From bone collectors to the supreme ruler of humanity

Chapter 133 Entering the Underground Palace

The next day, just as dawn was breaking, Lin Yan climbed out of the cave.

The morning mist hadn't dissipated yet, and the entire valley was shrouded in white moisture. He stood at the cave entrance and stretched his muscles and bones, his joints cracking a few times. After refining the Crimson Essence Fruit last night, the soreness from the exhaustion of his true energy during his escape had completely disappeared. Now he could feel a surge of power flowing beneath his skin.

Lin Yan took out some dry rations from his bundle, ate a couple of bites, filled his water pouch, and looked up to check his direction.

Yesterday, when he was chased by the monsters, he panicked and ran blindly. Now it seems that he has actually reached the edge of the core area of ​​Cangwu Mountain. If he goes south for about 30 or 40 miles, he should be able to see the entrance to the underground palace.

He tied his bundle tightly and walked down the scree slope at the base of the cliff.

The further south you go, the sparser the surrounding trees become, while the number of stones on the ground increases, and the stones all show signs of being artificially chiseled, clearly indicating that this area was renovated a long time ago.

After walking for about an hour, Lin Yan stopped and looked down at the ground.

Three steps ahead, there was a footprint in the mud.

The footprints were fresh, with clear edges, and hadn't been blurred by the dew overnight; they must have been made just yesterday.

Lin Yan squatted down to take a look. The pattern on the sole of the shoe was the style of military boots commonly seen in the capital, not the pattern of straw sandals or animal skin boots worn by unaffiliated cultivators.

He looked up and saw more footprints on the ground ahead. He roughly counted them and found at least seven or eight people.

These people all came from the same direction, their footprints were evenly spaced, and their strides were consistent, clearly indicating that they were well-trained. These must be the remaining people in the attic.

I never expected that they would be able to get two or three teams together to act.

Lin Yan stood up, patted the mud off his hands, and followed the footprints.

After walking for the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, a sheer cliff appeared ahead. The cliff face was straight up and down, and it looked about thirty or forty feet deep. There were many low pines and vines growing on the cliff face, which covered most of the cliff face.

These footprints disappeared at the edge of the cliff, indicating that they must have gone down the cliff, which means that the entrance to the underground palace should be down there.

Lin Yan leaned down and looked down, and found a protruding rock platform in the middle of the cliff. Below the rock platform, he could vaguely see a dark opening on the cliff face.

He tightened his bundle, turned over, grabbed the vines on the cliff face, and began to climb down step by step.

The vine's roots were strong enough to support his weight. Lin Yan grabbed the vine with his right hand, dug his left hand into the crevice of the rock to steady himself, and used his feet to push against the protrusions on the cliff face, shuffling down step by step.

When he landed on the protruding rock platform, he discovered that the dark opening was a stone door.

The gate is located on the cliff face, about two zhang high and more than one zhang wide. The door frame is carved from a single large piece of bluestone, and eight large characters are engraved on the lintel.

Those who enter this gate are willing to risk their lives.

These characters are in ancient seal script, with deep, sharp strokes that exude a fierce and menacing aura.

The gate was originally sealed by two heavy stone doors, but when Lin Yan arrived, the stone doors had been smashed to pieces, and the broken stones were scattered on the rock platform.

Lin Yan bent down and picked up a piece of rubble to examine it. The chisel marks on the broken surface were very shallow, as if it had been shattered by a palm strike. This door must have been blasted open yesterday.

Lin Yan threw down the pebbles, drew his Zhenyue Blade and held it in his hand. He concealed his aura and quietly stepped into the stone gate.

The passageway behind the door was narrow and long, probably only wide enough for two people to walk side by side. Every few steps on the walls on both sides, there was a copper lamp embedded in it, the oil inside of which had dried up for who knows how many years and was covered with a thick layer of black grime.

Lin Yan took out a tinderbox from his pocket, blew on it, and continued to grope forward by the light.

He had only taken about ten steps in the passageway when he suddenly stepped on something.

He lowered the tinderbox and shone it down; the object at his feet was a crossbow bolt.

The crossbow bolt was half the length of a normal arrow, with a barbed arrowhead and a black coating on the tip. It shone brightly in the firelight, clearly not a legitimate item.

Lin Yan didn't reach out to touch it, but walked around the crossbow bolts and continued forward.

The stone walls on both sides of the passageway began to show a dense array of small holes. Most of the holes were empty, but some still had unfired crossbow bolts embedded in them. The number of crossbow bolts lying on the ground was also increasing, and several of them were still stained with blood, which had dried to a dark brown color.

After walking another twenty or so steps, the passageway came to a bend, and after turning the corner, the space suddenly opened up.

At the end of the passageway was a square stone chamber, about the size of the main hall of an ordinary house. The walls of the chamber were covered with small holes, and crossbow bolts, darts, and poisoned silver needles were scattered all over the floor. Some of the hidden weapons were embedded in the opposite wall, penetrating three inches into the stone, demonstrating their immense strength.

A person was lying face down on the ground in the very center of the stone chamber.

Lin Yan walked over with the tinder in hand and squatted down next to the man.

The man lying face down on the ground was in his thirties, wearing a dark blue bodysuit. Lin Yan used the scabbard to turn his head over and saw that his face was black and purple, his eyes were bulging out, and there was a ring of black blood at the corner of his mouth. He had clearly died of poisoning, and his death was quite gruesome.

The body did not yet smell of decay, indicating that the person had not been dead for long.

Lin Yan used his knife to cut open the man's clothes on his back and found that the man had been shot with three silver needles. The needles were almost embedded in the flesh, with only a tiny bit sticking out. He must have triggered a mechanism on the wall and been shot.

He rummaged through the man's pockets and found a brocade pouch containing several demon cores and several hundred taels of silver.

Lin Yan tucked the brocade pouch into his bosom, stood up, and examined the traces in the stone chamber once more.

Most of the hidden weapons on the ground were concentrated in the eastern half of the stone chamber. The man died right in the middle. Further west, the hidden weapons became sparse and fewer, indicating that they had forced their way through the traps. After triggering one round, a barrage of arrows rained down, and the man was unlucky enough to fall here.

There was a small door in the west wall, and several bloody footprints on the ground led in that direction.

Lin Yan peeked into the small door. Behind the door was another passageway, wider than the one he had come in through. There were a few hidden weapons on the ground, but no corpses were left behind.

He walked along the passageway in the dark, his footsteps barely audible, the light from his tinderbox illuminating only a three or four steps in front of him.

At the end of the passageway was another stone chamber, but this one was different from the previous one. There were no hidden weapon holes in the chamber, and the four walls were bare. A stone tablet stood directly in the direction of the passageway.

The stele is about ten feet tall, and its surface is covered with inscriptions. The inscriptions are somewhat blurred due to their age, but they can still be barely made out.

Lin Yan held up the tinderbox and looked closely. The inscription began with "Regulations for the Underground Palace of Emperor Wu of Liang". The following words were densely packed and described the layout of the underground palace. The first hall was the Hall of Ten Thousand Arrows Piercing the Heart, the second hall was the Hall of Burial for Concubines, the third hall was the Hall of Guardians of a Hundred Beasts, and the fourth hall was the Imperial Bedchamber.

The Hall of Ten Thousand Arrows Piercing the Heart should be the stone chamber we just saw.

The next hall should be the burial hall for the imperial concubines.

As for the Hall of a Hundred Beasts Guardian, you can tell from the name that it's definitely not a benevolent place.

Lin Yan finished reading the inscription and memorized several descriptions of the third hall. The Hall of Hundred Beasts Guardians housed mechanical beasts crafted using special refining techniques. These beasts were large and powerful, but they would not attack on their own. The mechanism would only be triggered when a person stepped on the blood jade stone slab inside the hall. If one wanted to pass through, one would have to force their way through.

He walked around the stone tablet and saw a large stone door behind it, half-open, with a sliver of light shining through the crack.

Lin Yan extinguished the fire extinguisher and squeezed through the crack in the door.