Yang and his group jogged down the tunnels in loose formation. They had quickly realized that their previous approach of trying to meticulously secure the location was absolutely impossible to execute down here.

This being an old mine, there was a network of hundreds if not thousands of tunnels, constantly splitting up and looping back on each other. There were also likely several entrances available to the bandits. In a situation like this and without a map of the area, there was nowhere to start or stop when occupying and no way to prevent enemies from fleeing or ambushing them.

Consequently, they had decided to opt for a different plan: A quick and precise strike at the head.

Instead of allowing themselves to be surrounded and whittled down, they moved as quickly as possible with the goal of finding and capturing the enemy leader. Securing them was by far more important than preventing the escape of every singular bandit, because they were the most likely to hold key information.

As they moved, the token Elder Wei had given Yang suddenly shattered. He didn’t let his focus slipped, but internally rejoiced. This token was connected to a similar one that the Elder held, and they had agreed to shatter them by injecting them with Qi, once they had found Qingge. At the next opportunity, he stopped for a moment to inform his team:

“Elder Wei has secured Lady Qingge. We can now focus entirely on capturing the leadership.”

After a quick confirmation with the others, they continued on, renewed confidence in their steps. A group of enemies they encountered minutes later was readily dispatched without any issues. A quick interrogation of a few of the survivors confirmed that they were still on the right path.

In general, they had met less and less resistance as they went deeper, the groups of enemies growing smaller and less frequent. This meant that either their morale was already broken, and a substantial number had fled, or they were mounting up for a final defense somewhere. Considering the behavior of the ones they did meet, Yang suspected the latter.

They rarely were eager to engage them and mostly gave up within a few moments of fighting. These weren’t the brave few still willing to offer up resistance, they were the timid advance parties that had been sent out to buy time and were aware of it.

In any case, their numbers were mind-boggling to say the least. Including the ones from the warehouse, Yang had counted at least three hundred enemy fighters so far, at least half of them possessing some level of cultivation. With undoubtedly several hundreds more strewn throughout these tunnels, this was truly a true force to be reckoned with, akin to many a smaller city’s standing army.

Some time and a few smaller engagements – all won without notable occurrences – later, the tunnel made way for a large hall, of sorts and the group stopped in their tracks.

“Well, now we know where they all went.”

Yang’s companion was right, and his dry delivery of the remark would have been quite funny under normal circumstances, but right now there was no time to laugh. The hall was filled with hundreds of bandits upon bandits, armed and ready to fight.

Right in the center stood a colossus of a man, his massively muscular frame discernable even beneath the thick steel plates of his armor. He had slung a massive bladed mace over his shoulder and his one-eyed face showed a grim but confident grin.

They had found the leader.

…

Liu Wei was back in the tunnels, moving towards the bandit’s hideout.

He had brought Qingge up into the pavilion and properly checked that her healing process was running smoothly before leaving her in the hands of her companions who had occupied the place and descending back into the mines. After that, he had just retraced his steps to where he had met her and was now following the trail of blood she had left behind, illuminated by a floating ball of cold flames he had created.

He had been shocked when he had seen her and while her condition wasn’t immediately threatening, it had been quite bad. Given time, her reformed body would have probably helped her pull through on her own, it was mostly just exhaustion that had driven her to the edge of fainting, but he was glad it didn’t have to come to that.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

So right now, Liu Wei was very eager to find the ones responsible putting her in this state, which is why he had decided to return here despite his confidence in Senior Member Yang’s ability to wrap this up on his own.

He fastened his steps. Qingge had really made it far, considering how long he had already been following her trail, though the state of her concentration was clear from how many unnecessary detours she had made in getting there. What a streak of truly good luck it had been that they had actually met in this massive network of tunnels!

This place and its history were actually rather remarkable; Liu Wei had learned about it during his time at the university. Many thousands of years ago, in the founding era of this city, deposits of silver had been discovered here and the mines had first been dug.

The silver was quickly exhausted but instead of closing up, the mines had been used and expanded for millennia to come, supplying the growing city and its surroundings with the high-quality stone they needed. Over time, they and the several natural cave structures they connected with had become the largest singular underground complex on the peninsula, stretching on for several hundred kilometers in total and retaining that position to this day.

Only with the rise of Brittlestone Town as the primer mining location of the region had they slowly lost their relevance. That didn’t mark the end of their story though. Over time, they had been used as shelter during wartimes, as storage area and as catacombs for the city’s dead. At some point, an entire subculture of people who lived down here had even developed and flourished for hundreds of years.

Only when these people became increasingly hard to control and tax, had the city finally come down on them and the mines had eventually been closed up and mostly forgotten. Today, only the scholars still cared about these tunnels.

At least that was supposed to have been the case, though the bandits clearly thought otherwise. They had dug new access points and apparently transformed them into their base of operations. Clever, Liu Wei had to give them that.

Going back to the here and now, he noticed something ahead with his soul sense. A short time later, he came across a scene of battle. The body of a man, his throat cut open lay on the ground in a pool of dried blood that connected to the trail he had been following.

That explained what had happened to Qingge. She had fought – and won – against this man, most likely having been confronted by him during her escape. Their injuries matched and pointed to a long and tough battle fought mostly without weapons.

If Liu Wei had to wager a guess, Qingge had been unarmed from the start and managed to disarm this man at the start of their fight. The fight had concluded when one of them had gotten ahold of the weapon again, they had fought over it, wounding each other and finally killing the man. The weapon in question had probably been the sword she had carried with her.

That meant his purpose for coming here was void. He had found the perpetrator, but he wasn’t in a position to capture him. Besides, the man had already paid for his actions… with his life.

He continued on regardless. Now that he was here, he might as well lend a helping hand in rounding up the bandits.

A while later, he came upon a table with a deck of cards and a half-filled mug of beer on it, a man reclined against the wall with a second mug, this one empty, snoring close by. He ignored both.

The next thing that caught his attention after traversing several empty tunnels were the cries of an old woman which led him to a sort of improvised cell.

“Let me out of here you bastards! Can’t anybody hear me? That damned girl locked me in here! Let me ouuuuut! I’ll skin you all alive if you don’t hurry you useless boneheads!”

From what his soul sense was telling him, the woman was indeed small and old, but she was also a body cultivator carrying several Qi-intensive poisons on her body. After deliberating for a moment, Liu Wei did her the favor. The door was locked, so he unceremoniously broke it out of its hinges.

“Finally, someone decides to jump over their overweight shadow and make themselves useful. You know how long I was…”

The lady stopped speaking and took a step backwards once she saw Liu Wei.

“Quite the sturdy door for its appearance, don’t you agree?”

Liu Wei was quite amused by the situation.

“Who… who are you supposed to be?”

“I assume when you speak of ‘that damned girl’, you are referring to Qingge, the member of my sect your group captured?”

He had ignored her question entirely, but its answer seemed to start dawning on her nonetheless.

“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about. In fact, I’m demonstrably just a prisoner here myself. They kidnapped me from my… my tea shop.”

Liu Wei raised an eyebrow.

“It’s impolite to lie to your seniors, you know?”

“I… but…”

“I think it would be best if you just stayed silent and followed behind me. We can discuss the specifics of your situation later. Understood?”

“Very much, sir. But you see, my old bones would have trouble keeping up with you. If you let me, I’ll find my own way out of here and wait for you outside.”

“A nice attempt, but I can see that you’re a cultivator. Now stop wasting my time and get going.”

“I… As you say, sir.”

That taken care of, Liu Wei made his way back to the main tunnels, now with an old lady in tow and in a considerably better mood.