Chapter 267: Home at last……

Fang Transmission Sect also came to Prosperous City!

As expected, there's nothing he doesn't know about the matters of Yin and Yang.

I estimate he's been staring at this corpse phantom for a long time, unable to dare to intervene, and tonight he came to compete with us for the corpse phantom.

I just don't know whether he knows there's also cat grease beneath this grave pit.

I can't worry about that anymore; Fang Transmission Sect won't ruin our plans, Liu Junyan has already sent me the signal to move out, I hold the soul-guiding lamp, crouch low, and quickly approach the grave pit.

The grave pit is large and deep; without the golden light of the Golden Scale, below is a pitch-black expanse.

I yanked off the black cloth covering the soul-guiding lamp.

Merit Light engulfed the grave pit, and I jumped down without hesitation.

Below the grave pit there is still a layer of coffin planks, but that coffin plank is merely an empty frame.

Just now I saw the coffin lid flung away, but below there are only the four walls of the coffin, the bottom actually empty.

The instant my feet touched the ground, I felt an extreme yin cold qi surging up from the soles of my feet, making me shudder.

The space below is narrow and cramped, much narrower than the grave pit above, able to hold only one person.

I held the soul-guiding lamp and looked all around; besides dirt, I saw nothing.

Wrong.

The corpse phantom draws vital energy upward from here; this is the formation eye of the Nine Heavens Lock Soul Array.

Logically, from here, any direction should lead to a certain mine tunnel.

Since that's the case…… I reached my hand into the soil, constantly feeling around.

Sure enough, I soon felt a mechanism; pulling hard, I heard a splash, and a large sheet of black charcoal mixed with damp, yin-cold soil rolled down, nearly burying my lower body.

Fortunately I was mentally prepared; at the moment I pulled the mechanism, I leapt upward sharply.

After all, the grave pit below is so narrow that besides jumping up, I couldn't jump sideways.

Good thing I jumped, and I jumped high enough.

At the moment I jumped, a dozen or so charcoal shards like swords shot out, barely scraping my soles as they passed, deeply embedding into the opposite soil.

My body then fell straight down.

Before my feet even landed on the charcoal heap, I exerted myself and jerked my body upward a bit.

Sure enough, the opposite side struck by the charcoal spears also opened, and similarly, charcoal spears shot out with a swish.

After repeating this several times, the mud walls all around were opened, and I steadily landed on the charcoal heap; seeing the identical structures on all sides, I momentarily didn't know where to enter first.

Logically, the entire mine tunnel network should be interconnected.

Even if I took a wrong turn, quickly retreating to the formation eye should cause no trouble.

I clenched my fists, gripped the rod of the soul-guiding lamp firmly, and entered from the left.

In the mine tunnel from over a hundred years ago, people's thinking then likely still favored the left.

Upon entering, there is a passage several dozen meters long; the overall terrain slopes downward, and at the end are a few steps.

I walked down step by step, very slowly.

By the time I reached the bottom step, even the soul-guiding lamp could not illuminate the whole space.

Dark.

Too dark.

I realized I was already inside a certain mine tunnel; I brought the soul-guiding lamp close to the wall and saw that all the walls below were dirt mixed with black charcoal, piled together densely…… This reminded me of a classic, hard-to-break burial structure from history—the Yellow Cypress Burial.

The Yellow Cypress Burial is a high‑grade coffin chamber in ancient imperial tombs, constructed by stacking peeled yellow‑heart cypress wood.

Yet in this mine tunnel, the neatly stacked charcoal piles work in a similar way.

The charcoal piles sit side by side, leaving only a narrow path that extends deeper.

I don't know how long this mine tunnel is, but I know there are nine such tunnels in total.

Each mine tunnel has nine anchor points, and on each anchor point there is a miner who was choked to death…… No!

Old Lady Gray said that back then Little Gray Jump and the miners were suffocated by a collapsed mine tunnel, but this tunnel shows no trace of any collapse.

So how exactly did those miners die back then?

I unconsciously held my breath and stepped back a few paces…… Could it be poison gas?

Upon thinking, it didn't seem right.

Poison gas would likely contaminate the miners' vital energy, right?

Excluding those extreme measures, only the Nine Heavens Trap Soul Array itself remains.

I again cautiously took a few steps forward, and nothing happened.

So I tentatively walked forward again.

As I walked, I counted my steps.

My steps were tiny; two of them equaled a normal step.

When I took my eighteenth step—equivalent to nine normal steps—I suddenly felt a spell of dizziness.

After that dizziness lasted a few seconds, I noticed something was off.

The mine tunnel was moving.

It was changing!

No, it was the Nine Heavens Trap Soul Array that was moving and changing!

This change was silent yet made me feel as if my soul might detach, my breathing grew difficult, I clutched my trachea with one hand, as if I would suffocate any moment.

I wanted to retreat first, get outside, stabilize my soul essence, then think of a solution.

But I couldn't move at all.

It wasn't that I was paralyzed; rather, my brain felt oxygen‑deprived and unable to control my legs to step back.

The suffocation feeling grew stronger; my fingers were almost digging into my flesh, I wished they would choke off my windpipe.

I knelt down on the ground, and the Soul-guiding Lamp fell with me.

In the next moment, the Merit Light from the Soul-guiding Lamp enveloped my whole body, and the suffocation feeling stopped abruptly.

My heart gave a sudden jolt, and I instantly understood.

No, I wasn't really about to suffocate just now; I was affected by the Nine Heavens Soul-Confounding Formation, which disturbed my mind and produced a hallucination.

It was at this moment that I finally understood exactly how those miners died back then.

It wasn't a mine tunnel collapse that caused them to suffocate to death; rather, the Nine Heavens Soul-Locking Formation affected their minds, and they were literally choked to death by the suffocation hallucinations they themselves produced.

What a clever and vicious method!

Having figured this out, I took three deep breaths in a row, stood up, and picked up the Soul-guiding Lamp again.

This time, I strode forward.

On the ninth step, the feeling of unstable Soul Essence surged again, and the suffocation feeling arrived as expected.

I steadied my mind, and my steps did not stop.

Sure enough, this feeling of suffocation passed in an instant.

My guess was correct, and the verification succeeded.

From now on, I have nothing to fear on the road ahead.

After walking out of the third set of nine steps, I stood still for a moment, suddenly opened my mouth, and shouted loudly toward the front: "Zhang Chongzhi, I'm home……"

My voice was loud, with a long drawn-out tail.

For a moment, my voice echoed continuously throughout the mine tunnel, carrying far and far away.

I gripped the Soul-guiding Lamp tightly, lifted my feet, and shouted as I walked: "Zhang Chongzhi, I'm home…… Li Huaian, I'm home…… Sun Dabing, I'm home…… Wang Azhu, I'm home……"