Chapter 27: Tide Sound, Anomalous Domain
When Lu Qingyang tumbled out of the Star Gate vortex, he landed squarely in a reef flat overgrown with oysters. The bronze beast head tucked into his waistband was covered in foul-smelling seaweed. He grumbled as he pulled off the carnivorous barnacles clinging to his pant leg, casually stuffing the largest one into his waist pouch—its poison gland could fetch half a catty of Spirit Grains in the black market.
"This is Tide Sound Ravine." Yinghuo stepped barefoot over the slippery reef rocks, the silver bells on her ankles making no sound in the salty sea breeze. She gazed at the bronze pillar forest in the distance, which appeared and disappeared with the tide, and a streak of blood suddenly seeped from the chensha stone in her hair: "It's the ruins of an Ancient Battlefield from three hundred years ago."
Lu Qingyang squinted at the bronze pillars bobbing with the tide, then suddenly pulled out a simple fishing rod made from a fish bone. As soon as the dried ink-dragon meat hanging on the hook touched the water, the entire sea area suddenly churned with white waves as if boiling. He pulled on the rod and retreated seven steps, and at the end of the fishing line, a section of a rusty bronze halberd was pulled out.
"Good stuff!" He stroked the water-repelling pattern on the halberd's handle, his fingernails prying off a few deep-sea sunken silver fragments. "The flow of this pattern, it's worth at least..." Before he could finish, the entire reef flat suddenly collapsed, pulling him and Yinghuo into a rapidly flowing underwater crevice.
Fluorescent moss in the depths of the crevice formed eerie totems. Lu Qingyang spit out the seawater that had choked his lungs, and the Spiritual Fire lit on his fingertips illuminated the dense Sword Qi marks on the rock wall. Among those crisscrossing marks, faint scratch marks of some giant beast's claws were vaguely visible.
"It's a scale-shedding nest of a Saber-toothed Tiger Dragon." Yinghuo's silver bells suddenly let out a piercing clang, and dark green viscous liquid seeped from the rock wall cracks. Lu Qingyang grabbed the bronze halberd and thrust it at a certain Sword Qi mark. The rusted halberd tip precisely jammed the fangs of a Yao Beast that was about to pounce out.
The roar of an adult Saber-toothed Tiger Dragon shook down gravel, and Lu Qingyang used the force of the Yao Beast's lunge to slide back seven zhang. Three bronze tiger talismans rolled out from a hidden compartment that his back had knocked open. He dodged while rubbing the patterns on the surface of the tiger talismans with his boot sole: "Good stuff! Used for deploying troops on the battlefield..."
By the time Yinghuo's silver bell cord wrapped around the Yao Beast's hind leg, Lu Qingyang had already pried off the night-luminescent pearls from the bottom of the hidden compartment. The enraged Tiger Dragon thrashed its tail, shattering a rock pillar, and a half-open bronze door was revealed among the falling stalactites. He kicked away a pouncing young Tiger Dragon and pressed the tiger talismans into the tiger head pattern recessed on the door: "Excuse me for a moment!"
A putrid stench, mixed with weapon fragments, surged from within the door. The qingmu spirit pearl suddenly vibrated in Lu Qingyang's Dantian. Among piles of bronze ge-spears, an ancient corpse clad in fish-scale armor held the bronze halberd he had just fished out. Half of its face, revealed beneath its helmet, bore a striking resemblance to the old man he had seen in the spirit pearl's illusion.
"This old fellow looks quite friendly." Lu Qingyang squatted down to unfasten the ancient corpse's heart-guard mirror, when three poisoned crossbow bolts suddenly shot out from a gap in the armor. He flipped backward to dodge the fatal shots, but his calf was still grazed, drawing blood: "Three hundred years dead and still so stingy!"
Yinghuo's silver bells suddenly rang out clearly, and the Ancient Battlefield ruins began to vibrate with the rising tide. Lu Qingyang dragged his injured leg to higher ground, discovering that the bronze pillar forest formed different trigram patterns as the tide level changed. He pulled out an iron-armored turtle shell for divination, and the cracks on the turtle shell were perfectly consistent with the arrangement of the bronze pillars.
"The Kan water position, the Gate of Life is at Mao Shi San Ke..." He pulled out cinnabar mixed with dragon blood and calculated on the rock wall, then suddenly pushed Yinghuo towards a bronze pillar engraved with a lightning pattern. "Fairy, I trouble you to perform a rain-praying dance!"
As soon as Yinghuo's toes touched the bronze pillar, the entire sea area suddenly erupted with wind and thunder. Lu Qingyang seized the opportunity to embed the three tiger talismans into the lightning pattern, and the bronze pillar forest sank into the seabed as if on cue, revealing the wreckage of a sunken ship covered in coral. He whistled as he pried open the bronze chest in the captain's cabin, but the burst of Yin Qi froze his fingers.
Inside the chest lay a bronze key entangled with seaweed. The patterns on the key's handle were strikingly similar to the cracks on the qingmu spirit pearl. Lu Qingyang, exhaling white mist, tucked the key into his embrace, then turned to see Yinghuo gazing at a mermaid corpse—the Jade Slip tightly clutched in the corpse's hand was engraved with the emblem of Taiyi Pavilion's first Sect Leader.
A dull vibration came from the seabed, and Ye Wuchen's Sword Qi cleaved the water. Lu Qingyang dragged Yinghuo and rolled into a hole in the sunken ship, casually arranging the mermaid corpse into an embracing posture: "Leaving a little surprise for Fellow Daoist Ye..." Suddenly, screams of Taiyi Pavilion Disciples came from outside the hole; clearly, someone had triggered the hidden corrosive bone poison in the corpse.
While the pursuers were temporarily blocked by the poisonous mist, Lu Qingyang had already made his way to the sunken ship's bottom hold. Boxes of Spirit Stones were covered in crystal clusters due to seawater erosion. He smashed them while humming a discordant tune: "Make a fortune early, cultivate immortality die early..." The qingmu spirit pearl suddenly burst forth with green light, swallowing up all the remaining Spiritual Qi in the Spirit Stones.
Just as Yinghuo's silver bell cord wrapped around his ankle, the bottom hold suddenly collapsed entirely. The two fell into an even deeper trench. In the turbulent current, Lu Qingyang glimpsed familiar golden patterns shimmering at the bottom of the trench—they were the crack patterns of the qingmu spirit pearl, magnified a hundredfold, now flickering with the dark current.