With the rooms thoroughly cleaned out, they approached the large metal door. Pan Tian used a scroll of wisdom on it just to be on the safe side. "No curse that I can tell. No traps either. But doors are tricky," Pan Tian said.

Pan Tian pulled the scarab key out of her storage ring and slotted it into the indentation. It sank into the slot and latches unlocked with a series of clicks behind the door. Pan Tian gripped the handle and moved it up, every triangle sliding smoothly together as she did so. She threw open the door, revealing a room with a transparent floor that exposed complicated gears and machinery below.

In the center of the room, on a large platform, was a purple crystalline lotus folded up into a bud. Above it was a dark, semi-transparent circle on the ceiling. Six thick pipes came down from the ceiling, through the floor, and into the machinery below. With more pipes around the outer edge of the room, exposed gears and machinery lining the walls, a large capacitor on the opposite wall, and four sarcophagi around the edges of the room.

The sarcophagi moved, stone grinding on stone as green light spilled forth and three powerful auras washed over the room. Each at the ninth star of the Expert rank.

"Get back!" Jie cried as she shoved Pan Tian and Ithilix through the doorway and back out into the corridor. She grabbed Xue and threw him out of the room, using lightning step to make her move as fast as she possibly could. She grabbed a handle on the door and slammed it closed, the locks engaging as she did so. She stood in front of the door then, between her friends and the powerful presences that threatened them.

Three heavily bandaged humanoid mummies stepped out of the sarcophagi. Each had bodies like humans but with slender tails, clawed hands, and heads that more closely resembled a cat's. Their eye sockets burned with green fire.

One mummy carried blades of inky black shadow. Another formed an orb of sickly green fire that hovered behind her head like a poisoned sun.

The third had ostentatious robes decorated with purple runes and two skeletal snakes that slithered down his body. The snakes grew as they slithered down him. When they reached the floor, they swelled in size even faster until they towered over their master. Their slender bones were wreathed in green flames as they hissed, exposing long, thin, curved fangs in jaws bigger than Jie's head.

"A brave sacrifice, interloper," hissed the one with the orb of green fire behind her head.

Jie cycled qi armor. She glanced at the fourth coffin, also open. She frowned.

Was that open before? I only sensed three auras... did I miss one? Or did they get behind the door? Jie thought. Her fears sent a spike of qi shooting through her dantian, only to slam into the barrier to her middle dantian and make her entire body tremble.

"You soil our holy ground. Use our esteemed city and even our very bones for children's games, and now refuse to speak?" snarled the one with shadow blades.

"We meant no offense," Jie said though she couldn't help feeling at least slightly guilty from the mummy's words, "and we're hardly the worst intruders you have."

"The noctilith?" said the mummy with the snakes in a harsh, empty voice, "Yesss... they are... troublesome."

"So, are we fighting or what? I mean you're undead, but if you don't want to fight, we can go our separate ways," Jie said.

The mummies laughed. "Such arrogance," said the one with the orb of fire, "first we shall kill you and your friends. Then, we will curse you to this place so you might know true suffering."

Jie looked at the empty sarcophagus again and the fear that one had somehow slipped past her and was after her friends even now sent another spike slamming into the barrier to her middle dantian.

"Fine," Jie growled, "but just so you know. What I did... it wasn't a sacrifice."

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Jie removed the veil she kept on her aura entirely, letting her strength wash over them. Even though they were at the same rank, the mummies staggered.

Though these undead were capable of speech, Jie still saw them as nothing more than monsters and felt no need to hold back against them.

The one with the shadow blades slashed them at Jie despite the distance between them, creating massive arcs of deadly black qi similar to the ones Pan Tian created.

Jie jumped up and spun through a gap between the two scything arcs of black energy then lashed out with two finger of light attacks at the same time. One aimed at her attacker and the other at the master of the skeletal snakes. The latter of which formed spheres of darkness about the size of her head above his withered, bandaged hands. Each sphere radiated deadly power and held a large glowing purple rune in the center.

Green, fiery qi gushed from the female cat mummy's orb of fire in thick beams that struck each of the mummies. It washed over them all and formed armor comprised of green fire around all three of the mummies. Much like Jie's qi armor. Dragon lightning qi struck both of Jie's targets and exploded, knocking them backward and spreading cracks through the layer of qi covering them but not actually harming the mummies themselves.

Jie formed a lightning step platform in mid-air and boosted off it toward the mummy with the green, flaming orb. Without her barriers, Jie was sure it would be far easier to destroy the remaining mummies.

Jie landed just shy of the barrier forming mummy, rolled, and sprang to her feet as she cycled a dragonfist over each of her tightly clenched fists.

The mummified cat woman flinched as Jie appeared before her in a burst of speed and slammed a dragonfist under her chin. The powerful blow sent spiderweb cracks racing through the mummy's fiery armor as the mummy rocketed upward from the force of the strike.

Jie caught the mummy's foot. The mummy's green qi burned her own qi armor like acid wherever it touched, sizzling against Jie's electric armor but failing to break through. Jie yanked the mummy back down and slammed her into the floor with a thunderous crash that made the transparent material reverberate like a gong but didn't even scratch it.

The mummy yowled and scrambled as Jie climbed on top of her, ignoring the burning qi eating at her qi armor. Shadow arcs and purple runic spheres of darkness bore down on Jie as she hammered the mummy with dragonfist attacks, each one blasting fragments of green qi armor away. After just three strikes, the mummy's qi armor shattered like glass. Yet, just before Jie could land another strike, the mummy beneath her melted into sand and flowed away as though caught on some unseen wind.

Jie fell to the floor through the space the barrier mummy had previously occupied as arcs of shadow and runic spheres struck her. The attacks detonated against her qi armor in an eruption of darkness and purple qi that washed over her like a dense cloud of smoke. The blast knocked her down and took an alarming amount of qi from her bright blue armor as it snarled, snapped, and crackled in protest.

The barrier mummy reformed twenty meters away, her green qi restoring a protective barrier around her already.

Jie growled as she got to her hands and feet and the barrier mummy leaped up onto one of the thick pipes, scrabbling up its surface away from her.

Jie dropped and rolled under another shadow arc. Then, sprang back to her feet as she aimed a finger of light attack at the barrier mummy even as she sidestepped strikes from the two skeletal snakes.

Just as Jie was about to release her attack at the barrier mummy, something hit her back ankle hard and pulled it backwards, throwing her down to one knee and twisting her aim down and to the side at the very moment her dragon lightning qi flashed from her fingers.

Lightning arced from her fingers and struck the large capacitor on the wall instead. The capacitor sparked and the entire room jolted as a dim purple glow pulsed in the floor and gears and machinery groaned to life. A fourth aura oozed into existence right behind Jie.

But, rather than fear, she felt overwhelming relief that it hadn't slipped by and attacked her friends even as she saw part of its legs shimmer into view as its invisibility effect faded.

Jie triggered her qi armor reaction as she twisted out of the hooked grip of the assassin's khopesh blade around her ankle. She glared at him and cycled a dragonfist. But, before she could strike, two shadow arcs smashed into her from the side, sending her tumbling through the air and into the path of a runic sphere that struck her hard in the face and exploded.

The blast sent Jie spinning away in the opposite direction and burned through yet more of her qi. The successive strikes drained her qi armor so rapidly that it created unprotected patches where she wasn't guarded for just a moment before fresh qi poured into her technique and refreshed it.

Jie formed a lightning step in mid-air and boosted off it, trying to regain her footing and reset the tempo of the fight. But the assassin mummy pounced on her back and drove her down into the platform. The assassin hacked and slashed her back, carving through her qi armor like a ravenous beast as he attempted to pin her down with his body weight.

With a thought, Jie made her armor react to the assassin, and the crackling discharge sent him flying back away from her while slamming her harder into the ground in turn.