"Stop!"
Upon reaching the stretch of passage in the Chiwang Tomb covered in eggs like mutated tumors, the Jiazi Army soldiers halted abruptly.
"Commander, judging by the situation, Yu Huatian has already cleared this passage... though I don't know what they burned." A soldier who had scouted ahead hurried back. "We found no Brocade Guard corpses up ahead, and almost no signs of fighting."
"It seems the Brocade Guards passed through here very quickly," the man dressed as a scholar mused. "We should be close to catching them."
Yang Ren considered this. "Did you find anything else?"
"The passage was burned black," the soldier replied. "Almost nothing useful was left."
Yang Ren nodded, then led his soldiers swiftly through the scorched passage, heading straight into the depths of the Chiwang Tomb.
Before long, however, the Jiazi Army commander noticed something amiss—beyond the scorched area, there were scarcely any traces of the White Steel Brocade Guard.
"What's going on? There were plenty of people in their party. They couldn't have left no trace at all..."
Yet there was only one straight path ahead, unless everyone had vanished into thin air—which was clearly impossible.
"Let's return to where we were," the scholarly man said with a frown. "Something's wrong there!"
"Wait." Yang Ren raised a hand, signaling for silence. "There's a sound... something's approaching!"
His gaze sharpened, and he shouted, "On guard!"
These were battle-hardened soldiers who had fought far and wide across the Beimang Ghost Domain. At their commander's order, the Jiazi Army soldiers moved in unison, fully alert.
Yang Ren whipped out his weapon—a long saber.
With a shake, the saber split into dozens of blade segments. Linked together, they made the great saber look like a razor-sharp whip.
"Here it comes." Yang Ren lashed his blade forward.
The whip-saber