Chapter 88

After pushing open the stone door, Ding Qi was taken aback. He had not expected to find people behind the stone door.

Seeing the people in the hall, including Zuo Zongmen, all looking at him, the gloomy expression on his face instantly disappeared. However, when Ding Qi saw the dozen or so stone doors evenly distributed on the walls of the hall and the one he had just opened, he immediately understood what was going on.

He recalled the words of the Qian Law Enforcer before entering the mechanism passage.

"Who would have thought that in the end, I would run into these Qingyun Sect people," Ding Qi thought to himself strangely as he stepped out of the stone door and walked towards the hall.

When Zuo Zongmen and the others saw that the person who came out of the stone door was Ding Qi and that he was alone, they already understood what had happened. The two Qingyun Sect female disciples who had entered the mechanism passage with Ding Qi were clearly already lost inside. What surprised them somewhat was that Ding Qi, who they knew was not a martial arts practitioner and had no experience in the world of martial arts, had managed to come out of the mechanism passage by luck.

The fact that Ding Qi, rather than a disciple of the sect, had come out of the mechanism passage, also disappointed several Qingyun Sect leaders.

However, Zuo Zongmen and the others clearly only thought that Ding Qi had been lucky enough to survive the mechanism passage and did not think much more about it. Even after Ding Qi entered the hall, Zuo Zongmen did not ask him about his experiences in the mechanism passage, as he had done with the other Qingyun Sect disciples.

After Zuo Zongmen and the others had questioned the several teams of Qingyun Sect people, they already had a complete understanding of the situation. Ding Qi's team was no different.

After entering the hall, Ding Qi learned from the intermittent conversations of the Qingyun Sect disciples gathered nearby about their encounters, understanding that they had also faced traps and suffered heavy casualties.

Out of the dozen or so teams that had set out, only six teams, including his, had gathered. The fate of the remaining teams was unknown.

"These two actually made it through safely; it seems their luck is quite good," Ding Qi thought to himself as he shifted his gaze from the Qingyun Sect disciples.

Ding Qi had just seen Wei Zhuo and the young lady in the group of Qingyun Sect disciples who had safely come out of the mechanism passage. However, after a brief moment of attention, he withdrew his gaze and quietly sat in a corner of the hall, frowning slightly, no longer concerned with other matters.

Since obtaining the Spirit Gathering Pills, Ding Qi had passed through several other halls. While searching these halls, he had initially been quite hopeful, thinking he might find other valuable items after the Spirit Gathering Pills.

However, to Ding Qi's great disappointment, he found no valuable items in the halls he had passed through.

During this time, to thoroughly search the underground palace, Ding Qi used the brocade handkerchief in his hand to cut through the walls of the underground palace more than ten times, connecting different areas to search everywhere.

Not long ago, when he used the handkerchief to open another passage and saw a stone door, he pushed it open and unexpectedly encountered Zuo Zongmen and the others.

Ding Qi originally thought that after his initial excavation, which involved cutting through more than ten walls and searching everywhere, he would not meet up with Zuo Zongmen and the Qingyun Sect people at the rendezvous point. However, he had inadvertently opened a mechanism passage and entered the current rendezvous hall.

Half an hour after Ding Qi entered the hall, another stone door among the dozen or so on the walls was opened. Elder Guan of the Qingyun Sect emerged from the stone door. The three remaining Qingyun Sect people in his team had all been lost in the traps within the passage.

However, what Ding Qi found strange was that after seeing Elder Guan emerge from the stone door, Zuo Zongmen's expression seemed somewhat odd.

Zuo Zongmen's odd expression was fleeting, and if Ding Qi's eyes were not sharp enough, he would have suspected it was just his imagination.

An hour later, another Qingyun Sect Law Enforcer emerged from a stone door.

However, just as this Law Enforcer pushed open the stone door and before the attention of the people in the hall was drawn to him, another event occurred that attracted everyone's attention.

As the new Law Enforcer pushed open the stone door, a loud rumbling sound suddenly echoed in the hall.

Under the rumbling sound, everyone instinctively turned their gaze towards the source of the sound. These Qingyun Sect people, who had experienced the extremely dangerous and lethal traps in the mechanism passage, were already highly alert to any abnormalities.

However, after seeing what had happened, the Qingyun Sect people breathed a sigh of relief. Even many of the Qingyun Sect people who had been sighing since coming out of the mechanism passage showed a rare look of joy.

In the distance from Ding Qi, with the rumbling sound in the hall, a stone door was slowly opening. This stone door, at first glance, did not seem different from the dozen or so stone doors evenly distributed on the surrounding walls. However, the reason this stone door produced such a loud sound was that it was extremely thick, about two zhang (about 6 meters) thick.

Now, under the influence of some mechanism, the stone door was slowly opening, revealing a space behind it that was even larger than the hall they were currently in.

This stone door appeared to be the entrance to the next place.

Many Qingyun Sect people, realizing this, showed a look of joy. The opening of the door meant they were one step closer to leaving this mysterious underground palace.

Regarding the mysterious opening of the door, Zuo Zongmen and the others did not rashly enter but turned their gaze to the Qian Law Enforcer, who was most knowledgeable about mechanisms.

"Based on the current situation, the stone door that just opened should indeed be the passage to the next place. It seems that the mechanism passage does not need to be fully traversed; only half of it needs to be passed to open the next location," the Qian Law Enforcer said after a moment of contemplation.

With the Qian Law Enforcer's judgment, Zuo Zongmen and the others finally decided to enter the stone door passage. As for whether there were any other Qingyun Sect people still alive in the mechanism passage who had not yet arrived, Zuo Zongmen and the others were not worried.

If there were indeed other survivors in the mechanism passage and they had passed through it, they would naturally discover the hall behind this stone door upon entering and follow them in.

Next, everyone entered the hall behind the stone door one after another.

However, when the Qingyun Sect people truly passed through the stone door and entered the hall behind it, and saw the situation inside, everyone's face instantly changed.

Not only the Qingyun Sect people, but Ding Qi also widened his eyes when he saw the scene before him.

The hall was empty, with no peculiar decorations. However, on both sides of the walls were things that made everyone shudder.

In front of them, dozens of human skeletons stood on both sides of the walls.

These dozens of terrifying skeletons were hung upside down on the walls, like lanterns.

A cold wind swept through the hall, and everyone involuntarily shivered.