103: Chapter 103 Divine Sense Explores the Abyss, Searching for People Through the Name List

Qixia Peak. The spirit tea trees on both sides of the mountain path were half an inch taller than they were a month ago.

As Lu Changyuan walked up the stone steps, he could feel a thin, steady stream of Spiritual Qi slowly circulating within the mountain—that was the Seal-Breath Restriction that Luo Qingcheng had laid down, using the ley lines of Qixia Peak as a foundation.

The Restriction covered not only the devil-cleansing thunder bamboo garden but the entire mountain peak itself.

The dojo at the peak was very quiet.

A few natural bluestones were stacked to form a simple stone platform, with a meditation cushion placed in the center.

Luo Qingcheng sat cross-legged on the cushion, her eyes closed, with no fluctuations of spiritual power around her—she was healing from her injuries.

A teacup rested on the stone platform in front of her, the tea inside already cold.

Lu Changyuan stopped three feet outside the stone platform.

He did not speak.

After a few breaths, Luo Qingcheng opened her eyes.

"There is an aura of the deep-sea floor on you."

Her voice was not loud, and her tone was flat, as if she were stating something she had just noticed.

She looked down at the fingers of her right hand—a faint layer of white frost condensed from cold air remained on her knuckles.

"Cold veins. The cold veins of the Cold Dragon Abyss. You went there yesterday."

"I went again this morning."

Lu Changyuan sat down on the bluestone opposite the platform.

"More than two thousand bottom-dwelling black fish have gathered outside the Abyss Mouth.

I lowered a sounding line and encountered a persistent layer of pressure between six hundred and eight hundred zhang—it wasn't a fluctuation of Spiritual Qi, but a diffusion of extremely low-frequency pressure.

All the black fish above six hundred zhang were stationary.

The temperature was nearly four degrees lower than the surrounding waters."

Luo Qingcheng did not speak.

She moved the teacup aside and formed a very simple hand seal with her right hand—her index and middle fingers pressed together, the other three fingers curled, with her fingertips pointing toward the ground.

"Probing the abyss with Divine Sense.

In deep water over two thousand zhang, the lower the water temperature, the greater the resistance to Divine Sense.

I cannot guarantee I can see the bottom."

"See as much as you can."

Luo Qingcheng closed her eyes.

A thread of extremely fine golden light overflowed from her fingertips—so thin it was almost invisible to the naked eye, flashing only for a moment as it passed through the boundary of the Qixia Peak Restriction.

That was a strand of Golden Core Divine Sense condensed into a beam.

Lu Changyuan sat quietly opposite her.

He knew that for a Golden Core Cultivator still in the recovery period, extending one's Divine Sense consumed spiritual power with every breath.

Luo Qingcheng's breathing slowed down, dropping from the normal once per breath to about once every ten breaths.

The temperature around her body dropped slightly.

The five fingers of her left hand, resting on her knee, splayed slightly, and a faint golden light appeared on her fingertips—she was closing off the excess spiritual power channels in her body, concentrating all her Divine Sense onto that single thread.

A moment later.

Luo Qingcheng's eyelashes fluttered.

"I see it."

Her voice was very soft, not like she was speaking, but rather translating the images perceived by her Divine Sense sentence by sentence.

"There is an old thing at the bottom of the abyss.

Its size is immense—my Divine Sense thread touched the edge of its body at two thousand one hundred zhang and extended about three miles to the east before crossing it.

It is sleeping.

Most of its body is buried in the silt at the bottom of the abyss.

The outer layer of the silt has formed a hard shell—the thickness is not something that could accumulate in a year or two.

This old thing has been lying at the bottom of the abyss for at least several hundred years."

"Is it awake or asleep?"

"Asleep.

A natural, long-cycle deep slumber."

Luo Qingcheng slightly adjusted the angle of her fingertips, and the golden thread moved slowly along the outline of the giant beast's body at the bottom of the abyss.

"Its breathing interval is about once every forty-seven breaths—this frequency is very slow for a deep-sea giant beast.

There is a naturally formed silt shell around its body, the surface of which is dry and cracked, with the cracks filled with fragmented dead coral and sediment.

The last time this silt was disturbed was a very long time ago."

She paused.

The golden thread stopped at the head of the giant beast.

"Its head is facing the direction of the Cold Dragon Abyss.

But its body hasn't shifted at all—it was startled by the Spiritual Qi fluctuations from the hatching of the Black Tortoise and turned over in its sleep.

After turning over, its breathing frequency slowed down, and it is currently sinking back into a deeper sleep."

"When will it wake up?"

Luo Qingcheng opened her eyes.

That strand of Golden Core Divine Sense retracted from the bottom of the abyss, circled her fingertips, and dissipated into the air.

She reached out to pick up the teacup, found that the tea had gone completely cold, and put it back down.

"Not in the short term.

Based on calculations from its current breathing frequency and the thickness of the silt shell—at the very least three to five years, at most eight to ten years."

Her tone was very certain, the same tone she used when judging the metamorphosis cycle of the Sword Ray Cavalry—not a guess, but stating a time range that could be deduced from known conditions.

"But the fact that it is driving bottom-dwelling creatures upward in its sleep will not stop.

Each of its breaths will form a pressure pulse layer between six hundred and eight hundred zhang—the intensity and frequency of this pulse layer are directly related to the depth of its sleep.

The deeper it sleeps, the weaker the pressure.

Currently, its breathing frequency is still decreasing, which means it is sliding back into a deeper sleep."

"The black fish are just the first batch?"

"The bottom-dwelling biological chain is divided into several layers from deep to shallow.

The ones at the very bottom are driven up first—those are the black fish and krill you saw.

If the pressure persists, larger mid-to-deep layer creatures will float up next."

She pushed the teacup away.

"As long as you do not actively attack them or release large-scale Spells into the depths of the abyss, they will not impact the Restriction.

Being trapped outside the Restriction is safer than digging downward."

Lu Changyuan went over these words in his mind.

Controllable.

It was a new normal that required long-term management.

"Many thanks, Senior Luo."

"It is my duty."

Luo Qingcheng closed her eyes again.

"The Guest Elder contract states—the thirty-mile sea area surrounding Qixia Peak belongs to my dojo, and the Cold Dragon Abyss is not within those thirty miles.

But if that old thing at the bottom of the abyss really wakes up, its pressure range will far exceed thirty miles.

My dojo will also be within its range of impact."

The meaning of this sentence was very clear—her probing of the abyss was to confirm whether her dojo was safe during her recovery period.

But the conclusion for both parties was the same: safe in the short term, requires monitoring in the long term.

Lu Changyuan stood up.

Before leaving, he looked back—Luo Qingcheng had already released the hand seal, her hands were resting flat on her knees, and her breathing had returned to that extremely slow recovery frequency.

The cold tea in the teacup reflected a small circle of faint light on the stone platform.

Blue Moon Island, Lords Mansion.

Side hall.

Su Qingli and Chen Mo flipped through the supplementary population registration register from beginning to end.

Three batches of supplementary quotas, totaling over six thousand people, were arranged by batch number, not by surname—each page had to be scanned line by line.

The two of them flipped through it for an hour and a half.

"Here it is."

Su Qingli's finger stopped at the end of the third-to-last page of the third batch registration form.

A line of extremely fine small characters—the registrant's handwriting was significantly sloppier than the other lines, as if they had been at the end of the line when registering and it was their turn just as things were wrapping up.

Name: Zhou Laogen.

Age: Seventy-one.

Former affiliation: Zhenhai Fortress Outer Ring Warehouse Inspector.

Current placement: West Slope Tents, outermost row, third room from the east.

"Zhou Laogen" on the register, "Warehouse Inspector—Zhou So-and-so" on Xu Sanlan's list, and "Zhou So-and-so" under the sign-off column of the Yongtai Firm cargo waybill—the three names corresponded to the same person.

When Lu Changyuan returned from Qixia Peak, Lu Hu was already waiting at the door.

"Young Lord, the location has been found.

West Slope Tents—that's the temporary shed area furthest to the west in the resettlement zone.

He should still be there."

"Go and invite him.

Be polite.

He is not a prisoner—he is a witness."

Lu Hu took two cavalrymen to the West Slope Tents.

He returned about two incense sticks later.

His expression was a bit strange when he entered.

"The person has been invited.

He is waiting in the side hall."

"Is something wrong?"

"Old Man Zhou—as soon as I mentioned, 'The Blue Moon Island Lord has something to ask you,' he nodded and followed me.

But halfway here, he suddenly asked me, 'Is it about the Yongtai Firm?' "

Lu Hu paused.

"I didn't answer.

He asked it himself.

After asking, he didn't speak anymore.

All the way to the door of the side hall, his hands were trembling."

"For a seventy-one-year-old man, trembling hands is not strange."

"It's not that kind of trembling.

It's the trembling of a person who has worked in a warehouse his whole life and is suddenly called in to reconcile old accounts—what he fears is not his old age, but being asked about things he shouldn't be asked about."

Lu Changyuan stood up.

He picked up the comparison table that Su Qingli had organized on the table—twelve cargo waybills, timeline, sign-off person—folded it, and put it into his robes.

"I will go in alone.

You wait outside."

Only one lamp was left in the side hall.

Zhou Laogen sat on an old wooden chair against the wall, his body hunched small.

Seventy-one years old, his hair was completely white, and his finger joints were thick and large—left over from decades of carrying boxes and moving goods.

He was wearing a faded, old grey cloth short shirt, the cuffs were frayed, and his cloth shoes were stained with wet mud from the muddy road outside the West Slope Tents.

When he saw Lu Changyuan walk in, he stood up subconsciously.

The movement was quick—the habitual reaction of a former warehouse inspector seeing a superior inspecting the warehouse.

"Sit."

Lu Changyuan sat down opposite him.

He turned up the wick of the lamp a little, then placed the summary of Xu Sanlan's old Sealed Fleet testimony on the table, and placed the cargo waybill that had been permeated by spiritual light beside it.

Zhou Laogen looked down at his own signature on the cargo waybill that had been revealed by the spiritual light—handwriting from over a decade ago, the ink had faded to a dark brown.

He stared blankly for a long time.

The side hall was so quiet that only the faint sound of the lamp wick burning remained.

Then he spoke.

His voice was very dry.

"You finally found this."

Lu Changyuan did not make a sound.

He was waiting.

Zhou Laogen's hands were on his knees—they were no longer trembling.

From the moment he entered the side hall, his hands had actually steadied.

It was like something a person had waited many years for had finally arrived before them, and the fear had shifted from "when will it come" to "how should I say it when it arrives."

"The signature on that slip is mine.

Twelve batches—one batch every month.

The boxes shipped out in each batch were all labeled 'Array Material Scraps,' but what was inside the boxes was never scraps."

Zhou Laogen raised his eyes to look at Lu Changyuan, "What was inside the boxes was Sealed Fleet array materials—not discarded ones, but brand new ones.

They were drawn directly from the Sealed Fleet reserves in the Zhenhai Military Warehouse."

Lu Changyuan opened Xu Sanlan's testimony.

"Xu Sanlan said that the Sealed Fleet was missing eight boxes during the last verification."

"More than eight boxes."

Zhou Laogen shook his head.

"Seventeen years ago, starting from the fifth day of the first lunar month, one batch was shipped on the fifth of every month—each batch ranged from twelve to twenty boxes.

I handled every single batch.

The reason 'scraps' was written on the shipping order was to avoid the normal outgoing registration for Sealed Fleet array materials—every box of Sealed Fleet array materials released from storage had to go through three levels of sign-off plus a registration seal from the Command Headquarters.

But 'scraps' didn't need that—a single Warehouse Inspector could sign off and release them."

"Who made you do this?"

Zhou Laogen's jaw tightened.

His hands started trembling again—this time he was about to say a name he had hidden for seventeen years.

He extended his right index finger, dipped it in the cold water in the teacup on the table, and wrote three characters on the tabletop: Warehouse Chief Cui.

"Warehouse Chief Cui was the sign-off lead for the Outer Ring Seventh Warehouse of the Zhenhai Military Warehouse at the time.

The jurisdiction of the Seventh Warehouse covered the entire material dispatch of the Sealed Fleet.

He conveyed the orders—every night before the shipment, he would personally come to my duty shed, notify me verbally, and leave no note.

'Tomorrow is the fifth, ship the scraps, same old rules.' Just that one sentence."

"You never refused?"

"He was my direct superior.

He said this batch of goods was to go through the 'scrap' channel, and I was only responsible for signing off and releasing them.

As for why Sealed Fleet array materials had to go through the scrap channel—he wouldn't tell me, and I didn't dare to ask."

Zhou Laogen's voice was very low.

"But I kept one thing."

"What thing?"

"A private ledger.

The monthly salary of a Warehouse Inspector is linked to the volume of materials handled—if it doesn't go through the official accounts, I can't reconcile my salary at the end of the month.

So I kept a private ledger myself.

It recorded the dates, number of shipping boxes, and a summary of Warehouse Chief Cui's verbal instructions for those twelve batches of 'scraps' seventeen years ago—every single one was recorded."

Lu Changyuan leaned forward slightly.

"Where is the private ledger now?"

"I buried it after the incident."

Zhou Laogen's fingers tightened on his knees.

"The day the news came back that the old Sealed Fleet had met with an accident—the entire fleet was wiped out—I knew something was wrong.

I wrapped the private ledger in three layers of oil paper, stuffed it into the interlayer of an empty wooden box for array material scraps, and buried it under the third blue brick at the foot of the west wall of the Outer Ring Seventh Warehouse in Zhenhai Fortress.

That location is the gap between the drainage ditch and the wall base—no one would squat there to rummage through things except a Warehouse Inspector.

It's been buried for seventeen years."

"Did you ever go back to check on it later?"

"No.

I was afraid—afraid of being seen if I went, afraid of it being dug up and discovered—I was afraid for two or three years.

Later, there were many wars and job transfers, and the Seventh Warehouse was even demolished and rebuilt once."

Lu Changyuan picked up the cup of cold water on the table, replaced it with a cup of hot water, and pushed it over.

Zhou Laogen held the cup with both hands, not drinking, just holding it.

"Where is Warehouse Chief Cui now?"

"I don't know.

He was transferred away three months after the fleet incident.

The transfer order came down very quickly—signed directly from above.

Where he was transferred to was not announced.

I only know it wasn't a demotion—his transfer order bore the seal of the East Sea Governors Office."

Lu Changyuan took note of the name Warehouse Chief Cui in his heart and did not continue to press.

He stood up.

"Old Zhou—don't go back to the West Slope Tents for these few days.

I'll have someone arrange a shed in the Inner Harbor for you to stay in first.

If you need anything, tell the guards at the door."

Zhou Laogen raised his head.

His eye sockets were a bit red, but he didn't cry.

He put down the cup, his two rough hands crossed on his knees.

"Lord Lu.

I am old—seventy-one.

This life of mine is not worth much.

But what I said—the private ledger, the twelve batches of goods, Warehouse Chief Cui—is true."

"I know."

Lu Changyuan walked out.

At the door of the side hall, Lu Hu was waiting, leaning against the wall.

Lu Changyuan gently pulled the door of the side hall shut.

"Uncle Hu.

Find an anonymous single shed in the Inner Harbor—a bit remote, inconspicuous.

Send two veteran Dao soldiers to guard it in turns.

Protect the witness, and also prevent him from running."

"Understood."

"Additionally—"

Lu Changyuan took out Commander Tie Zhan's communication talisman from his robes and squeezed it in his hand, "Send a message to Deputy Commander Tie Zhan.

Remember the content well: Former Sealed Fleet warehouse inspector Zhou Laogen confessed—seventeen years ago, twelve batches of Sealed Fleet array materials were illegally released through the 'scrap' channel, with verbal orders coming from the Seventh Warehouse sign-off lead, Warehouse Chief Cui.

Zhou Laogen buried a private ledger under the third blue brick at the foot of the west wall of the Seventh Warehouse—please ask Uncle Tie to send someone to find it.

Also, regarding Warehouse Chief Cui, see if his transfer destination can be found."

Lu Hu nodded and turned to leave.

"Wait."

Lu Changyuan added, "Add one line at the end of the message—Warehouse Chief Cui's transfer order bore the seal of the East Sea Governors Office.

Tell him to pay attention to this."

Lu Hu left.

Lu Changyuan stood in the corridor outside the side hall.

The sky outside the window was darkening.

On the harbor berths, the cold light of the Starlight Coral parent branch began to appear in the twilight—that layer of faint cold blue spread outward from the reef wall outside the berth, a few inches wider than yesterday.

That old thing at the bottom of the abyss was still sleeping.

Three years, five years, ten years, eight years—this period in between was the time left for Blue Moon Island to prepare.

By the day the Black Tortoise hatches, there would be no need to fear whether that giant beast in the Cold Dragon Abyss wakes up or not.

As for the old case—where the Yongtai Firm's "scrap" boxes were transported from the warehouse seventeen years ago, loaded onto the Sealed Fleet, and where they went after sailing out to sea—this question now had the first person who could answer it.

Warehouse Chief Cui.

Lu Changyuan went over the three characters he had just noted in his mind once more.

Then he turned and walked toward the accounting room—Su Qingli was still waiting to reconcile today's matters.

At the end of the corridor, the sea was at low tide.

The cold light of the Starlight Coral spread across the water surface into a faint blue band of light.

In the distance, Qixia Peak was left as only a silhouette in the twilight.

On the stone platform at the peak, Luo Qingcheng should still have her eyes closed.

The cold tea in the teacup had not yet been changed.