"I'll stand guard. No one is to come near!" Just then, Ye Xiangyin came in with a dozen or so men.
"Sorry for the trouble, Deputy Stronghold Chief Ye," Tang Wen said.
Sure enough, the moment Song Shan went out, she headed straight for Sun Hongqing and told him that Tang Wen was preparing to enter seclusion to force out the Gu.
Sun Hongqing suspected nothing and simply told Song Shan to keep a close watch. The two even seized the time to tumble into bed together before parting.
However, once the doors and windows were shut, Tang Wen's drug sent Song Shan into a deep sleep.
Ma Yao immediately got out of bed and activated the mechanism to move the large bed aside.
His disciple Zhang Xiaoru stood guard above, ready to sound the alarm at any moment, while Tang Wen and the others entered the underground passage.
They followed the stone steps down several hundred meters, then took out ropes and rappelled down, descending another five hundred meters or so before stopping.
Tang Wen discovered that there was actually an underground river below. It was not wide, only thirty or forty meters across, and a huge cavern lay on one side.
Ma Yao lit several oil jars on the stone walls, and the cavern immediately brightened.
At once, everyone's gaze fixed on a tree inside.
There was nothing particularly distinctive about the tree. It was only ten feet tall and occupied twenty-odd square meters, with leaves somewhat like those of a Chinese bayberry tree.
Red fruits grew amid its foliage, looking rather like little tomatoes only a finger thick.
"So many?" Even Feng Jiuxue was startled.
She had eaten Little Vermilion Fruits before, but only a few. This was her first time seeing an entire tree laden with