Urban Martial Saint

The pile of bones in the middle of the Cave shocked Ye Qing even more. Although he didn’t walk up to take a closer look, he could still tell that the number of skeletons here was far greater than what he’d seen when he first entered the Cave. There had to be at least a thousand sets of bones here!

A thousand people died here? Who on earth were these people? If they were the same as the ones outside, all Peak Masters and beyond peerless master, how terrifying would that be? At this rate, the number of Peak Masters and beyond peerless master whose bones lay in the Tomb of Ghost Valley Master would far exceed the total number of experts alive in the world today, right? How was that possible?

Carrying his doubts and shock, Ye Qing still walked forward. He wanted to personally go and take a look at those bones.

Seeing Ye Qing walk forward, the Church crowd and the Ninjas from Japan were all utterly stunned. They had just watched that Ninja get chopped to death by the Giant Axe stone Big Han, and were already terrified of this Cave to the extreme, not daring to enter at all. Yet now Ye Qing actually dared to walk inside—was he going in there to die?

However, the outcome was completely beyond their expectations. Ye Qing did walk inward, but now he had experience. He knew that although those stone men were powerful and terrifying, each of them had their own activity range. And the three-meter strip of ground between every two stone men was definitely safe. So Ye Qing followed that principle, always walking in the middle path, and indeed did not alarm a single stone man. He easily slipped through their encirclement and reached the central area of the Cave.

The Church crowd and the Ninjas from Japan watched Ye Qing walk safely to the middle zone, their eyes widening even more. Yet no matter how they thought about it, they couldn’t figure out how Ye Qing had made it across.

There were no such towering stone men in this central zone, so once Ye Qing stepped into it, he was much safer. Still, to be extra cautious, he walked forward a few more steps, completely leaving the stone men’s range. Only then did he relax, bend down, squat, and carefully examine the bones all around.

When he was outside just now, Ye Qing had followed Fu Qingping and learned how to tell a person’s strength before death from their bones. So he very easily identified several Peak Masters. Just like what he had encountered outside, the majority of these skeletons were still Peak Masters. The rest were mostly beyond peerless master. Moreover, among them were some skeletons that looked like they had belonged to beyond peerless master, but for some unknown reason, there was actually a faint radiance within those bones, as if the bones themselves could emit light. It was extremely strange.

Ye Qing naturally had no idea what was going on with these glowing bones, but he figured they were definitely not simple. So one thing was certain: among the thousand or so people who died here, any one of them taken out alone would be a top-tier expert. Yet all of them had died here. What on earth had happened? Before the Tomb of Ghost Valley Master was completed, what exactly had taken place here? Why had so many experts died in this place?

Ye Qing took a deep breath. Inside this Tomb of Ghost Valley Master, he had already seen too many things that he found unbelievable. But faced with so many experts’ skeletons, he still couldn’t calm down. He slowly stood up, intending to take a more detailed look at the distribution of bones around him. But just then, he suddenly caught sight of something that seemed to be standing upright amid a distant pile of bones. It was just that there were too many bones stacked around it, so he couldn’t see it clearly.

Ye Qing hurried over and took a careful look; only then did he realize that the standing object was a black Stele, something akin to a gravestone. The surrounding piles of bones had blocked the Stele from view, so if one stood farther away, there was no way to see it clearly. Only when he came closer could he make out the details on the Stele.

He reached out and slowly moved away the bones around it, revealing the true appearance of this black Stele. The black Stele was about one and a half meters tall, standing upright in place, looking very much like a Stele. There were also carvings on its surface. Although they were covered with dust, once he wiped the dust away, they were still clearly visible.

Ye Qing wiped the dust off the Stele and looked closely; his expression changed once again. There were quite a few characters carved on the Stele, and as Ye Qing had expected, he basically didn’t recognize any of them. However, the script itself looked very familiar to him, because the style of these characters was almost exactly the same as the characters he had seen in the Demon Hideout Cave.

In the Demon Hideout Cave, Ye Qing had obtained the Demon Sect Secret Technique, the Indestructible Demon Body, which had been carved on a Stone Tablet. He hadn’t recognized most of those characters either; they belonged to a very ancient script. And the script for the Indestructible Demon Body was remarkably consistent with the script now carved on this Stele. In other words, the person who left these inscriptions on the Stele and the person who left the Indestructible Demon Body might very well be one and the same!

This discovery shocked Ye Qing to the extreme. Who could have imagined that the person who had left the Indestructible Demon Body in the Demon Hideout Cave had also left behind a Stele inside the Tomb of Ghost Valley Master. But what, exactly, was carved on this Stele? Could it also be Demon Sect Secret Techniques? And what was the relationship between the bones all around and the person who had left this Stele?

Ye Qing couldn’t figure out what lay behind all this, but he had the simplest method: copy every character on this Stele, then find someone to translate it after he got out. Perhaps there were still people who could recognize this ancient script.

Copying was relatively easy. After he had copied down all the characters, Ye Qing put his notebook away. He searched the area again but found nothing particularly special, so he did not linger in the Cave. He turned around and headed out.

The Church crowd and the Ninjas from Japan were guarding the entrance, and the two sides were still fighting. When they saw Ye Qing come out from the middle, the Great Elder immediately shouted, ”Ye Qing, what did you find in there? What were you writing just now?”

”I don’t know either,” Ye Qing said. ”Some very ancient characters. I don’t know what they say, so I just copied them down at random.”

”I want those things. You understand what I mean, don’t you?” the Great Elder shouted at once. He didn’t directly ask Ye Qing to hand over the text, because he knew that even if Ye Qing showed him the characters now, he wouldn’t understand them. He had entered plenty of tombs in Huaxia before and naturally knew that many inscriptions in tombs were written in ancient scripts that weren’t easy to recognize. If people from Huaxia couldn’t read them, how could he?

”Fine, I get it!” Ye Qing replied irritably, though he was sneering inwardly. The Great Elder still didn’t understand the situation. Whether he could walk out of the Tomb of Ghost Valley Master alive was still a big question mark, yet his appetite was enormous—he wanted everything he saw. Did he even have the life to carry it out?

The Great Elder thought that by holding Huangfu Ziyu, he was effectively holding Ye Qing. What he didn’t know was that Ye Qing was also calculating against him. For Huangfu Ziyu’s sake, Ye Qing definitely wouldn’t let the Great Elder die in here. But Ye Qing also wasn’t going to let himself be led around by the nose. He would first use the Church’s side to wear down the Great Elder’s strength, then gain control over him and rescue Huangfu Ziyu.

The Church crowd listened to Ye Qing and the Great Elder talking but couldn’t understand what they were saying. So in their eyes, the Ninjas from Japan and Ye Qing had joined forces and were discussing how to deal with them.

The Church’s people had originally been at a disadvantage, but after that Ninja from Japan was chopped to death by the Giant Axe stone Big Han, the situation changed; they were now completely in the superior position. Now, seeing the Great Elder and Ye Qing discuss countermeasures, they started to feel uneasy.

”Those despicable Ninjas from Japan must have come up with some plan with Ye Qing. We have to find the ancestor of the Dark Church before they do and use him to deal with these people, or we can forget about walking out of here alive!” the Great Lord called out in a low voice. ”You hold them off. I’ll head out first and search the other Caves!”

”Yes!” the Church crowd responded in unison and went all out against the Ninjas from Japan, buying time for the Great Lord.

The Great Lord seized the opportunity and immediately turned and rushed out of the Cave. The Ninjas from Japan wanted to pursue, but were held back desperately by the Church people and couldn’t get out to block him.

Hearing what the Great Lord said just now, Ye Qing was also shaken. He didn’t know what this ”ancestor of the Dark Church” the Great Lord spoke of was, but his instincts told him that there had to be many things in these Caves that were inextricably linked to the Church. If they found them first, the outcome would be troublesome. So Ye Qing didn’t dare delay and quickly ran out of the Cave.

”Great Elder, you hold them off. I’ll go out first and stop the Great Lord!” Ye Qing shouted.

The Great Elder believed that since he held Huangfu Ziyu, Ye Qing could not escape his grasp, so he wasn’t worried at all. He immediately commanded the Ninjas from Japan to block the Church crowd. In this way, Ye Qing easily slipped around them and dashed out of the Cave.

Ye Qing wasn’t as fast as the Great Lord, so by the time he exited the Cave, the Great Lord had already passed through the outer Cave and entered one of the doors. And this door was precisely the one Ye Qing had long ago determined to be the Death Gate!

Seeing the Great Lord enter the Death Gate, Ye Qing exhaled in relief. He had been worried he wouldn’t have time to stop him, but this was better—the Great Lord had gone to his death of his own accord, so there was nothing to worry about. Ye Qing’s gaze shifted away from the Death Gate and turned toward the last door he had yet to enter.

According to Ye Qing’s earlier deduction, the Tomb of Ghost Valley Master had to be behind one of these five doors. Now that he had gone through four, only this final door remained. For thousands of years, the Taoist Sect’s number one Great Saint, Ghost Valley Master—was his tomb behind this door?

Ye Qing took a deep breath and walked straight toward this door.