133: Chapter 133 Retrieving Medicine from the Ice Cave, Lu Hu Breaks Through the Ranks (1)

Lu Changyuan pressed his hand against the ice surface.

The ice layer was extremely thick—his Divine Sense could not penetrate even a foot before being bounced back.

Leng Feng had said that Divine Sense below the Golden Core stage could not penetrate it—and indeed, it could not.

The creature guarding this place had used some kind of ice-attribute spell to seal it layer by layer—each layer having a different grain direction.

The outermost layers ran horizontally, the layers further in had diagonal grains, and further in still, the grain direction became vertical.

It was an artificial seal—at least a dozen layers thick.

The ice sealing layers had been piled up one by one by the creature guarding this place using ice-attribute spells.

The purpose was to prevent the aura of the spirit plant from leaking out.

A dark white shadow darted out from a narrow crevice on the right side of the ice cave.

An Ice-Armored Beast—about four feet long, shaped like a flattened lizard.

Its entire body was covered in a layer of translucent ice armor—the surface of the ice armor was covered in dense, tiny cracks, and in the dark water, these cracks emitted the same pale cyan cold light as the ice cave.

Its mouth was a horizontally split bone seam—when the seam opened, there were no teeth, but a row of barbed bone spikes protruded from the edges of the bone seam.

When the bone spikes touched prey, they would snap shut—like ice pincers.

Lu Changyuan sidestepped—the Ice-Armored Beast rushed past less than three inches from the outside of his left shoulder.

It was extremely fast—but its trajectory underwater was a straight line.

The Ice-Armored Beast had a flat tail—the tail's range of motion in the water was very small, and it relied more on the opening and closing of the ice armor on both sides of its body to adjust its direction.

In the instant it rushed past, Lu Changyuan clearly saw the rhythm of the ice armor's opening and closing—there was a very brief pause after every two movements.

In that moment of pause, the Ice-Armored Beast's body was straight—it could not change direction.

He made his move during the next pause.

The Sword Ray Cavalry's second-grade Water Pattern Sword refracted the cold light underwater—the blade did not strike at the Ice-Armored Beast's head.

Lu Changyuan timed the rhythm of the ice armor's opening and closing—the moment the ice armor opened for the second time, the sword tip thrust into the gap between the second and third ice armor plates on the right side.

The blade pushed inward against the soft membrane inside the ice armor—after pushing less than half a foot, it struck a bulging, dark red mass of flesh.

The Ice-Armored Beast's heart.

When the blade pierced through the heart, the ice armor all over the Ice-Armored Beast's body exploded simultaneously—over a dozen translucent ice armor fragments scattered in the current, each fragment still carrying a pale cyan cold light.

The Ice-Armored Beast's body twitched twice—its dark white corpse began to sink.

Blood seeped out from the gaps in the ice armor—the blood was pale blue, and it diffused in the water much slower than human blood.

Lu Changyuan withdrew his sword.

The Ice-Armored Beast continued to sink—it was swept away by the current after sinking about thirty zhang.

This type of second-grade Yao Beast was very common in the deep water layers of the Cold Dragon Abyss—guarding spirit plants was its instinct, and it would not actively attack people, but any living thing that approached the ice cave would be regarded as a threat.

He pressed his hand back onto the ice surface.

After the Ice-Armored Beast died, the spell sealing the ice layer began to fade—the cyan light on the surface of the ice layer began to dim.

The rate of fading was not fast—the sequence in which each layer of ice lost its cyan light progressed from the outermost layer inward.

About half a stick of incense later, the outermost layers of horizontally-grained ice turned the color of ordinary water—Lu Changyuan tapped the ice surface with his sword hilt.

The ice layer cracked along the direction of the horizontal grain—the crack extended downward along the boundary line between the vertical and diagonal grains that Leng Feng had observed when marking it, and when it cracked to the bottom layer, the entire ice surface shattered into dozens of ice shards of varying sizes.

After the ice shards sank, the spiritual light from inside the cave surged out.

It was white and blue—a gentle, warm brightness that was not dazzling.

Three spirit plants were growing on the stone wall at the deepest part of the cave—each was about half a foot tall.

Their roots were embedded in the crevices of the stone wall, and their stems were translucent and pale white—inside the stems, one could see extremely fine blue threads running from the roots upward; when they reached the base of the leaves, the blue threads spread out, coating the leaves in an extremely thin layer of blue-white cold light.

The leaf shape resembled a human palm—five lobes, with a drop of semi-solid milky white sap congealing at the tip of each lobe.

In the cold light, the sap looked like frozen dew—but when a fingertip approached, one could feel a very faint warmth seeping out.

cold marrow ganoderma.

Three stalks.

Leng Feng had written on the Jade Slip, "Suspected to be several high-age cold-attribute spirit plants"—he hadn't guessed wrong.

The age of the cold marrow ganoderma could be determined by the number of blue threads on the stem—a blue thread congealed every ten years.

Lu Changyuan used his finger to count the threads on the stem of the leftmost stalk—there were about eight to nine blue threads.

Eighty to ninety years.

The stalk on the far right had the densest blue threads—there were over a dozen blue threads on the stem, densely packed together, with some threads already overlapping.

A mature ganoderma over a hundred years old—the sap congealed on the leaf tips was as crystalline as freshly melted ice beads.

Using the sword tip, he cut a circle around the outer perimeter of the root systems of the three cold marrow ganodermas on the stone wall—without damaging the roots, he pried them off along with the small piece of stone wall they were attached to.

He placed each ganoderma, roots and stone included, into a Jade Box prepared by Su Qingli.

The inner layer of the Jade Box was carved with an extremely thin aura-sealing Array Pattern—once the lid was closed, the spiritual aura of the cold marrow ganoderma was locked inside the box, and not a trace could be smelled outside.

There was a fourth stalk in the ice cave.

But the fourth one had not yet grown—it was just a white sprout poking out from a crevice in the stone wall, with the first blue thread just beginning to congeal at the sprout tip.

Less than ten years old—if taken, it would be gone.

Lu Changyuan glanced at that white sprout—closed the Jade Boxes, and turned to swim outward.

By the time he returned to the water surface of the Abyss Mouth, the sun had already risen to the top of Qixia Peak.

The water mirror array on the Pier was still glowing—Su Qingli was sitting in front of the water mirror, and when she saw him surface, she stood up.

She did not speak—she only moved her hand away from the edge of the water mirror.

Lu Changyuan came up out of the water.

The Water-avoiding Talisman on his chest shattered into several extremely thin blue fragments—the talisman's spiritual light had been exhausted after withstanding the water pressure at one thousand five hundred zhang and over an hour of time underwater.

He untied the cloth bag from his waist and placed it on the Pier—he had used less than half a pinch of Gu He's ice-water combustion agent.

The remainder was enough for one more use.

The side hall of the Lords Mansion.

When Lu Hu was called back from the spirit field patrol line, he still did not know what it was about.

Lu Changyuan stood in the very center of the side hall.

He lined up the three Jade Boxes on the table—when the lids were opened, the blue-white cold light of the three cold marrow ganodermas dimmed the spiritual lamps in the side hall by a degree.

There were only he and Lu Hu in the hall—the doors were closed, the windows were closed.

On the Outer Port Pier, Leng Feng was leading the newly formed personal guard unit in their first formation training—the sound of commands carried over across the stone road, very far away, making it impossible to hear exactly what was being shouted.

"Lu Hu—take off your top. Fight a match with me."

Lu Hu was stunned for a moment.

Then he took off his outer battle armor—the battle armor was a newly issued heavy Black Iron armor, and the Cold Iron patterns on the armor plates glimmered under the spiritual lamps.

He removed the armor plates one by one and set them by the wall, stripping down until only a fitted coarse cloth vest remained.

He was ready to fight—his physique was that of a twenty-year veteran.

The muscle lines on his shoulders and back—forged from carrying heavy armor for twenty years—were completely different in definition from those developed through meditation in the Cultivation room.