He Mingyuan spoke first. "Look at the distribution of these Treasure Pavilions. Some areas seem denser than others. We can't use a south-pointing compass to determine our bearings here, but we can assign north, south, east, and west based on this map of the Treasure Pavilions. Let's use Void Sage Fang's starting location as our reference and designate the sole exit from that square hall as north. Then we can see that Void Sage Fang was south of the center of our map, but not at its southernmost point, because my location in the southeast was farther south..."
The four then discussed the matter and soon discovered that the outer portions of the map had fewer Treasure Pavilions, and those pavilions contained fewer ancient corpses. Toward the center, however, both the Treasure Pavilions and the ancient corpses within them grew more numerous.
Based on the distribution of the Treasure Pavilions, the four Great Scholars soon decided to continue northwest. That direction held the most Treasure Pavilions and was also the likeliest place to find a passage to the second level.
Having settled on a direction, the four continued on their way. Whenever they encountered a dead end, they immediately turned back and resumed traveling in their chosen direction.
Along the way, all four freely shared their experiences. The other three spoke first, then waited for Fang Yun to recount his. Their exclamations of amazement never ceased throughout the journey; none had imagined that Fang Yun had been through so much.
Although Fang Yun concealed certain matters, he did not do so out of selfish motives. Taking Demon Barbarians as disciples, for instance, was something he absolutely could not reveal to anyone, except perhaps Wang Jinglong or the Western Sage, who oversaw affairs concerning the Demon Realm.
After they had traveled