101: Chapter 101 The Dual Paths Begin, Strange Movements at the Abyss

Early morning. Blue Moon Island, Lords Mansion.

Lu Changyuan had just set down the old records of the Yongtai Firm he had been reading halfway through last night, when a pale golden light from a message talisman shot in from outside the window, landing on the pen holder beside his hand. The talisman light dissipated, revealing Leng Feng's handwriting—the characters were very scrawled, written in a hurry.

"The warning line around the Abyss Mouth has been triggered seventeen times. The creatures are small, black fish, palm-length. They don't attack, just repeatedly bump against it, dispersing and then gathering again. The cavalry hasn't taken action, waiting for your instructions."

Seventeen times. In a single night.

Lu Changyuan pressed the message talisman onto the table, stood up, and walked to the window. The surface of the Outer Port was calm, the morning light spreading across the water, shattering into patches of pale gold. He watched the sea for a few breaths, then turned and walked out.

"Su Qingli."

Su Qingli poked half her body out from the accounting room.

"There is movement on Leng Feng's side. Go and call Elder Chen—the matter of the old records starts today." He picked up a message talisman on the table and replied to Leng Feng, "Do not drive them away or kill them, guard the post well. Report the quantity and movement every four hours. I will arrive in the morning."

Before Su Qingli could respond, he added another sentence: "When will Governor Xue Zhen's old records arrive?"

"By the calendar—today. If he sent someone, taking the East Sea Governors Office's fast boat, it should arrive at the port in the morning."

"Call me as soon as it arrives."

Lu Changyuan walked out of the Lords Mansion. Lu Hu had already prepared the horse outside the door.

Cold Dragon Abyss. East side of the Ring Reef.

Leng Feng stood on the reef wall, an observation record written with charcoal sticks placed at his feet. From the Hour of the Rat to the Hour of the Rabbit, the warning line had been triggered seventeen times—he had watched from the side each time. The ones triggering the line were a school of palm-sized black fish, completely dark, with very fine scales, swimming back and forth in a fixed circle outside the Restriction. They would bounce off when they hit the Restriction and wouldn't try again after bouncing off—but would return after about the time it takes to burn an incense stick. It didn't look like an attack. It looked like a school of fish trapped in an invisible circle, unable to find an exit.

"Look." Leng Feng squatted down and pointed at the water surface. Several black fish floated on the surface with their bellies turned white; they were already dead. He used the tip of his sword to gently lift one up and turn it over—under the scales on the fish's belly were several dark red bruises; it wasn't from hitting the Restriction, it was seeping out from inside the body. Crush injuries.

"They came up from the Deep Water Zone." Leng Feng threw the dead fish back into the water, "Shallow water fish wouldn't have these kinds of injuries—this is from being forcibly pushed up from several hundred zhang deep; their bodies couldn't handle the pressure change."

Lu Changyuan squatted on the reef wall and watched for half an incense stick's time.

The number of black fish was still increasing. When he first arrived, there were about a few hundred, and in less time than it takes to drink a cup of tea, several more schools had gathered on the periphery—every newly arrived fish bore the same crush injuries.

He did not give the order to drive them away. He only had Leng Feng add two more people and change the observation record from once every four hours to once every two hours. Water temperature, current speed, school size, number of Restriction triggers—record everything.

"Don't touch them for now." He stood up, "I'm going to check other places."

He walked a circle along the reef wall. The sea area outside the Restriction was completely normal, the seawater clear, no murky currents, and the Spiritual Pressure was stable. Only this area of the Abyss Mouth—the black fish only gathered here. The distant sea area was perfectly normal. This indicated that the source of the pressure did not come from outside.

It was from below.

Lu Changyuan stood on the reef wall for a while, looking down at that patch of ink-blue water.

Then he mounted his horse and returned to Blue Moon Island.

Lords Mansion meeting hall. Su Qingli had already spread out the old records of the Yongtai Firm on the long table.

Three storage jade boxes, each the size of a palm. Sent by someone dispatched by Governor Xue Zhen, the outside of the jade boxes was affixed with the seal of the East Sea Governors Office, intact and undamaged. Su Qingli carefully opened the seal and took out the items one by one—mostly yellowed paper pages, brittle at the edges, some with small holes eaten by insects. There were about seventy or eighty pages in total.

She divided these pages into three piles by date. The first pile was the registration information from seventeen years ago and the records of changes in successive owners—Yongtai Firm registration date, the first owner Cui Zhongyuan, business scope was "Spiritual Mineral transshipment and recovery of array material scraps." The second pile was tax records—one page per month, listing the major categories, quantities, and tax amounts of incoming and outgoing goods. The third pile was shipping manifests—over a dozen pages, each page recording a specific shipment.

The problem lay in the third pile.

Su Qingli spread out the shipping manifests one by one. The format of the Spiritual Mineral manifests was very neat: the shipper was Yongtai Firm, the consignee wrote the complete merchant name, the sign-off column had a signature and a secret stamp, and the entry number was clear. But the miscellaneous items manifests—the few pages marked "array material scraps," "discarded talisman paper," "old warehouse base materials"—the format was much messier. The shipper was still Yongtai Firm, but the consignee column was either torn off a section or simply left blank. The torn-off position was very neat—it was cut with a knife, the cut edge was smooth, not accidentally torn.

"Someone deliberately removed the consignee's name from the manifests." Su Qingli placed a Spiritual Mineral manifest and a miscellaneous items manifest side by side, "Goods shipped on the same day, the Spiritual Mineral manifest is complete, but the miscellaneous items manifest is missing the consignee. It's not a coincidence."

She picked up another pile—the sign-off columns that had been smeared with ink.

"These few are more troublesome. The sign-off column has been completely blackened out, invisible to the naked eye." She took out a palm-sized jade piece—a light-transmitting jade talisman, usually used to identify the purity of Spiritual Minerals. "Using spiritual light to shine through from the back should allow us to see the characters underneath."

Chen Mo took the jade talisman and placed the first blackened shipping manifest on top of it. The jade talisman emitted a layer of soft, pale white light, penetrating the back of the paper—the blackened ink layer turned grey-white under the spiritual light, and the handwriting covered beneath the ink layer slowly emerged.

A name.

Chen Mo looked up. "Underneath the sign-off column is a person. Surname Zhou."

Su Qingli opened Xu Sanlan's old Sealed Fleet list. The first line of the list. Warehouse Verifier—Zhou Moumou. It corresponded to the name under the sign-off column of this blackened shipping manifest—Zhou Moumou—the surname was the same, but the name was blurred by a large patch of ink, only the surname could be seen.

"It's not a coincidence." Su Qingli placed the list and the shipping manifest side by side, "The same person. The first name on Xu Sanlan's list, and the first sign-off person that was smeared out on the Yongtai Firm manifest—they are the same person."

When Lu Changyuan rushed back from the Cold Dragon Abyss, this was the scene he saw with the two items placed side by side on the table. He picked up Xu Sanlan's list and glanced at it, then picked up the shipping manifest and glanced at it.

"Keep shining through. Shine through every single one that has been blackened."

"Already doing it." Chen Mo picked up the second one.

Just at this moment, a talisman light lit up on the message stand at the door again. Leng Feng's third observation record had arrived: the school of black fish had increased from a few hundred to over a thousand. The water temperature hadn't changed. The current speed hadn't changed. But the number of fish kept rising. Leng Feng added a sentence at the end of the record—

"They don't dare to run outwards, nor do they dare to dive inwards. Stuck outside the Restriction, gathering more and more. Something below is driving them."

After reading it, Lu Changyuan handed the message talisman to Su Qingli. Then he picked up a pen and wrote two lines on a blank piece of paper on the desk.

First line: Deep Sea—Black fish gathering, source unknown, do not drive away or kill for now.

Second line: Old Records—Incomplete shipping manifests, blackened sign-off columns, Surname Zhou verifier overlaps with Xu Sanlan's list.

He set down the pen and looked at these two lines of words. Two lines, starting to move from the same day and the same hour. One was beneath the sea surface, one was beneath the paper surface. Both were emerging.

"Elder Chen—those consignees that were cut off, can we reverse-engineer them from other manifests?"

"Difficult. Yongtai Firm's Spiritual Mineral manifests and miscellaneous items manifests used two separate sets of accounts—the Spiritual Mineral manifests had continuous numbering, the miscellaneous items manifests did not. What was cut off is cut off, unless we find another identical set of archives." Chen Mo set down the spiritual light jade talisman, "But looking at it for now—there is only this one set."

"Then first shine through everything that can be shone through." Lu Changyuan stood up and walked to the window.

The sky outside had already darkened. The reflection of a row of lights shone on the water surface of the port. The wind blew from the northwest direction—the direction of Cold Dragon Abyss. It carried a trace of extremely faint chill.

He turned to look at Su Qingli. "Tomorrow I will go to Cold Dragon Abyss again. Bring Lu Hu and ten cavalrymen—go underwater to measure the abyss bottom."

"Measure how deep?"

"Measure as deep as possible. Measure until the depth where the black fish dare not go down."