Chapter 3353 — Utterly Baffled

After all, even if this man were crippled—even if he lay at death's door, a vegetable in bed—Wei Zhao could still heal him by means of the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art. But once a man was dead, Wei Zhao was powerless to bring him back.

That was why Wei Zhao wanted to leave this place first and then find a way to negotiate with the Palan clan. This was hardly the moment for talks; if other members of the clan came out and saw that Wei Zhao had wounded one of their own, they would surely fall upon him in a mob, and then he would have no chance to explain himself. Better to let everyone cool down before anything else.

What Wei Zhao had not expected was that the instant he got into the car, he heard a thunderous boom, and a vast chasm split open in the ground beneath them. Their car plunged straight down into it!

At that moment Wei Zhao could have taken action—it was entirely possible for him to leap out of the car, for he was a Heaven-rank expert. But if he fled, what would become of Yu Xiaoke and Yu Dake? The two of them would certainly not escape. So Wei Zhao simply sat where he was in the car, resolved to see with them what was to come.

The rift above had opened swiftly and closed just as swiftly. Before their car had even reached the bottom, the fissure sealed shut again, and the space below was plunged into pitch-black darkness.

"Ah—" Yu Xiaoke screamed in fright and instinctively clutched at her seatbelt.

Yu Dake was made of sterner stuff, but even his expression was now grave. He did not know what they would encounter next, nor what they would have to face.

Wei Zhao alone remained calm as ever. He had already closed his eyes and used the jade pendant's power of perception to probe the bottom of the chasm. There was nothing dangerous down there—only a pool of water. If the car fell into the pool, they would be in no great danger.

Most likely this trap was not designed to kill intruders, but to imprison them! Once these people were shut away down here, would they not be at the Palan clan's mercy?

Wei Zhao's guess was probably right. The walls of the chasm on every side were sheer cliffs, just like the precipices they had encountered in the Five Baleful Mountains—there was no foothold anywhere. Even a peak late Heaven-rank expert at the height of his powers could never climb out from such a depth!

And even if one could climb up, what then? The rift above had already closed. Even if you could leap that high, you could never break through the earth. Granted, the martial technique unleashed by a peak late Heaven-rank expert at full mastery was formidable—but you would already have had to circulate your mental cultivation formula just to leap to such a height, and once up there, you would have to circulate the technique's formula again to unleash your martial skill. There would be no time for that, to say nothing of whether the skill could even penetrate such a thick layer of earth!

"Don't worry. There's a pool down there. We won't die," Wei Zhao said mildly.

"Huh? How do you know?" Yu Xiaoke was taken aback.

"I saw it," Wei Zhao said.

"Saw it? That's impossible, surely? I looked too, but it's bottomless down there. How could you see anything?" Yu Xiaoke was somewhat skeptical.

"Heh heh..." Wei Zhao smiled and offered no explanation. Such things were hard to explain, after all—better to keep up an air of mystery.

But even as he laughed, there came a splash, and the car dropped into the pool—exactly as Wei Zhao had said.

Yu Xiaoke and Yu Dake were both astonished. They had not imagined that even at such a moment Wei Zhao could make such a precise judgment. He was truly formidable!

"Let's go." Wei Zhao opened the door and jumped straight out of the car.

To be honest, Wei Zhao could walk in the dark as easily as on level ground, but Yu Dake and Yu Xiaoke could not. Yu Dake hastily switched on the headlights, and only then did he and Yu Xiaoke clamber out of the car.

The pool was not too deep. The car sank slowly to the bottom, but the beams of its headlights, refracted through the water's surface, were still clearly visible.

This car had been specially modified by Feng Tianlong's side—the mysterious investigation bureau—so even after taking on water, its electrical system would not fail for a good while yet. The headlights were still burning.

"Phew... Mr. Lin, you really are something. You judged the terrain in an instant. So what should we do now that we're down here?" Following Wei Zhao, Yu Dake felt as though he had gained some backbone; even after falling into an abyss, he was not overly worried. "This place is huge. Shall we look around?"

"Not yet. Look over there." Wei Zhao pointed at a sign not far away, caught in the beam of the headlights.

Yu Dake and Yu Xiaoke instinctively raised their heads to look—and gave a start! For on that large sign, a warning was written in many languages: "Danger ahead. There is only one way out alive. Do not wander about, or face the consequences!"

Near the sign were five passageways, and there was no telling which was the right one and which were wrong.

"Uh..." Yu Dake was somewhat speechless. He had not expected this place to be so complicated, with other hidden mechanisms and secret passages as well.

Yu Xiaoke was surprised too, but being of the Thief Sect, she was quite composed at this moment. "If I'm not mistaken, one of these leads to the Palan clan's ancient castle—the passage their own people use. The rest are dead ends. We're imprisoned down here: either we go get ourselves killed, or we wait for them to send someone. This is much the same trick as in some ancient tombs!"

"Then... do we wait here, or...?" Hearing Yu Xiaoke's words, Yu Dake asked uncertainly. "It looks to me like the Palan clan wants us dead. Something's off. Could the Gu family have tipped them off, so these people lay in wait to finish us off?"

Wei Zhao was in fact puzzled as well. Why had the Palan clan come at him with lethal force from the very start? They had surely never met before, and there was no grudge between them. How could he have drawn such hatred?

As for the Gu family tipping them off, that was not impossible—but the odds were really too small. After all, from Gu's son's manner at the time, he was a thoroughly timid man and would not dare lie. So they had no way to contact the two who had left, and those two had also revealed their whereabouts and their business—tipping off the clan would bring them punishment just the same. So it was hardly realistic.