When listening to Long Ming's plan, everyone showed various expressions.

"And how do you plan to do that?" Hu Tao finally asked, with a somewhat agitated and nervous expression. Long Ming found Hu Tao's expression strange, but didn't dwell on it and replied, "Do you still have that spiritual stone?"

"Yes."

"Great, hand it over to me. I can use it to create a Qi explosion rune. Fortunately, spiritual stones contain plenty of Qi inside them, so it's possible to use a rune that will destabilize this Qi and cause a powerful explosion," explained Long Ming.

"Hm, it's a pity to waste a spiritual stone like this. But in our realm, they're not that useful, so it's okay... I guess," Hu Tao said, with a look of loss, before handing the stone to Long Ming.

With the spiritual stone in hand, he took a knife from his bag and began to inscribe a symbol on the surface of the stone. It took him a few minutes to finish, showing how difficult this activity was, so when he finished making the last line, he hastily threw the stone into the corridor.

Moments after hitting the ground, the stone began to glow unstably and soon exploded, causing a powerful flash that momentarily blinded the entire group.

"Let's go!" Long Ming shouted, still blinded, and began to run down the corridor. The Qi turbulence wouldn't last long, so they had to be quick. Shortly after, Lin Fei, Jin Mei, Yong Gan, and finally Hu Tao began to run down the corridor as fast as they could.

The corridor seemed huge and almost two hundred meters long, but they managed to reach near the end of the corridor in about 12 seconds. At that moment, when Long Ming and Lin Fei passed the corridor and entered another room, they heard the sound of several arrows traveling down the corridor.

"Damn it!" Hu Tao shouted as he used his sword to cut down as many arrows as possible, finally reaching the room himself.

"Tsk, sorry, boss. I thought the turbulence would last longer," Long Ming apologized shortly after Hu Tao left the corridor, as Hu Tao almost got caught in the trap.

"Don't worry about it, at least we managed to overcome this adversity," he reassured, before focusing on his surroundings and becoming surprised. At this moment, the others also looked around and were equally surprised.

They were in a huge room, even larger than the one they were previously in, and most impressively, there were tall pillars surrounding the area, with flames at their tops illuminating every corner of the room.

They observed their surroundings with surprise and fascination, and began to explore with great interest. While observing the place, Long Ming froze as he looked at the wall in front of where they had entered. Before his eyes, he noticed two large pillars, with various symbols and inscriptions, and in the middle of these pillars was a huge ten-meter door; but it wasn't what surprised him, it was a huge iron statue, similar to a plate armor, five meters tall standing in front of the door, and to his astonishment, it began to move towards him.

"An enemy!" was all Long Ming could say before the statue stood in front of him and swung its spear towards him. Long Ming ducked, narrowly avoiding the statue's horizontal blow, and ran forward, approaching its feet.

Then he closed his fist and struck the calf of the huge statue. 'Urgh,' he grunted as he felt the consequences of punching a large piece of iron, but ignoring this pain, he recoiled as he noticed the statue raised its foot and tried to crush him.

At this moment, Hu Tao ran up to the statue and, with a jump, reached the creature's head level, then made a slash towards the neck, which seemed unprotected by the iron armor, revealing an internal stone structure.

The statue seemed to feel the impact of the blow and recoiled its head. While Hu Tao landed on the ground, Long Ming drew his Twinblade from its sheath and attacked the space between the statue's shin and foot, which seemed unprotected by the iron armor. To his surprise, a small mark appeared in that area, causing a relieved smile to form on him and a glimpse of victory.

"Attack the unprotected areas!" Long Ming shouted as he backed away again, noticing the statue's intention to crush him. At this moment, Lin Fei also approached and, with a sword in hand, approached the right leg.

The statue raised its spear and thrust towards Lin Fei, but she quickly dodged, and while the statue withdrew its spear from the ground, she jumped on the shaft and began to run towards its arm.

Soon after, Jin Mei and Yong Gan also approached the statue. Jin Mei, holding a halberd, joined Long Ming and also focused on the feet, while Yong Gan, holding a bow and arrow, kept his distance and focused on shooting at unprotected areas, mainly the elbows and knees.

Their synergy was impressive. Each of them performed a vital function during the fight, always helping each other when they deemed it necessary. Long Ming and Jin Mei attacked and retreated several times while Hu Tao tried to attract the statue's attention, making it focus its attacks on him, then attacked its arms and neck with Lin Fei. Yong Gan, as an archer, kept his distance and shot at unprotected areas whenever he found an opportunity.

In less than a minute, Long Ming was able to sever the statue's left foot, causing it to lose balance, and they all took advantage of this opening to attack the neck from different directions.

With the combined attack, the head detached from the rest of the body, making a loud 'thud' as it hit the ground. Being quite experienced, they didn't treat it as a victory and quickly retreated, watching it. Seconds turned into minutes as they watched and noticed no reaction. Assuming this as a confirmation of victory, they sighed in relief and approached the door protected by the statue.

Long Ming, being close to the door, looked again at the statue and, not noticing any reaction, sighed in relief. Then, along with Hu Tao, he opened the door.

"Holy shit," they all exclaimed in surprise at once, noticing the contents of that room.

Mountains tens of meters high and entirely composed of gold coins, spiritual stones, and various types of jewels, weapons, and equipment greeted their sight. No matter where they looked, they would perceive an incomprehensible amount of valuable things.

Each of them approached one of the mountains and looked at those treasures with greedy eyes.

"Ahem, you can take whatever you want. Young Master Li only wants the Cloud Cutter Sword manual and the Azure Sword," Hu Tao said to them, as if speaking to a child who could take whatever they wanted from a toy store.

Without wasting time, each of them explored those great mountains, observing all those treasures and trying to loot as much as they could.

Following his intuition, Long Ming walked up to one of the mountains, as he explored those mountains, he noticed a strange ring, with several inscriptions incomprehensible to him. He put the ring on one of his fingers and began to analyze it, then, to his surprise, he felt his senses being swallowed into a spacious and empty place.

Soon after, he withdrew his senses from 'inside' the ring, and internally thought with a huge smile on his face: 'a spatial ring!'

He had read about it in

some books, but Long Ming never expected them to actually exist, and most importantly, that he would be able to get his hands on one. As he thought about the instructions contained in those books, he held one of the coins in his hands and tried to imagine storing it in a chest: and following his expectations, the coin was absorbed by the ring, quickly disappearing from his hand.

Long Ming was surprised by this, so he tried to 'feel' the contents of the ring again and realized there was a gold coin inside. Then, Long Ming tried to imagine taking that coin out of a chest, and again, the coin suddenly appeared in his fingers.

'With this, it will be much more practical to carry some things,' he thought internally, then he held each of the runes, coins, and books in his bag, storing almost all of them, except the runes. 'Hm, it seems that it's not possible to store things that have Qi,' Long Ming wasn't disappointed by this, so he stored, finally, his Twinblade and went to collect the things that interested him.

Following his intuition, he stored some weapons, armor, gold coins, and some books on cultivation, Qi, martial arts, and, to his surprise, there were even books on runes and alchemy. After a few minutes, collecting everything his intuition said was useful or valuable, he realized that Hu Tao finally picked up a sheathed sword and a book that was in the center of that vault.

"Boss, can I read the manual?" Curious, Long Ming approached Hu Tao and asked to read the book he had in his hands (which he deduced to be the Cloud Cutter Sword Manual).

"Hmm, sure, why not?" Hu Tao seemed to be in conflict for a few seconds before lending the manual to Long Ming to read, with a mysterious smile on his face.

Long Ming carefully read the contents of the manual for long minutes, feeling able to memorize every phrase and word, however, for some reason, he couldn't understand anything written. Even though the letters were readable and the sentences made sense, Long Ming couldn't comprehend the content, as if the author were mad and speaking nonsense. Despite this, Long Ming didn't think the manual was fake, quite the opposite, he understood it to be just his understanding of the path of the sword and, mainly, cultivation, which was too superficial to study the manual.

He wasn't disappointed by this result. Because even if it didn't make sense now, in the future, he could understand the author's intention and rise to a new level.

After about five minutes, Long Ming returned the manual and went to where Lin Fei was.

"Fei'er," he spoke as he approached her closely until there were only a few centimeters of distance between their faces. Lin Fei was confused by his approach and instinctively moved her face closer to his, Long Ming didn't reject her approach and kissed her, but then added, "thank you, but actually, I wanted to show you this," then he looked at his hand and, with a thought, a sword suddenly appeared in his hand.

"This...!" Lin Fei was amazed by what she had seen, even doubting her eyes, but soon noticed Long Ming's expression and understood that he wanted to keep it a secret.

"This sword is for you," Long Ming said as he handed the sword to her. Lin Fei took the sword with a radiant smile on her face and began to admire it. It seemed to be a high-quality sword, as well as very beautiful. With a small test, she managed to cut one of the gold coins with a little effort, which made her eyes widen in surprise and astonishment.

"All right, folks. Have you got everything you wanted?" Soon after, Hu Tao shouted, drawing everyone's attention. Upon noticing everyone's agreement, he continued, "then we will return to deliver Young Master Li his request."

Everyone agreed, although they felt a dose of disappointment for not being able to take all that wealth, including the sword and the Azure swordsman's manual.

After a few seconds of walking, they exited the tomb. For some reason, the trap in that corridor didn't activate this time, making their exit even easier.

Upon returning to the forest, they realized it was already night, so they decided to set up camp for the night. After setting up the tents, Long Ming and Lin Fei decided to hunt some animals for them to eat.

They walked away from the camp, to a point where they could no longer see the light of the campfire in the center of the camp.

At some point, Lin Fei stared at Long Ming and asked, "Ming'er, why are you so distressed?"

"Distressed? I'm not distressed," Long Ming replied, as if he didn't understand why she had asked that.

"Don't lie to me. We've been together for over two years, I know when you're lying. You always scratch your thumb with your index finger when you're lying," she said as she looked at his hands.

"Tsk, you know me too well, huh... I'm just worried, that's all. This mission is... very suspicious. I mean, why would the Li Clan hire a small group of mercenaries to plunder the tomb of someone as famous and powerful as the Azure swordsman? Aren't they worried that we'll run away with all these rewards?" he began to vent, about all his insecurities regarding that mission. In his opinion, that mission was very dangerous and suspicious, not only because of the Li Clan's intention, but also because of the integrity of that tomb.

As far as Long Ming remembers, the Azure swordsman disappeared almost a thousand years ago. So how was that tomb still intact? Furthermore, he also couldn't understand how complex formations like that secret entrance, and that trap, could last for so long. From what Long Ming knows about rune art, especially about formations, they require constant Qi consumption and periodic maintenance, as their circuits and symbols tend to wear out. Forget a thousand years, a formation would hardly last for more than a hundred years without proper maintenance.

So Long Ming doubted that maybe there was some group that was taking care of that tomb secretly. And for someone to keep that tomb for so long, especially with a treasure-filled vault... well, it was impossible for it to be a weak organization.

"I understand that you're worried. But, Ming'er, what reward comes without a dose of danger? We, as cultivators, are destined to face countless tribulations and adversities. It's our destiny to confront the heavens and, through our strength and bravery, overcome all challenges before us, obtaining rewards beyond our understanding. It's certain that there's a risk contained in this mission, didn't we just go through a clever trap like that corridor? And then that strange moving statue? But we overcame all these challenges, and now we're going back home."

"... you're right," Long Ming replied with a sigh, before kissing her again. Then they looked for a wild boar, or an animal of similar size, and soon returned to the camp.