Heavenly Dao Engine
Chapter 1165 - 1165 0678 Pincer Attack_1

Chapter 1165: Chapter 0678: Pincer Attack_1 Chapter 1165: Chapter 0678: Pincer Attack_1 Chapter 0678: Pincer Attack from Both Sides

This time, the Princes argued fiercely. This expedition, involving a joint team from five palaces to explore the Saint’s Tomb, had seen many such quarrels among the Princes. However, during the previous occasions, despite their squabbles, they eventually managed to reach a relatively unanimous decision and came up with a solution that was acceptable to all parties. But this time, the situation was markedly different.

After all, the scenario they now faced was unprecedentedly perilous, even more so than when they confronted that ghostly face on the gate of the Saint’s Tomb. In the face of the ghostly face, they could choose to retreat or collaborate with Qi Tian to deal with it. But now that they had finally entered the Saint’s Tomb, they were being repeatedly overturned by an unseen enemy who had taken down three elite exploration teams one after another.

If they chose to retreat at this point, it wouldn’t sit well with them; if they decided to continue sending people to explore, they feared further losses. And to simply sit and wait could mean missing a golden opportunity. In short, no matter what decision they made, it would have its inadequacies, always struggling to satisfy everyone.

At such times, what was most needed was a strong leader who could forcefully consolidate the varying opinions. Yet none of the five Princes bowed to another, and all of them only truly acknowledged Qi Tian. But with Qi Tian still in recovery and without time to attend to them, the five Princes could only fall into endless bickering, seemingly unable to reach any conclusive result for the time being.

Although the debate among the Princes was intense, after all, they were now one family and wouldn’t go so far as to draw swords against each other or forcibly impose their choices on one another. Their disputes were limited to verbal arguments, and their subordinates were all busy with their tasks without rashly intervening in the Princes’ quarrels.

After all, in the history of such explorations of the Saint’s Tomb, such arguments were quite common. Almost every time multiple royal palaces explored together, such scenes occurred. Those serving under them had grown accustomed to it, intelligently keeping themselves out of the fray unless their Prince summoned them; otherwise, they wouldn’t dare to offer unsolicited assistance.

Although the more than one hundred Gold Core Realm cultivators did not cheer for their Princes, they were far from idle. They were methodically undertaking tasks such as setting up a Defensive Array at the end of the tomb corridor to guard against creatures from within the underground palace suddenly rushing into the corridor.

Additionally, they set up multiple fixed points within the corridor for surveillance, tightly monitoring the entire passage to prevent any sudden mishaps.

Another important task involved real-time monitoring of the situation outside the tomb. Manager Chen had people seal off all their escape routes, but it wouldn’t be impossible for someone to cross the barricades and closely monitor them from the Saint’s Tomb. If they allowed Manager Chen’s faction to detect a vulnerability, it was likely that Manager Chen would send people over for an overt attack. This was a particularly important concern that they had to guard against vigilantly.

The Princes’ debate lasted for an extremely long time, and as the sky darkened, they still hadn’t reached an agreeable solution. Their differences were vast, and it was immensely challenging to bridge all disagreements with a single proposal.

This outcome only confirmed from another angle how dangerous the underground palace of the Saint’s Tomb really was. It could almost be said to have frightened all five Princes out of their wits; none dared to venture into the underground palace, not even if they combined the strength of all their followers.

For those exploring the underground palace, the arrival of nightfall was definitely not good news. The palace was already a place fraught with dense yin energy. As dusk fell and the yang energy dissipated while the yin surged, the dangers within the underground palace would only escalate. So, quite naturally, almost everyone huddled within the corridor to wait for daylight before continuing their exploration.

To prevent any unforeseen incidents, the entire team once again strengthened their defenses in key areas, especially guarding against unexpected events within the tomb corridor. For this reason, they added a few more surveillance points on top of what they had during the daytime.

In the first half of the night, surprisingly, nothing untoward occurred either inside or outside the tomb corridor. But just past midnight, the cultivators guarding the Defensive Array at the junction between the corridor and the underground palace, a precaution already in place, were horrified to find something relentlessly breaking through the array.

Located within the dark environs of the underground palace, the individuals stationed there had several light sources set up inside and outside the Defensive Array during its construction, making the surroundings reasonably bright. Despite the light, they couldn’t see what was attacking the Defensive Array. Even when they employed their Divine Sense or other methods, the nature and location of the entity breaking through the Defense Array remained invisible.