After I stopped trying, a rich woman trained me into a demon emperor.

Cold sweat soaked the back of everyone's collar, turning it a dark color.

They looked down and saw that less than half an inch in front of their toes was a bottomless, dark cliff.

If I had been bewitched by the paper bride and taken just half a step further, I would be a piece of rotten flesh at the bottom of the cliff by now.

Liu Mazi's legs went weak on the spot, and he collapsed to his knees on the edge of the cliff, slamming his forehead against the rocks repeatedly.

"Master Zhou!"

Ancestors!

I've been bewitched! Please, have mercy on me and let it go!

Zhou Ran merely unleashed a gust of wind with his palm.

"ah--"

The screams were drawn out and echoed back and forth in the abyss several times.

Liu Mazi tumbled down and plunged into darkness until the last sound was swallowed up.

The few who had just survived stood ramrod straight, their mouths tightly shut, afraid to make a sound.

"From now on, this team will have only one voice."

No one answered.

No one dared to answer.

The abyss before you is not a dead end.

A bronze chain strung together, hanging upside down, extends crookedly to the bottom of the cliff.

Zhou Ran glanced at the rusted, verdigris-colored chains.

The Mangshan ancient tomb complex is known as "born in Suzhou and Hangzhou, buried in Beiman".

For thousands of years, kings, generals, ministers and nobles have competed to dig pits here.

But Feng Bancheng said that the site they were inspecting was not an imperial tomb from any dynasty.

It's something older than the Western Han Dynasty.

Those gold coins and treasures piled up here are not for burial, but "money to buy one's life".

Following the chain ladder to the bottom, the space suddenly expanded as soon as my feet touched the ground.

This place is so big it's boundless.

There were no coffins, no murals, only hundreds and thousands of bronze boxes scattered about.

The lid of the box was mostly rotten through, and Wuzhu coins, gold ingots, and jade pendants rolled out and piled up into a small mountain, gleaming with a greenish-brown rust color and a greasy yellowish-gold light in the dim light of the flashlight.

This is not a tomb at all, but an underground vault from the Western Han Dynasty.

But the smell in the vault is off right now.

The smell of blood overpowered the smell of rust.

Three groups of well-equipped tomb raiders each occupied a corner, glaring at each other.

More than a dozen freshly dead bodies lay scattered on the ground, blood flowing from their wounds into the pile of gold coins, turning the five-zhu coins a dark brown hue.

The most eye-catching group was the one standing on the left.

The woman in the lead wore a black tactical vest, had a very hot figure, her ponytail was neatly tied, and her eyes had that defiant look that only a wolf cub could have.

She was known as Aning in the underworld; she was the female leader of the Southern School of Robbery.

She was followed by several men, each with a short folding shovel, and each of them was splattered with blood.

The other two groups were veteran tomb raiders from the north.

Zhou Ran glanced at it again.

A young man next to Aning was clutching his forearm, where the flesh had been torn open and blood was dripping down.

Ah Ning pulled a piece of bandage from her vest pocket and quickly wrapped it around her waist without any hesitation.

Unlike the Red Widow.

The Red Widow sells her smiles and sex, hides sleeping pills under her fingernails, and wants nothing more than to climb over everyone else's heads to get ahead.

When Ah Ning's person was injured, her first reaction was to stop the bleeding.

This woman isn't exactly a ruthless person.

Zhou Ran pressed down on the fat man's shoulder, signaling him to tighten the Luoyang shovel on his back.

"Fatty, play the coward and pretend to be a scared newbie who's breaking up the group."

Zhou Ran lowered his voice.

There are all sorts of people here. Before we figure out the situation and the exact location of the source bone, there's no need to be the first to stick our neck out.

The fat man understood immediately, hunched over, and put on a terrified expression.

Zhou Ran and his group, sandwiched among the surviving thieves, crept along the wall toward the depths of the vault.

As Zhou Ran passed a pile of scattered gold bricks, he deliberately stopped.

His eyes were fixed on the gleaming yellow objects, and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down in response.

Ah Ning saw through his foolish, greedy, and reckless behavior.

Aning glanced over the group of defeated soldiers, her attention finally settling on Zhou Ran.

This young man may look like a novice, but his demeanor is something that cannot be faked.

At least this guy has some skills.

She stepped forward, bent down, picked up a gold brick from the ground, tossed it around, and threw it at Zhou Ran.

"New here?"

You can't have money without being alive to enjoy it.

Ah Ning's voice has a natural husky quality, with a drawn-out tone.

Zhou Ran caught the gold brick and hurriedly stuffed it into his pocket.

Ah Ning looked him up and down, lowering her voice slightly:

"You came down from up there?"

What's going on up there?

"Many people died."

Zhou Ran made a face that showed she was still shaken.

"There's something in the fog; those who go in can't get out."

Ah Ning frowned and looked back at the few remaining men under her command.

This job resulted in huge losses.

There were originally twelve people, but now only five are left who can stand.

"Have a drink of water."

She handed over a water bottle, but her eyes swept over the two groups of oil thieves from the north.

"At this point, we're all in the same boat."

Zhou Ran took the kettle.

The moment the finger touched the spout of the kettle, the Taihuang Overlord Body gave feedback.

The spout is coated with a special "bewitching oil".

This thing isn't fatal, but it can amplify a man's desires infinitely, burning away his reason and turning him into a puppet to be manipulated at will.

Zhou Ran sneered inwardly.

However, compared to the Red Widow's "Soul-Stealing Powder," this love potion is much gentler.

It doesn't harm the body or kill, it just makes people obey.

Control is not the killer move.

This woman may be shrewd, but deep down she still has a bottom line.

Without any hesitation, Zhou Ran took a big gulp from the spout.

The moment the medicine slid down his throat, it was enveloped by the surging primordial energy and blood in his meridians, forcibly refined, without even a splash.

But Zhou Ran's acting was quite convincing.

A sticky, hot sensation immediately rose to the surface of his eyes.

He mustered his courage, reached out and put his arm around Aning's waist, and brought his nose close to her ear to take a deep sniff.

"Sister, this water is so sweet."

Ah Ning paused for a moment.

If it were Red Widow, she would have already taken the opportunity to cling to him.

But Aning did not.

She subconsciously tilted her neck back half an inch, her right hand already touching the buckle of the folding shovel at her waist, a smile on her lips, but she was swallowing hard.

She's not good at this.

There was even an instinctive aversion.

"What's the rush, handsome young man?"

Ah Ning steadied herself and didn't push him away.

She lowered her voice and whispered the information close to Zhou Ran's ear:

"The treasures outside are all scraps."

She raised her hand and pointed to the deepest part of the vault.

The pattern of the scattered gold coins on the ground in that direction is incorrect.

It didn't collapse naturally, but was forced open from the inside by some force.

"Our Luoyang shovel has reached the bottom."

Deep within this vault lies the core of the Primordial Desolation Tomb.

Ah Ning's voice dropped even lower, her lips almost touching Zhou Ran's earlobe.

"We discovered a 'heart-beating bone' inside."

The Primordial Bone of the Great Wilderness!

Upon hearing those four words, a hungering hum resounded deep within Zhou Ran's bones.

He tightened his grip on A Ning's waist, using this movement to suppress the uncontrollable trembling in his arms, while the dazed look on his face remained unchanged.

Feng Bancheng once said that what lies beneath Mangshan Mountain is not a tomb, but a fissure leading straight to an abyss.

Feng Xi once said that the rebels in the underworld are using the rifts in the mortal realm to expand.

The Great Desolate Tomb is located precisely at the intersection of the Yin and Yang realms.

It is probably a desolate tomb from another dimension that drifted here and forcibly broke through the spatial barrier.