Once the Five Elements Cycle-Returning Formation was broken, the stone hall's bronze doors had no other protection. Jin Xuan stepped forward and gave them a gentle push.
With a long creak, the doors swung inward, and everyone filed inside.
Inside the stone hall was a chamber roughly a hundred feet wide, with seven or eight smaller side chambers around its edges. The stone doors of half those chambers stood ajar.
Unlike the plain exterior, the main chamber was resplendent with gold and jade. Gold inlays and embedded jade adorned the surrounding walls, bathing the entire space in glittering light.
However, once they saw the chamber's condition clearly, their hearts sank.
The interior was a complete shambles. Seven or eight stone pillars carved with dragons and phoenixes, which should have stood around the chamber, had been reduced to broken remnants scattered haphazardly across the floor. Even several layers of the stone paving had been torn up.
It was obvious that a great battle had taken place here.
At the sight, they immediately scattered without consulting one another, each choosing a stone door and either pushing it open or cleaving it apart with a sword before going inside to search.
A short while later, they all returned to the main chamber with gloomy expressions.
"How could this happen? It's been picked clean! There's nothing here. All that effort getting in was wasted!" Pan Xu complained bitterly.
"Indeed, Fellow Daoist Jin. Is this the Ancient Cultivator's cave abode you told us about?" Cheng Yan asked in frustration.
"Don't be impatient, everyone. If I'm not mistaken, there should be a passage leading elsewhere! Let's look for it." Although Jin Xuan was disappointed too, he spoke with conviction.
With no other choice, the others could only trust his words and begin searching everywhere.
Before long,