Inside the main burial chamber, Director Hua saw the passageway ahead and displayed an extremely excited expression.

"It's open!"

Qi Yun and Duan Pingyu snapped back to reality, their eyes wide open, not expecting there to be something extraordinary below.

Even though they had anticipated it, when the passageway beneath the sarcophagus actually appeared, it still felt incredible.

As the sarcophagus was raised to about two meters high, it finally stopped moving. Director Hua stepped forward, took a palm-sized device from his toolkit, inserted it into the passage for a test, then turned back to Qi Yun and the others, calling them: "Let's go, the air down there is fine."

The two of them followed, and Qi Yun took one last look at the Bronze Warriors in the main burial chamber, still standing at the four corners of the sarcophagus. Their vacant eyes seemed to observe silently in the darkness.

He took a deep breath and followed Director Hua onto the stone steps, where a slightly decayed dry scent hit him in the face.

The stone steps were wide, each covered with half a centimeter of dust, which crunched underfoot and was particularly clear in the silent passage.

Director Hua led the way, the headlamp beam piercing through the darkness, illuminating the chisel marks on the stone walls. The steps in front of them descended at a slight incline, and they couldn't see where it ended.

The three of them walked for a good ten minutes, unsure of how many meters they were below the surface when the darkness at the end of the steps was suddenly torn open by a faint light, and the scene ahead finally changed.

The moment they stepped out of the passage, the three of them gasped in unison.

In front of them was a vast plaza, and in the center of the plaza stood an underground palace as magnificent as a palace!

The underground palace seemed to be shrouded in a mist, making it hard to see clearly.

The three walked out of the passage and set foot on this plaza, and their view instantly expanded.

The entire plaza was at least the size of a football field, paved with large slabs of dark blue stone, each slab half a meter square. The ceiling was so high it couldn't be seen, with only dim light filtering down from above, barely revealing crisscrossing stone beams, with many withered vines hanging from them, gently swaying as if blown by the wind.

"No wonder there's plenty of oxygen down here. There must be an air circulation design..." Qi Yun murmured to himself.

The underground palace in the center of the plaza was indistinct in the mist, like floating amid clouds.

Director Hua shone his powerful flashlight towards the palace, observed for a long time, and finally snapped out of his awe, calling Qi Yun and the other two: "Let's go over there, keep close to me."

With that, he led the way to the center of the plaza, occasionally striking the ground with a stick in his other hand.

The three smoothly reached the foot of the magnificent underground palace. Its walls were built with dark gray bricks, over ten meters high, decorated with clear and intricate carvings crisscrossing each other.

However, from their vantage point, they couldn't accurately discern what these carvings depicted.

The entrance to the underground palace consisted of two massive stone doors, each over three meters high, with a smooth, flat surface as if polished from a single slab of dark blue stone, with not a single gap at the edges. The sheer weight of the stone doors themselves was tens of tons, making one wonder how it was transported during the construction of the underground palace.

In the center of the stone doors were two bronze rings, each as large as a plate, with a faint metallic sheen, still looking new despite the centuries, with only a bit of dust but no hint of rust.

If Shanyang Hu had made it here earlier, those bronze door rings wouldn't have been preserved.

Director Hua meticulously examined the entrance, then extended a hand, touching the surface of the stone door, moving along to the location of the rings.

After frowning and pondering for a while, he turned and called to Qi Yun: "Qi, grab the right ring and follow my movements to knock."

Qi Yun had been standing at the back, not daring to step forward, fearing he might inadvertently trigger a mechanism. But upon hearing Director Hua's instruction, he approached the right stone door and reached out to grasp the ring.

The next second, he felt an icy chill seeping into his head, as if the ring had just been taken out of a freezer.

"Begin!" Director Hua called out.

Qi Yun followed his movements, pulling hard, lifting the three to four-pound ring and letting it strike against the stone door with a clear "clang" that resonated throughout the plaza, echoing for what seemed like an eternity.

"Again! This time hit it twice!"

"Again!"

"..."

They kept trying for more than ten minutes.

Suddenly! Qi Yun again heard that familiar "creak" sound, as if some mechanism was being triggered.

Followed by a rumbling noise, the enormous stone door weighing tens of tons began to slowly open inward by itself!

As the stone door moved, clouds of dust fell, forming a haze in the flashlight beam, causing the three to cover their mouths and noses, turning their faces away.

Once the dust settled, the stone door was fully open, revealing a peculiar light from within.

"Let's go!" Director Hua called out excitedly, yet cautiously leading the way inside.

The three walked into the palace interiors and were once again rendered speechless by astonishment.

The interior was several stories high, with a gilded dome painted with patterns resembling the Milky Way.

Each star held a massive Luminous Pearl, casting a dim light throughout the palace.

The light they saw earlier from the plaza was likely from these Luminous Pearls.

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