100: Chapter 100 concludes the phase; the first hatching occurs at the bottom of the abyss.

That afternoon, Lu Changyuan and Lu Hu returned to the Cold Dragon Abyss with fifty members of the Sword Ray Cavalry.

The fog was still the same fog. Gray-blue, thick as a wall, piled from the sea surface to mid-air.

But this time as they walked in, the cavalrymen were not as nervous as the first time—the horses recognized the road, and the people recognized the road too.

The team passed through the fog wall nearly twice as fast as last time; the moment they emerged, the Ring Reef appeared before their eyes, and the ink-blue water of the Abyss Mouth was as flat as a piece of black jade.

Lu Changyuan took the Sea-Covering Xuan Turtle egg out of his storage pouch.

The pale gold patterns on the surface of the eggshell were flowing slowly. The frequency was slower than the previous few days—not weakness, but quietness. It was like a person who, after a long journey, had finally reached their doorstep and stopped to catch their breath.

He pressed his palm against it. Cold. Deep. Dark. Three sensations surged up together, exactly the same as when he touched the eggshell in the secret room for the first time, but this time there was one more thing—certainty. The egg was no longer urging him. It knew it had arrived.

"Uncle Hu. Find a path down. It must be stable—it cannot be steep."

Lu Hu took five cavalrymen and searched inch by inch along the inside of the Ring Reef. The underwater structure inside the Abyss Mouth was more complex than expected—the reef wall sank layer by layer like stairs. Some steps were wider, enough for a person to stand on, while others were so narrow that they could only accommodate one foot.

"Young Lord! Here!"

Lu Hu found a gentle slope on the east side of the reef wall. The slope angle was about thirty degrees, covered with dark green seaweed. He walked down a few steps on the seaweed, and his foot suddenly slipped—it wasn't that he missed his footing, but he had stepped on a stone surface that was colder than the surrounding rocks. He crouched down and touched it with his hand; extremely fine cold currents were seeping out of the stone cracks.

"Cold Vein." Lu Hu turned his head and shouted upward, "There is a Cold Vein at the bottom of the slope!"

Lu Changyuan walked down the gentle slope holding the egg.

At the bottom of the slope was a naturally formed stone grotto. The entrance was small, only allowing one person to bend over and crawl in. The space inside was about the size of a square table, with a thin layer of frost on the stone walls. At the bottom of the grotto was an extremely fine crack, from which water so cold it bit the bones was constantly seeping out—a Cold Vein. The water temperature was just right; it wasn't the kind of cold that freezes into ice, but the uniform coolness of deep water, almost exactly the same as the temperature on the surface of the Sea-Covering Xuan Turtle eggshell.

He placed the egg into a shallow depression at the bottom of the grotto.

The moment the eggshell entered the water, the pulse of Spiritual Qi on its surface suddenly stopped for a beat.

Then it started again.

The frequency had changed. From that urgent, urging type of beating before, it had turned into an extremely slow, extremely heavy undulation. Each undulation interval was about ten breaths—slower than human breathing. The water temperature in the grotto began to drop at an almost imperceptible speed.

A circle of pale gold light patterns spread out from the surface of the eggshell, hit the stone walls of the grotto, and bounced back, stopping at the grotto entrance. The light patterns did not overflow—they only covered the small space inside the grotto. Lu Changyuan reached out and touched that light pattern; his fingers passed through without resistance, but he could feel an extremely gentle repulsive force—it wasn't rejecting him, it was protecting the egg.

"It has started to hatch."

Lu Hu crouched outside the grotto entrance and looked inside.

"How long will it take?"

"I don't know." Lu Changyuan pulled his hand out of the water and shook off the water droplets. "Elder Tianji said it takes two hundred years to grow the shell—he didn't say how long the hatching itself takes. It could be days, it could be months."

He stood up. Outside the grotto, the seawater was illuminated by the light patterns of the eggshell with a layer of extremely faint dark gold. That layer of light spread out underwater, like a lamp lit at the bottom of the water, illuminating the reef wall within a radius of two zhang.

Lu Changyuan set up two layers of Restrictions outside the grotto. The first was a warning array line—made with three old thunder-pattern talisman papers and one thunder-struck wooden stake, which would produce a crisp sound when triggered, and the sound could reach the water surface. The second was a simple protective Formation Plate given to him by Su Qingli—it could block attacks below the Early Stage of Foundation Establishment. It was useless against true high-level ones, but enough to prevent ordinary sea beasts at the bottom of the sea from curiously crawling into the grotto.

"Leave five people. Two shifts, three hours per shift." Lu Changyuan said to Lu Hu, "Guard only, do not touch. If you discover any abnormalities—sudden drop in water temperature, color change of the light patterns, cracks on the eggshell—send a message immediately."

"Understood."

The five cavalrymen set up a makeshift sentry post on the gentle slope. A wooden board was placed between two reef rocks, and sleeping mats were laid on top. They took turns watching the movement at the grotto entrance.

Lu Changyuan stood on the gentle slope, looking down at the mass of dark gold light underwater.

Six base items. The earth vein jade spike had taken root three inches deep in the thin soil area of the Spirit Field, and would sprout after one season. The tide sound spirit bamboo had started symbiosis next to the devil-cleansing thunder bamboo, and the flow direction of Spiritual Qi had already changed. The gold-patterned iron thorn vine had extended its first batch of roots in the broken reef plate, and the first crop of ship bones could be cut in three years. The Starlight Coral had attached to the reef wall in the cold water channel of the Outer Port, and the water within three feet had already cleared up. The cold marrow jade shell had secreted its first thin layer of cold jade marrow on the cold spring eye at the bottom of the concave reef. Now the last one—the Sea-Covering Xuan Turtle egg—had entered the bottom of the Cold Dragon Abyss.

All have landed.

Not Magic Treasures that can be used immediately upon acquisition.

They are six things that need to be waited for day by day and raised year by year. But each one has started to grow at its own rhythm.

Evening. Blue Moon Island Lord's Mansion.

Su Qingli sat in front of the desk with three account books spread out before her. She was recording today's income.

First item: The first batch of payment for the three-month trial supply of purification liquid—eighty-seven small bottles, forty-five Low-Grade Spirit Stones per bottle, totaling three thousand nine hundred and fifteen Low-Grade Spirit Stones. The seal has already been placed on Manager Wei's acceptance note. The buyer is the logistics procurement of the Zhenhai Fortress.

Second item: Mining rights for the Cold Dragon Abyss micro-spirit mine. Officially confirmed by the East Sea Governor's Office, and classified under Blue Moon Island. The grade of the ore vein is medium, with an estimated annual mining volume of about eight thousand to ten thousand Low-Grade Spirit Stones—not a large mine, but it wins in stability.

She paused between the two lines "Cold Dragon Abyss micro-spirit mine mining rights" and "First batch of payment for the three-month trial supply of purification liquid."

Then she picked up her brush and added a line of small characters at the bottom.

The characters were not large, but the strokes were heavy.

"From today on, Blue Moon Island will no longer rely solely on windfalls to eat."

She put down the brush and pushed the account book to Lu Changyuan opposite her.

Lu Changyuan looked down at that line of text without saying anything. He took out the old files of Yongtai Firm and the old Sealed Fleet testimony of Xu Sanlan from his bosom and placed them side by side next to the account book.

"Qingli. The files of Yongtai Firm—seventeen years of transport records. Governor Xue Zhen said he can retrieve them from the old file repository."

"When can he retrieve them?"

"He didn't say. But he is more anxious than us—his nephew's pigtail is in our hands, which is more useful than any promise."

Su Qingli picked up the old files and flipped through them. The first page was the registration information of Yongtai Firm—the registration time was seventeen years ago, and the first owner was named Cui Zhongyuan. In the tax records on the following pages, the time and routes of several large-scale spirit mine transports overlapped with the time points of the Sealed Fleet routes narrated by Xu Sanlan.

"Old accounts from seventeen years ago." Su Qingli put down the old files. "If we can get the complete files, the clues of the Old Seal Bid Case will be upgraded from bottom-level testimony to official archives. At that time, what we investigate will not just be Yongtai Firm—it will be all the merchant firms that Yongtai Firm has cooperated with, the goods transported, and the handlers contacted over the past seventeen years. Who signed the order, who received the goods, who transferred them, it's all in the files."

"That is why Governor Xue Zhen refuses to bring the complete files over directly." Lu Changyuan said, "He only gave a few pages of samples—the rest depends on my nod."

"Have you nodded?"

"No. I said the old case should go through normal channels—he retrieves the files first, and I verify the testimony."

Su Qingli thought for a moment. "That's good too. No rush. Let him move first—once he moves, and the old files are in our hands, the initiative of who to investigate later and how far to investigate will be in our hands."

It was late at night.

At the bottom of the Cold Dragon Abyss. The Sea-Covering Xuan Turtle egg in the grotto was still undulating at that extremely slow frequency. The pale gold patterns on the eggshell emitted a faint light in the darkness, flashing on and off in circles. The seawater outside the grotto was colder than during the day—the water temperature within three zhang of the eggshell had dropped by nearly two degrees, and it was still dropping.

The five cavalrymen on night duty sat on the reef. One was gnawing on dry rations, two were chatting in low voices, and two were staring at the water surface. Everything was very quiet.

Suddenly, the light patterns in the grotto stopped for a beat.

It didn't disappear—the interval of the beating suddenly stretched to twenty breaths. Then it started again, the frequency slower and heavier than before. A circle of dark blue ripples, almost invisible to the naked eye, overflowed from the grotto entrance, extremely light and faint, like a drop of ink dripping into a basin of clear water. The ripples oscillated outward along the cold currents at the bottom of the Abyss, passing through the Ring Reef, passing through the Cold Gang fog zone, passing through the shallow sea reef plate, and oscillating towards the deeper seabed.

Tens of thousands of miles away. At the deepest part of the deep-sea trench.

There was no light there. The water temperature was so low that an ordinary Foundation Establishment Cultivator could not last for the duration of an incense stick. The bottom of the trench was covered with a layer of gray-white sediment that had accumulated for who knows how many years, so thick that the stones underneath were invisible.

A pair of scarlet eyes slowly opened.

The eyes were very large. So large that in the darkness, only two arc-shaped red lights could be seen, and the boundaries of the eye sockets could not be clearly seen. The red light swept across the bottom of the trench and paused—as if identifying the direction. Then the flow direction of the water in the entire trench suddenly changed. From random undercurrents to a unified flow direction—surging outward, surging upward, surging towards the direction of the Cold Dragon Abyss.

At the same moment. Blue Moon Island Lord's Mansion secret room.

Lu Changyuan placed the few secret letters left by Governor Xue Zhen and Xu Sanlan's old Sealed Fleet testimony side by side on the table. Yongtai Firm. This merchant firm had been registered at the East Sea Governor's Office for seventeen years and had had item dealings with the Sealed Fleet—but what were the items? Were they ordinary spirit mines, or something else? In the few pages of old files that Governor Xue Zhen gave him, the tax records only had the four words "Spirit Mine Transport," with no details.

He picked up a charcoal stick and subconsciously wrote three characters on the paper.

Yongtai Firm.

Then he looked up at the window. The sea was very calm, and the moonlight was spread on the water surface of the port, shattering into silver-white.

But he always felt that something had changed.

He couldn't put his finger on it.

He looked down at the dark gold ring on his hand, then looked up again in the direction of the Cold Dragon Abyss.

There was no wind on the sea. Even the mooring ropes at the Pier were not swaying.

It was too quiet.