Spirit Palace Great Hall

"Zhang Qiling, at our pace, about how much longer until we reach the Bronze Door?"

Yu Zhi and Zhang Qiling entered a noticeably spacious hall in the underground palace-or perhaps "plaza" would have been a better word. Compared with an ordinary side chamber, it was wide open, covering roughly a hundred square meters and standing more than ten meters high.

Looking up at the ceiling, they could clearly see murals: intricate images and writing pieced together into a constantly repeating pattern.

Yu Zhi wasn't learned enough to understand what they meant. He simply thought the place was very friendly to people with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Whether the patterns or the furnishings, everything was symmetrical.

"Two days."

"Then, in the places we've passed through, would the mechanisms leave traces when they were triggered?"

"Yes, but they wouldn't be obvious."

"When do you think you'll go in? Will it be August seventeenth?" Yu Zhi asked.

Zhang Qiling shook his head. "Why do you think it'll be August seventeenth? I can't say exactly which day, but this time it definitely won't be the August seventeenth you mentioned. It should be more than ten days from now. The times I go in and come out actually change every time." Then he paused briefly, as though checking something.

"The book didn't give an exact date."

Yu Zhi explained, "Ahem, here's the thing. On August seventeenth of that year, that person went through the door, and then Fatty and Wu Xie agreed to pick him up ten years later. In our world-not in the book-a lot of people who liked the book went to Changbai Mountain of their own accord to bring him home. But everyone knew it was fake, that it was fiction. Anyway, it's a little complicated. Can you make sense of it?"

"Did you go?" Zhang Qiling knew how to get to the heart of the matter.

Yu Zhi lowered his head and said quietly,

"Yeah, I did."

There was really nothing he couldn't say about it, but he was still embarrassed with the man himself right in front of him, even if that man was now his boyfriend.

"Mm. Thank you."

Zhang Qiling lifted Yu Zhi's hand to his lips and kissed it.

"Oh, it was really nothing. Tens of thousands of people went that day," Yu Zhi said, unconcerned.

"But you're the only one who came to my side and did so much for me."

Zhang Qiling was deeply moved. Each unexpected discovery let him feel Yu Zhi's love for him.

"Zhang Qiling, I'm not as good as you think. I'm selfish too. When I first got here, I thought about standing by and watching your life unfold."

Yu Zhi didn't want to deceive Zhang Qiling, so he confessed in a spirit of reckless abandon.

"Then thank you, A Li, for being willing to step into my life in the end. Everything you've done has been with me in mind, always putting me first. I know that, A Li. Everyone has selfishness in them, but you only say you're selfish. Judge a person by their deeds, not their heart!" Zhang Qiling stroked his hair.

Yu Zhi was truly moved. So his bright moon understood everything. Those extra decades he'd lived hadn't been for nothing! This must be the charm of an older man!

"Um, let's hide in a bit and let those Nine Gates people go first. No matter what they want, I don't want them to get it. We can just watch them die. I think they should die pretty quickly, and then we'll go on. If they take too long, we won't bother with them and will head straight for the Bronze Door."

Yu Zhi smiled wickedly. If it weren't for the fact that cultivators' cultivation would be affected by deliberately and maliciously killing mortals, he wouldn't have minded helping them return to heaven and earth.

"All right."

Zhang Qiling answered, then rubbed Yu Zhi's face. "Don't make such a strange expression."

"Don't you think my smile just now was wickedly charming?" As he spoke, he made the same wicked smile again.

Zhang Qiling looked at him, then his lips moved. He seemed to be considering how to put it in a way that would satisfy Yu Zhi, but after a long while, he still couldn't squeeze out a single word.

"Hahahaha, I'm teasing you. Where do you think would be a good place for us to hide?" Yu Zhi let him off the hook.

Zhang Qiling breathed a sigh of relief. He suddenly felt that this was harder than fighting ten Blood Corpses. Looking at that smile, which had nothing wickedly charming about it, he really couldn't think of a suitable word. What he did have was a determination to give Blind Man a sound beating when they got back. It was all his fault for being a bad influence on Yu Zhi.

"Over there. They won't notice us." Zhang Qiling led him back a little way, out of the palace and to the corner they had just passed, then took him along as he leaped up.

Only then did Yu Zhi notice a blind spot above them that couldn't be seen from below. It was dark and safe, with direct access to the great hall. Those people definitely wouldn't notice it.

The two of them hadn't waited long before they heard footsteps. The others had finally arrived.

Wu Sansheng's group had some skills of their own, as befitted members of the Nine Gates' second generation who could inherit the "family business." Chen Wenjin quickly discovered the mechanism for the iron chains at the cliff, and they followed the chains safely across. The journey had been extremely perilous, but fortunately, none of them were freeloaders, and they had all made it through with a fright but no harm.

Xie Lianhuan said, "Huo Ling, check the map Fo Ye gave us. Is the Spirit Palace Great Hall up ahead? How much farther is it to where we're going?"

"Still a long way. After this Spirit Palace Great Hall, we'll have to pass through an intermediate level, the Corpse Storage Pavilion, another intermediate level, and a volcanic crater before we reach the inner perimeter of the mausoleum. The inner perimeter was built like a small palace complex, with a moat and sacrificial burial pits. Only after those can we reach the inner hall. Fo Ye said the thing is in there."

Hearing the people below, Yu Zhi curled his lip. He had thought Zhang Qishan wanted the Ultimate behind the Bronze Door, but it turned out he only wanted a Corpse Bug Pill. In the end, there was a ninety-nine percent chance this group hadn't brought a Corpse Bug Pill back, or Zhang Qishan wouldn't have died.

These people really couldn't do anything right. A sudden idea struck him: should he give them a hand and let them get it to feed to Zhang Qishan? Having him live on as something neither human nor ghost would be more satisfying than letting him die just like that. The moment the idea took shape, he was wildly tempted.

Yu Zhi always forgot that he knew it was a Corpse Bug Pill because he had a god's-eye view. At this point, the Xisha Archaeological Team hadn't yet been fed Corpse Bug Pills or turned into Forbidden Women, so it was understandable that Zhang Qishan and the others still thought they were Longevity Pills.

"Then we need to hurry. Fo Ye's doctor said he has a little over a month left at most," Wu Sansheng said.

The group quickly entered the Spirit Palace Great Hall and began searching for mechanisms and hidden passages. The place was empty, with no way forward, so there had to be a mechanism.

Yu Zhi and Zhang Qiling listened as the group searched for more than half an hour without finding anything. Yu Zhi tugged on Zhang Qiling and took him into the System Space.

There was no telling when those people would find it. The two of them couldn't stay crouched up there forever, so they might as well go into the space and rest for a while.

Yu Zhi hadn't been inside for more than a month. The house there still felt very dear to both of them. After all, it was the love nest where they had lived for nearly two years in the Zhang Family's ancestral grounds, the place where they had confessed their feelings to each other.