96: Chapter 96 Choosing a Seaport, The Abyss of the Cold Dragon

The next day, before dawn, torches were already lit at the Outer Port Pier.

Lu Hu counted the fifty Sword Ray Cavalry one by one. The Purple Lightning Seahorses were nervously pawing the ground in the torchlight, the Evil-warding Talismans on their armor scales flickering with the light. Each cavalryman carried five days of dry rations, two flasks of fresh water, three spare Evil-warding Talismans, and one signal flare for emergencies. In the leather pouches on the sides of the seahorse saddles, they had stuffed depth-sounding lines, water temperature jade slips, and copies of sea charts.

Leng Feng stood by the Pier, handing a list of the Outer Port defense handover to Lu Changyuan.

"I have increased the patrol frequency for the three sections of reefs at the Outer Port. If the array pot over at Old Chen's side has any issues, Su Qingli will take over first. After the cavalry leaves, the island's mobile forces will be tight—I only have thirty infantrymen I can mobilize." He paused. "Are fifty cavalry enough?"

"It is enough." Lu Changyuan tucked the list into his robes. "Guard the island well."

"Understood."

Su Qingli did not come to the Pier. She had gone to the spirit field's thin soil area before dawn—it was the fourth day since the earth vein jade spikes had been planted, and their roots were beginning to spread; she needed to record the root growth direction for the first week. She left a note for Lu Changyuan, which Lu Hu took out from his robes and handed to him.

There were only two lines on the note: "The sea chart is useless in the Cold Gale Mist. Follow the egg."

After reading it, Lu Changyuan folded the note and tucked it into his sleeve.

"Set off."

Fifty Purple Lightning Seahorses stepped into the seawater simultaneously. The hooves shattered the thin light of dawn, splashing up a sheet of silvery-white spray. The cavalry rode in pairs, pulling a loose horizontal formation fifty zhang wide across the sea surface—the unique formation of the Sword Ray Cavalry—not the wedge shape for charging, but a fan shape for searching and advancing. Lu Changyuan and Lu Hu rode in the very center of the fan.

The route was northwest. The markings on the sea chart became increasingly sparse. For the first fifty li, they could still see one or two uninhabited reefs and abandoned fishing marker buoys. After a hundred li, there were no longer any traces of human activity on the sea. The water color deepened slowly, changing from light blue to deep blue. There were fewer seabirds too—for the first few dozen li, one could still see white-winged seagulls following the stern to pick up small fish in the wake, but after a hundred li, looking up, there were only empty, grayish-white clouds in the sky.

Lu Hu checked the sea chart while riding.

"The next thirty li is an old reef area. The sea chart marks hidden reefs—there are sharp ones underwater, we have to go around."

"How far around?"

"Twenty li to the west."

"Go around."

The cavalry unit adjusted their direction. Lu Changyuan took the Sea-Covering Xuan Turtle egg from his robes and placed it in a protective bag made of soft leather and cotton batting in front of his saddle. The pale gold patterns on the eggshell were even brighter than yesterday. He placed his palm on it—the direction of the sensing was still northwest, but clearer than yesterday. The degree of clarity was like someone having placed a small magnet in his mind; it was not piercing or harsh, just quietly pointing in one direction.

"Young Lord," Lu Hu said, looking at the patterns on the shell, "is it pointing the way?"

"It is looking for home."

They traveled for another two hours or so. Fog began to rise on the sea.

The first to notice was one of the cavalrymen at the very front—he turned his head and shouted, "There is fog!" The moment he finished shouting, the fog became so thick that one could not see a person's silhouette ten zhang away. The speed of the fifty-cavalry formation dropped immediately. Lu Hu raised his hand to signal the whole team to tighten the formation, the fan shape contracting into two columns, with only one zhang between each seahorse, allowing them to see the back armor of the preceding rider.

The fog was not white. It was grayish-white with a layer of extremely faint blue—like the cold air emitted when ice melts, frozen in the air. The temperature of the air dropped a notch within a single incense stick's time. Lu Changyuan breathed out, and a small puff of white mist immediately condensed in front of him.

"Cold Gale Mist." He said in a low voice.

The "fog area" Su Qingli had marked on the sea chart was only two words. No one had ever told him what the Cold Gale Mist was like. But from the first breath he took upon entering the mist, he knew—this kind of fog would not dissipate when the sun came out in the morning. It rose up from the seabed. The extremely cold deep water met the surface seawater warmed by the sun above; when the cold and warm clashed, the Cold Gale surged up from the bottom of the water, turning into a sea fog that never dissipated all year round.

The Purple Lightning Seahorses began to sneeze. Their noses were much more sensitive than humans—the cold air irritated their nasal passages, and they instinctively blew air out. Several cavalrymen reported thin frost on their armor. It was not ice, but a fine white powder that wiped off with a touch, like frost and like salt.

"Everyone, stick the Evil-warding Talisman on your chest!" Lu Hu ordered. "The talisman can dispel the cold air close to your skin—don't wait until you're frozen stiff to stick it on!"

The cavalrymen pulled spare Evil-warding Talismans from their saddle pouches and slapped them onto their chests. The talisman paper warmed slightly upon contact with body heat, and the chill inside the armor was pushed back a little. The seahorses also calmed down after snorting a few times.

Lu Changyuan did not use a talisman. The protective Spiritual Qi of a Late Foundation Establishment Stage Cultivator was more than enough to deal with this level of cold. He pressed his palm onto the black turtle egg again.

The pulse of the eggshell was actually clearer in the fog.

It was not getting stronger.

It was that the sense of direction was clearer—just like after entering the fog, all interference around was blocked out, leaving only this one directional line shining.

"Continue forward," Lu Changyuan said. "Follow the egg."

The team traveled through the fog for nearly an hour. No one spoke. There was only the sound of the seahorses treading water, the light clinking of armor plates, and the low hum of currents surging up from below.

Then the fog suddenly dissipated.

It did not thin out slowly. It was as if someone had lifted a cloth from overhead—it suddenly lit up before their eyes. The fifty cavalrymen rushed out from the wall of fog, the seahorses felt light under their feet, and everyone looked up at the same time.

Before them was a Ring Reef.

Black reefs rose from the sea, forming a huge circle with a diameter of over ten li. The color of the water inside the reef wall was completely different from the outside—the seawater outside the fog area was deep blue, but the water here was ink blue. It was not pollution. It was depth. When the water reached a certain depth, the sunlight hit it and could not reflect back, so the water surface looked like ink. In the very center of the Abyss Mouth, the water surface was as flat as a piece of black glass; there were no waves, no ripples, and even the sea wind blowing over only swirled around the outer reef walls and could not reach the heart of the abyss.

Lu Hu rode his horse forward a few steps and looked down.

"This water..."

He did not finish. He untied the depth-sounding line from the seahorse's saddle, tied the end of the rope to a protruding reef, and tied a lead weight to the other end. He swung the lead weight out—the lead weight dragged circles of hemp rope into the ink-blue water.

The rope was let down circle by circle.

Fifty zhang. One hundred zhang. Two hundred zhang. Five hundred zhang.

Lu Hu's expression began to change.

Eight hundred zhang.

The hemp rope tightened—not because it hit the bottom, but because the rope was finished. The lead weight was still sinking, but there was no more rope. Lu Hu untied the remaining rope end from the seahorse saddle and pulled it with his bare hands twice, but could not pull it—the lead weight was dragging in the water below eight hundred zhang, and the weight was still there.

"Eight hundred zhang and it did not hit the bottom." He threw the rope onto the reef. "This depth-sounding line is standard equipment for the Zhenhai Army—eight hundred zhang is the limit. The markings on it only go up to eight hundred."

He glanced at that patch of ink-blue water.

"This place... no wonder the old sea chart only marked it as 'Fog Area, Unmeasured'. Ordinary merchant ships cannot even enter that fog—there is no visibility in the fog, the sea chart is useless, and ships rely entirely on experience. Even if they get in, they might not be able to find this Abyss Mouth—the Ring Reef looks like a circle of ordinary reefs from the outside; without passing through the wall of fog, one would not know there is such a big hole inside. Even if one finds it—" He pointed to the end of the rope still sinking in the water, "Eight hundred zhang and it cannot find the bottom; no one knows what is underneath."

Lu Changyuan stood on the reef wall, running Lu Hu's words through his mind.

Natural Cold Gale Mist. A bottomless Abyss Mouth. Extremely cold water temperature.

Three layers of barriers.

Any one of them would be enough to stop ordinary Cultivators and sea clans. With all three stacked together, that was the complete answer as to why the Cold Dragon Abyss had been marked as "Unmeasured" on the map for hundreds of years and no one had come to occupy it.

He pressed his palm onto the black turtle egg again.

The temperature of the eggshell was even lower than before. It was not frozen by the cold air outside—the egg itself was cooling down. The pulsation slowed down, but the force of each beat became heavier. It was as if something was slowly turning over deep inside the eggshell.

"It is recognizing this place," Lu Changyuan said.

Lu Hu looked at him. "Recognized?"

"Not yet. We have to go down."

"Eight hundred zhang deep water, the water temperature is likely to freeze into ice—"

"Not going down now." Lu Changyuan put the egg back into the protective bag. "Set up camp first. Measure the hydrology around the Abyss Mouth clearly—water temperature gradient, direction of undertows, the underwater structure of the reef wall. Measure it clearly before thinking about how to go down."

Lu Hu nodded. He turned and shouted to the cavalrymen: "Camp by the reef wall! Four people per shift to take turns on guard—two shifts watching the sea, two shifts watching the sky!"

The cavalrymen immediately became busy. Some moved reef stones to build windbreak walls, some laid out sleeping mats, and some distributed dry rations and water. The seahorses were led to a natural recessed shallow bay on the east side of the reef wall, and a dozen of them huddled together to keep warm.

Lu Changyuan walked to the highest point of the reef wall, spread the sea chart on a flat reef stone, and drew a circle at the location of the Cold Dragon Abyss with a charcoal stick.

Then he wrote two words next to the circle.

Arrived.

The sun began to sink to the west. The light on the sea surface turned from bright white to golden, and then from golden to dark red. The fog area side was illuminated by the setting sun, and the edge of the gray-blue mist was plated with a layer of dark golden light, looking like a city wall rising from the sea to mid-air.

Lu Hu walked over while chewing on a piece of dry ration.

"Young Lord. Start measuring the hydrology tomorrow. Measure the south side of the Abyss Mouth first—the slope of the reef wall there is gentle, suitable for going into the water."

"Good."

"By the way—" Lu Hu swallowed the dry ration, "When the depth-sounding line was pulled up just now, the rope was freezing to the touch. The temperature of this water is even lower than I thought."

"The colder, the better," Lu Changyuan said. "The colder it is, the more the black turtle egg likes it."

Lu Hu thought about it, felt it made sense, and went back to gnawing on his dry ration.

Just then, a sound came from the direction of the fog area.

It was not the sound of the wind.

It was not the sound of the ocean currents.

It was music.

The sound of strings and bamboo flutes drifted over from the other side of the fog wall, sometimes near and sometimes far. Sometimes it was clear enough to tell which note was a flute and which note was a pipa, and sometimes it was swallowed by the mist, leaving only a few scattered tunes. Lu Hu put down his dry ration, and his hand pressed onto the hilt of his sword. The fifty cavalrymen stopped what they were doing at the same time—no one gave an order, but everyone heard it.

The music grew closer.

Then the wall of fog was split open.

Three treasure ships sailed out from the mist. The hulls were longer than the largest patrol spirit boat on Blue Moon Island, the bows were inlaid with gilded beast heads, and a row of spirit cannons hung on both sides of the hull, the muzzles glowing with a dark metallic luster under the setting sun. A large flag hung from the mast of each of the three ships, the flags snapping in the sea breeze.

Lu Changyuan recognized the characters on the flags.

East Sea Governor.

On the deck of the treasure ship in the middle, a young man leaned on a soft couch. He was in his early twenties, wearing a bright blue brocade robe, with a high-quality jade pendant hanging from his waist. A songstress sat on each side of the soft couch, one holding a pipa and the other holding a jade flute. The music just now had been played by these two people.

The young man tossed a spiritual fruit of unknown type into his mouth, chewed twice, turned his head, and glanced at the cavalry on the reef wall.

He raised his hand.

The music stopped.

He sat up a little straighter, bracing himself on the armrest of the soft couch. His gaze swept from Lu Changyuan's face to the cavalry's seahorses, and then back from the seahorses to Lu Changyuan's face. Then he smiled—the expression was like someone finding a few stray cats that had broken into their own back garden.

"Where did these Loose Cultivators come from?"

The voice was not loud, but every word was drawn out very long.

"This Cold Dragon Abyss is a territory that this young master took a fancy to first. If you know what's good for you—" He waved his hand, "Go find somewhere else to fish."