Walker Of The Worlds

Chapter 2655  Pickpocket

Observing the people of Ram Orchard City, Lin Mu felt a strange sense of detachment. Perhaps it was because he had never had the luxury of a carefree youth like these cultivators, or perhaps it was because, for the first time in a long while, he was seeing people younger than himself. Most of his recent encounters had been with ancient beings and powerful immortals.

'How old am I now?' Lin Mu suddenly pondered. 'Sixty-three… no, sixty-four. I think I turned sixty-four while we were still in the middle of teleporting.'

Time had become a blur, and keeping track of his own age seemed like an afterthought.

THUD.

Just as he was lost in thought, someone bumped into him.

"Sorry!" It turned out to be a teenager.

Lin Mu tilted his head in confusion and watched as the teenager ran away. He stopped in the middle of the road and touched his waist.

"Huh… did he try to pickpocket me?" Lin Mu wondered.

A few hundred meters away, the teenager darted into a narrow alley and hid behind a large basket before opening an old, dirty bag attached to his waist.

"Let's see how the harvest is this time." The boy muttered.

It was his daily 'job' to nab some money from unaware people in the market. Of course, he was no fool and only targeted those who were weak. There was no way he would try to steal from an Immortal Cultivator, so he kept to the weaker Spirit Cultivators.

It was usually easy for him to spot them just by observing the kind of robes they wore. If they were simple and had no clan crests or markings, he would go for them. If they were particularly well-made or had extensive embroidery, he would avoid them, as they could belong to someone with a strong backing.

There was no lack of such targets in the market, especially among the children of the various clans of Ram Orchard City who had yet to reach the Nascent Soul realm. They were perfect prey—either from lower-ranking branches of their clans or from well-off but non-influential families.

Considering their status, they wouldn't wear flashy robes. And even if he was caught, he had plenty of means to escape. He had judged Lin Mu the same way, as the man wore plain black and white robes with no designs or clan crests. Not to mention, his robes didn't even seem to be Spirit or Immortal garments, having no qi fluctuations.

Even Lin Mu himself exuded no detectable qi fluctuations. His humble demeanor made him an ideal target.

The boy's preferred tactic was to steal pouches and slip them into his own old bag so that people wouldn't notice. Young Spirit Cultivators often had a sense of vanity and would hang their pouches by their waists to flaunt their wealth.

These pouches, even when empty, were valuable—especially if they were Spatial Storage Pouches. Though many still used ordinary pouches simply because they liked to hear the clinking of their money as they walked.

Stronger cultivators, however, stored their valuables in more secure Spatial Storage tools like rings or bracelets, which were far harder to steal. Pouches were the lowest-tier storage tool, making them an easy mark.

The boy didn't even care if the pouches had formations preventing unauthorized access. That only made them more valuable. He didn't need to open them himself; he could simply sell them whole to those who could and take a cut of the profits.

And in the rare case that a pouch was unprotected, it meant an even bigger fortune for him, since he could directly access its contents.

"Hehe, this bag looks nice." The boy grinned, pulling out a white cloth bag with a simple drawstring closure.

He didn't mind its light weight—many Spatial Storage Pouches had weight-reduction formations that made them nearly weightless.

The boy carefully inspected the pouch from all sides for any inscriptions before using his spirit sense to probe it. But the moment he did—

Poof.

The cloth bag simply disappeared into thin air.

"What the!?" The boy was taken aback.

He stared at the empty space in his hands, then at the ground, as if expecting the bag to reappear.

"It was just in my hand." He muttered. "Did it have a Spatial Return Formation on it?"

He had heard of such formations but had never encountered one in real life. A high-grade security measure, a Spatial Return Formation prevented theft by teleporting the storage tool back to its rightful owner. Even among high-grade Spatial Storage tools like rings and bracelets, these formations were rare, as their application required the combined expertise of a Grandmaster Formation Master and an Immortal Tool Refiner.

But this didn't make sense. To the boy, Lin Mu had looked like a common Spirit Realm cultivator. Someone like that shouldn't own such an expensive and complex artifact.

Only the wealthy elite or nobles would possess something like that. And those types never wore plain robes; they enjoyed flaunting their status.

Of course, the boy had no idea who Lin Mu really was, nor did he realize that the bag he had stolen was nothing more than an illusion created by the Silver Mirage Circlet.

Lin Mu's entire getup was an illusion, and when the bag was taken too far from him, the illusion simply faded away.

But the boy was in for an even greater shock than the sudden disappearance of the bag.

"So you really did try to pickpocket me."

A voice came from behind him.

The boy froze, his blood running cold.

Slowly, he turned around, dreading what he might see.

There stood the man in simple black and white robes, the same person whom he had just stolen from. Not only that, but when he gazed at the man's waist, he saw the same white cloth bag hanging there.

"It really was a Spatial Return Formation?" The boy muttered in disbelief. 'Just whom did I steal from?' He thought with utter horror.