Qian Wanyu listened carefully but heard nothing at all. She shook her head. "Why? Did you hear something?"
"Seventh Sister, listen closely."
Dongfang Minghui even turned sideways, her expression grave as she pressed her ear against the wall to listen.
Qian Wanyu extended her Spiritual Power but still heard nothing. Ninth Sister's solemn expression, however, gave her a fright.
"It sounds like dripping water, but it's strange. Why do I feel like it's getting closer?"
Even as she spoke, a chill ran through her. Could some bizarre living creature also be locked inside the Blood Fiend Alliance's stone chambers?
"Come on. Stay close to me."
Qian Wanyu took her hand out of habit and held the torch in her left. After a few steps, she stopped.
"Seventh Sister?" Dongfang Minghui gave her a puzzled look.
"The floor here is different."
The path before them was paved with square tiles that stretched quite a distance.
Dongfang Minghui took the torch from The Female Lead and crouched to examine the path. The paving here was slightly darker, but in this pitch-black passage, the difference was impossible to spot without looking closely.
She counted nine squares across and nine down, eighty-one in total.
"Could this be a Nine Palaces Grid?"
Dongfang Minghui scratched her head. She remembered studying this in college, but the eighty-one-square grid before her was the hardest kind of all. She remembered that its creator was a genius.
Qian Wanyu returned to where they had been standing, picked up a few small pebbles, and tossed them onto the squares in the middle. The pebbles clattered to the floor, but nothing unusual happened.
Qian Wanyu stepped forward, but before her foot landed, Dongfang Minghui wrapped her arms around her leg from where she crouched. "Seventh Sister, don't move yet."
The Nine