Chapter 94

When Ding Qi changed direction and entered the depths of the maze again, as he had anticipated, Zuo Yang and Guan Qiu were indeed transported to the outer area by the maze mechanism.

After a thorough search, the two quickly found the exit of the maze and left it.

After leaving the maze, Guan Qiu and Zuo Yang immediately fabricated a charge against Ding Qi among the Qingyun Sect members. They claimed that when they entered the maze earlier, they accidentally encountered Ding Qi and unexpectedly discovered that this outsider, who had entered the underground palace with them, was actually a spy sent by the Tianquan Sect.

This was clearly the charge that Guan Qiu and Zuo Yang had discussed and decided upon for Ding Qi.

After labeling Ding Qi as a spy of the Qingyun Sect, they ordered the Qingyun Sect members to search for Ding Qi while investigating the underground palace, and to kill him on sight.

Those who found and killed Ding Qi would be credited with a great achievement in the Qingyun Sect and would receive substantial rewards upon their return.

Although the Qingyun Sect members were surprised that Ding Qi, who had not been particularly noticeable, was a spy of the Tianquan Sect, no one doubted the judgment of Zuo Yang and Guan Qiu, who were highly respected in the Qingyun Sect.

After receiving the instructions from Zuo Yang, the leader of the Qingyun Sect, the members of the Qingyun Sect all took this matter to heart.

After completing this task, the Qingyun Sect members also began to prepare to explore the vast maze before them.

Qian, the protector who was highly skilled in mechanism techniques, was responsible for arranging the Qingyun Sect disciples to better explore the maze.

After the Qingyun Sect finished arranging the exploration of the maze, everyone quickly entered the maze and disappeared into it.

An hour later, a rumbling sound came from the hall at the end of the mechanism passage.

After the six teams of Qingyun Sect members, led by Zuo Yang, gathered for the night and then left one after another, a door in the mechanism passage opened again.

A figure gracefully walked out of the stone door.

This person was none other than Deputy Sect Leader Sha, who had just passed through the mechanism passage.

At this moment, Sha Yi looked quite disheveled. His clothes were torn in several places, and there were several bloodstains on his face.

After pushing open the stone door, Sha Yi cautiously surveyed the hall in front of him and paid close attention to the dozen stone doors on the walls. Finally, a look of understanding appeared on his face.

"This place is probably the convergence point of all the mechanism passages," Sha Yi judged in his mind.

Then, Sha Yi came out of the stone door and entered the hall. He tried to open several stone doors on the walls and, seeing that they led to smooth stone passages similar to the one he had just passed through, confirmed his thoughts.

Only then did Sha Yi let out a sigh of relief.

"Fortunately, I have the immortal insect in my hand; otherwise, it would have been difficult to navigate through the mechanism passage," Sha Yi thought, recalling the various traps he had encountered in the mechanism passage, a look of helplessness on his face.

Although Sha Yi's powers were considerable, the traps he encountered along the way were extremely dangerous. Many of the traps in the mechanism passage were neutralized by the immortal insect he had obtained. Even so, Sha Yi still emerged from the mechanism passage in a rather disheveled state.

The torn clothes and bloodstains on his face were the result of passing through several dangerous traps.

Looking at the hall that seemed to have been used, Sha Yi had a strange expression on his face: "Given the danger of this mechanism passage, I wonder how these people managed to pass through it before me..."

After seeing the hall, Sha Yi guessed that other members of the Qingyun Sect had already entered the hall and left, heading deeper into the underground palace.

This made Sha Yi, who was well aware of the dangers of the mechanism passage, feel somewhat strange, wondering how these people had managed to pass through the numerous traps so quickly.

In fact, Sha Yi did not know that the mechanism passage he had taken, although one of the dozen passages, was second only to the passage Ding Qi had taken in terms of the variety and danger of the traps.

After all, the passage Ding Qi had taken contained the precious spirit-gathering pill left by the cultivator surnamed Feng, while the passage Sha Yi had taken contained the immortal insect. The danger of the traps was far beyond that of the other passages.

Recalling his experience in the mechanism passage, Sha Yi shook his sleeve, and a small insect flew out, a look of joy on his face.

After taking one last look around the hall and focusing his gaze on the stone door that was clearly different from the others and led to the next exploration site, he stepped into the stone door...

After Deputy Sect Leader Sha left the hall, another hour passed, and a stone door in the hall opened again with a rumbling sound.

The person who opened the stone door was dressed in the attire of a Qingyun Sect disciple, but his clothes were spotless, unlike the disheveled Qingyun Sect members who had come out of the mechanism passage earlier.

This person looked at the empty hall and had a thoughtful expression on his face. He was the cultivator surnamed Feng.

After glancing around the hall, the cultivator surnamed Feng lost interest and did not linger there. He walked straight to the stone door leading to the next location.

However, when the cultivator surnamed Feng stepped into the stone door and entered the eerie hall with the skeletons, his face changed slightly at the sight.

The cultivator surnamed Feng looked coldly at the unexpected scene in the hall, his expression changing several times.

The dozens of corpses that had been hanging on the walls for two hundred years, as if lit by a heavenly lamp, had been completely destroyed. Each corpse had been cut into hundreds of pieces by some sharp object.

If it weren't for the fact that he had personally nailed the skeletons to the walls and arranged them two hundred years ago, even the cultivator surnamed Feng might not have been able to recognize what the skeletons in the hall originally looked like based on the current scene.

The skeletons in the hall had been destroyed too thoroughly.

Not a single bone in any of the corpses remained intact.

The current state of the hall was, of course, the result of Ding Qi's destruction when he left.

The cultivator surnamed Feng stood in the hall with a dark expression for a long time. Then he approached one of the skeleton remains and sighed deeply, "After I completed the construction of this underground palace, if I hadn't killed all of you, you might have revealed my secrets to the people of Lingzhushan, and I would have been finished. Besides, after my battle with the people of Lingzhushan, my physical body was damaged, and I needed to continuously take spirit-burning pills to burn my internal spiritual energy to barely extend my lifespan for a few years. I couldn't find suitable living sacrifices for the ghost spirit array I set up in this underground palace, so I had to use you..."

"Fortunately, the ghost spirit array is one of the few arrays in the cultivation world that does not cause any spiritual energy fluctuations. Otherwise, even in the barren lands of the Xia and Lu states, where there are no spirit veins and even low-level wandering cultivators rarely come, other cultivators might have accidentally discovered this underground palace and taken all the cultivation resources I hid here."