What is this?

Yu Qingqiu looked at the line of characters, his eyebrows slightly furrowed.

He naturally knew the story of "Cao Cao specially created the position of Grave Robbing Commissioner, who would uproot and expose all remains in his path," having caught cultivators who had fallen so low as to specifically steal from graves and rob burial artifacts. He was well aware that throughout ancient and modern times, many princes and generals worried about their tombs being looted, so they often hired extraordinary people to construct grand mausoleums underground, filled with countless mechanical traps.

But there was fresh, sticky ooze left inside this tunnel, which clearly meant it had been dug not long ago. How could it have been visited by tomb robbers?

"Feigning complexity and mystery."

Yu Qingqiu snorted coldly, bent down, and examined the ground closely. He noticed that among the three forks, the middle one seemed to have traces of disturbed soil which had been smoothed over again.

He stood up, tapped the side of the bamboo tube rhythmically with his finger, and the cluster of fireflies at the top of the bamboo tube immediately split in two. Half stayed at the front of the tube, while the other half detached from the tube, swirled in the air for a moment, and eventually flew into the middle fork.

No smug expression appeared on Yu Qingqiu's face. He held the bamboo tube with one hand and the longsword with the other, following the fireflies into the tunnel.

The passageway was dark and twisted, with sporadic drops of muddy water falling from time to time. The air was not as stale as one would imagine. If one listened carefully, faint whispers of wind could even be heard.

Twenty zhang, forty zhang...

Yu Qingqiu skimmed the ground with the tip of his foot, moving as quickly as a shooting star, his robe whipping in the air, silently noting the distances and angles of the passages he passed, gradually constructing a clear map of the tunnel structure in his mind, and correlating it to the surface, imagining which building in Lvzhou he was underneath.

THUD!

The tunnel ahead suddenly ended, and Yu Qingqiu stopped abruptly to avoid crashing into the wall.

A large door blocked the way.

It was called a door, but it was actually just a smooth stone block that completely sealed the tunnel. It was gray-white in color, cool to the touch, and incredibly slick, with no handle or keyhole—only a twisted, narrow crack running across the stone surface, serving as the seam.

Below the seam, a row of crooked, ugly small characters was inscribed:

"Grave Robbing Commissioner: Unite for life, divide for death. Three people are required to pass through this door."

In front of the door, the ground was covered with a stone floor connected to the stone wall.

Yu Qingqiu scanned up and down for a moment, finding no mechanism. So he took a half step back, his sword blade trembled furiously, emitting a high-frequency buzz, and a faint layer of cyan Sword Qi attached itself to the surface of the blade.

The little bugs emanating an orange glow seemed to sense danger, and they alighted one by one, crouching at the edge of the tunnel.

SHINK—

The sharp blade effortlessly penetrated the stone gate as if slicing through tofu with no resistance.

Just as Yu Qingqiu was about to cut a gap in the stone door to pass through, a loud rumble came from behind the door. The ground beneath his feet trembled violently, and mud and sand continuously fell from the ceiling of the tunnel as if it was about to collapse.

When the blade stopped its downward cut, the tunnel's impending collapse also abruptly ceased.

This door...

Yu Qingqiu's expression was gloomy as he stared intently at the stone door.

It seemed like someone had set up some kind of restriction here. If the stone door was damaged, the tunnel would collapse, burying the intruder under tons of earth and sand... just like in those ancient tombs.

He released the hilt of his sword and examined the stone door again, still finding no mechanism to open it.

...

After hesitating for a moment, Yu Qingqiu formed a blade hand and chopped at the soil bordering the stone door, attempting to bypass it by digging a narrow path to the other side.

High-level Martial Arts certainly had their benefits. With his Inner Strength enhancing his palm strikes, their efficiency was on par with an ordinary shovel, easily dislodging heaps of soil.

But the ground was damp and the mud filthy. In no time at all, Yu Qingqiu's white robe became so dirty it was unrecognizable, and he himself looked as if he had just crawled out of a coal mine.

One meter, two meters, three meters...

Yu Qingqiu dug along the side of the stone door, his expression changing from calm and collected to somewhat hesitant, then to gloomy and unsettled, and finally to twisted rage.

Ten meters already! How can the edge not be in sight? Just how wide is this stone?!

Yu Qingqiu took a deep breath, lowered his slightly trembling right palm, then raised his left and jabbed it into the mud above the stone wall.

Just as I thought... this stone isn't just wide and thick, it's also incredibly tall...

I just want to know who would be so bored as to place a huge rock here! Did they have nothing better to do?!

Yu Qingqiu retracted his arms in frustrated defeat, resignedly returned to the front of the stone door, paused for a moment, silently turned around, and walked back to the three-way intersection, entering the left passage.

This path is a dead end, but surely one of the other two will work?

「Ten minutes later」

Xing Qianhu returned again to the three-way intersection, his hair disheveled and body caked in mud, his frame trembling slightly with rage.

The remaining two... were also false paths with identical stone doors!

PHEW...

Yu Qingqiu slowly exhaled, tilted his face upwards, and let the dripping water from the ceiling splash onto his face.

Am I really going to be buried here today, beneath the nine springs?

"Grave Robbing Commissioner... unite to live, divide to die... three people are needed, three people..."

As if he had realized something, his eyes snapped open. He quickly ran to the stone door at the end of the middle path, stepped onto the stone floor, circulated his Inner Strength, and focused his breath, sinking it to his lower abdomen, making his body suddenly heavier, equal to the weight of three adults.

This action seemed to trigger some mechanism. A dull yet clear sound of a mechanical structure operating echoed from behind the stone wall. The seemingly indestructible stone wall split at its central seam and slowly slid open to both sides, revealing an even wider, dark tunnel from which the sound of howling wind echoed.

...

Not a hint of joy could be seen on Yu Qingqiu's face.

His intuition told him that, given the tricky nature of these mechanisms, the path ahead would likely be even more perilous and treacherous.

THUD, THUD, THUD.

The sound of boots treading on the muddy ground echoed through the tunnel, and beneath the orange-red glow of the fireflies, Yu Qingqiu once again arrived at another three-way intersection built in the same style.

This time, there were no words regarding the Grave Robbing Commissioner above the junction; instead, there were several lines of small characters.

"There is a man surnamed Iron, but he is naturally bald. What illness does he suffer from?

One: Seborrheic alopecia

Two: Seasonal alopecia

Three: Old Iron has no problem

Please choose the correct answer and enter the corresponding tunnel to reach the next level."

The corner of Yu Qingqiu's eye twitched. He understood each character individually, but when strung together, they seemed like gibberish.

Then the only option was to try each path.

Xing Qianhu silently entered the left tunnel. At its end stood a stone wall with a protruding stone button in the middle. On the button were the words, "Please press."

Only a fool would press it. Yu Qingqiu picked up a stone and, from ten meters away, hurled it at the button, hitting it dead center.

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