Heavenly Dao Engine
Chapter 1274 - 1274 0732 Hollow in the Lamp Post_2

Chapter 1274: Chapter 0732: Hollow in the Lamp Post_2 Chapter 1274: Chapter 0732: Hollow in the Lamp Post_2 Manager Chen had specifically studied this lamp post and discovered that it was hollow inside, containing nothing. Behind the lamp post, there was an inconspicuous rune. Manager Chen had unintentionally touched it once, and afterwards, a crack surprisingly appeared on the lamp post, which allowed entrance into its interior. From the outside, the lamp post seemed small, but once inside, one would realize that the space was rather spacious, and lying down to sleep would pose no problem at all. What was more important was that Manager Chen also found that while hidden inside the lamp post, he could peek at the outside activity, and yet people outside could not locate him using Divine Sense.

Clearly, this lamp post was an extraordinary magical artifact. Perhaps Manager Chen would have taken the lamp post with him when he first discovered it, had he not found it to be of little use and somewhat ominous.

Now, in his urgent need to survive and without other options, Manager Chen immediately thought of the space inside the lamp post. If he hid there, he should be able to avoid the beings at the Nascent Soul Stage, for no one could ever imagine that such a small lamp post could hide a person.

As Manager Chen approached the lamp post, Qi Tian involuntarily furrowed his brow; from the 3D holographic map provided by the Heavenly Dao Engine, he keenly noticed something amiss. Unless encountering some particular scenarios, the Heavenly Dao Engine could detect all items containing energy and reflect their quality and quantity in the holographic map.

Ever since Qi Tian obtained the Heavenly Dao Engine, he had continuously been summarizing the colors, lines, and dots in the holographic images, and over time, he had accumulated quite a few patterns. Based on these patterns, he could quite easily find small spaces undetectable by ordinary cultivators.

Yet now, Qi Tian was startled to see that where Manager Chen was located, two columnar energy maps had appeared on the map. These images were very faint, and the edges were extremely blurry. According to the patterns Qi Tian had summarized, this usually indicated that the object corresponding to the images had very weak energy and was of little value. However, what surprised him was that the two columnar energy maps were actually hollow, and the hollow parts looked as if someone had carved out pieces from the holographic map, a phenomenon unheard of before and one Qi Tian had never encountered.

Before Qi Tian could figure out what was going on, he noticed in the latest 3D holographic image that Manager Chen’s figure had disappeared without a trace, leaving Qi Tian clueless as how he had lost him.

Stunned, Qi Tian quickly hastened his pace, taking three steps at a time and immediately arrived at the entrance to the Inner Underground Palace. He saw the two lamp posts arranged on either side of the entrance at a glance.

Qi Tian walked straight over; he did not reach out to touch the lamp posts but circled around them a few times. Regardless of whether he used his eyes or Divine Sense, he found nothing extraordinary about the two lamp posts. However, when using the Heavenly Dao Engine’s detection function, the energy feedback from the two lamp posts was still hollow, as if the interiors were empty and someone had dug a hole in them.

Qi Tian looked down in search of any clues left by Manager Chen, but no matter how hard he searched, he couldn’t find a single trace left by him. Manager Chen was above Half-step Nascent Soul level as a cultivator, and if he chose not to leave behind any traces, he could certainly do so. Qi Tian didn’t know if the current situation was deliberately created by Manager Chen or by another existence.

Qi Tian had lost all traces of Manager Chen, just as Manager Chen had predicted. Qi Tian indeed had not expected that Manager Chen could have crawled into the lamp post. Qi Tian looked up at the entrance gate to the Inner Underground Palace, suspecting whether Manager Chen had sneaked in while he wasn’t paying attention, but he immediately dismissed the idea. He had been monitoring Manager Chen in real-time with the Heavenly Dao Engine and couldn’t have possibly missed Manager Chen opening the gate and entering without noticing, as the Heavenly Dao Engine would not make such an error, nor would he fail to observe it.

Discarding that possibility, something unknown must have occurred here, and the disappearance of Manager Chen could very well contain secrets unknown to him.

Qi Tian was extremely unwilling to let things be. On one hand, Manager Chen was someone he desperately wanted to eliminate. The discord between him and Manager Chen was far from trivial; not killing Manager Chen left Qi Tian feeling stifled. On the other hand, the Pill Spirit and pills that Manager Chen had found were treasures Qi Tian coveted. If Manager Chen managed to take them away, Qi Tian had no idea when he would next come across such treasures.

Qi Tian’s gaze fell upon the lantern pillars once more, his intuition telling him that Manager Chen’s sudden disappearance was undoubtedly directly related to these very pillars. If he could unearth this connection, then he could find Manager Chen.

Qi Tian began to reassess the lantern pillars. He wasn’t the only one; he also had the nine ghostly faces join him in scrutinizing the pillars’ secrets.

Originally, these ghostly faces were all at the Nascent Soul Stage, their insight far surpassing Qi Tian’s. Although they did not know what these two pillars really were, the inconspicuous runes on them soon caught their attention.

The ghostly faces conveyed their findings to Qi Tian, and his gaze shifted onto the runes.

Qi Tian had profound research in runes and arrays, yet when he saw the runes on the pillars, he felt as though he was reading an arcane language. He did not recognize a single rune; they seemed to come from a system completely different from the one he was familiar with, like two distinct languages with no apparent correlation at the surface.

Qi Tian did not rashly reach out to touch the runes. He knew that some runes had extremely simple triggers. These runes stored tremendous energy, and once they were activated, the energy could undergo various strange transformations. The most common outcome was an explosion. It was essentially like a grenade exploding right in front of him, and the severity of the consequences was something Qi Tian was all too clear about.

Qi Tian felt that the first thing he needed to do was figure out what these runes meant. If he could decipher them, that would be best. If not, Qi Tian planned to adopt a scorched earth approach, destroying the pillars to potentially kill Manager Chen. As for the Pill Spirit and the pills, he would have no choice but to give them up. Compared to that, eliminating Manager Chen was what Qi Tian urgently needed to do.

Understanding these runes was no easy task. It was like trying to master a completely new language without any foundation—virtually impossible—despite Qi Tian’s profound background in runes that made the task slightly less difficult. Still, it was nearly an insurmountable challenge.

Qi Tian did not intend to waste a substantial amount of time to end up with nothing to show for it. He started to assign tasks—Liuli Sand was mobilized to release a dense fog that filled the entire Outer Palaces, with the exception of the area around the lantern pillars, which remained clear. In this small area, Qi Tian assigned several ghostly faces and the Transporting Whirlwind to stand guard, ensuring everyone’s safety. As for himself, he took a few other ghostly faces to start looking through materials.

Qi Tian had collected a lot of materials related to runes and arrays, especially from the Saint’s Tomb that he had thoroughly plundered. He found many texts and wanted to see if they contained any relevant records.