CHAPTER 45: CHAPTER 45: THE ROYAL CLAN CHANGES ITS SURNAME

Ji Nanhong stood on the stone platform, trying to jump a little. There was no more pain in her foot bones.

The Dual Cultivation Technique is truly magical. In just a few hours, her cracked bones had already healed and recovered, more effectively than those expensive healing medicines.

"Let’s go." With that, Ji Nanhong leapt up, her figure soaring over ten meters into the air, grabbing the bone chain hanging from above.

Her eyes were fixed on the shadow on the stone wall; Chen Guan did the same. After a while, seeing the shadow not react, the two sighed in relief simultaneously.

Ji Nanhong tied the rope to the bone chain and tossed the other end to Chen Guan.

Chen Guan caught the rope and followed Ji Nanhong up the bone chain, his eyes occasionally glancing at the shadow. Seeing no reaction, he finally relaxed completely.

The two climbed up along the bone chain. Halfway up, the characters lit up again, and Chen Guan glanced down. This glance made his scalp tingle.

"The shadow is gone." Chen Guan stopped moving and shouted to Ji Nanhong above.

Hearing this, Ji Nanhong immediately entered battle mode, looking down at the stone wall. Sure enough, she found that the shadow on the wall had disappeared.

The two quickly scanned around with their four eyes, but after looking everywhere they could see, they still could not find any trace of the shadow.

"Go," Chen Guan gritted his teeth and told Ji Nanhong to keep climbing.

Whatever they did now would be too late. The two desperately climbed upward, full of fear, fearing that the shadow would emerge from the darkness to take their lives.

The two were frightened, but even when they climbed a stone platform just dozens of meters away from a crevice, they still did not see the shadow make any move.

Once on the stone platform, they didn’t dare to be careless and continued climbing along the cliff face until they climbed out of the ground fissure and finally breathed a long sigh of relief.

All around, there was no sign of the Corpse horde, nor were there any traces of the Elite Squad or Qin Ziyu.

Almost ten hours had passed, so it was natural they had left.

"Let’s go back to the camp first." After leaving the fissure, Ji Nanhong’s demeanor lost some of its warmth and gained a more powerful aura.

As they left, Chen Guan took a glance back at the crevice but still did not see the shadow appear.

"What a pity, the Corpse King’s body and Secret Treasure," Chen Guan regretted, but dared not stir up more trouble to retrieve the Corpse King’s corpse.

The Dual Cultivation Technique was indeed miraculous; in just a few hours of dual cultivation, Chen Guan ascended another level, reaching level 7, significantly enhancing his power.

It was Chen Guan’s first time arriving at the camp, but the situation at the camp made him feel something was off.

The veterans said there used to be only a few dozen people at the camp, with more arriving in recent days, so why was there now not a single person in sight? Only some empty wooden houses and tents.

Chen Guan looked at Ji Nanhong and saw her eyebrows tightly knitted; she was clearly puzzled about what was going on.

While they were wondering, a woman came out of a wooden house. Seeing Ji Nanhong, she was initially stunned, then overjoyed, and hurried over, "Captain, you’re not dead? They said you died over at the Corpse Rot Forest, but I knew that woman was talking nonsense."

"What woman? Where are the others?" Ji Nanhong’s frown deepened.

"The woman named Wang Lian is a newcomer. She said you died in the Corpse Rot Forest, and everyone in our team even sided with her. It’s infuriating." The woman recounted the situation.

The more Chen Guan listened, the more off it seemed. The fact that Wang Lian was not dead in the Corpse Rot Forest already surprised him.

Unexpectedly, Gongsun Zhuo was also not dead. They, along with Qin Ziyu, made it to the Elite Team’s camp and even took over the Elite Team, leading them to kill other World-Defying Secret Spirits.

What surprised Chen Guan even more was that Wang Lian orchestrated all of this, and Qin Ziyu was willing to submit to her leadership.

From when Chen Guan and his group fell into the ground fissure to now, it had been just about ten hours. In that time, Wang Lian led the Elite Squad to slay three World-Defying Secret Spirits, now heading towards the final one, the Great Black Celestial Demon God Statue.

Except for some injured ones recuperating at the camp, everyone else had gone with Wang Lian and the others.

"Wang Lian has a trump card." Chen Guan never trusted Wang Lian, but he didn’t expect her methods to be so formidable.

For someone like Qin Ziyu, to be used by Wang Lian under such circumstances, even Chen Guan had to admire such skills.

"It seems that the order Wang Lian mentioned for killing the World-Defying Secret Spirits was likely not true, or perhaps there wasn’t any order at all." Chen Guan had realized this issue when they were in the underground space.

If she only wanted to obtain the Apang Sutra, killing those World-Defying Secret Spirits wasn’t necessary.

The Apang Sutra was created by the Emperor Ancestor for Apang; this place was probably just a trial ground prepared for Apang. How could it be so stringent?

After listening, Ji Nanhong’s lips curled into a sneer, "Wang Lian, it seems the Wang Family has arrived."

"The Wang Family of the Celestial Hill?" Chen Guan had asked Wang Lian before, but she didn’t admit to being part of the Wang Family of the Celestial Hill.

"The Celestial Hill Wang Family is just a general term. The branches of the Wang Family are numerous, and the Wang Family of the Celestial Hill doesn’t represent the entire Wang Family."

Seeing Chen Guan’s confusion, Ji Nanhong explained, "The Wang surname comes from descendants of extinguished royal families who changed their surname. Before the Emperor Ancestor unified the Six Harmonies, and even after that, many royal families of the Six Kingdoms changed their surnames to Wang; the Wang Family of the Celestial Hill is just one of them, merely more renowned."

"Besides the Wang Family of the Celestial Hill, many with the surname Wang have banded together to form an underground organization, secretly attempting to overthrow the rule of the Emperor Ancestor, but they never succeeded. Only after the Emperor Ancestor entered the Celestial Secret Realm did this organization gradually become visible."

"Unfortunately, even without the Emperor Ancestor, they couldn’t become the new rulers. That organization was also suppressed by the New Ancestral Court and the Ten Celestial Kings, and to this day, they are unable to come to light, only able to engage in furtive activities."

Ji Nanhong seemed quite disdainful of that Wang Family’s organization, "Come on, let’s go see what remarkable abilities that Wang Family’s Wang Lian possesses."

Chen Guan thought, "Women are always stubborn. You’ve been on the island for a year and haven’t killed a single World-Defying Secret Spirit. Wang Lian destroyed three in less than ten hours; her skills are definitely greater than yours."

This thought occurred to Chen Guan, but he didn’t dare say it aloud, understanding that Wang Lian knew more than Ji Nanhong, so it was not surprising for her to achieve such feats.

"With Wang Lian holding the Elite Squad and having killed three World-Defying Secret Spirits, she must have gained quite a bit of benefit. Now, trying to deal with her won’t be that easy."