The middle-aged man surnamed Qian was the first to step inside, with Chen Changming, Li Houhai, and the others filing in after him.
As he passed through the watery curtain of light, Chen Changming felt a warm, gentle force envelop him for an instant, as though he had crossed an invisible barrier.
Then his view suddenly opened up—he was already standing in a spacious secret chamber.
The chamber's four walls were built of bluestone, empty and immaculate. The floor was covered in intricate, ancient formation patterns, and at its center rested a teleportation formation over ten feet wide.
The middle-aged man surnamed Qian stopped and turned around, pointing at the teleportation formation ahead as he explained to Chen Changming, "This is the outermost teleportation formation, and also the Medicine Sect's ninth-level teleportation formation. Once activated, it will send us to the location of the eighth-level formation. The Medicine Sect headquarters has nine levels of teleportation formations, advancing one level at a time. Each level requires a token of different authority to activate. The deeper we go, the closer we get to the heart of the headquarters."
Chen Changming could not help but give a wry smile. "The Medicine Sect truly carries caution to the extreme."
"It can't be helped. Our Medicine Sect has always been this way."
The middle-aged man surnamed Qian spread his hands with a smile, his expression carrying both pride and helplessness. He continued, "Our Medicine Sect has many ninth-level teleportation formations. Generally speaking, the locations of these ninth-level formations are fixed. But once we reach the fifth-level formations and below, their locations constantly change—every teleportation leads to a different destination. So even Fusion Realm elders like us have no idea where we will ultimately be sent, much less the exact location of the headquarters."
Chen Changming's