The city was empty and quiet, like a dead city, not a ghost in sight. Qin Yan and his companions walked for a while without encountering any strange beasts.

Out of curiosity, they randomly entered a few houses in the city and found various furniture inside, covered in dust as if they had been inhabited before, but clearly left unused for years.

"It's strange, it seems like people used to live here, how did it end up like this?" Lin Shiqi said curiously.

Qin Yan said, "Maybe this city, like the city with the leopard people before, was all killed and eaten by monsters, turning it into an empty city."

"That's a possibility," Lin Shiqi nodded, "But then again, why would the sword be placed in such a place? It's strange to leave such an important thing in a place where so many monsters roam."

"I don't know, but let's find that sword as soon as possible and figure out a way to leave here."

Guided by the light emitted by the red crystal, the group wandered through the city and eventually arrived at a huge, palace-like stone building with a massive gate, where they stopped.

Looking around, Qin Yan saw that there were no other paths nearby, and they had reached the innermost part of the ancient tomb, with the light from the red crystal becoming stronger.

"It should be here, the sword should be inside this palace," Qin Yan said, looking at the vast palace in front of him.

Yi Tianchou walked to the front and coldly said, "Since that's the case, our cooperation ends here. As we agreed at the beginning, whoever finds the sword first, it belongs to them."

Without waiting for Qin Yan's response, he strode into the huge palace gate, while Yu Ji followed suit.

"Let's go quickly, we can't let them get ahead of us," Lin Shiqi said, seeing Yi Tianchou and Yu Ji entering the palace.

"It's okay, this palace is so big, they won't easily find the sword. We have the crystal to pinpoint its exact location, so we have the advantage," Qin Yan reassured.

Hearing this, Lin Shiqi felt relieved, and the three of them entered the huge palace gate.

The palace was empty, with only stone corridors, inner courtyards, and some other buildings, and no strange beasts inside. Qin Yan and his companions searched the palace for a while but couldn't find the sword.

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"What's going on, the crystal keeps changing, where is the sword?" Lin Shiqi became impatient after searching for so long.

"It's strange, the sword should be here," Qin Yan stared at the red crystal in his hand, took a few steps to the side, and noticed the light dimming slightly. He took a few steps back, and the light became stronger. Continuing to move back, the light dimmed again.

"Could it be that the crystal is malfunctioning, there's nothing here," Lin Shiqi said, as they were in an empty courtyard with nothing around.

At this moment, Dream Butterfly thought of a possibility, "Could the sword be directly below or above us?"

"That's a possibility," Qin Yan realized, looking up, but only saw the empty sky and high cliffs, nothing else.

"It seems like the sword should be beneath us." Qin Yan swung his trident spear in the air, releasing energy blades towards the stone ground. He struck the stone surface several times, leaving half-meter-long marks. Qin Yan clenched his fist, crouched down, and slammed his fist into the ground, causing a dull "thud" sound, but the ground remained unchanged.

"No, this ground is solid, the sword shouldn't be underground," Qin Yan concluded after trying to break open the ground for a while.

Dream Butterfly said, "In that case, there's only one possibility. There should be a basement in this palace, and the sword must be in the basement. Let's quickly search for any entrances to the underground around here."

They started searching for the entrance to the basement in the palace. After a while, they found a passage leading underground. They immediately entered the underground passage, which turned out to be quite long. After walking for several minutes, they emerged from the passage into a spacious rectangular stone chamber.

Lin Shiqi summoned a fireball to illuminate the stone chamber. They saw a large number of square stone coffins scattered in the rectangular chamber. As they walked around the chamber, Qin Yan suddenly noticed a conical lead-gray platform at the end of the chamber. In the center of the platform, a dark sword-like object was vertically inserted.

"Look over there, there's a sword inserted. Could that be the sword we've been looking for?!" Qin Yan couldn't hide his excitement as he gazed at the sword on the conical platform and exclaimed loudly.

"It must be the sword!" Lin Shiqi exclaimed with joy upon seeing the sword. "Yes, after all our hard work and risks, we finally found the sword." As she spoke, she hurried towards the platform at the end of the stone chamber.

With a loud noise, a large stone coffin in the chamber flew up and smashed towards Lin Shiqi. She quickly stopped in her tracks. With a deafening crash, the heavy stone coffin hit the ground in front of Lin Shiqi, causing the entire underground space to shake violently.

"That was close!" Lin Shiqi exclaimed, sweating coldly. The stone coffin seemed to weigh thousands of pounds, and if it had hit her, she would have been turned into minced meat and died instantly.

"Come back, Shiqi, there must be some monster here!" Qin Yan said anxiously. Lin Shiqi also felt that something was not right and quickly retreated to stand beside Qin Yan.

With a loud noise, the lid of the stone coffin that had just been aimed at Lin Shiqi opened automatically and flew out. Then, a strange creature slowly crawled out of the coffin, appearing in front of Qin Yan and the others.

"What... what is this creature?!" Lin Shiqi stared in shock at the creature crawling out of the coffin. It appeared to be a monster that looked like a lion, with a lion's body and a human-like face. In addition, on the back of this lion-faced, human-bodied monster were two large, eagle-like gray-brown wings.