I couldn't fight now, though it would have been the best way out of this situation, the lack of information I have at this stage is stopping me from doing anything stupid.
I walked up to Liang Yu and pushed her against the wall.
"Huh, wait, what are you doing… I mean, it's too sudden!" she said fully flustered.
"Huh? What are you talking about? stand here," I said then pulled my brush and began writing an inscription on the wall around her.
"Ah… an inscription, yes, what else," she said smiling ruefully as if she was expecting something and was disappointed.
I finished writing the inscription and then called X into my holding bag.
Then I pressed myself against her and onto the wall enabling the formation to start.
Soon, the formation lit up, and everything about us, from our scent, our sense, and even our presence was muffled.
It took less than a minute for a few cultivators to come rushing towards where we were and immediately the wall on the other side opened up letting out a bright light shine through the tunnel.
The two groups of cultivators met together a few feet next to us and looked dumbfounded.
"What? Where did they go?" one of them asked.
"I don't know, they never came here, did you miss them on the way here?" one of them asked.
"No, we made a full sweep as we were moving, what the hell? Did they disappear or something?" one of them asked.
"We locked the door on the other side when we came here, so even if they hid somewhere, they should still be stuck in the tunnel."
"This is strange, they never got here so there could have been another path inside the tunnel you must have missed them. So, they must still be somewhere in the tunnel, let's hurry back!" a cultivator added and the group rushed back.
One of the cultivators however made sure to lock the tunnel door before they headed to the other side and placed a couple of explosive talismans under some rocks.
I spotted all of that of course and made sure to keep it in mind.
Soon, they disappeared from where we stood and then I finally moved from Liang Yu.
Who looked more red in the face than a tomato.
"What's wrong?" I said as I pressed my head onto her forehead.
"Fever?" I asked.
"No, no, nothing, don't mind it," she said and hurriedly moved away from me.
"Anyway, let's leave," I said.
"How? They locked the door," she said.
"Why do you guys keep forgetting that I'm a master inscriber," I shook my head and then walked up to the closed gate.
Once I got there, I made sure to remove all the explosive talismans, carefully of course, and placed them a bit further into the tunnel.
Once that was done, I began working on the other gate. The inscription wasn't that difficult to disable, and I made quick work of it in a few minutes.
With the rotating door now opened we both walked outside while it closed behind us.
"Let's keep moving," I said as I chose one of the two available paths we had. We moved to the left of the new pathway.
It took us a few minutes before arriving at one of the areas with the same academy symbol. I placed my talisman against the door and enabled its opening. There was another Piece of Information there that I collected. And now we had three, we still need seven more and I knew it was going to be a pain to get them.
The passages through the prison looked complex and complicated to navigate through, not to mention the occasional Divine Sense sweep that would come every now and then to probe our location. But whenever they thought they found us, they never managed to find us due to my ability to fully hide our presence from Divine Sense.
We collected many other pieces and had six in my possession, but I knew for a fact that we couldn't get any more from this floor as I had mapped it fully along with all the secret passages within it.
Another thing of note happened soon after. The group we left on the third floor came up after realizing that there were no more Pieces of Information. We didn't meet them, but I knew they had come up from the person managing this prison.
"A prisoner has been captured!" spoke the same voice.
It was a good thing too because I knew another thing from this information.
The person will be indicating the prisoners captured and the prisoners that have managed to escape, namely the guy who Snitched first was already out, but the second one was clearly still stuck here. So, if we get lucky, we might end up meeting him and with the five Pieces of Information he has, I would be well over the quota.
We continued moving forward and decided that it was time to head to the first floor. But there was an issue.
There was only one way to the first floor.
"Shit," I cursed as I spotted a guard who was meditating on top of the stairs leading to the first floor.
This guy must be from the guard group, usually, a single person wouldn't be able to stop us from going up, but in a scenario where we can't use our skills, we're pretty fucked.
We backed off a bit and I spoke to Liang Yu, "We need to think up of a way to get him to leave his post," I said.
Liang Yu began thinking at first then seriously looked at me and said.
"I'll act as a decoy, I'll run past the stairs and have him follow me," she said.
I stopped her and said, "That's pointless, you'll be caught for no reason," I said.
I looked past the stairs and sighed, "I didn't want to do this, in case you think ill of me," I said.
"What do you mean? You've been saving me for a long while I'm pretty sure I should be the one thanking you and hoping for you to not think ill of me as being nothing but extra baggage that is holding you down," she said.
"Right," I said. I then began making a few hand symbols and manifested a perfect clone of myself.
The moment I finished the spell, Liang Yu looked at me with wide eyes, "H-how do you know the secret technique of the Holy Water Palace?!" she said.
There was a bit of anger in her voice.
"This is why I said don't think ill of me," I said then pulled up a golden scripture from my inventory.
"I found this during my travels," I said as I showed her the scripture.
She looked at it and frowned, "I'm afraid I'll have to take this away from you…even if it means my life," she said.
"Go ahead you can have it back," I said as I handed it back to her.
She looked at me in total confusion, "You're just going to give up a heavenly treasure, just like that?" she said.
"Well, it's completely useless to me right now, I already learned the technique, so what's the point of keeping an old piece of paper," I said.
She took the scripture then frowned, "How did you manage to even learn the Doppelganger technique from this? It's still incomplete, not to mention… are you a woman?" she asked.
I frowned at her and said, "I'm pretty sure the last time I looked, I had a big sausage between my legs, so no, I'm not a woman," I said.
My words caused her a bit of embarrassment but she said, "Because this is a skill that only women can learn, how did you do it? a man's meridian structure will not allow him to use this technique," she said.
"Well, maybe because I interpreted the technique by my own standards, I managed to overwrite it and subvert the limitations for its use without me even noticing," I said.
"Anyway, I thought that if you had the ability to use your skills you would have probably done this instead, since you're a saint of the Holy Water Palace you should know about this," I said.
"Yes, I do, and it's one of the techniques given solely to the three Saintes of the Holy Water Palace. Whoever owned this was probably a Saintess of the palace. Someone from the older generation, where did you find it?" she asked.
"It belonged to a Crimson Robed cultivator, who tried to kill me. A long time ago, in a desolate cave…it's a memory I don't wish to remember," I said.
"Crimson robed… do you remember what sect he was from?" she asked.
I frowned I actually don't know, that man was back at Si Xue planet, and I doubt that he would be related to Liang Yu but I still drew the symbol of the sect he belonged to, I still remember it.
It was an easy symbol to draw and once I finished, her eyes widened up.
"It was them after all!" she said.
"Who are you talking about?" I said.
"This," she pointed at my drawing, "It's the Three Suns Sect, a devil worshiper sect. Our ancestor sent his daughter, one of the three Saintess to broker a peaceful relationship with the Three Sun sect, but they never reported her safe arrival. They must have killed her and taken her inscription… this is vital information, do you swear that what you just said is true!" she said.
"Upon my Dao, I found it in his pouch and I still have it to this date," I said.
Then showed her the pouch I got from the man in Crimson Robes.
She grabbed the pouch and investigated it a bit and said, "Shen Bao, with this, I can act as if I hadn't seen you use our sect's Secret Skill, but please make sure to not reveal this to anyone else on this planet. It'll cause you a great deal of trouble, consider it thanks for showing me the evidence of the passing of my older sister," I said.
"But, the monitor of this prison is probably able to see what we're doing?" I said.
She shook her head, "the monitor of the prison belongs to the Heavenly Academy, they keep tight lips on these matters. So don't worry about it, anyway, while you already used this, might as well draw that man's attention for now," she said.
"Right," I said then sent the clone rushing forward towards the stairs, the moment the clone and the man meditating spotted each other, my clone cursed then headed back down and ran in the opposite direction of where we were.
The man came rushing, "Wait there you little rat!" he shouted and rushed down the stairs to our level, but before he followed the clone he made sure to look in our direction and sent a divine sense traveling a long way through the tunnel. Finding nothing he judged that it was not a distraction and followed the clone rather rapidly.
The two of us were hiding and just as he went away, we rushed up the stairs.
Time to head to the first floor.