113 The throne room. (1/2)

Li Yang and Fang Ying trailed a little behind the other groups as they passed through the open door and checked their surroundings. Stretching out beyond the door was a hallway that was a few tens of meters in width and height, going on for at least one or two hundred meters before ending in another door, this one engraved with an eagle and a fish both coiling around each other.

There were a few doors located along the walls of his hallway, but most of them were already opened, revealing somewhat small rooms containing only a few empty flowerpots, a single table, and two couches within. The walls in this hallway weren't nearly as damaged as the walls in the previous hall, but there were still a few long scratches that dug into the walls.

A few people cast sideways glances at Fang Ying to see what she was going to do. Fang Ying was the only one here who had reached the late stage of the Immortal Rebirth realm, she was the strongest one currently there. If she ended up taking an interest in something they went for, it would be hard for these groups to protect it. They heaved a stealthy sigh of relief when they saw that Fang Ying was more interested in chatting with Li Yang, only casually checking her surroundings.

The various groups quickly set out to open the various closed doors and inspecting the already opened rooms. Li Yang and Fang Ying calmly observed the various groups, occasionally casting a sideways glance into one of the rooms or entering them. Li Yang occasionally also cast a glance at the scratches on the walls, quietly conversing with Fang Ying and Langshen.

”These scratches should have been made using claws, not weapons. And looking at how high above the ground they are placed, the beast that made them should be rather big. It might be the beast responsible for the drops of blood on the scale and the feather. The previous hall should have been the waiting area for common guests, these rooms should be the waiting area for the more important guests. But they already seem to have been swept clean, there isn't even a single seed or speck of earth remaining.”

The rooms had circular flowerpots, but all of them were completely empty and had faint scratch marks on the edges, the one that left the long scratches on the walls might have also emptied the flowerpots. But why they might have done something like that, Li Yang and Fang Ying had no idea. Neither of them was really searching the area, they left that to Langshen, who could easily use his control over space to discover anything that might be hidden from plain sight.

There would occasionally be one or two small fights when people ended up arguing over who could take the couches or the pillows covering the couches, but no one was willing to start any large battles just yet. When they got closer to the closed door at the end of the hallway, only a few tens of meters away, Langshen stopped walking and used his nose to point at a certain scratch on the wall. Thanks to the fact that they were still trailing behind all the other groups, no one else saw Langshen's motion.

Li Yang and Fang Ying locked eyes for a short second before nonchalantly walking over to the scratch mark, casually inspecting it. But even after inspecting the entire scratch mark, they were unable to find anything strange about it. Fang Ying furrowed her brows and placed a finger against one end of the mark, a small amount of blood starting to cover the entire thing.

When the blood reached the halfway point of the mark, it slowed down for a short second. Fang Ying immediately stopped the blood, Li Yang stretching out his arm and placing his palm on the place where the blood had slowed down. He felt something tickle his palm when he placed it there, one of his eyebrows rising as he grabbed the thing he had touched and pulled back his arm.

He was now holding a small tuft of bloody fur, only visible thanks to the blood that Fang Ying had brought worth. He took one strand of the fur and traced it with his finger, stretching it out as far as he could. That one strand was almost 30 centimeters long and was completely invisible, save for the part that had been touched by the blood, only by using their Qi to do a thorough scan of the surroundings were they able to see it. Fang Ying snatched a bit of the fur and did the same as Li Yang, both of them looking at the fur with a sliver of amazement.

”Invisible fur, huh? Let's hope the beast that left this behind isn't still alive, that would make things quite troublesome.”

Demonic beasts who could become invisible were rather rare, they were also very troublesome and dangerous to fight. As for a Demonic beast that had naturally invisible fur like this? Neither Li Yang or Fang Ying had ever heard about anything like it, something that only served to further spark Li Yang's curiosity about this place. The two quickly put away the fur and continued to act nonchalantly, both of them activating their own respective tracking techniques to make sure that they weren't caught off guard.

The door at the end of the hallways was sealed up just like the previous one, a few people from each group stepping forward to figure out how the array that locked the door worked, slowly taking it apart by destroying the runes that controlled the array. The seal on this door wasn't as good as the one that had been present on the gate to the garden, it only took the groups half a day to break the array and push open the doors.