runes seemed to be random at first, but after a while Lin Mu could tell that the runes that appeared seemed to fit somewhere in the entire array.

The erratic array that seemed like a unsolvable puzzle now seemed a bit more reasonable.

Daoist Chu, and Lin Mu worked together to figure out where each rune fit, while the others watched. They would only talk when I was time to do so, as they didn't wish for the runes to be affected. They had discovered this too when a rune disappeared in the middle of being tested when someone spoke out of turn.

AN hour passed like this, before Lin Mu hit a wall.

"I can't move this rune." Lin Mu furrowed his brows. "You can't?" Daoist Chu tried to next. "I can't either… Strange." "Is something wrong?" Crown Prince Feng Shun asked.

"I don't know, the rune suddenly stopped responding." Lin Mu said, not being able to figure out what the problem was.

"It's stuck?" Crown Prince's Immortal sense touched the rune, which suddenly made it move. "It moved!" "How did that…? Wait!" An idea appeared in Lin Mu's mind. ~shua~

He moved another rune from before in to the center before looking at Crown Prince. "Can you try moving this one?" Lin Mu questioned.

"Uh…. It doesn't move." Crown Prince Feng Shun answered. "How about you all?" Lin Mu inquired next.

"I can't move it." Ziran replied.

"Yeah, it's frozen." Lady Kang did too.

Everyone tried one by one, and failed to move it other than Lin Mu.

"So we have a limited scope of runes for each person." Lin Mu was starting to understand it better. "How many moves did you move so far?" Daoist Chu asked.

"Seventy." Lin Mu answered. "How about you?"

"Seventy as well… Perhaps the limit is seventy for each of us?" Daoist Chu guessed.

"It might just be so. So far only us two have been controlling them, and perhaps we took up all the slots we were supposed to." Lin Mu inferred. "Others will have to do the work now." He stated.

"I'll do it." Crown Prince agreed and got to it.

While he might not be fully versed in Formations, it didn't mean that he couldn't use it. At the very least, he was better than 99% of normal Immortal experts in terms of proficiency with Fomentation arrays. In fact, everyone here was somewhat versed in formations and could be considered above average.

After a while, Crown Prince Feng Shun also reached the limit of seventy runes.

"Let's see… We've got at least a quarter of the array solved." Lin Mu said after observing the entire thing. "Everyone will have to do a part to completely solve this." He added.

With that said, the others quickly got to working. Sometimes they needed a little assistance which was quickly provided by Lin Mu and Daoist Chu.

One by one, everyone was reaching their rune quota and Lin Mu was now understood why this puzzle needed all ten people to work. 'It is testing us on our cooperation skills. If it was a group that was not in cohesion with each other, or if someone was too stubborn or egotistical to listen to others, I can see how it would become hard to solve this.' Lin Mu thought to himself.

This was actually a thing that happened more often than not among immortals, especially talented immortals. They didn't want to be considered inferior to others or be shown up, thus they would often be stubborn. While they might listen to it eventually, it might just take extra time to finish the puzzle. Thankfully Lin Mu's group didn't have that problem, as everyone was genial to each other and had a common goal in mind. One could grasp from this, just how important it was to vet the members of an expedition carefully.

~HONG~ Têxt belongs to .

After about six hours of work, the runes seemed to have all been placed in the right positions, and the array finally made sense to everyone.

A wave of immortal Qi spread from the structure before the array presented itself before turning into a key!

~WHOOSH~

This incorporeal key flew out of the structure before embedding into the very air above while everyone watched it with surprise.