The palace exterior was intricately carved, revealing its solemn beauty at first glance, but the interior was a starkly different dark world.
With almost no ventilation or light, the interior felt as dim and lightless as the depths of a cave. As the few individuals stepped lightly onto the ground, the crunching sound of dust under their feet could be heard.
"Didn't this complex of buildings always stay submerged in the sea?" Wu Tianzhen squatted down, picked up a pinch of dust, and felt its texture between his fingers. It was incredibly dry.
They had landed on the island within the half hour that the giant whale surfaced. To suggest that these palaces were dried by the sun in this short span of thirty minutes, accumulating dust, was simply unbelievable.
However, it was equally unlikely that the sealing of this place was so good that not a single drop of seawater had entered even after a thousand years of submersion. Setting aside the stone crevices through which a faint breeze could be felt, even the few scarce small windows would have ensured that the interior of the palace was completely filled with seawater.
Wu Tianzhen, puzzled, patted the dust off his hands and stood up, utterly bewildered, feeling as though all the scientific knowledge he had learned had suddenly become useless.
"Hey, I'm telling you, your scientific knowledge is useless in places like these!" Fatty, having patiently observed for a long time from "Teacher Wu's Study of Yingzhou's Nature," could no longer bear it.
"Why insist on talking about science in a bizarre place? Isn't that like telling Buddhist scriptures to the Jade Emperor, completely irrelevant!"
Ignoring Wu Tianzhen's mumbling about "no matter how bizarre, there must be basic principles," Fatty's eyes had already darted away, his hands itching with anticipation.
The moment he entered the room, his sharp eyes had spotted a large cauldron placed in a corner. Although it was far away and the specific structure was unclear, its height of about two meters alone indicated it was no ordinary item.
Instantly, all the other stone tables, chairs, and stools in the room lost their appeal to Fatty. His fervent passion was entirely directed towards that little enchantress he had only glimpsed once.
Watching Fatty trot over, Zhang Qiling made a move to follow but suddenly remembered something and glanced at Hei Yanjing.
...The shadow they encountered upon entering was of unknown danger. Although it had already concealed itself, no one knew what it might do.
Moreover, it was uncertain if that thing even had a physical form. If it suddenly appeared, the two would need to react in time.
Hei Yanjing likely still held a grudge. Seeing Zhang Qiling look over, he crossed his arms, adopting an air of someone who had been blind for many years and could not see outsiders.
Zhang Qiling: ...Immature.
He decided not to bicker with this Hei Yanjing, who had lived for an unknown number of years but sometimes seemed as if he hadn't outgrown adolescence. After all, there were few people in the world as mature, steady, and unforgiving as himself.
By now, he had followed Fatty to the giant cauldron. Upon closer inspection, the cauldron's surface was covered in intricate patterns, vaguely forming some pictures of unknown meaning.
It looked like a group of people gathered before a pool, drinking water, and nothing else. There were no common divine beast images, no special circumstances defying common sense, completely different from the murals they had encountered before.
Logically, the meticulously carved patterns on a special object like a cauldron, which carried meanings of prayer, would surely contain some information, no matter how little. Why was this one...
"Good heavens!" Just then, a splashing sound echoed nearby. Zhang Qiling followed the sound and saw that Fatty had attempted to climb the cauldron but had somehow fallen.
Reaching out to steady Fatty, Zhang Qiling's eyes sharpened, and he leaped forward, landing on the giant cauldron almost like a black shadow in an instant.
...Although Fatty's agility wasn't comparable to Zhang Qiling's or Hei Yanjing's, it was still far superior to that of ordinary people. For a two-meter-high cauldron, with his eagerness for treasures, he should have been able to reach the top effortlessly, and certainly not fall.
There was something inside—!
The flashlight secured to his chest shone down as he leaned forward, and with a clang, the Black Gold Ancient Blade was unsheathed.
Zhang Qiling knelt on the narrow edge. Even when wielding the blade in a space only three fingers wide, his stance remained steady.
And in that flash of lightning, a resounding clang echoed!!
Wu Tianzhen, who was examining strange marks on the wall, heard the sound and turned back abruptly. For a moment, he only saw a spark explode in the dark corner!
After instinctively catching sight of the spark, he then located Zhang Qiling—
At this moment, Xiao Ge was contorted into an awkward position in the narrow space between the giant cauldron and the ceiling. The Black Gold Ancient Blade was held horizontally in front of him after the collision, and his entire body seemed to be bristling with tension as he stared intently into the darkness within the cauldron.
With Wu Tianzhen's eyesight, he couldn't see what was inside the cauldron, but he was already on edge. Dropping the wall he hadn't finished studying, he hurried to the base of the cauldron.
"Fatty, what's going on?" He patted Fatty's back without much gentleness. "What is Xiao Ge fighting?"
Fatty was also a bit puzzled. He held out a hand, and the palm of the hand that had just reached the cauldron's rim now bore a conspicuous white mark.
...The shape was as if it had been poked by something sharp.
"Hiss—I really don't know about this," he shook his head. "But it's definitely something that can move, otherwise it wouldn't have startled Fatty."
Just then, they all heard a dense and rapid rustling sound from within the cauldron—!
Zhang Qiling exploded into action. A white shadow suddenly emerged from the cauldron's opening. Just as it was about to stab at him, it was caught by the Black Gold Ancient Blade!
Under the sharp gleam of the blade, Zhang Qiling, with a twist impossible for ordinary people, maneuvered in the extremely small space. His long leg slammed down with a crisp cracking sound, and a white object was then yanked by the neck and flung out!
The object slid across the ground, making a shattering sound as it was slammed down, and only stopped when it crashed into a stone table.
Wu Tianzhen and Fatty shone their lights over, only to see a pale white skeleton!
A... skeleton with a human torso and a fish tail!
"Whoa... is this the bone of a鲛人 (jiaoren)?" Wu Tianzhen, seeing this legendary creature for the first time, was extremely excited even though only a skeleton remained. He eagerly went over to examine it.
Although the 鲛人 skeleton's skull had been smashed by Zhang Qiling, it was, after all, a dead fish. Its vitality was still quite strong. Discovering that Wu Tianzhen was examining its gender, it furiously made creaking sounds of bone friction on the ground.
"Yo, an acquaintance~" Hei Yanjing's voice came.
Wu Tianzhen felt a malicious intent in his voice. He looked over warily, only to see Hei Yanjing reaching into his clothes and rummaging—
And pulling out a crayon?!
And it was pink?!
Wu Tianzhen: ...Seriously, are you sick?
Seeing the poor skeleton follow in the footsteps of its predecessors, transforming from the ordinary white painted version into a delicate pink limited edition, Zhang Qiling slowly averted his gaze.
...He didn't know how long Hei Yanjing's hobby would last, but for now, he decided not to go down there.