An Family's team reached the first formations within a few seconds.
Because they weren't that difficult, many of the young men had the ability to break them by themselves; therefore, An Yu Yong paired the youths that didn't know about formations with the ones that knew and her unfortunate self not only was paired with her eldest brother but also with the stern An Xiao Ning who had been given the order to keep an eye on her.
Smile with this situation was hard for her, she had to control her mouth from pumping upwards.
The first formation was solved in no time. In the Forbidden Bamboo Forest, the formations, as if they were alive, restructured themselves after an instant of being resolved. Therefore, they had to be quick when crossing them, especially the ones who had no knowledge about them.
As they went from formation to formation, they surveyed their surroundings looking for the token cards but they did find none until they passed through the fifth formation; they were actually pretty lucky to find one, even though it was just a green token card with five places.
Hours had gone by and they stopped to rest and to have a meal. They ate dry food and some fresh fruit; they hadn't prepared ingredients to cook as they thought it will be the same as before where they had to enter the Ghost Forest which had mysterious beasts and diverse plants; this bamboo forest aside from green bamboos only had grass and little shrubs.
After a break that lasted an hour, they continued and the deeper they went, the more difficult the formations became.
The skies turned dark as well as their luck; they didn't have come across another token card.
An Bing Qing's initial impatience subsided after she gave up on scurrying away this first day. Her eldest brother hadn't lost watch of her even on the meal times; and even though there were no mysterious beasts and the probability of other teams being near was low, there were vigils on this bright night.
'Sigh, it will be until then, then', she had given it a good thought and before falling asleep, she came with an answer.
Four more days passed, and now only An Cheng Dong was the one resolving the formations. An Bing Qing had done anything as she wanted to remain low key.
The sixth day came and her opportunity to slip away too. With the increase of complexity in the formations, An Cheng Dong had to come up with other ways to break them.
Three days ago he had switched from finding the right way to resolve them to superpose his own formations over the ones in the Forbidden Bamboo Forest to make them collapse from overload but that wasn't working this day.
Now, it was the time of using rough force. Of course, it had to be in a certain way to don't have a destructive backlash. Thus, An Xiao Ning joined An Chen Dong in finding the formation's weak points while An Yu Yong took part of the attacking force.
She wished to say it was strange but she had already expected not being called to take part in it.
An Bing Qing stood there, silently watching all the arrangements from a safe standing.
The air began to tense, and without including her and the duo that was busy directed them, all the others circulated their energy and lashed their techniques as they had been told.
Loud booms and crashes were heard, and An Bing Qing finally smirked after all these days. She put to work her agility skill and swiftly left the place. She had slipped away once again.
'Eldest brother, I'm doing these for the family, ok', she said in her mind, trying to lessen the little guilty she felt.
Because on the route they took they didn't find more token cards, she decided to change directions. She was going to look around the place she already was familiar with.
'Though the lake isn't that deep in the forest, it is out of the reach of many. And it also seems to be a good place to hide something', she thought as she surveyed with her soul her surroundings, she had spread her soul sense but not much, only till her vision could reach. She didn't want her soul sense to be found out; it was dim though as there were little geniuses that had reached the Soul Seed level before thirty but it was better to be cautious.
But that wariness was forgotten once she didn't find any token card. She expanded it bit by bit as time passed, and she covered more distance in some couple of hours than the one in the past six days; she didn't have to break her head with those formations, after all.
She was at half a kilometre from reaching the lake but what she feared happened and she didn't notice it until it was late.
Suddenly someone came behind her and a strong arm surrounded her thin waist; and before she could make a sound, a hand covered her mouth.
She was about to struggle but the familiarity of the aroma it wafted to her, made her freeze, allowing the person behind to take her without a problem to where the green bamboos grew thick.