Chapter 140 Sea Eye
As Xing Chun walked, he praised Zhongli Shan's skill and asked him why he kept such amazing swordsmanship hidden.
Zhong Lishan honestly replied, "I'm not proficient yet."
It would be so embarrassing if something went wrong while using it frequently.
Upon hearing that he wasn't familiar with it, Xing Chun immediately stopped in his tracks, looked up at the high wall of waves, and asked, "Does 'not familiar' mean that it might collapse halfway down?"
Zhong Lishan said expressionlessly, "That's right."
“Then I’ll…” Xing Chun turned around, but Mei Liangyu grabbed him back. “If it collapses, I’ll hold it up for you. Stop talking nonsense and get in the water.”
Xing Chun was just pinching his nose with one hand when Mei Liangyu stuck a bright yellow talisman on his forehead. The cinnabar red on it was covered with bewitching and indistinct incantations.
Mei Liangyu said, "The deep sea is bitterly cold; no living person can survive at that temperature. This is a Taoist seasonal talisman to ward off the cold and keep warm. I modified it, and it's barely enough for us to last half an hour down there."
Xing Chun lifted the talisman that was hanging on Mei Liangyu's nose and stared at him: "You changed the Taoist talisman?"
Mei Liangyu slapped one onto his own head as well, saying nonchalantly, "Even Taoist priests write talismans, what can't be changed?"
He was about to stick the sticker on Zhong Lishan as well, but Zhong Lishan stopped him first and did it himself.
Xing Chun turned to look at Zhongli Shan: "Half an hour, that's about the same amount of time the star array outside will take. General Zhongli, what about you?"
Zhong Lishan was somewhat helpless at the teasing in his words: "It won't collapse in half an hour, don't worry."
After entering the sea, Mei Liangyu led the way, with Xing Chun and Zhong Lishan following on either side, while keeping an eye on the movement of the seawater and trying to avoid the swirling sea eye.
If you accidentally get caught up in it, then it's all over.
Leaving aside whether he could survive in the surging sea spring, even if he was lucky enough not to be killed by the five elements of energy within the sea eye, he didn't know where the seawater would take him.
Apart from Taiyi Island, which has islands, it is surrounded by an endless sea.
If you are taken to a desolate place by the sea eye, it is no different from being dead.
The Six-Headed Wood grows in the deep sea, where it never sees the sun and suffers extreme hardship and cold. It grows under the pressure of the seawater and cannot grow very tall.
Mei Liangyu had previously shown the two of them the appearance of the Six Mysterious Wood as depicted in the book.
It resembles coral in the sea, is tree-like, and is fiery red—a vibrant, authentic fiery red. It's a color that can only be seen with the naked eye, a color that no colored ink in the world can replicate.
When Xing Chun first saw it, he mistook the Six Mysterious Wood for coral in the sea, until he saw the description in the book: a Mysterious Wood only grows six branches, and the branches have fine soft hairs. The hairs are poisonous, but touching them with your hands is harmless. They only work when you bite them, so as to protect yourself from being eaten by sea creatures.
Its uniqueness lies in its strong resistance to toxicity, which prevents it from being corroded in any harsh environment, but it is also difficult to polish and manufacture into other shapes.
Mining is also troublesome; there are many better options beyond the Six-Herb Wood.
Mei Liangyu had come here once a few years ago with the Wen Yang brothers. At that time, all four major families of government agencies mobilized, a large group of over a hundred people, well-prepared, with some going into the water and others guiding them at sea.
Mei Liangyu didn't know why those four families went to sea to find the Six Mysterious Wood back then. He only remembered that he was discovered halfway through his dive and was pulled out of the water, leaving him to stay on the shore.
Before setting off, Mei Liangyu asked Wen Yang and his brother to confirm the location of the Six Mysterious Wood again, to make sure he hadn't remembered it wrong.
At this moment, the deep sea was pitch black. Mei Liangyu's modified Four Seasons Rest Talisman could not only ward off the cold but also provide light. A halo of light surrounded the three of them, illuminating their path. Ahead, a magnificent light shimmered faintly. Upon closer inspection, they discovered it was a vast coral forest.
The forest is densely covered with red corals, and the underwater rock walls are covered with strangely shaped corals of various colors, among which peach, pink, and fiery red are the most common, making them the most precious of the corals.
When you get close to them, you can feel the flow of the five elements between heaven and earth, and these corals are affected by this, so their colors become very bright, like pearls in the sea, shining and radiant.
The Six-Headed Wood is not only intelligent, but also cunning.
It has evolved toxin-containing hairs to protect itself and also likes to hide in coral reefs.
Mei Liangyu made a hand gesture, indicating that the location was in this area and they needed to search for it.
The three separated and took charge of three different directions and areas, entering the Coral Forest to search for traces of the Six Mystic Wood and the Milky Way Water.
While on shore, Mei Liangyu and the other two had discussed this:
Milky Way water is very similar to dewdrops; it is crystal clear, colorless, and odorless. To someone who doesn't know much about it, it would definitely be mistaken for a rather large dewdrop.
Previously, when the instructors of the Thirteen Realms and the Saints visited the temple, the green bamboo sticks they used were called "River-Probing Sticks." They were specially soaked in medicines from doctors and farmers and were used to test the toxicity of the Milky Way water.
The water in the Milky Way is so toxic that the River-Probing Stick can detect its toxicity even when it is only a few inches away.
If Nian Qiuyan wanted to take the Milky Way water from the Upside-Down Moon Cave, all she needed to do was break off a palm-sized piece of Six-Mystic Wood, press it into the Milky Way water, and the dense downy hairs on the branch would absorb and lock the Milky Way water onto the hairs, coating the entire branch with heavy dew.
That branch of the six-colored wood will become visibly damp and moist, with a drooping appearance.
Although the differences were obvious to the naked eye, the three of them still prepared a river-finding stick, since they were looking for the Six Mysterious Wood in the Coral Sea, where almost everything they could see was a vibrant, fiery red.
The broken branches of the Six Mysterious Wood will lose their vitality after a few days, and the downy hairs on the branches will no longer be able to retain the Milky Way Water. That is why Mei Liangyu guessed that Nian Qiuyan would hide the Milky Way Water in the forest in the sea.
That night, the sage was unable to find the Milky Way Water on Nian Qiuyan or in the dormitory, which confirmed his guess.
Nian Qiuyan may have taken a lot of Six-Element Wood, wanting to forge a box that could hold the Milky Way's water, but it would be difficult for him to do it alone, and it would take too long.
Before he finished, Mei Liangyu bet that the Milky Way was still deep beneath the island of mechanical devices.
Three figures moved through the coral sea, which shone with a magnificent light. The light and shadow reflected in the water were breathtaking, but Mei Liangyu and the others had no time to appreciate the beautiful scenery. They had to hurry to find the Six Mysterious Wood and the Milky Way Water.
After an unknown amount of time, Xing Chun had swum to a position near the edge of the Coral Sea. He looked back and felt that he was a little lost. After looking at the colorful and dense corals for too long, he became confused: Had I actually looked for this place before?
Xing Chun poked the probe stick into the gap between the large coral pieces. He heard Mei Liangyu's whistle, made using the Five Elements Life Technique, reminding them that they had only a little time left. If they couldn't find it, they would have to surface and leave; they couldn't stay any longer.
He responded with a whistle, then looked down and saw that the tip of the bamboo stick he had taken from the coral crevice was stained black.
This discovery revealed the presence of toxicity in the Milky Way's water.
Xing Chun's eyes widened, and he quickly bent down to approach the cluster of corals, while simultaneously whistling to signal for the Milky Way to come over.
Before the three of them was a small mountain made up of corals of various colors and shapes. In the middle of the mountain, large, pink, umbrella-shaped corals overlapped one another, and the Six-Headed Wood was hidden beneath the umbrella-shaped corals.
Zhong Lishan and Mei Liangyu inserted their river-probing sticks into the crevice from different directions. When they pulled them out, the tips of the sticks had turned black, and they could both detect the toxicity of the Milky Way water.
The three of them worked together to knock off the coral that was covering the Six Mystic Wood, revealing dozens of Six Mystic Wood pieces hidden underneath.
The fiery red branches were long and curved, smaller than the largest Six Mysterious Wood recorded in the book, and seemed to still be in the growth period. Mei Liangyu and the other two immediately noticed the drooping branches, and the fine hairs on the branches were moist and crystal clear, looking wet even in the seawater.
Xing Chun and the other man made a hand gesture, indicating that this was the one; break it and take it away?
Zhong Lishan also said that they had to hurry, or there wouldn't be any time left.
Mei Liangyu moved his hand, and the sharp curved dagger in his sleeve swiftly cut the six-colored wood that preserved the Milky Way water. This branch was even smaller than his palm, but he didn't have time to examine it closely. After getting the item, it began to float away.
The other six types of wood around them were too close together, their branches intertwined. When Mei Liangyu took them away, it was inevitable that these branches would collide with them, causing the fine downy material wrapped in the Milky Way water to sway and fall off, staining Mei Liangyu's clothes.
As Mei Liangyu swam, these tiny, almost invisible downy particles floated around him. Unbeknownst to anyone, the downy particles, carrying the scent of the Milky Way, drifted into his ear through his hair.
The branch that Mei Liangyu was holding was not wet with the Milky Way water. Fearing that it might cause an accident during the ascent, he put the branch of the Six Mysterious Wood into his mechanism box.
The fuzz of the Six-Headed Wood completely enveloped the Milky Way Water, so it wouldn't be a problem to put it into the mechanism box at this time.
As they surfaced, Mei Liangyu was still thinking about the Milky Way water they had found, but there was no evidence to prove that it was Nian Qiuyan who had done it.
Should we hand the item over to the academy to quell the matter and prevent the academy from continuing the investigation and finding Nian Qiuyan in the end, or should we hand the item over to Nian Qiuyan and ask him why?
While he was still thinking, Mei Liangyu suddenly felt a sharp pain in his brain. The pain came suddenly and violently, causing the veins on his forehead to bulge.
The Four Seasons Resting Talisman also failed, and the biting cold instantly engulfed Mei Liangyu's entire body, causing him to lose the strength to rise and fall.
Below him was the bright, warm glow of the coral sea. The refracted light and shadow appeared to Mei Liangyu like scenes cut apart. As the figures in the scenes moved, he heard countless whispers.
In the same sea, a different version of himself appeared before him.
When Mei Liangyu fell, he saw himself as a child, and the white-clad man who had led him into the sea.
He heard the man's gentle, smiling voice say, "The seas are interconnected; they can take you anywhere. Whether it's the sea of Taiyi or the sea of Yan... they're all the same."
Zhong Lishan noticed Mei Liangyu's unusual behavior and quickly floated towards him, reaching out to grab him. Seeing Mei Liangyu's furrowed brows and unfocused gaze, he knew something was wrong. Just as he was about to examine Mei Liangyu's Five Elements Qi, he saw Xing Chun, who had been swimming at the forefront, suddenly turn around.
Xing Chun looked like he'd seen a ghost, his eyes filled with terror, and frantically gestured to the two of them.
Zhong Lishan couldn't see what Xing Chun's gesture meant. When he looked up, he saw the seawater suddenly distorting. An unstoppable and irresistible suction force suddenly appeared above and below them, creating a vortex from the sea and pulling them into the seabed, forming a sea eye.
When the two star arrays on the sea surface disappeared, the high wall of waves created by the sword energy suddenly collapsed, and the seawater crashed down heavily, bringing chaos back to the sky above this sea area.
Thunder rumbled and waves crashed relentlessly, swallowing and concealing all traces of the storm.
Only the black-feathered bald eagles circling in the sky remain stationed here and have not left.
[Author's Note]
Thank you so much for your support! I will continue to work hard!
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