Wei Zhao's gaze swept over everyone present, but it came up with nothing. There were indeed a few skilled hands in the party, but the strongest of them stood only at the peak of the late Yellow Rank — not even Mystic Rank.

Still, the best men these tomb robbers could ever hire were Yellow Rank at most; after all, no Mystic Rank would sell his life for them. The tomb-robbing trade was far too perilous — a man might drop dead at any moment — nowhere near as comfortable as serving as a bodyguard in some rich man's house.

What was more, most Mystic Rank experts had been snapped up by the great clans, making them as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns among common folk. There could never be many of them, to say nothing of Earth Rank experts.

And yet a man had most certainly died here, and no one even knew how. That left one other possibility: the killer was not in the party at all. He was no member of their group, but someone lurking in the dark who killed and then slipped back into hiding.

Of course, the remaining possibility was that an Earth Rank expert of the external school walked among them, and that while he kept his strength concealed, Wei Zhao's golden finger failed against him and automatically filtered him out. But one had to understand how hard it was to cultivate to Earth Rank in the external school. Even a great clan like Wu Chengtian's had never produced an external-school Earth Rank expert.

The moment Mr. Qiu died, nearly everyone in the party went pale — Lord Hao most of all. His gaze sharp as a blade, he looked at Brother Keng, at James, at Wei Zhao and Qiu Lingshan: "Which of you did this? What good does it do you? We're all lost, we can't get back out — are you not ruining others along with yourself?"

"Lord Hao, that's not right of you to say. Why must it be one of us who killed him?" Brother Keng was rather displeased. "Couldn't that fellow Qiu have killed himself? Why don't you ask Old Hei? Maybe he pulled this 'warrior severs his own wrist' stunt on purpose, meaning to pin it on someone else and then swallow the tomb's riches all for himself!"

"Bullshit! Even if I were going to cut off a wrist, I'd never use Mr. Qiu for it!" Old Hei was about to explode with rage — his best man dead for no clear reason, and now he was a suspect on top of it. The indignity was killing him. "Mr. Qiu was an expert at the peak of the early Yellow Rank that I paid a fortune to bring in. How could I let him die? I've got plenty of small fry — you think I'd kill off my best man for the fun of it? Am I sick in the head?"

"Hmph. The man's dead. Even if you say he was Mystic Rank, we've no way to verify it." Brother Keng spoke coldly.

"Enough! Let's drop this for now and talk about what we're going to do." Lord Hao waved a hand, sounding rather helpless. "Old Hei, this path — something's wrong with it, isn't it?"

"Wrong, all right! Before, we walked maybe ten minutes — five or six hundred meters at most — and reached the entrance to the underground palace. Now we've been walking over half an hour, well past a thousand meters, and we're still nowhere near it, with nothing but blackness ahead. We've definitely taken the wrong path..." Old Hei shook his head. "It was precisely because I feared we'd go wrong that I had Mr. Qiu bring up the rear, but..."

"Who knows what you're plotting — maybe you led us astray on purpose!" Brother Keng had a foul temper and a belly full of anger, and now he made Brother Hei his whipping boy.

"Fuck your mother! Old Keng, say one more word and I'll put a bullet in you, I swear it!" Old Hei, furious, humiliated, choking on it all, drew his gun outright and leveled it at Brother Keng.

"Heh heh, go on then, if you've got the guts. If you don't shoot, you're a son of a bitch!" Confident that Lord Hao's presence would keep Old Hei from doing anything rash, Brother Keng cursed him to his face.

"Old Hei, don't you dare shoot!" Lord Hao barked as well.

Bang! A gunshot — Old Hei really had fired. Had Lord Hao never said "don't you dare shoot," Old Hei might not have been so reckless; but that one word, "dare," set his blood surging. Why the hell shouldn't I dare?

Damn it, my best man died and I don't even know how, I'm already suffocating with it, and you lot stand around making snide remarks, suspecting I staged the whole thing myself? So what if I blow your brains out with one shot? Old Hei had been goaded to the edge of breaking down.

Brother Keng never even had time to cry out before Old Hei shot him dead. Everyone present was dumbstruck, staring at Old Hei in something like terror. James and his men abruptly drew their guns and aimed them at Old Hei — he had no intention of becoming the second Brother Keng.

"Old Hei, what are you doing? How could you shoot a man dead?" Lord Hao reproached him angrily.

Wei Zhao cast Lord Hao a mild glance, unable to tell whether the man was truly a fool or merely playing one, or perhaps leaning on his seniority. He had provoked Old Hei like that — it would have been stranger if Old Hei hadn't fired.

"Lord Hao, you saw it yourself — he asked for death. He said if I didn't shoot, I'd be a son of a bitch, so I had no choice but to shoot." Old Hei gave a cold snort and turned to James. "Don't go stirring up trouble with the rest of them. Either that, or we all go down together!"

At this, Old Hei's men raised their guns as well, aiming at the men of Brother Keng and James.

"Enough! Even if Old Keng spoke out of turn, there was no need to kill him — am I not still here?" Lord Hao said, rather helplessly. "Right now, what matters most is getting out alive, not fighting among ourselves. Old Keng's men — if you're willing to come along with us, then come along; if you'd rather avenge Old Keng, then square off against Old Hei and fight it out, and I won't interfere. Settle your grudge, and then we head back at once."

Of Old Keng's men, all but two loyal followers saw their boss dead and had no mind to sell their lives for him any longer; at that thought, they lowered their guns one after another. But those two diehards suddenly made their move — and were shot dead by Old Hei's men.

As things stood, Old Hei plainly had the greater numbers. Avenging Old Keng was a fool's choice.

"All right, let's head back." Lord Hao said nothing more, only those few flat words.

The group went on hand in hand, slowly retracing the way they had come. This time no one dared move as quickly as before; they crept forward a small step at a time. But they had not gone far before they were forced to stop.

Because before them lay a fork in the path. By now no one remembered which fork they had come from, and there was no trace of lime powder on the ground either — plainly, Mr. Qiu was already dead by then.

"What do we do?" The men at the front halted and turned to ask.

James opened his mouth, meaning to blame Old Hei — it was he who had led the way out in front and gotten them all lost. But then he remembered how Old Hei had just blown Old Keng's brains out with a single shot, and he wisely shut his mouth. Among them all, he was the only foreigner; if it really came to blows, he would likely come off the worse.

"Lady Swallow, have a look — which path should we take?" Lord Hao paused to consider, then turned to Yu Xiaoke. "You are an heir of the Flying Swallow Sect; you ought to know something of mechanisms and hidden passages. Have a look at these two paths — which one leads out?"

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