Several cultivators were still unable to understand what happened, but most knew what went on.
"You sons of a bitches!" one of the cultivators grabbed another.
The second raised his hands and said, "What? You have a problem with me giving my own Information Paper to young master?" he said.
"You ruined us all!" the first cultivator said, "That's not my problem, Young Master has promised to take good care of my family, and paid me a handsome sum, what did you give me? Please put your hands off," the cultivator said and I immediately understood what went on.
"What's going on Shen Bao," Huang Yu asked.
"Well, it seems that I made a mistake, we should have been more careful at the banquet," I said.
Another cultivator heard what I said and one of them spoke, "What do you mean?" he asked.
I explained, "The banquet was actually an obvious tell for what is to come. The Pieces of Information was distributed before we entered the prison, it was our mistake to not realize that we should associate ourselves with people with Pieces of Information, that man, Wu Lei, had realized it and made contact with the people who had the tickets. Once they made their group they all handed him and his partner their pieces of information allowing them to have an easier way to clear the test. While we were too focused on 'Making' Connections, he made sure to control the situation from the start… he is an impressively shrewd man," I said.
"Why are you complimenting him! We all lost! Don't you understand?" the same cultivator said.
"Who said we lost?" I asked.
"In case you don't know how to count, there are only nineteen tickets! And they took ten of them, how can we clear the scenario here if we can't even get the rest?!" he said.
"Well, why do you think there are only nineteen?" I asked.
"Because…" the man said.
"Yes, that is also a hint, meaning that there must be a tenth ticket, only the way to get it won't be simple, I believe it is a hidden ticket somewhere in this prison," I said to him.
"Then do you have an idea on how to clear this place?" he asked.
"I'm not sure, but I have a good hunch we'll be able to find out more once we leave this place," I said then turned to the other cultivators.
"However, I hate traitorous scum," I said as I looked at the few cultivators who sold their pride and gave away their Pieces of Information.
"You talk a big game for someone in the same situation as us, what can you do without your Qi?" one of the traitors spoke a smirk wide on his face.
"Really? Who said I can't use Qi?" I smiled back then I opened my mouth and spat a powerful poisonous breath that spread through the whole room.
Since I'm capable of easily controlling poison, I made sure that none of it would touch any of the people that didn't sell out, or in fact never even have a piece of information in the first place.
The rest of the cultivators shocked from what just happened tried to rotate their cultivation base only for the shackles to fully suppress them.
"H-how!?!" one of them spoke, their last words of course.
None of them survived my breath and they all died paralyzed and frothing at the mouth.
I then inhaled back all the poison and looked back at the rest of the cultivators, "Now that the troublesome ones are dead, how about we plan the way out?" I said in a gentle smile.
But my words were like cold water that poured on them.
Unlike them, I was fully capable of using my abilities, because I didn't cultivate normal Qi. This meant, that if any of them tried to pull some strange shit, they won't make it past me alive especially after they realized an important thing.
"What's this?" one of the cultivators spoke as he saw a black spot on his palm.
"Oh, that's Death Weaver's Plague," I said.
The words that came out of my mouth were a clear threat.
"Why did you do this to us?!" another cultivator asked.
"Because I'm planning on using you all for the next test, and in case any one of you manages to get their hands on a piece of information and tries to 'Snitch,' I can easily kill you off. But don't worry, just listen to my words carefully and you'll all be able to clear this place," I said.
"What kind of madness is this? Who will guarantee that you won't just escape after you get your tickets?" he said.
I turned to Huang Yu, "Because I need ten tickets at least, for me and her, and if I were to get at least ten tickets, I might as well clear the whole scenario," I said smiling back, "Now are you planning on helping out, or…" I didn't finish but I looked at the dead corpses on the ground.
It was clear what I meant to say and they understood rather fast.
"W-We'll help," one of them said, and the rest followed suit.
"Good, now let's move," I said as I went towards the portal that had opened a while ago once we all were shackled.
"Shen Bao, do you think it's wise to do this? To have everyone imprisoned to your whims, aren't you just creating enemies?" Huang Yu spoke.
"In life, one must make many enemies to progress, but here, being forced to follow my orders is the only way for me to clear this place, so I'll have to make them serve for now," I replied back through sound transmission.
Once we were outside the room, we found ourselves in a long straight tunnel. It was made of sturdy-looking dark bricks.
There were a few Light Pearls barely able to light the way forward.
There were two paths we could take, left or right. "Should we split up?" one of them asked.
"No, it's pointless to split up, the test isn't based on time, so we might as well stay grouped up, in case we split, one of us could get caught and the worse case would be if one of us is caught with a piece of information. So let's stay grouped up for now," I said and told them," Let's head from the right," I said.
The group didn't argue about the direction and we all moved forward for a very long time.
The tunnel seemed to extend for almost all eternity, and I made sure to check if we were in a spatial dimensional labyrinth, but it wasn't the case, this prison was simply absurdly huge.
The path we took didn't branch out for a while until we arrived next to a room that had a bright white formation on it.
The formation itself had a design that looked exactly like the Information Piece.
"What's this?" one of the cultivators asked.
I took a closer look at the information first then, said, "This is a locked wall, we'll be able to go past it when we use a Piece of Information against it, there should be something behind this wall," I said.
"Damn it, but we have none of those, those fuckers took everything," the cultivator said.
"We don't really need it," I spoke, "As long as I'm here," I smiled then pulled a small brush.
"What are you going to do?" asked Huang Yu.
"You'll see," I said and began tampering with the formation.
The cultivators behind me began grumbling as they were speaking.
"How is he going to even modify a formation made by the Heavenly Academy, this thing is already too complex for a high-end inscriber. Humph, I think it was a bad decision to follow him, we might as well just give up," he spoke.
Other cultivators had the same train of thought which I found a bit jarring. Why the heck do people underestimate me this much?
Suddenly the formation lit up and the wall in front of us tore open and unraveled into a whole new room.
On the other side of the room was a table with a single piece of information sitting lonely on top of it.
The rest of the cultivators were all shocked and had their jaws wide open.
I scoffed at them and headed in, slowly making sure that there are no traps first before I grabbed the piece of Information.
"Good, we got one, nine more to go, let's head out," I spoke to the group.