Chapter 185: Settling In
Xu Qing looked back at the Captain but didn’t say a word. As far as he was concerned, the Captain was taking this role far too seriously. The charming way in which he’d just cleared his throat was just plain jarring. However, Xu Qing didn’t say anything. He knew that though Patriarch Golden Vajra Warrior had been quiet lately, based on the patriarch’s personality, he was surely recording all of this for later use. One day, they would be precious images that Xu Qing was certain he could find a use for. After giving the Captain a long look, he turned away and ignored him.
The Captain raised his eyebrow and was about to say more when another series of spell formation fluctuations rolled over the warship.
The octopus shivered and dropped into a kneeling position as it waited for the spell formation to finish the scanning process. As the ghost thirst butterflies dispersed, Xu Qing looked over the rail at a huge structure below them. It was a very simple construction. There were two freestanding pillars that created a sort of gate. Between the pillars was a black vortex, slowly spinning as red electricity crackled within it.
Outside of the gate were numerous red magical mushrooms, atop of which sat a host of Seazombie cultivators. There were men and women among them, and they included both humans and nonhumans. There appeared to be about a thousand in total, all of them tasked with keeping this location secure. Clearly, anyone who wanted to enter the vortex would have to pass by them first. Some of them were powerful experts whose gazes caused a feeling of danger in Xu Qing.
When the spell formation fluctuations swept over the warship, the sealing barrier with the mark of that three-flame Seazombie reacted to it, glittering brightly. Then the spell formation fluctuations faded away.
The octopus crawled back up and cautiously proceeded forward. As they passed the various magical mushrooms, the Seazombie cultivators on them stood and offered greetings with clasped hands.
“Well met, Third Princess.”
“Well met, Third Princess.”
Xu Qing’s expression remained placid, but inside he was fully on guard. Given that there were so many eyes on them, if a single person saw through their disguise, they would be finished.
The combined auras of all these Seazombie cultivators created a mighty pressure that forced the little bottle in his robe to work much faster to deal with it. If things kept going like this, the bottle would stop working much sooner than expected.
It was the same with the Captain. It wouldn’t matter if his disguise looked even better than it did. He was still in great danger. Taking out a black pearl, he started fiddling with it while simultaneously plastering an impatient expression on his face.
Soon enough, they were closing in on the gate. However, all of the gazes were still fixed on them, therefore, the Captain suddenly threw the pearl off to the side. It exploded, sending out powerful aura fluctuations toward the surrounding Seazombies.
“Seen enough?” the Captain said, and his irritation faded into a broad, sweet smile. Because his complexion was pale, and he looked visibly weak, which was no act, his smile seemed even more effective than usual.
The surrounding Seazombies quietly bowed their heads.
“Give me a hand,” the Captain said loudly, walking unsteadily up to Xu Qing at the prow and reaching out to him.
Xu Qing really did admire the Captain’s acting skills. Bowing his head, he took ‘her’ by the forearm and helped ‘her’ walk off of the warship, away from the octopus, and toward the black vortex.
Compared to the vortex, Xu Qing and the Captain looked as insignificant as ants. The mere fluctuations it emitted were so terrifying that both Xu Qing and the Captain reeled inwardly. However, they had strong willpower and were prepared. Moving neither fast nor slow, they approached the gate. Finally, after sharing a quick glance, they stepped into it. The moment they did, their minds filled with rumbling sounds, and they felt like they had entered a different dimension.
They were now in a world of bright red! It wasn’t a very large space, and the ground was covered with a red elixir that made it seem like a pool of blood surrounded by eight stone pillars. Sitting atop each of the stone pillars was a cross-legged Seazombie cultivator!
Most eye-catching was a huge statue in the middle of the pool. Its feet sank below the surface, but it still stood 3,000 meters tall, making it seem like it was propping up the sky. It was a blotchy crimson color, and looked like the corpse of a human, its head thrown back as it howled to the sky. Its hands were posed in a very unusual way. One hand was extended up, as if to grasp at the dome of heaven. The other hand rested on its chest. The statue had many undulating tentacles growing out of it, all of them covered with eyes. That alone was bizarre, but what was even stranger was that if you looked closely at the eyes, they all seemed to contain images of other worlds. Each world was different, and they added to the statue’s astonishing aura, which crushed down on everything around it, and seemed to create a harmonic resonance with the Seazombies.
Apparently, the surrounding Seazombies had been created by the aura of this statue; the statue itself was their origin.
The mighty pressure was many dozens of times greater than outside the gate, and it caused Xu Qing’s bottle to start draining even faster.
Meanwhile, a crack appeared on the Captain’s face, in other words, a fracture in his disguise. However, using some unknown method, he quickly fixed the problem. That said, Xu Qing could sense unstable fluctuations coming from him. Clearly, not even the Captain would be able to stay in the place for very long. Both of them were deeply shaken.
This statue could only be one thing: the divine likeness of the seventh zombie ancestor of the Seazombies.
Each of the zombie ancestor statues were different sizes, and the seventh wasn’t even the biggest. Nor was it the strongest. Even still, as one of the nine, it was considered a paramount entity among Seazombies. The Seazombie king himself would pay obeisance every time he came to the statue.
That was because these nine divine likenesses contained the secret of how to create Seazombies. Furthermore, they would naturally create the bright red pools beneath their feet, an elixir that was required for the zombification process. What was more, it had miraculous healing properties.
In fact, there were a few dozen Seazombie cultivators sitting cross-legged within the elixir being healed. The weakest of them was at the level of two flames, and there was one at the three-flame level. All of them had obviously been seriously injured on the front lines.
And yet, they didn’t count for much. What was really shocking to Xu Qing and the Captain was that sitting atop the statue’s left hand, which was right in front of its chest, was a young boy in a blood-red robe!
Xu Qing had first seen this young boy in the Pearl Archipelago. He was one of the Seazombies’ Gold Core cultivators, who had led the assault on the Pearl Archipelago from the sea! [1]
Upon seeing him here, Xu Qing turned to the Captain.
The Captain looked stunned, then smiled back wryly. Obviously, his intelligence report had not been accurate. Either that, or some adjustments had been made to ensure that a Gold Core cultivator was watching over this place.
Xu Qing stood there silently, musing that he had allowed himself to go too crazy this time, and wondering why he had allowed the Captain to drag him along. This place had dozens of two-flame cultivators, over a thousand other cultivators outside, plus a Gold Core cultivator who could kill both Xu Qing and the Captain with a single palm attack. The Gold Core Seazombie was meditating at the moment, and it was impossible to say what would happen when he opened his eyes. Would he see through their ruse? After all, the mere pressure in this place was causing problems for their disguises.
Besides, they were in the Seazombie’s ancestral land, very close to their army’s main camp. Who knew what other powerful experts might show up out of the blue...?
Taking a deep breath, Xu Qing stifled his anxiety and turned it into determination. Gritting his teeth, he decided that since he was here, he might as well make the best of the situation. Then he exchanged a glance with the Captain, and saw that familiar crazy look in the Captain’s eyes. Together, they walked forward. After they had walked about 300 meters in, rotten corpse hands began to rise up in front of them.
The hands weren’t there to grab them, but rather, to provide a place for them to walk. As the two of them proceeded along, the Seazombie cultivators on the surrounding pillars mostly ignored them. A few cracked their eyes open, but upon seeing Third Princess, they quickly closed their eyes. As for the Gold Core boy, he didn’t open his eyes at all.
At that point, Xu Qing breathed a sigh of relief. Eventually, when they were close to the statue, the Captain found a place by the statue’s feet where he sat down cross-legged to meditate. Almost immediately, he started readjusting his position to edge close enough to touch the statue.
Without a word, Xu Qing also entered the pool. As soon as he was in the elixir, he could sense a strange force at work. It wasn’t spirit power, and it wasn’t mutagen. It seemed full of pure nourishment, including soul power. As soon as it entered Xu Qing, his dharma apertures stirred, which was all he needed to confirm that this elixir was going to be a big help in opening dharma apertures.
He immediately settled down cross-legged, and after taking a look at the surrounding Seazombies in their healing routines, he carefully attempted to absorb that unique force. He knew that he couldn’t directly open any dharma apertures, as the resulting fluctuations would be too obvious. The best thing would be to just do some stockpiling. If he could collect enough of the elixir, then after he left, he could use it to open some dharma apertures. The number of dharma apertures he opened would depend on how much of the elixir he could get.
Eyes filling with determination, he rotated his cultivation base, whereupon blood-colored streams of liquid started moving from the pond and into his body. He sent them to his dantian region, and they stirred with such alarming, soul-stirring power that all of his unopened dharma apertures trembled. At the same time, an intense feeling of thirst arose in Xu Qing. Stopping for a moment, he looked around, then continued with the absorption process. As it turned out, stealing from the enemy right under their noses... was very exhilarating.
1. Xu Qing saw the Seazombie boy in chapter 164. ☜