The place was empty, and unlike the extremely barren surface which was hot due to its desert like nature, it was relatively cool underground; it was also quiet and peaceful;

"If someone wanted to build an army to infiltrate an entire Kingdom, they could do so by entering the Kingdom in scattered groups, and rendezvousing in an underground location like this to build their manpower until they are ready for the coup!"

Daniel told Min Hong who nodded in agreement…

Min Hong was impressed by the amount of space here which was enough to house over 500 people as he looked over to Gong Yi who also had the same expression on his face…

Then Jun Tao took Min Hong and Gong Yi to the area where he and his most loyal subordinates usually have their meetings, and there he offered Min Hong the leader seat whilst Gong Yi took the next with himself coming up next…

Teng was also there and he stood behind Min Hong instead of sitting as Min Hong asked;

"So tell us, how are the state of things here and the mission progress?"

"Yes, master…"

"It all began when the empire began to fall short in terms of resources about seven years ago, and the entire empire was gradually descending into chaos because the increasingly scarce resources meant greedy and eccentric experts ended up needing the same resources which makes some want to take them by force with the other party being unwilling to hand them over…"

"Then after about four months of solid investigations, the ministry appointed with the regulation of the empire's wealth and resources finally found where the problem was; our merchants…"

"The empire had resources which were easily found within its borders, but were extremely scarce in other empires and settlements, and as a result, the empire set up an inter-trade between the merchants of other empires and settlements and ours, but what the ministry discovered was that, the rate at which merchants were visiting the empire was decreasing rapidly with alarming rates, and as a result, intern protectors were assigned to spread out of the empire in every direction and find out the cause of this problems…"

"We sent messages via messenger birds to our regular merchant alliances and tribes, but there was no reply and neither did our birds return, and as a result, we were required to visit them in person…"

"With a massive jungle splitting the borders of our Empire from the East Wind Empire, and also the bad blood that exists between both of us, it is only normal that we received little to no trade of any sort from them…"

"The next nearest empire we could trade with was the Jun Empire, and before five years ago, we had no issues with them, and there were our biggest trading partner, thus we headed out to find out why they were not as active as they usually were, and that was when we stumbled upon the land of stones…"

"We don't know why, but this place was never on our maps before, and we were stunned when we found out that an entire civilization the size of a village was existing out here, thus we decided to gather information on what was happening with the merchants from the Jun Empire since they were very close to their borders, but that was when the nightmare began…"

"We began to lose members of our groups one by one, and what started as a group of 10 Intern Protectors and 40 core court disciples from them Desert Sun Sect, since we were the closest sect to this area, began to decrease mysteriously…"

"Our members were being assassinated one after the other, and within the space of just a month, we had lost 20 core court disciples and 6 intern protectors, and as a result, our mission was diverted from searching for the problems facing our biggest trade partner to finding out who was poaching our members and killing them one after the other, and I a search for an answer to that, we also stumbled upon the answer to our trade problems…"

"Apparently, a new group of bandits with three Saint Stage experts had arrived within this area and displaced the existing residents with their strength and numbers, and they were called the Diamond Crust Mercenaries…"

"Apparently, this group had been posing as experts sent by the Dogon Empire to rob, plunder, steal and even kill several merchants who had to pass through the land of stones to get to the Dogon Empire..."

"Then as a result, the Jun Empire finally got wind of it, and since they couldn't send a message in any way to the Dogon Empire, and they weren't receiving any from us either, they were made to believe that this was the work of the Empire in a bid to cripple their empire, and that was when the bad blood began between our Empire and the Jun Empire…"

"But when we were about to leave for the empire, the mercenary group caught wind of our escape and set up a pursuit…"

"They caught up to us in no time, after all, we were all in the Nascent Soul stage and they had three Saint Stage expert, and then the slaughter began, and I had to watch my men and fellow disciple being slaughtered mercilessly in my presence…"

"They slaughtered us all until we were only three left, and it was the that Teng sacrificed four of his five Nascent Souls back then; using three of them to distract the saint stage experts by using his Wind, Water and Sword nascent souls, he used his Earth Nascent Soul underground and stealthily used it to send a single message to the Empire; Help!"

"But since we already figured out that such a large scale sabotage couldn't be possible without the help of an inside man or group, Teng didn't send the message directly to the Imperial Palace, instead he made massive amounts of sand float in the air before forming the character help, with an arrow pointing over here in the land of stones…"

"Such a glaring message was effective at passing our message across, but it also meant the enemies within had also figured it out, and as a result, the Diamond Crust mercenaries received word and came over to clear us out in broad daylight, causing everyone to figure out that they were not made up of people from the Dogon Empire alone, but from many criminals and wicked people who had been banished by the three neighboring Empires of the Dogon Empire…"

When Jun Tao spoke up to this point, Min Hong could also relate to a certain extent on the last part of his statement, after all, when he had also fled the East Wind Empire, he had headed straight for the Dogon, and if these other Empires had also denied him entry, he would have most likely ended up here…

"They slaughtered us all until only three of us were left; I, Teng and Huang Pi… They couldn't touch us because I had a bargaining chip with me…"

"Every Leader of the Intern Protector group had a special technique embedded in their bodies before heading out for missions, and this technique ensures that when the leader of the group dies, the empire would be notified instantaneously of the location, time, cause of death and the last 360 degree imagery of the vicinity when the leader of the group died, that way, the empire would be able to know the culprit and act accordingly…"

Min Hong was stunned by this technique as he began to think that the Dogon Empire might not be as simple as it seems;

"This technique is stronger than anyone below the nirvana stage, which means that the only thing that could kill the leaders without triggering the technique is a Nirvana/Samsara stage technique or expert…"

"Furthermore, whenever they wanted to attack any of the three of us I jump in and try to take the attack, but they caught my tactics and decided to imprison us within the land of stones…"

"We were told not to ever breakthrough into the Saint Stage, and we could leave if we wanted to but not towards the Dogon Empire, which meant our only option to flee was to enter the Jun Empire who were now in bad blood with us and might kill us on sight…"

"But the Empire responded swiftly to our call for help, and in less than three months, we got another set of stronger core court disciples and Intern Protectors…"

"Three months is not swift, especially when you consider the fact that it only took us a month to get here…"

Gong Yi spoke about what Min Hong was about to ask as they both had a deep frown etched on their foreheads;

"Firstly, the empire had to be as subtle as possible so as not to alert the enemy within their ranks of their maneuver, and the help they were sending also had to approach with caution because they wouldn't want to alert the Diamond Crust mercenary group either…"

"Secondly, they were sending over 200 men to our aid which consisted of 20 Intern Protectors and 180 core court disciples from all sects since the Desert Sun Sect couldn't recover quickly from the loss of the first batch of core court disciples sent over…"

'That would explain why they aren't even up to ten core court disciples in a sect as large as the Desert Sun Sect…'

Min Hong thought to himself when he heard the latter part of Jun Tao's statement…

"But despite that amount of subtlety, these new batch of help were still discovered and the 20 Intern protectors sacrificed their lives to ensure that the core court disciples entered the land of stones safely…"

"We wandered miserably all over the land before stumbling upon this place, and immediately, we got a boulder to roll over its entrance to hide it from others as we then set out to start rescuing the rest of the 150 core court disciples scattered all over the land of stones." Jun Tao explained…