"Lying?" Thorne's face changed drastically when he heard this. He carefully looked around.

  "Don't worry." Chen Yue smiled leisurely. "As far as I know, he can only monitor through those special snowflakes. He can't do it here."

  "How do you know he's lying? Why would he lie?"

  Thorne couldn't figure it out. This was the guardian's territory. Although they were powerful outside, they were completely insignificant here. If the guardian wanted to kill them, it probably wouldn't be any more difficult than crushing an ant.

  Would such an existence need to deceive them in a roundabout way to achieve some ulterior purpose?

  "At first, I couldn't figure it out either." Chen Yue shrugged. "However, when he mentioned the small house at the exit of the maze, I understood."

  "Do you know what that small house actually is?" Seeing Thorne shaking his head blankly, Chen Yue knew that if he didn't explain it in detail, Thorne would never understand.

  "It's a long-distance teleportation device. Although I don't know its specific functions, generally speaking, the minimum distance for a long-distance teleportation device to teleport is at least a hundred miles." Originally, with Chen Yue's knowledge, he couldn't be sure just by listening to the description. But he had been teleported by a long-distance teleportation device before, so he naturally knew it quite well. Moreover, he pretended to be curious and asked about the specific process of teleportation, and finally was certain about it.

  "A hundred miles..." Thorne was shocked. If he still didn't understand at this time, he would really be stupid. "We're already outside the ruins. Even if we want to teleport, it would be at most a few miles at most. After all, the core area itself is only about a dozen kilometers. Therefore, if we really teleport, we definitely won't be teleported into the real ruins."

  "That's right." Chen Yue's face was a bit gloomy, and there was even a bit of murderous intent between his brows. "That long-distance teleportation device is a bit different from what I know. After all, it's a product of the previous civilization. Maybe we'll be teleported to a certain place in the Sky Leaf Empire, but it's more likely that we'll be teleported to another country."

  With the vast territory of the Apostle Continent, if they were teleported to a faraway country, they might never have the chance to come back in this lifetime.

  "Do you mean that this is all a scam?" Thorne was shocked. If this was true, then the deaths of so many adventurers and mercenaries outside would be completely meaningless.

  "No." Chen Yue let out a long breath slowly and said in a deep voice, "The ancient ruins should be real. Otherwise, he wouldn't have tried so hard to send us away. Now that I think about it, he's been doing this all along. At first, he pretended to be mysterious to scare us away. As a result, I won against him and forced him to come up with the idea of breaking through the levels. Whether it's the first choice or the second choice with the long-distance teleportation device, the purpose is to make us leave."

  "Isn't he afraid that we'll choose the first one? Then we'll go out and publicize it after getting the benefits, and won't more people come here?"

  "Gift?" Chen Yue snorted coldly. "He deliberately threw out this temptation. You should know that we're intruders. It's good enough that he doesn't hold us accountable for our rudeness. How could he give us gifts? There's no such good thing in the world. In fact, he's been tempting us to choose the first one all along."

  Seeing that Thorne still didn't quite understand, Chen Yue reminded him, "Then, let me ask you, if you want his gift, where will you go to get it?"

  Thorne suddenly realized. This was actually the same method as the second one. Maybe there would also be a teleportation device at that time to teleport them out.

  Chen Yue continued, "If he hadn't been so hesitant, saying at the beginning how dangerous the second choice was, trying to scare us into choosing the first one, but then going back on his word after we all chose the second path and saying that there were only three levels in total and that the second level was just a simple maze, trying to reassure us, I wouldn't have become suspicious."

  Shaking his head, Thorne's face showed a nervous look. "Then what should we do next? If we go back, he'll find out. Could it be that we really have to teleport?"

  "Of course not." That strange smile appeared on Chen Yue's face again. "Don't you think it's strange? With his strength, there was clearly a simpler way, but he chose the most complicated one instead."

  Thorne nodded. This was also what he couldn't figure out the most. Could it be that this guardian was really so bored that he was just looking for fun for himself?

  There must be a reason they didn't know inside, but they could make a bold assumption based on this: the guardian wouldn't directly take action against them.

  "How can we return empty-handed when we've entered the treasure mountain?" Chen Yue's eyes shot out a intimidating light, and he said slowly, "What we need to do is to enter this ancient ruin."

  After being persuaded by Chen Yue, Thorne suppressed the shock in his heart. The two decided to split up.

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  To avoid arousing suspicion, Thorne entered the maze, but he just wandered around near the entrance of the maze. Once he found something wrong, he could withdraw immediately.

  Chen Yue went to look for the ancient ruin. With his ability, he could discover the silver-white snowflakes in the wind and snow. As long as he was careful, he wouldn't be discovered.

  However, in case the guardian had other monitoring means, Chen Yue didn't move vigorously on the snowfield. Instead, he carefully and slowly moved forward. And the Frozen Rabbit became his best assistant. It quickly ran through every corner of this area, but didn't find anything strange.

  Then, the only place where the ancient ruin might exist was underground.

  At this time, there was no good solution. Chen Yue could only find a hidden corner and start digging downward.

  Ten meters, twenty meters, thirty meters...

  With the extremely sharp Blade Beast, Chen Yue dug to a depth of 150 meters. All he saw was still the vast expanse of snow, without any trace of the ruin.

  "Could it be that the ruin isn't underground, or it's not under this snowfield?" After working hard for a long time without success, Chen Yue's thoughts inevitably wavered.

  However.

  The hesitation flashed by, and Chen Yue's face regained its unshakable firmness. He continued to dig downward.

  After digging more than 200 meters, with a "ding" sound, Chen Yue finally showed a relieved expression on his face.

  The terrain here was a snowfield. All the way down, apart from snow and solid ice, there was nothing else. With the sharpness of the Blade Beast, it couldn't have been blocked at all. So the only possibility was that he had hit the ruin.

  "More than 200 meters..." Chen Yue pulled the corners of his mouth, calmed down his mood a little, and scraped off the layer of ice and snow on it slightly. A purple-black rock appeared in front of him. Without any hesitation, Chen Yue dug to both sides again. But at the same depth, he encountered the same huge rocks. After sweeping away the surrounding ice and snow, he realized that this was a huge boulder. The width of just over ten meters was only the tip of the iceberg, and there was more of it buried in the ice and snow.

  Chen Yue's expression became very calm. He knew that his guess was mostly correct.

  What was below was undoubtedly the ancient ruin.

  At this time, two hours had passed. Worried that things might change if he delayed, Chen Yue didn't try to bypass this huge rock of unknown size to find the entrance. Instead, he summoned the Blade Beast and pressed it against the purple-black boulder.

  "I'm sorry to trouble you." Chen Yue muttered to himself. With a slight exertion of force, the rock as hard as iron was pierced deeply by the Blade Beast as if it were made of paper. After turning it around, a small piece of rock the size of a washbasin was cut off.

  After cutting it more than a hundred times, he finally penetrated the huge rock and dug out a passage big enough for one person.

  In the next moment, Chen Yue entered the interior of the ancient ruin.

  As soon as he landed, suddenly a loud explosion sounded.

  "Kid, what do you want to do?"

  "Whoosh." The hairs on Chen Yue's body stood on end. His nerves were instantly adjusted to the limit. He took a step forward, and an imposing momentum as heavy as a mountain suddenly emerged. Immediately after that, his right hand holding the Blade Beast was about to swing forcefully towards the direction of the sound when another voice exploded.

  "Get lost! Figure it out by yourself. You can't even get out of such a simple maze. You're all idiots!"

  Chen Yue was speechless and a bit embarrassed. It seemed that that sentence wasn't meant for him.

  Only then did he have time to observe his surroundings. This was an empty hall, entirely made of purple-black boulders. He didn't know what material it was. And the architectural style inside, which was very different from that of the present day, made Chen Yue understand that this was undoubtedly the ruins left by the previous civilization.

  However, looking at the empty hall, which was cleaner than if a hundred thieves had ransacked it, Chen Yue was completely speechless.

  Was this the legendary ancient ruin with countless treasures, where even a single brick could make one as rich as a country? It was simply the most shabby ancient ruin in history...

  Perhaps apart from the rocks that made up the ruin itself, there was nothing worthy of attention here.

  If it weren't for the old-fashioned voice of the guardian constantly ringing in the hall, Chen Yue would almost have doubted whether he had gone to the wrong place.

  When he was outside, he didn't feel it. But when he got inside, he suddenly realized how loud the guardian's voice was. Even if a hundred elephants roared together, they would be outdone.

  With a slight frown, Chen Yue walked towards the direction of the sound. After turning a corner, he saw a room similar to a control room, and the sound was coming from there.

  "Even at this moment, he hasn't discovered that I've invaded..." Shaking his head, Chen Yue became more certain about his guess of the guardian's identity.

  They had been fooled from beginning to end, and they were willing to be deceived and run around in circles.

  The most helpless thing was that the guess about the guardian was made by themselves. Looking back, the other party really hadn't admitted his identity as a guardian in a single word.

  "How embarrassing."

  Supporting his forehead with his hand, Chen Yue pushed open the door of the room without hesitation.

  There weren't many things in the room, and the living creatures that could be called were even more obvious at a glance. So Chen Yue took in everything at a glance.

  This glance made him feel as if he had been hit on the head. His vision went black, and he almost fainted from anger.

  He saw that in front of a strange instrument, a petite beauty the size of an adult's finger turned her head when she heard the sound. At the moment of seeing Chen Yue, her snow-white and delicate jade hand tightly covered her red lips, and her big eyes like gems showed infinite shock.