The five members of the tomb raiding party were all seasoned veterans in the field of grave robbing, and each of them was a specialist in at least one occupation.
The party leader, Song Gu, was renowned in the Nine Souls City as a top figure in ghost hunting. His specialty was in spiritual magic. According to the plan, if an evil spirit were to appear in the tomb or if there was a lingering will inhabiting it, then Song Gu would swiftly deal with it.
Amongst the tomb raiding party members, aside from Wei Jun, who was specialized in theft and formation hacking, there was a young lady with a lithe, sexy figure known popularly as the Dark Queen.
Her specialty lay in intelligence gathering and sensory ability. She was there as a guide and scout. In case of traps laid by the tomb owner, she would act to disable them.
The remaining two members of the party were a pair known as the Berserker Twins. Most tombs often had golems and undead guards, and in their berserker mode, this duo could handle any form of physical attack. They were the vanguard.
According to the plan, Wei Jun would disable any formation or barrier, and he would also pick the locks along the way. Dark Queen was to deal with traps, illusions, and mazes. Song Gu would take care of any lurking spiritual personnel, while the Berserker Twins would handle golems and undead guards.
The rest of the initial group were never actually needed, and the only reason Song Gu had invited them was to use them as cannon fodder in order to minimize the losses on the elite level. Well, they would have become a hindrance anyway—or so he thought.
The moment Wei Jun noticed the drop in the magic energy concentration around the entrance, he knew that the formation recharge that happened rarely was about to begin. Once he noticed the fluctuating energy level, he quickly gave the signal, and the quintet charged straight through the wide-open corridor entrance of the Black Dragon Tomb.
If the legends were to be believed, then this tomb housed the corpse, funeral items, and legacy of a Dragon Lord: the Black Dragon Emperor.
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"Hey! What the fuck do you think you're doing?!" an angry roar echoed through the darkness of a remote passage.
It was the voice of the party leader, Song Gu, and for some reason he sounded absolutely livid.
"Um... I'm doing what I'm supposed to do," a calm, tingling voice replied, followed by a peal of melodious laughter.
Wei Jun immediately recognized the owner of that voice. It was the wraith lady Ming, also known as the Dark Queen.
During the brief lapse caused by the formation core charging, the group had successfully slipped into the outer courtyard of the Black Dragon Palace. With Wei Jun's assistance, they had bypassed the Beguiling Formation and reached the palace's main entrance without alerting anyone.
Having survived countless raids while constantly walking on a knife's edge, Wei Jun knew the group's cohesion would soon crumble. With that in mind, he was already weighing his chances and considering his best course of action.
The party leader, Song Gu, was notorious for being selfish to an unreasonable degree and utterly obnoxious. He was not someone anyone could rely on when it mattered most. Although the Berserker twins were honest and somewhat trustworthy, their loyalty belonged only to each other.
As for the Dark Queen, Lady Ming... she was on an entirely different level.
While Song Gu was regarded as the party's leader, Wei Jun knew who truly called the shots and had been the one to assemble the team in the first place.
Others might not recognize her, but he knew exactly who she had once been. She had earned the title of Dark Queen after becoming the first person to conquer a legendary tomb alone. Although rumors claimed she had been grievously injured during that expedition and retired from the raiding world afterward, the alluring wraith standing before him was living proof that those rumors were far from the truth. She was very much alive—and in excellent health.
Judging by the demeanor of everyone around him, Wei Jun knew that Lady Ming was by far the most dangerous enigma. Song Gu might have been unreasonable, but that very flaw made his actions somewhat predictable. The Berserker twins were equally straightforward, their thoughts and intentions easy enough to read.
The Dark Queen, however, was an entirely different matter.
She was an unfathomable existence—a deadly enigma whose thoughts, motives, and limits remained shrouded in mystery.