Chapter 1351 — No End

Fortunately, the jade pendant he carried had an automatic team-forming function: anyone Wei Zhao had accepted into his group within a certain range would send up an alarm the moment they ran into danger. So when Yu Xiaoke touched the stone door and Wei Zhao sensed no warning signal from the pendant, the tightness in his chest eased at once. He did not interfere with her, only stood coldly where he was.

Yu Xiaoke plainly had no idea there was no danger behind the stone door. As the others drew back, she pulled the door open and then shot backward at once, ducking into the passage beside it—the one they had taken by mistake the day before.

The stone door opened, but nothing stirred inside. No poison gas, no poisoned arrows, no monsters or demons such as they had imagined—only layers of age-old dust and a damp, musty smell swirling in the air.

"No problem here!" Old Hei swept his searchlight across the distance for a while, then said, "Someone got in here before us. There are spent arrows on the ground. The people ahead must have tripped the traps, so now that we have set them off a second time, there is nothing left to fear."

"So full of mystery. Didn't we already see that someone had gone in before?" Old Yu snorted. "Then why aren't we going in now?"

Old Hei nodded, then said to Yu Xiaoke, "You go first."

Yu Xiaoke felt a surge of gloom. This money was not easy to earn; she had come only to walk point, and if things went wrong she would be cannon fodder. But there was no help for it—if she wanted the money, she really did have to play the cannon fodder.

Wei Zhao, however, said nothing at all. Taking it as his own duty, he fell in behind Yu Xiaoke; if anything happened to her, he could shield her at once.

Mighty General followed behind Wei Zhao, and after him came Qiu Lingshan and Chen Yutian.

As for Wei Zhao taking the lead, Old Hei naturally had nothing to say. The farther forward one walked, the more dangerous it became; better to follow honestly at the rear. On their earlier tomb raids they had gone at most as far as the entrance to the underground palace, and everything inside that palace was unknown.

Once they entered the passage into the underground palace, the air grew noticeably thinner, which had something to do with the stone door having been shut tight before. Wei Zhao and the others were cultivators and were unaffected, but Old Hei and James had prepared oxygen tanks against any contingency.

The passage in the underground palace was just as it had been when they first entered—rugged and winding, now seeming to climb, now seeming to descend, now turning left, now right. Only the forked paths of before were gone, which set the hearts of the group a little at ease; at least there was no chance of going astray.

The one thing that left them uneasy was this: the passage seemed to have no end. Though they walked with care, wary of forks and traps, their pace was not slow, since their numbers were few. Yet after more than an hour they had seen not the slightest sign of an exit.

"What is going on? Why are we still not there after walking so long?" Old Yu's voice rose in inquiry.

"This passage must wind back and forth in an S shape, spiraling downward as it goes," Yu Xiaoke explained. "By any normal reckoning, at our walking speed we should have reached the foot of the mountain by now. That we haven't means the passage was deliberately built this way, to plant a kind of psychological fear in people." To those who robbed tombs often, this was nothing rare. Some ancient tombs were built as bizarrely as possible; the more they astonished a person, the safer they were.

Old Yu nodded. "In that case, let us walk faster! Dawdling like this, when will we ever reach the end?"

"If you think it's too slow, go up front and lead the way yourself. Otherwise, shut up!" Wei Zhao turned his head, glanced at Old Yu, and spoke coldly.

"You—" Old Yu choked with anger. He would have liked to walk in front, but who knew whether there was danger there? Earth-rank expert though he was, every trade has its own mountain to cross; if he failed to react in time and died in the tomb just like that, would that not be a crushing loss?

Besides, if he had dared to act on his own, he would never have sought out tomb raiders like Wei Zhao. He could have robbed the tomb himself first and spared himself the trouble of dividing the spoils.

"Old Yu, care brings no great error. Since we are already inside, reaching the underground palace is only a matter of time. There's no need to hurry this one moment..." Old Hei said as well.

Old Yu said no more, and the group walked on along the long corridor...

After roughly another ten kilometers, Old Hei and James began to tire. Yu Xiaoke, though no Yellow-rank expert, had first-rate lightness skill and thought nothing of walking farther; and Wei Zhao, Qiu Lingshan, Chen Yutian, and even Mighty General were all cultivators, so naturally they felt no fatigue.

"This is about enough—how about we rest here a while before going on?" Old Hei really could not hold out much longer; he wanted to sit a while, eat something, drink some water.

"You useless thing, tired after just a couple of steps?" Old Yu was impatient by nature, and seeing Old Hei want to rest displeased him.

Wei Zhao truly wondered how a creature like this had trained his temperament up to Earth rank—how had he not gone mad from qi deviation and died? His luck was truly good! On the path of cultivation, one must have a steady temperament; too much craving for quick success can bring on qi deviation.

"Then we'll rest a while." Wei Zhao paid no attention to what Old Yu said and simply stopped, about to sit down cross-legged.

"..." Old Yu was so angry it left him helpless. He gave a snort and could only stop as well.

Old Hei and James cast Wei Zhao a somewhat grateful look—but whether the gratitude was real or feigned, only they themselves knew.

This rest stretched on until evening came in a blink. After the group had eaten, it was nearly time to sleep, and naturally they could not go on. Wei Zhao was quite content: he simply sat cross-legged and prepared to rest. Old Yu was furious enough to want to curse—you're a Mystic-rank expert, what the hell do you need sleep for? You could hold out for days without it. Isn't this just screwing everyone over?

If Wei Zhao would not walk, no one could walk; and Old Hei and James wanted to walk even less. Both were ordinary men, and at night they naturally had to rest.

There was nothing Old Yu could do but sit down on the ground and begin cultivating. Though the spiritual energy in the ancient tomb was fairly abundant, it still fell short of the place where the hidden Yu family dwelled, so Old Yu had no great desire to cultivate here...

The night outside was quiet enough; the night inside the ancient tomb was terrifyingly silent. To conserve energy, Old Hei could only switch off the searchlight, and in an instant all of them were plunged into darkness.

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