Chapter 80

"Then, the three of you will be responsible for exploring this stone door." Guan Qiu pointed at the group led by Ding Qi and spoke to the stone door on his left.

After Ding Qi and the others nodded in agreement, they walked towards the stone door. Once Ding Qi and his two companions opened the stone door and entered the passage behind it, turning a corner, they quickly disappeared from sight.

After Ding Qi and the others left, Guan Qiu continued to arrange the other members of the Qingyun Sect. These people, following Guan Qiu's instructions, formed their own groups, opened the stone doors, entered the passages, and after a few turns, also disappeared like Ding Qi, their figures vanishing around the bends.

However, when Guan Qiu arranged for Vice-Patriarch Sha, an unexpected situation arose.

Vice-Patriarch Sha's face was filled with anger, and he deliberately seemed to want to oppose Elder Guan's arrangements. In a fit of pique, he moved in the opposite direction of the assigned path, opened the stone door, and entered with a look of fury, quickly disappearing down the corridor behind the stone door.

Elder Guan shook his head at Vice-Patriarch Sha's deliberate opposition to his arrangements.

Ever since Vice-Patriarch Sha left the Qingyun Sect and entered this underground palace, this was not the first time he had violated Guan Qiu's arrangements. Guan Qiu had become accustomed to it and could only shake his head helplessly each time.

As long as Vice-Patriarch Sha's actions did not affect the overall situation, Guan Qiu would turn a blind eye.

However, no one saw that the moment Vice-Patriarch Sha entered the passage and turned around, the look of anger on his face instantly disappeared, replaced by an expression of wild joy. If it weren't for Vice-Patriarch Sha's astonishing self-control, his trembling body from excitement might have given him away.

Vice-Patriarch Sha had not chosen this stone door out of pique; he had already made up his mind from the beginning to enter this passage. His earlier behavior was clearly just a ruse.

Vice-Patriarch Sha's goal was to prevent others from noticing that he had purposefully chosen this passage from the start, for which he had prepared meticulously.

"A bunch of fools, treating the remains of a cultivator as some legacy of the founding patriarch. Humph! This time, as long as I, Sha Yi..." Vice-Patriarch Sha thought with a mocking expression as he walked down the corridor behind the stone door.

The Qingyun Sect members left in the room naturally had no idea what Vice-Patriarch Sha was thinking.

After that, Wei Zhuo and Zhang Tao, whom Ding Qi knew, also entered the stone door and quickly disappeared.

After Guan Qiu arranged the last group of Qingyun Sect members to enter the stone doors, he, along with the last few people, stepped into a stone door and finally disappeared.

Now, all the Qingyun Sect members had entered the stone door passages. The originally crowded small room suddenly became empty.

A cold wind, coming from nowhere, swept through the room after everyone left. A thin layer of frost instantly formed, covering the entire room, making it extremely cold. The cold and eerie room, along with the dozen dark entrances connected to it, gave an inexplicable and bone-chilling feeling.

Subsequently, the stone doors in the room, under the influence of a mysterious force, creaked and slowly closed, sealing off the dark entrances and completely blocking the way back.

At this moment, Ding Qi was walking in the passage, with the two Qingyun Sect female disciples ahead.

Ding Qi observed the surroundings of the passage. The walls were quite smooth, and there were many turns. By now, Ding Qi had counted seven turns.

Ding Qi and the two others had been walking in the passage for quite some time, indicating that the passage was quite long. Originally, Ding Qi and the others had already descended dozens of feet underground in the first two halls. Now, after walking such a long downward passage, Ding Qi estimated that they were likely already over a hundred feet underground.

Ding Qi retracted his gaze from the passage and looked at the two Qingyun Sect female disciples ahead, his eyes gleaming, deep in thought.

After walking for some time, one of the female disciples, seeing that Ding Qi was not catching up, turned around and said to him, "Hurry up, or..."

Just as this rather attractive female disciple was about to say more, Ding Qi slightly bent his fingers, and two invisible finger winds shot out from his hand, heading towards the two female disciples in front. Before the two could react, the finger winds grazed their necks.

The two instantly felt their vision go dark and fainted without understanding what had happened.

After a while, Ding Qi passed by the two and glanced at them lying unconscious on the ground, ultimately shaking his head.

"The Qingyun Sect members seem to know very little about this underground palace. In that case, I can only use some means to explore on my own."

Since entering the underground palace, through the behavior of the Qingyun Sect members, Ding Qi had already determined that they knew almost nothing about the palace.

He realized that to find out about the先天功 (Xiantian Gong) in this underground palace, he would have to use some means to explore the palace's conditions on his own.

The two female disciples accompanying him were quite troublesome.

He could only let them remain unconscious here for a while to prevent them from hindering his next actions.

With this thought, Ding Qi looked at the two again, then stepped over them and continued down the passage.

... Just as Ding Qi finally decided to explore the underground palace alone, the other Qingyun Sect members in different passages were also slowly making their way deeper into the palace along the long and winding passages.

In the passage where Zhang Tao and his group were, they were also moving forward.

"Zhang Tao, you need to pay more attention to the conditions of this passage. Be as careful as possible. There might be traps in this passage, so we need to proceed cautiously to avoid injuring ourselves," the Qingyun Sect protector leading the group said with a slight smile, showing great concern for Zhang Tao, the most outstanding disciple of this generation.

The protector had been very considerate and caring towards him throughout the journey.

"Yes," Zhang Tao nodded absentmindedly from behind.

However, Zhang Tao then raised his head and looked at the protector and the other two disciples in his group, a cold and fierce expression flashing in his eyes for some reason.