Chapter 1 The Trap

Chen Xiao and the other two followed Steward Li up to the second floor. Unlike the hall on the first floor, the second floor was divided into many rooms. Chen Xiao had no idea what each room was used for.

The three of them were first led into an elegant room. On the solid wood table in the room were placed fruits and snacks, and two shapely, beautiful maids stood on either side.

"I'll take my friend Chen Xiao to participate in the assessment now. You two friends can rest here for the time being. If you need anything, just ask the maids. After the assessment is over, we'll all have a good drink together." Steward Li was still all smiles, and he was extremely polite when he spoke to Xiao Liuzi and Wang Ke, as if this smile was born on his face.

"Okay, you guys go ahead and get busy, we'll just wait here." Xiao Liuzi agreed readily, feeling very happy. Following Brother Xiao, his status instantly rose. Even the lofty steward of the Array Master Guild had to be polite to him.

Chen Xiao frowned slightly at Xiao Liuzi's carefree appearance, but found that Wang Ke also had a solemn expression, as if he had also noticed something was wrong. He felt a little more at ease.

"Then let's go, Chen Xiao." Steward Li said. Chen Xiao knew that worrying at this time would not help, so he decided to take it one step at a time. He followed Steward Li out of the room.

After Chen Xiao and Steward Li left, Wang Ke immediately asked the two maids to leave. Although the two maids didn't understand why, they still obediently went downstairs.

Originally, they thought that Wang Ke and the others were at the prime of their youth, and looked like inexperienced fellows. They thought they would make some outrageous requests, but they didn't expect the other party to be so indifferent to romance.

Wang Ke looked around outside the door for a while, then carefully closed the door. When he turned around, he saw Xiao Liuzi already holding a piece of watermelon and gnawing on most of it. Wang Ke quickly shouted, "Don't!"

Xiao Liuzi looked up at Wang Ke, confused. Then he felt his vision begin to blur, and he swayed before falling to the ground.

At the same time, the door was suddenly opened, and Wang Ke heard someone say from behind, "Hehe, I didn't expect you to be quite alert, but it's useless."

Wang Ke subconsciously turned his head, and a cloud of yellow smoke blew straight into his face. In just an instant, he lost consciousness.

All of this happened silently. Chen Xiao, who had been taken to the assessment room, had no idea that his two brothers had been captured.

The assessment room was much larger than the previous one, with hundreds of square meters. Inside the room, there were dozens of identical white marble tables. Each table was equipped with talisman paper and talisman brushes. The talisman paper was smooth and lustrous, and the talisman brushes even had extravagant gold pen holders.

"Gaudy and impractical." Chen Xiao thought to himself. Good talisman paper and talisman brushes have spiritual energy. If you just want to highlight the value of the talisman drawing tools through the expensiveness of the material, you will undoubtedly fall into the lower class. This will only make people feel full of nouveau riche atmosphere.

However, in addition to being gaudy and impractical, the assessment room also made Chen Xiao smell a hint of danger, with a faint sense of unease. But Chen Xiao couldn't figure out where the problem was in a short period of time.

"Just find a place and draw a picture, I've heard about your skills. Frankly, what qualifications do I have to assess you? We're just going through the motions." Steward Li said with a smile, looking harmless.

As he spoke, Steward Li found a table himself, picked up a talisman brush and started drawing. He also said, "Recently, I've been troubled by a difficult problem. I hope my friend Chen Xiao can give me some pointers after the assessment is over!"

Chen Xiao didn't know what Steward Li was up to, but he still modestly replied, "Steward Li, you're being too serious. I can't give you pointers, we're just discussing things together."

"Yes, discuss together, discuss together." Steward Li's tone gradually slowed down, and he lowered his head deeply, with a hint of a smile on his lips.

However, what Chen Xiao couldn't see was that Steward Li's face had become extremely gloomy, and that smile was becoming colder and colder.

Chen Xiao chose a table, picked up a talisman brush and was thinking about what kind of array talisman to draw, when a sudden change occurred.

The white marble table actually melted slowly at a speed visible to the naked eye, and finally turned into a pool of stone pulp.

"Hiss!"

At the same time, the talisman brush in Chen Xiao's hand turned into a golden snake. The snake wrapped around Chen Xiao's wrist at an extremely fast speed, spitting out its forked tongue and biting towards Chen Xiao's wrist like lightning.

Chen Xiao's expression changed drastically. The snake was very fast, but he was even faster. He stretched out his other hand and grabbed towards the seven inches of the snake's body (vital spot).

Just as Chen Xiao's fingers were about to touch the snake's body, and he could even feel the chill emanating from the snake's body, the snake suddenly disappeared.

When Chen Xiao looked around, he found that he was no longer in the assessment room, but in a primeval forest, filled with the smell of decay and suffocating humidity.

"It's an array!"

Chen Xiao suddenly understood. He finally knew why he felt uneasy. This assessment room was clearly an array. He had entered the array from the moment he entered it, and everything he was seeing now was just an illusion conjured up within the array.

Once you enter the other party's array, unless you destroy the array core or find the array setter and prevent him from continuing to cast spells to maintain the array, you can forget about getting out. The only thing left is a dead end.

The person who set up the array must be Steward Li, who always had a smiling face.

Arrays and array talismans are closely related. An array is a large array talisman. People who can draw array talismans must also know a little about arrays. However, unlike array talismans, arrays are generally fixed in a certain location, rather than drawn on talisman paper. Moreover, each activation of an array requires a lot of consumables. The white marble table Chen Xiao had just seen was the consumable for this array.

At this point, Chen Xiao finally understood why the talisman paper and talisman brushes placed on the table were all flashy and impractical goods. Those were just used to attract Chen Xiao's attention, mislead Chen Xiao, and prevent him from discovering the existence of the array.

The reason why Steward Li was writing and drawing on the table earlier was just to secretly activate the array.

There was no one in front of Chen Xiao, but he looked straight ahead and said with a wry smile, "You've really gone to a lot of trouble for me. I admire you, I admire you."

Talking to himself in the air, this scene was as strange as it could be.

Even stranger was that there was actually a response in the empty air, "Hehe, aren't you a genius? But so what if you're a genius? Can a dead genius still be called a genius? Hehe..."

A sinister laugh, it was Steward Li's voice, but his figure was nowhere to be seen.

"I never dared to say that I was a genius, but grievances have their debts, and debts have their owners. You have to let me die knowing why. Who exactly wants to kill me?" Chen Xiao's voice revealed a hint of despair.