Wei Zhao nodded, then gathered General Majestic into his arms. But General Majestic was a peculiar case: it absorbed the energy Wei Zhao fed it passively, and knew nothing of inner-energy techniques, so Wei Zhao's earlier method for raising a creature's strength plainly would not work here.

Thinking back to the time he himself had been wounded, the only method Wei Zhao could devise was this: draw a little energy out of General Majestic, compress it, then give it back, and see whether that had any effect.

Now that he had an idea, Wei Zhao set to work.

Sitting cross-legged, he roused the Xuanyuan Dragon-Taming Art and began absorbing energy to cultivate; but this time he did not enter the jade pendant space—he drew the energy out of General Majestic instead.

Wei Zhao was already at the peak of mid Mystic Rank, and could break through only by accumulating it little by little. The amount of energy he took in was both tiny and slow; even so, that was enough—he need only remove a little true qi of energy from General Majestic's body.

So after absorbing only a trace, Wei Zhao stopped, compressed a small packet of energy, and sent it straight back.

"Whoosh—" In an instant General Majestic was like a balloon pumped full of air, swelling in every part, limbs splayed, eyes bulging, sprawled flat on the ground, howling in agony: "Woof—"

Wei Zhao watched the dog on the ground with some sympathy, but he did not intervene. True, he could draw the energy back out of General Majestic's body, yet doing so would amount to abandoning any hope of upgrading it.

So Wei Zhao resolved to let General Majestic weather this trial by its own effort. Even if the energy burst it open, so long as it did not die, Wei Zhao could still heal it with energy—he was not especially worried.

General Majestic's plight gave Qiu Lingshan and Chen Yutian a proper fright as well, but Wei Zhao said nothing, and so naturally neither of them said anything either.

One hour, two hours... at last the ballooned body that the energy had swollen slowly shrank, and finally returned to normal. General Majestic had become an early Mystic Rank hound!

"Woof, woof!" General Majestic's bark was cheerful; though it could not speak, the rise in its strength clearly delighted it.

"Heh... congratulations," Wei Zhao said, smiling at General Majestic.

Qiu Lingshan and Chen Yutian clicked their tongues in wonder. A dog, of all things, had become an early Mystic Rank as well—around Wei Zhao, truly anything strange could happen.

What puzzled them, though, was that Wei Zhao kept boosting one person's strength after another, while his own seemed not to change in the slightest; and even when he was injured, he recovered overnight. Just what manner of man was this?

Even a Heaven Rank expert could not possess such formidable ability, surely? Especially constrained by the thin spiritual qi of heaven and earth in the air, no one could recover that quickly. Where did Wei Zhao's true qi come from? Why did it seem inexhaustible?

Of course, if Wei Zhao would not speak of it, they could only bury the question in their hearts. Wei Zhao had not deliberately concealed anything; he simply treated them as his own people in earnest, and they could not be so tactless as to press him with questions.

A day and a night passed, and at last footsteps sounded in the passage. Before long, the figures of Old Hei and the others appeared.

"So they're all back..." Wei Zhao was unsurprised; after all, with quicklime powder as markers, even a wrong turn would always lead them out again. It was only that the lot of them came back dusty and grimy, plainly worn out from wandering the passage to no avail.

"Well? Did you find anything?" Qiu Lingshan asked, mimicking the woman thief's tone with a teasing edge.

"Hmph!" Old Yu gave a cold snort. "Not even a ghost!"

Old Hei and James exchanged a glance, both rather regretful. Had they known, they would have done better to trust Wei Zhao's words; they had walked a whole day and night for nothing, wasting their strength and ending up thoroughly depressed. A thief never goes home empty-handed—to come away empty means ill luck—yet along the entire way there had not been so much as a bird's feather, not a single thing to be pocketed in passing.

Yu Xiaoke was just as dispirited, but she was, after all, hired by Old Hei, and could hardly say much.

"I told you so; you wouldn't believe me." Wei Zhao shrugged. "Can we go now?"

"Could we... rest a little first?" Neither Old Hei nor James was a cultivator; both were dead on their feet, and with Old Yu hounding them the whole way, they had not dared slack off.

Old Yu and Yu Xiaoke, by contrast, were cultivators both. Yu Xiaoke was not even Yellow Rank, yet her stamina was good, and a short rest would restore it.

"Then rest by yourself. We've waited a day and a night; we're bored half to death." Wei Zhao paid Old Hei's suggestion no mind and rose, heading for the mouth of the other passage.

"This..." Old Hei grew anxious at once. He knew Wei Zhao's abilities, and this business in particular had impressed upon him all the more how formidable the man was; if they did not travel with Wei Zhao, he doubted they could even reach the underground palace in one piece.

James felt much the same, but he was truly too exhausted; his legs were like lead, and he could not move them.

"You two worthless creatures, on your feet and get moving!" How could Old Yu allow Wei Zhao to act alone? He had figured it out: among these tomb robbers, the male thief was the one with real skill, and if they did not move together with him, this tomb raid would likely not go smoothly. So he threatened, "If you don't come, this old man will kill you both!"

Old Hei and James started in fright and scrambled up; there was no help for it—they had to follow Wei Zhao, stumbling and crawling forward.

When they first entered this passage, it was no different from before: the same path, the same stone walls, dipping and rising, bending left and right. Wei Zhao walked on by the light of the searchlamp.

And as they went farther, the passage seemed to grow ever more spacious, from the two meters or so it had been to three meters, four, five... until at last it had widened to somewhere around ten meters!

At this, everyone understood: this time they had taken the right path, and the underground palace must lie just ahead. Yet the way growing wider and wider meant there would surely be traps lying in wait before them...

Suddenly, Wei Zhao halted.

"What is it, male thief?" Seeing Wei Zhao stop, Old Yu tensed at once.

"Look at the ground," Wei Zhao said mildly.

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