The tunnel was still lit by some small torches fitted into tiny gaps, suggesting that there was airflow coming from somewhere else. He focused the Navigation Talent on the area around the tunnel, which revealed many tiny holes scattered across the ground, while small Arrays underground prevented sand from falling inside and blocking the airflow.
He marveled at the ingenuity of the Thieves' Guild. They probably used the temple as a hideout before until it was raided. Afterwards, however, they didn't completely move their location, and instead constructed a second base just like the first that was better concealed.
William peered down the tunnel, which forked multiple times before reaching a large room almost a hundred kilometers underground. It was the deepest hole William had ever seen in his entire life, even further down than the bottom of the Gravitas Ruins.
Even his Navigation Talent almost couldn't see the bottom of the tunnel, nor could it easily tell which path was the correct one to take. Only after climbing into the tunnel and using the Navigation Talent as a guide did William have an inkling of direction.
Carl followed behind as William took a well-concealed ladder downward. His hands firmly gripped the polished stone rungs that matched the color of the sand above, the material easily able to bear both William and Carl's weights combined.
The ladder only extended for roughly thirty meters, which was long compared to his old world, but nothing compared to the scale of structures in the Azures Continent.
When they touched solid ground, the vertical tunnel ahead transitioned into a 45-degree slope that would send any normal person sliding out of control. The smooth stone tunnel had no footholds, so there was no way to slow down once one started moving.
For William and Carl, however, that was no issue. They sat and allowed their bodies to slide downward, using the Earth Element to temporarily raise the slope whenever they needed to reduce their speed.
At each fork, William would come to a halt and consult his Navigation Talent before moving forward. At each correct turn, they would pass through some sort of spatial compression that shortened the distance to the bottom by a few kilometers.
When he had guessed the correct path a few times, Carl began to ask questions.
"I'm the one that sent my Beetle to investigate, why are you the one picking the route? And how did you know about this tunnel?"
When adding the Navigation Radar to the mix, William was able to confirm his guess.
He pulled back on the door until there was just a sliver of an opening, then hastily entered a shadow with Carl. His Darkness Element wasn't strong enough to pull the Desert Beetle in with them, so Carl ordered the Beast to tunnel underground and keep an eye on things.
Seeing the door crack open, a few of the Cultivators inside turned their heads. A particular Cultivator had a sour look on his face from the terrible hand he had been dealt. He looked over at the partially open door, his lip curling up slightly.
He slapped the table in frustration, causing a stack of cards to fall off the table. He sneakily hid one of the good cards in his sleeve, then feigned anger as he shouted, "Damnit! I thought we fixed that door!"
He walked over to the door with a smug smile that none of the others saw, then closed it and returned to the table. It was his turn, so he adopted a serious look and laid down the card he had just hidden in his sleeve.
The other three Cultivators groaned upon seeing the highest card in the deck played. "Why is your luck so damn good? I'm done."
Each of them folded their hands, allowing the man who closed the door to take a pile of ten Mana Stones from the center of the table. He shoved them all into a cheap Space Ring, then followed the group to play darts near the back of the room.
Is this a lounge room or something? William wondered. His shadow took cover under the now abandoned table, then he peeked out to take a better look at the room.
Near the darts were a set of two bulletin boards that resembled the Guild Hall's Quest Board. On one board, over a dozen contracts were pinned, ranging from assassination requests to simple notifications on the movements of various merchants.
The second board was more like a trophy board than anything else. Portraits of wanted criminals and their bounties hung on the board, with large lower-case g-shaped symbols with a dot in the center of the g, representing the amount of Gold awarded for their capture.
As he compared the bounties to the faces of some of the people in the room, William smiled in delight as he realized that every single bounty was associated with someone in this hideout.