Chapter 586 - Hidden Staircase
"Brother Yuan, how is your body feeling? Is it still heating up?" Chu Liuxiang asked him.
He nodded and said, "Yes, it's still heating up, but it doesn't hurt, so it's nothing to be worried about."
"If you ask me, I think your body is reacting to something within this tomb. Maybe you actually belong to one of the Six Spiritual Families, and your body is telling you so." Chu Liuxiang chuckled as she joked.
"I belong to one of the Six Spiritual Families?" Yuan raised his eyebrows.
As ridiculous as that sounded, it wasn't completely impossible. As an orphan, his real background could be anything, and that includes one of the Six Spiritual Families.
However, they won't really know for certain until there is solid proof.
"Anyways, jokes aside, look at these weapons. Many of them are treasures." Chu Liuxiang said as she approached the weapon display cases.
"They give off the same aura as Spirit-grade weapons in Cultivation Online…" Yuan mumbled.
While Yuan and the others looked at the weapons, the grand elders scattered around the tomb to make sure there wasn't anything out of the ordinary.
About half an hour later, they all gathered again.
"Anything?"
"Nope."
"Nothing."
Yuan then asked, "Is this the only room in the tomb?"
"Yes. Although we don't have the layouts of this tomb, this is the only room that we know of. However, we do have speculations of a hidden room somewhere in this tomb. We just don't know where it is." Senior Wang said.
Senior Hong then spoke, "We believe there is a hidden room somewhere mostly because our founders' coffins cannot be found in this main room. They are probably in a hidden room, but we cannot find it no matter where to looked. Besides the entrance that is also an exit, there are no other paths in this tomb, and we don't dare to tear apart the tomb to find this hidden room without concrete evidence that it exists."
Yuan pondered for a moment. If what Chu Lixuaing said is true— that his body is reacting to something inside this tomb, maybe he can find it by following his body temperature.
"Do you mind if I look around for a bit?" Yuan then asked them.
"Go ahead. We'll also look around again just in case we missed anything."
Thus, Yuan and the others began walking around the room.
"The longer we stay here, the creepier it gets…" Meixiu sighed.
"Are you not good with these kinds of things?" Yuan asked her.
"So you're afraid of ghosts and zombies?" Chu Liuxiang chuckled.
"It's not that I am afraid of these things, but the eeriness of this place makes me uncomfortable," Meixiu said.
"Don't worry, we'll probably leave right after looking around."
As Yuan walked around, he would feel his body temperature rising and lowering, almost like he was playing the game hot and cold.
Eventually, Yuan found the direction that would make his body temperature increase the more he walked in that direction.
"I think this is the spot. My body is burning right now." Yuan said.
Chu Liuxiang pressed the back of her cold hands on Yuan's forehead and immediately exclaimed, "Whoa! Your body is actually burning! Are you sure that you're not in pain?"
"Yes, I am perfectly fine."
Yuan then gathered the grand elders and explained to them the situation.
"For some reason, my body feels the hottest when I stand in this spot."
"This spot?"
The grand elders looked around and realized that they were in the center of the room.
However, they don't see anything out of the ordinary.
It was at this moment Chu Liuxaing suddenly squatted down and extended her hand towards the floor.
"Hey, there's air flowing from the floor…"
"What? Let me see." Senior Wang kneeled on the floor and extended her hand, and sure enough, there was air blowing from the tile cracks.
Upon realizing the situation, she immediately began removing the floor tile while trying her best not to damage anything.
A few moments later, the large floor tile was removed, and to everyone's surprise, there was a staircase that led underground!
"Heavens… To think there was a hidden staircase in this place." Senior Wang mumbled as she stared at the hole with a dazed face, wondering to herself how they didn't find this until today.
"Are we going down?" Yuan asked.
"Of course." Senior Hong nodded.
Thus, they began walking this narrow and dark staircase, slowly descending deeper into the ground.
However, the chill that had disappeared when they entered the tomb suddenly returned for everyone beside Yuan, and it was much worse than before.
"Looks like whatever is down there is the cause of this chill." Senior Wang mumbled in a low voice as they descended deeper and deeper.
Half an hour later.
"Good lord, how far down does this staircase go? We've been walking nonstop for half an hour!" Senior Shi said, feeling more and more impatient.
And just as he finished his sentence, the others noticed a thin line of light a little further down.
They immediately quickened their steps, and a few minutes later, they arrived before this metal door.
After opening this door, they entered this small but eerie chamber that had six golden coffins arranged in a circle with what appeared to be a stone statue in the middle.
"This is it… This must be our founders' hidden tomb!" Senior Wang began shaking even more after realizing the situation.
The grand elders began approaching the coffins and the stone statue to take a closer look, but they halted their movements when Yuan suddenly shouted in a panicked voice, "STOP! DON'T GET CLOSE TO THAT THING!"
Everybody there turned to look at him with surprised expressions, and Senior Wang asked, "What is going on?"
However, Yuan didn't say anything and continued to stare at the stone statue in the middle of the room with a deep frown on his face.
'Impossible! What is that doing here?!' Yuan cried inwardly when he recognized the stone statue that had a human figure, but if one looked closely, it had horns on its head and parts on its body that humans shouldn't have, resembling something Yuan had encountered inside Cultivation Online— a demon!