Chapter 137| Chapter 138| Chapter 139
Chapter 137: Artifact
Lu Yunxi had been born and raised in this world. If given the chance, she naturally hoped her home could return to normal.
The cat jumped up excitedly. “As long as you soul-bind with me, half of the spiritual power you generate during your cultivation will be transferred to the world itself. Once that power accumulates to a certain threshold, the world will automatically form spiritual veins and generate its own spiritual energy. When it can circulate on its own, you won’t need to feed it any more power!”
“Come on, let’s soul-bind!” The cat leaped onto her lap, eager to begin.
Lu Yunxi looked down at the cat, hesitating. She wasn’t entirely convinced it was telling the truth. What if it was lying to her? Webnovels about the cultivation world always warned about high-level entities seizing a person’s body through possession.
“Let me think about it a bit more… Is it possible to do this without binding our souls?” She leaned down, trying to read the cat’s expression.
“What’s that look for? Are you turning your nose up at me? You know, back in the day, countless powerful cultivators begged to bond their souls with mine!” The cat glared at her, then flopped onto the ground in deep disappointment, its voice turning weak and pathetic. “Fine. There are still a few ancient powerhouses who managed to survive the collapse. It seems they have their own methods for fixing the world. You can go ask them instead.”
“Oh, right—don’t you have a spatial inventory? That space was jointly created by several prominent sects from the old cultivation world. They left a massive hoard of treasures for you, but most of it is probably locked right now. You need to level up quickly. There should be a cosmic storage bag waiting for you in there.” The cat suddenly remembered, tossing out the reminder.
The cat turned to leave after speaking, but it suddenly froze, its eyes widening in sheer shock. “You… you actually… How is this possible?!”
Lu Yunxi looked at it, utterly confused.
“Bai Ze! The pet standing next to you is a Bai Ze!” the cat shrieked frantically. “I thought every last divine beast egg left in the cultivation world had died out! I never imagined a Bai Ze would actually survive!”
“Bai Ze? Are you talking about my pet?” she asked, blinking.
“Yes! That is a literal Bai Ze!” The cat began jumping up and down in a frenzy, tears suddenly welling in its eyes. “I never thought I’d live to see another creature from my own generation…”
The cat circled Lu Yunxi a few times, looking at her with newfound respect. “You truly are something else. A Bai Ze is a genuine divine beast of the cultivation world. All those other players’ pets are just digital assets generated by the game company.”
“Well, it seems I can finally rest easy. You’d better do your best!” With that final exclamation, the cat leapt into the air and vanished completely.
Lu Yunxi snapped awake and sat up abruptly, her eyes adjusting to her newly renovated room.
After sitting on the edge of her bed for a moment to gather her thoughts, she got up and stepped lightly out into the courtyard. Even though her movements were incredibly quiet, Long Aotian awoke instantly.
Staring up at the pitch-black night sky, he asked worriedly, “What’s wrong, Master? Did you have a nightmare?”
Lu Yunxi shook her head. “Did I wake you? I just had a really bizarre dream, and now I can’t fall back to sleep.”
“I… why do you suddenly carry the aura of a divine weapon?” Long Aotian stood up and trotted over to her, his nose twitching as he sniffed her clothes.
“What?” Lu Yunxi froze. So it hadn’t been a dream after all? Everything the mainframe artifact said was true?
“Yes,” Long Aotian nodded affirmatively. “According to the bloodline inheritance I received at birth, this is undeniably the signature of a divine artifact. What did you encounter while you were asleep?”
Lu Yunxi fell into a deep silence.
If what the artifact said was true, she just needed to cultivate spiritual power and transfer it to the world… but wait. Spiritual power? Wasn’t that a resource exclusive to the cultivation world?
She frowned, wondering if she had missed a vital piece of information.
Let’s look at the facts: the world had currently lost its spiritual energy, making cultivation mathematically impossible. Yet, the only solution to fixing the world was to cultivate spiritual power.
Weren’t these two conditions completely contradictory? It was like expecting a horse to run a marathon without letting it graze.
Lu Yunxi replayed the cat’s words over and over in her head, but she couldn’t make heads or tails of the paradox. Ultimately, she decided to follow the artifact’s advice and seek out the surviving ancients.
She briefly recounted her dream to her pet, then asked, “Long Aotian, since you have a bloodline inheritance… do you know of any powerhouses who survived the collapse of the cultivation world and are still alive today?”
“I’m sorry, Master,” Long Aotian said, shaking his head. “Though I possess the memories of my lineage, I was dormant in my shell for millennia. I have no idea what happened to the world after it collapsed.”
“It’s fine. We’ll just have to go out and look for them ourselves,” Lu Yunxi said, patting his head. “I’ll try to push my training harder. I should be close to breaking through—”
“Ah!”
Glancing down at her system panel, she suddenly jumped three feet in the air, a massive grin splitting her face so wide her eyes narrowed into slits. “I actually broke through! I’m officially a Grandmaster!”
Though she had no idea what had triggered the sudden advancement, a breakthrough was a breakthrough. She could finally leave this place!
“Senior Sister, could you please deliver this letter to my master once you’re outside?”
“Master, I wish you a safe and prosperous journey.”
“Miss Lu, what are we supposed to do if you leave? We don’t know how to do anything yet!”
Lu Yunxi beamed as she bid farewell to her apprentice and fellow sect members. Smoothing down the hem of her robes, she turned to walk toward the exit with Long Aotian.
“Wait a minute! Why does that dog get to walk out with you?!” Luo Mingyi pointed at Long Aotian in absolute shock.
Lu Yunxi’s face went blank. “You’re the dog here! This is my divine battle pet, Bai Ze! Of course he can leave with me.”
“What?! I can go outside just by becoming your pet? Then I want to be your pet too!” Luo Mingyi snatched the edge of her outer robe, looking up at her with desperate, puppy-dog eyes.
Lu Yunxi was floored. They always said that shameless people were invincible, and this guy was the living proof.
She forcefully yanked at her robes, but he clung to the fabric like industrial glue. Gritting her teeth, she hissed, “Let go! The system doesn’t even allow players to be kept as pets!”
Utterly depressed, Luo Mingyi finally let go and went to sulk in a corner. After saying her final goodbyes, Lu Yunxi mounted Long Aotian and rode out of the valley.
Long Aotian truly lived up to his status as a divine beast; he could freely alter his size at will. When he expanded, he took on the majestic proportions of a giant lion, and his thick fur made for an incredibly soft, luxurious mount.
Lu Yunxi rode him for a while, then asked him to grow a bit larger so she could lie down and comfortably drift off to sleep.
When she finally woke up, they were resting inside a dilapidated temple, a warm campfire crackling beside them.
“Where are we?” she asked, peering out into the pitch-black night. The temple was surrounded by dense, suffocating woods, with no signs of civilization in sight.
“I’m not entirely sure,” Long Aotian replied. “But there’s a settlement just on the other side of this mountain ridge. We can head over and ask around tomorrow.”
Lu Yunxi walked around to the back of the ruined temple and peered over the ridge. Sure enough, a small town sat nestled against the coast on the opposite side. It was right by the sea!
She delighted at the sight. It was like someone handing her a pillow the exact moment she felt drowsy.
The mainframe artifact had mentioned that ancient cultivation entities were still alive, and the very first person that came to mind was the Flower King she had encountered back on the Flower Continent. Aside from the mainframe, the Flower King was the only entity who had dropped hints about the world’s hidden past.
Leaping into the ocean whirlpools might feel like being shoved into a blender, but it was undeniably fast.
“Let’s head over tonight!” Lu Yunxi pulled out some food to share with Long Aotian, then instructed him to shrink down and perch on her shoulder.
Activating her high-level Qinggong, she sprinted toward the shoreline. Clad in pure white, she cut through the dark like a gale, leaving nothing but a streak of pale light in her wake.
A villager who happened to step outside to relieve himself caught a glimpse of the white blur flashing past and nearly burst into tears of terror on the spot, falling to his knees. “Lord Ghost, please spare my life!”
Lu Yunxi faintly caught the sound of a voice, but she was moving too fast to make out the words. After scanning the area and confirming there was no danger, she flared her protective shield, tucked Long Aotian securely into her arms, and plunged headfirst into the ocean.
After swimming out a short distance, the familiar, violent whirlpool materialized and violently dragged her down.
Lu Yunxi was already somewhat accustomed to the sensation of being tossed around like laundry in a washing machine, but it was Long Aotian’s first time experiencing a teleportation vortex. By the time they tumbled onto the shores of the hidden island, the poor creature’s eyes were spinning in literal circles, and he collapsed onto the sand with a heavy thud.
“Long Aotian, are you alright?” she asked, gently rubbing his head while fighting down her own urge to vomit. “Don’t worry, that’s just how the hidden teleports work. It makes you a little nauseous at first, but you get used to it. Besides, the travel time is incredibly fast, so it’s a minor flaw in the grand scheme of things.”
Long Aotian managed to shake off his dizziness just in time to catch her explanation.
He looked up at her with a look of profound grievance. “Master… I can literally fly. And my flight speed isn’t slow at all. It would have only taken me half an hour to carry you to the next continent.”
What?!
Lu Yunxi’s eyes widened to the size of saucers.
In the past, she had always blacked out the moment she hit the water, but since she was a Grandmaster now, she had remained fully conscious through the entire trip. She had even timed it; they had been violently rolling through the ocean currents for roughly twenty minutes.
So the choices were:
- Roll around underwater for twenty minutes, arriving dizzy, soaked, and nauseous.
- Ride a majestic, flying divine beast for thirty minutes, arriving clean and comfortable, which was a mere ten minutes slower.
Was this even a real question?! Of course anyone would choose the aerial route!
“Next time…” Lu Yunxi’s eye twitched violently. “…you need to tell me about these things before I jump into the ocean.”
They sat on the beach for another two hours, waiting until the lingering vertigo finally faded away.
Chapter 138: Illusion
After resting on the beach until the worst of the vertigo passed, Lu Yunxi led Long Aotian on a trek across the small island.
“Are you looking for something, Master?” Seeing her constantly scanning the ground, Long Aotian trotted over to join her.
“I’m trying to find the marker that points toward the Flower Continent. Otherwise, we won’t know which way to go… Ah, found it!” Lu Yunxi spotted the landmark, her face lighting up with excitement as she rushed toward it.
The moment she reached the marker, however, the ambient noise around her abruptly cut out. An eerie silence enveloped the area.
Thoroughly confused, she turned back and saw Long Aotian still standing exactly where she had left him. His ears were twitching rapidly, as if straining to catch a distant sound.
Lu Yunxi waved her arms, calling out to him, “I’m over here!”
Long Aotian didn’t even glance in her direction.
Left with no alternative, she began jumping and dancing around, waving her hands wildly to catch his attention. After a long while, seeing that he still wasn’t responding, she was just about to walk back over when he suddenly bolted straight toward her.
“Long Aotian, what was that all about?” Lu Yunxi wiped a bead of sweat from her face, looking perplexed. “I was calling you for ages, and you completely ignored me.”
“I thought I heard a voice just now, Master. It felt like a sound I’ve heard somewhere before…” Long Aotian tilted his head, looking troubled. “But maybe it was just an illusion?”
An illusion? Lu Yunxi seriously doubted it.
According to the central mainframe artifact, the vast majority of the descendants from the cultivation era had their souls protected after the apocalypse, while the ancient ancestors had either ascended or perished. In such a barren, unforgiving environment, the fact that any entity had managed to survive from the ancient era to the present day was nothing short of a miracle.
Look at the mainframe itself—it had been pushed to its absolute limits and required near-constant dormancy just to survive. Even Long Aotian’s successful hatching was a statistical anomaly. The odds of a high-level divine beast like him experiencing a random hallucination were practically zero.
After a moment of thought, Lu Yunxi said, “Long Aotian, let’s head toward whatever you heard. Do you remember what it sounded like?”
Long Aotian began walking in a specific direction, digging through his inherited memories as he moved. “I can’t quite remember, but the resonance felt incredibly familiar…” He knit his brow in distress.
“Don’t worry about it, let’s just go check it out first.” Anyone who could trigger a sense of familiarity in Long Aotian had to be an absolute powerhouse from the old world.
Unfortunately, the sound had only lasted for a fleeting second, which was why he had frozen in place earlier, terrified of losing the signal. Now that the voice had vanished entirely, tracking it down without a guide was going to be an uphill battle.
Two hours later.
After combing through every inch of the small island and finding absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, Lu Yunxi slumped to the ground.
“I am completely spent. I need to rest!” Although the island was small, hunting for an unknown object with no clues was exhausting work.
They had kept their eyes peeled the entire time—moving heavy boulders, climbing trees, and checking beneath the roots. Now, the human and the beast sat side by side, listlessly chewing on their rations.
Lu Yunxi was so exhausted that she actually managed to fall asleep right in the middle of eating.
It was Long Aotian who eventually shook her awake.
“Master, wake up!”
“What is it? Is it morning already?” she mumbled drowsily, trying to bolt upright on instinct. She hadn’t realized that she had fallen asleep sitting sideways at an awkward angle.
The next second, a sharp crack echoed through the clearing.
“Ow! Sss—my waist!”
Inside the local clinic, a single candle cast a dim, flickering light.
Lu Yunxi lay flat on a cot, grimacing in pain as she struggled to sit up.
“Don’t worry, Long Aotian, I’m fine. I’m a doctor myself… I can gauge my own injuries.” Despite her reassuring words, she couldn’t actually manage to lift herself off the bed.
It hurt fiercely.
“Stop being so stubborn. A doctor can’t treat herself,” Long Aotian said, gently but firmly pressing her back down onto the mattress to prevent her from aggravating the injury. “The village physician said a damaged bone takes a hundred days to mend. You need absolute bed rest.”
She stared at the ceiling in profound depression. “This makes no sense. I’m literally a Grandmaster… How can a Grandmaster sprain her back just by falling asleep?”
“Even a Grandmaster is still human! You still catch colds, so it’s perfectly normal to throw your back out if you sleep awkwardly,” Long Aotian said, his eyes swimming with guilt. “This is my fault. If I had noticed earlier, I would have made sure you were lying down properly.”
Lu Yunxi was speechless.
I don’t blame you at all, she thought, but… does a thrown-out waist really count as a ‘minor ailment’? She stared at her system panel, feeling utterly overwhelmed.
While her high-tier healing skills were potent enough to restore health and treat severe conditions like facial disfigurement, her magic had a bizarre limitation: it couldn’t cure mundane, minor afflictions. And unfortunately, her current lower-back strain fell squarely into that category.
She lay helplessly on the cot, watching Long Aotian busily tend to her comforts as darkness pulled over the island.
“By the way, why did you wake me up earlier? Did something happen?” Lu Yunxi suddenly recalled.
“I heard that voice again…” Long Aotian set a medicinal pill next to her hand, nudging her to take it.
“What are we waiting for? Let’s move!” Caught up in the excitement, she completely forgot about her condition and tried to swing her legs out of bed. Her waist immediately emitted another ominous pop.
Her vision went black for a split second.
Long Aotian let out a helpless sigh. He carefully washed his paws, scooped up a generous dollop of thick medicinal ointment, and began rubbing it into her lower back.
“Take it easy. I already confirmed the coordinates earlier and mapped out the general area the sound came from. It’s not going anywhere,” he said soothingly.
With no strength left to argue, Lu Yunxi allowed him to slather the pungent black paste across her aching muscles. She closed her eyes, breathing quietly, completely terrified to move an inch.
Though conventional wisdom dictated a hundred days for a bone injury to heal, a Grandmaster’s physical constitution was truly formidable. Within a few short days, she had made a full recovery.
Lu Yunxi immediately set out, following Long Aotian to the source of the mysterious sound.
“Are you absolutely sure it’s here?” she asked, skepticism creeping into her voice as she surveyed the coastline.
The shore ahead wasn’t a pristine sandy beach; it was a treacherous stretch of jagged reefs jutting out of the water. The sharp rocks were heavily encrusted with wild barnacles and mussel shells, making it an incredibly unpopular spot for players and locals alike. The shells were razor-sharp and mostly empty, and even if you managed to find one with meat, prying it loose required immense care. One wrong slip meant a nasty, infected laceration.
“It’s definitely here. But it feels like it’s coming from underground,” Long Aotian muttered, unable to provide an exact pinpoint.
“Underground… so, beneath the seabed?” Lu Yunxi stared at the rocky reef, then out across the rolling waves, falling into deep thought.
Even if this entity truly was a legendary survivor from the ancient cultivation era, if it lived deep beneath the ocean floor, it couldn’t possibly be human, right?
After a brief tactical discussion, the duo decided to divide and conquer: Lu Yunxi would dive into the water to search the submerged structures, while Long Aotian would scan the exposed reef from above.
Fortunately, they were on an isolated island. Had they tried this on the main continent, jumping into the ocean randomly would have triggered a regional boundary sweep and washed them away. The island only had a few specific coordinates dedicated to teleportation whirlpools; diving from any other section of the coast was perfectly safe.
She active her protective barrier and slid into the sea.
The underwater world was a labyrinth of submerged reefs and vibrant corals growing in wild, uninhibited patterns, with schools of exotic fish darting through the sunbeams. Adhering to Long Aotian’s advice, Lu Yunxi looked for anything out of the ordinary—creatures with bizarre physiology, anomalies, or hidden beast eggs.
However, the ocean was so packed with strange marine life that everything she looked at seemed rare and anomalous. Worse still, she couldn’t just stash her discoveries into her spatial inventory. Long Aotian had warned her that her current storage dimension couldn’t support living biology; while a brief trip wouldn’t hurt, any extended stay inside the void would suffocate a living creature. She had no choice but to carry her findings by hand.
Before long, she had gathered a comical armful of random sea life.
Yet, when she brought them to the surface, Long Aotian merely shook his head. The spiritual frequency of these creatures didn’t match the voice he had heard at all.
They fell into a routine, hours bleeding away as they salvaged item after item to no avail. By the time the sun began to set, their only real harvest was a massive haul of premium seafood.
Lu Yunxi built a campfire on the shore, staring at the pile of crabs and shellfish. Too exhausted to cook a complex meal, she simply tossed everything into a pot of boiling water. Once cooked, she cracked them open and dipped the meat straight into soy sauce.
The human and the beast devoured the meal mindlessly, using the break to re-evaluate their strategy.
“Could there be a hidden mechanism built directly into the reef?” Lu Yunxi mused aloud. “What if someone actually excavated a subterranean tunnel system down there?”
After all, the mystical arts of the cultivation world defied all logic. She refused to believe that ancient grandmasters lacked the power to forge a permanent underground sanctuary.
Long Aotian racked his brain, trying to analyze the memory. “What kind of object could possibly emit that specific frequency?”
Just as they were both sinking into deep thought—
“It’s back! The voice is calling again!” Long Aotian bolted to his feet, pacing back and forth in an anxious frenzy. His ears twitched as he locked onto a signal, freezing over a specific patch of earth. “It’s right below us!”
Lu Yunxi tracked his gaze and immediately sprang into action. She retrieved a set of heavy-duty shovels and pickaxes she had forged herself from her inventory and began to dig.
Long Aotian couldn’t assist with manual excavation, so he contented himself with unleashing controlled, precision bursts of flame to loosen the packed earth, taking immense care not to use too much power lest he incinerate whatever was buried beneath.
The duo maintained a disciplined, careful pace. Fortunately, Lu Yunxi didn’t have to clear away too much earth before her shovel struck a hollow pocket.
She carefully cleared away the remaining mud and packed sand, revealing a large, structured opening built into the bedrock.
“What is this…?”
Chapter 139: The Little Turtle
Peering down into the subterranean opening, which was just spacious enough to accommodate a human, Lu Yunxi hopped down out of pure curiosity. Long Aotian followed her down without a moment’s hesitation.
The human and the beast began walking down the dark corridor. However, they had barely taken two steps before a familiar system notification chimed in Lu Yunxi’s ear.
She had triggered another dungeon instance!
Fortunately, because Long Aotian was formally bound to her as a battle pet, the system dragged him into the phase right along with her.
This particular dungeon layout was incredibly bizarre. They had clearly entered a stone cavern, yet freezing seawater suddenly materialized out of nowhere, flooding the passage. The sudden submersion left both of them feeling immensely uncomfortable.
“Who designed this map? Don’t they know that soaking your feet in freezing water like this is a textbook way to get rheumatism?” Lu Yunxi grumbled, looking down at the dark water that already reached her knees.
“Stay alert, Master. Something is moving toward us!”
The moment Long Aotian’s warning left his mouth, a tiny sea turtle—no larger than a human palm—paddled slowly into view.
“A turtle?”
Lu Yunxi had never known sea turtles could be so incredibly agile. The creature paddled freely through the currents, darting left and right in what looked like a clumsy waddle, yet its actual movement speed was so high that she couldn’t even keep it in her sights.
To make matters worse, the physics of the dungeon began to work against her. As the water level rose, her arrows suffered heavy liquid resistance, causing her shots to veer off target and miss completely.
And the threat was multiplying. What started as a single, isolated turtle rapidly escalated into a dense, swarming cluster of them.
By the time the dark water reached her shoulders, she had to tread water just to stay afloat. “Long Aotian! Are you alright? Where are you?!” she shouted over the sloshing waves.
This dungeon mechanic was genuinely twisted. They were trapped inside a completely sealed cavern, and the sea level was rising at an alarming rate. At this pace, the entire cavern would be completely submerged.
Spurred by the thought, she swam frantically through the dark. The moment she located Long Aotian, she layered several protective barriers around his small frame, sealing him away from the suffocating water.
Long Aotian hacked up a mouthful of brine and scrambled to her side inside the pocket of air. “Are you alright, Master?”
“I’m fine. Wipe your fur off so you don’t catch a chill,” Lu Yunxi said, expanding her primary shield into a massive dome that easily sheltered both of them before tossing him a dry towel from her inventory.
She sat cross-legged at the bottom of her dry bubble, staring out at the legions of sea turtles pressing against the translucent barrier. Countless pairs of tiny eyes stared back at them through the glass-like wall, sending a deep shudder down her spine. Her trypophobia was flaring up fiercely.
What kind of twisted genius programmed this instance?
Looking at the dense wall of glowing red eyes packed tightly against her shield, she felt goosebumps ripple across her skin. Digging quickly through her spatial inventory, her fingers brushed against a familiar item.
“Aha! Found it!”
She retrieved a lacquered wooden box containing a specialized medicinal powder—a potent crowd-control toxin she had personally crafted to deal with massive hordes she couldn’t out-muscle. The Zombie King from her previous trial had been fundamentally immortal, making this powder useless against him, but these turtles didn’t have an immortality buff.
Lu Yunxi grabbed an empty vial, dissolved the powder in water, and swapped her weapon out for a specialized trick-bow. Dipping her arrowheads into the toxic brew, she unleashed a rapid-fire barrage, firing off several thousand arrows in a dazzling blur until her mana bar was completely emptied. Panting slightly, she pulled out a stat-boosting bun and watched the aftermath.
The sheer kinetic force of thousands of arrows tracking simultaneously was devastating. The dense, choking wall of sea turtles was vaporized into digital particles in a single, explosive instant.
Her eyes lit up. Seizing the momentum, she chugged a mana potion and loosed another devastating salvo. It wasn’t until the very last turtle in the cavern was cleared out that the human and the beast finally let out a collective sigh of relief.
However, their respite was short-lived. They had barely sat down to recover their stamina when the water rippled again, and a massive wave of armored shrimp monsters spawned into the chamber.
While the turtles had lacked offensive capabilities, these shrimp monsters were a completely different story. A pair of jagged, mechanized horns protruded from their heads, acting like miniature cannons that fired pressurized concussive blasts through the water.
“Take a break, Master. I’ve got this round,” Long Aotian said, stepping to the edge of the barrier. He opened his jaws, unleashing a furious torrent of divine flames into the flooded cavern.
Unfortunately, his fire-based attacks were severely suppressed by the dense aquatic environment. Even after exhausting a significant amount of his energy, only a handful of the shrimp monsters were incinerated.
Lu Yunxi chewed her bun lazily, feeling thoroughly exhausted by the tedious pacing. If they were harvesting these creatures in the open sea, they would at least be rewarded with premium, delicious ingredients. But killing these dungeon spawns yielded absolutely nothing but raw experience points. And since she had already crossed the threshold into the Grandmaster realm, her experience bar remained completely frozen, refusing to budge by even a fraction of a percent.
Staring at the stagnant status indicator, she closed her system panel in annoyance, fully replenished her mana pool, and leaped back into the fray.
Once the turtles and shrimp monsters were cleared, the system systematically cycled through waves of predatory crabs, giant octopuses, and various other deep-sea horrors. By the time they finally conquered the entire dungeon sequence, a full day and night had passed.
Stashing the meager boss loot into her storage, Lu Yunxi and Long Aotian rested until their fatigue faded before making a move toward the designated exit. By now, the rising tides had completely receded, leaving the stone cavern completely dry once more.
The exit portal manifested as a vertical fissure radiating a pure, brilliant white light.
Suddenly, Long Aotian froze, his head snapping toward the dark, gray-black bedrock forming the adjacent wall.
“What is it?” Lu Yunxi asked, pausing her approach to the portal.
“I can feel a resonance,” he said with absolute certainty. “There is another entity of my caliber right on the other side of this wall.”
“Another divine beast? Is it another Bai Ze?” Lu Yunxi asked, a surge of pleasant surprise washing over her. She had been harboring a lingering worry that Long Aotian was the absolute last of his kind, destined to live out his days without ever encountering a companion of his own race.
Long Aotian shook his head, dampening her excitement. “I can sense the distinct signature of a divine lineage, but the frequency doesn’t belong to a Bai Ze.”
“A different divine beast?” That practically guaranteed the entity originated from the ancient cultivation era.
Lu Yunxi stepped up to the rocky barrier, inspecting the grain of the stone for a moment. Drawing her bow, she loosed a heavy, charged arrow that shattered a small fissure into the bedrock. Channeling her Grandmaster-level physical stats into her fist, she followed up with a succession of heavy, shattering punches.
CRASH!
The dense, gray-black rock wall fractured like glass, collapsing inward to reveal a hidden tunnel spacious enough for a human to comfortably walk through.
Standing at the threshold of the breach, Lu Yunxi’s eyes widened in sheer awe.
“It’s beautiful…”
The hidden passage ahead was breathtaking. The walls of the corridor were entirely crystalline and translucent, acting like a structural window that looked out into a surreal, panoramic ocean landscape. Schools of vibrant, iridescent fish darted through groves of glowing coral, while translucent jellyfish drifted lazily past the glass, casting a dreamy, ethereal glow across the path.
Long Aotian trotted into the crystal corridor, his eyes darting around cautiously as he monitored the environment. Taking their time to admire the stunning marine scenery, the duo walked slowly toward the end of the line.
A massive, ancient stone portal blocked the path at the terminus of the corridor. Dense clusters of thick kelp and sea anemones clung to the framework, framing a shimmering, distortion field in the center. Looking through the blur, all that could be discerned was a vast, deep expanse of pale blue twilight.
“If my instincts are correct, this is a one-way threshold leading directly out into the open ocean,” Long Aotian analyzed, checking the structural integrity of the seal. “Once we cross it, the pressure lock will prevent us from returning.”
Lu Yunxi inspected the shimmering field and nodded in agreement. Flaring her primary protective shield to enclose them both, the human and the beast stepped firmly through the portal.
Beyond the gate lay the open sea—a boundless, magical marine landscape that mirrored the view from the crystal tunnel. Long Aotian paused to gauge the spiritual currents, then confidently guided her toward a colossal, isolated boulder resting on the seabed.
“The signature originates from right here.”
Lu Yunxi circled the massive stone, gently tapping her knuckles against the surface, but her inspection revealed no hidden seams or mechanisms.
Right at that moment, a tiny, familiar silhouette darted into her peripheral vision. Having spent the last twenty-four hours slaying marine life on instinct, her reflexes fired instantly, and she whipped her bow into a firing position.
“Master, stop!” Long Aotian lunged forward to intercept her line of sight.
She froze, slowly easing the tension on her bowstring.
“Sorry about that. My combat reflexes are still wired for the dungeon,” Lu Yunxi muttered, her cheeks flushing with mild embarrassment.
Now that she was looking closely, she realized this miniature sea turtle was entirely different from the aggressive mobs she had been slaughtering inside the trial. This little creature possessed a refined, pristine appearance, looking infinitely more intelligent and adorable. It glared up at her with a look of profound indignation, clearly aware that she had just been a split second away from turning it into a pincushion.
Long Aotian stepped closer to the tiny turtle, sniffing the current before nodding in revelation. “The divine signature is unmistakable. This is a true descendant of the mythical Xuanwu.”
“A descendant of the Black Tortoise?” Lu Yunxi stared at the palm-sized turtle in sheer disbelief, struggling to reconcile its tiny stature with the legendary, world-bearing titan of myth.
“Hmph! You Bai Ze have truly degenerated over the centuries,” the little turtle snorted coldly, its voice dripping with haughty disdain as it glared at Long Aotian. “To think a proud divine beast of the primordial era would willingly submit and bond with a random human commoner!”
Lu Yunxi didn’t take offense to the insult; after all, she had just tried to shoot the poor thing. She was simply taken aback by its fierce attitude. Weren’t turtles supposed to be the epitome of patience, serenity, and stoic tolerance? This little guy was practically a walking ball of rage.
“If Master hadn’t broken my seal and provided the catalyst to hatch me, my life force would have completely withered away inside that egg,” Long Aotian countered smoothly, his tone entirely level.
He glanced back at the colossal boulder behind the turtle, his brow furrowing. “Though it’s strange… I can feel a massive, suffocating pool of divine energy radiating from this stone structure. Why is your personal aura so incredibly weak?”
The little turtle blinked, a flash of genuine surprise cutting through its haughty demeanor. It looked Long Aotian up and down before shifting its gaze back to Lu Yunxi, its hostility noticeably softening. “Well, I’ll be. It seems your human isn’t a malicious scavenger after all.”
“I apologize for the aggression earlier,” Lu Yunxi seized the opening to offer a sincere bow. “I sensed movement and raised my weapon purely on survival instinct.”
“Hmph,” the turtle let out a soft, mollified grunt, giving them a curt nod of its head. “Follow me.”
It swam up to a specific indentation on the face of the colossal boulder and pressed its tiny flipper against the stone. With a heavy, grinding echo, a concealed, small stone door slowly slid open.
