129: Chapter 129 Bone Fish Hunt, Bloodstained Return (3)

Lu Changyuan walked from the Pier to stand before Leng Feng.

Leng Feng was drenched—he had removed his heavy black iron armor in the shallows and left it piled on the Pier along with the other cavalrymen. He was wearing a tight-fitting water suit, and a strip of linen was bound around his left wrist—Gu He had just wrapped it for him, and the strained area was still oozing blood. His right hand clutched the Jade Slip containing the rubbings.

The Array Pattern on the surface of the Jade Slip was still emitting a faint spiritual glow—the text and patterns rubbed underwater would automatically solidify inside the Jade Slip once removed from the water. Leng Feng handed the Jade Slip to Lu Changyuan. His hand was steady—steady because he had been gripping it too tightly. A very shallow fingerprint mark had been pinched into the surface of the Jade Slip by the strength of his palm.

"Young Lord—it has been mapped out."

Lu Changyuan took the Jade Slip. He did not look at it immediately—first, he glanced at the injury on Leng Feng's left hand, then at the ten cavalrymen sitting or lying on the Pier. Three were coughing up bloody water—they had dived too deep and surfaced too quickly, and the compressed Spiritual Qi remaining in their lungs was being expelled. It was not an internal organ injury. The blood coughed up was dark red, mixing with seawater to form several thin streams on the Pier.

"First, take them to the shack in the reef area. Gu He—you can use my Pill Furnace tonight. If you lack any medicinal herbs, go directly to the storehouse to get them."

"The storehouse might not have what I need—but I have an alternative solution." Gu He slung his medicine gourd onto his back. "These eleven people—force-feed each of them a bowl of hot ginger soup. It's not medicine—it's to force the cold Qi out of their lungs. The water temperature below a thousand zhang underwater is within half a degree of ice water—having stayed underwater for over an hour, the cold has seeped into their bones. If we don't treat them tonight, tomorrow all eleven of their knee joints will be swollen like buns."

Su Qingli had already made arrangements. She had two cargo handlers on the Pier bring over a large iron pot—boiling water right there on the Pier. The ginger had been freshly pulled from the spice garden by the side of the spiritual field—it was old ginger, and when broken open, the ginger juice was spicy enough to sting the eyes.

Lu Changyuan sat down on a stone Pier-stump. He pressed the Jade Slip against his fingertips and probed inside with his spiritual sense—the contents of the Jade Slip unfolded under the oil lamp beside the water mirror. Leng Feng's characters were carved with a hard pen—the handwriting was not pretty, but every character was sharp-edged, like nails driven into paper.

The first section was a waterway map. From the Abyss Mouth to the entrance of the Dragon Burial Trench, which was two thousand zhang, Leng Feng had marked a water depth node every two hundred zhang—beside each node, he noted the water temperature, water flow direction, and Spiritual Qi concentration. The densest information on the map was between two thousand and two thousand five hundred zhang—for this section below the trench entrance, Leng Feng had marked four deep-water narrow paths to avoid the Bone Fish schools; beside each narrow path, he had drawn an arrow and a line of text: 'One-way. Can be used for the return trip.' Two of them had been crossed out with a horizontal line, with a note beside them: 'The water flow in this path has changed during the return trip; do not use.'

Further down the map—at the bottom of the Dragon Burial Trench, at two thousand five hundred zhang. Leng Feng had drawn a complete map of the Ring Reef's orientation. On the east side of the Ring Reef was a rift valley cutting diagonally upward—this was the path they had come down. On the west and north sides of the Ring Reef, there were extremely narrow fissures, and the water patterns outside the fissures were very chaotic. Leng Feng noted beside the fissures: 'Suspected deep-water hot spring outlet—water disturbance is too strong, Sword Rays cannot get close. Not an exit.'

Right in the center of the bottom of the rift valley—Leng Feng had drawn a rectangular marker. Around the perimeter of the marker, he noted the patrol route: 'Southeast → Northwest → Due West → Return to Southeast. One-way distance is about one hundred zhang. The interval for passing the same point each round is about sixty breaths. The shift change interval is about a quarter of an hour; the old guards withdraw about eighty zhang from the altar area, and new guards emerge from the western fissure mouth—the gap in between is about twenty breaths.' Directly above the rectangular marker, Leng Feng had written a line of notes in tiny characters: 'The patrollers are semi-humanoid—upper body resembles a human, lower body is a fish tail, holding a trident-shaped weapon, with cold light flickering on the tips of the halberd. The number is about fifteen. It has not been discovered whether there are more in the deeper layers.'

The Haiyuan Clan altar. A physical entity guarded by living creatures—not just a legend on paper.

Su Qingli copied the map from the Jade Slip onto paper. Her pen was much faster than Leng Feng's—the content that Leng Feng had written underwater for nearly half an hour, she finished tracing in less time than it takes for an incense stick to burn. After finishing, she wrote a line of text in the bottom right corner of the paper: 'New distribution line of Bone Fish schools: one thousand eight hundred to two thousand two hundred zhang, in scattered points. Black Fish schools: three hundred fifty zhang, continuing to rise. Fissure Spiritual Qi release accelerating—three days to the Abyss Mouth.'

"In three days, the Black Fish schools will emerge from the Abyss Mouth. The shallowest point of the seabed fissure in the direction of the northeast coast is about one hundred zhang—the Black Fish schools will surge up from the fissure, and the first place they will land is the northeast corner of the shack area. Old miners and the lowest-level shack dwellers live in the northeast corner of the shack area—the houses are all built of wooden planks, and if the Black Fish schools crash into them, they could knock people directly from their beds into the water." Su Qingli pressed the paper onto the stone Pier-stump and traced a line with her finger from the Abyss Mouth to the northeast coast, "But now the Bone Fish schools have scattered to one thousand eight hundred zhang. The Bone Fish don't go into shallow water because of the water temperature—if the Spiritual Qi continues to push outward and the cold water layer continues to move upward, the Bone Fish schools will sooner or later be pushed to below one thousand five hundred zhang. By then, the Black Fish will be moving up from the northeast coast, and the Bone Fish will be pressing up from one thousand five hundred zhang—sandwiched in between is the underwater spiritual field drainage outlet of Blue Moon Island."

Lu Changyuan looked at the line Su Qingli had drawn. She had circled the scattered distribution area of the new Bone Fish schools with a red pen—there was a gap of about one thousand three hundred zhang between the position of the red circle and the green line of the rising Black Fish schools. This distance was currently safe—but the red line was moving up, and the green line was also moving up.

"How long will it take for the Bone Fish schools to move up to the vicinity of the spiritual field drainage outlet?"

"If the Spiritual Qi release accelerates—it might be faster after the sludge dissolves. At the current speed—three months."

Three months. Exactly the same amount of time bought by the conscription order. The enemy of Blue Moon Island was not on the surface of the sea—it was beneath their feet.

Luo Qingcheng's voice drifted down from Qixia Peak. She was not brewing tea tonight—no tea fragrance drifted down. Her voice was very clear in the night wind—she didn't use sound transmission, she spoke directly with her voice.

"The patterns on the altar—I have finished looking at them. I have seen the flow of this kind of pattern once before—it was carved on that broken mirror sealed in the lowest level of the Heavenly Star Sect's inner treasury. The patterns on the Haiyuan Clan altar are the Sealing Pattern of an ancient underwater race—not used for attacking, but for suppressing something deeper. The altar itself is just a lid. What is pressed under the lid—Leng Feng cannot see."

Lu Changyuan looked up at Qixia Peak. A faint star of sword light lit up on the stone platform at the peak—Luo Qingcheng's sword lay across her knees, and the Geng Metal Sword Intent on the sword body was slowly flowing into the Spirit Stone trough of the third branch of Qixia Peak. The third phase of the Killing Array—it started being laid tonight. The pushing speed of the Geng Metal Sword Intent in the depths of the earth veins was faster than the previous two phases—the earth veins had already been primed by the array veins of the first two phases of the Killing Array.

"There is a patrol team on the lid—which means the thing under the lid is still there. Fifteen people guarding one lid—this is not defense, it is keeping watch." Lu Changyuan tucked the Jade Slip into his sleeve, "The first thing for tomorrow—Leng Feng and the ten people who explored the abyss. On the Pier."