Chapter 300
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There’s an old saying: “Extreme joy begets sorrow.”
Zhang Xiaohua was already overjoyed upon seeing so many night-luminescent pearls within the lava—it was all he could do not to flip headfirst into the molten flow. What’s more, harvesting the pearls came as easy as lifting a hand—no more effort than reaching out—and Zhang Xiaohua had strength to spare.
Thus, he followed the stone wall downward, plucking as he went, each grab more fluid than the last.
Who knows how much deeper he had gone, when all of a sudden—his outwardly released divine sense touched upon something both unfamiliar and eerily familiar—
Another divine sense!
This divine sense was like congealed rock, emanating an unspeakable solemn majesty. The instant Zhang Xiaohua’s own divine sense brushed against it, a tremor rose from the depths of his heart. Though he had yet to see anything with his divine sense, a feeling as if he were a mere ant beneath a towering mountain surged forth without warning.
Zhang Xiaohua’s body shuddered. The True Qi barrier surrounding him rippled with dazzling waves, nearly bursting apart. He no longer cared about the night-luminescent pearls slipping from his hand. Gritting his teeth against the quaking in his heart, he instantly retracted his divine sense. With his right hand he quickly formed a hand seal, restoring the barrier just before it collapsed.
Once the divine sense had been withdrawn, that soul-deep trembling seemed to vanish as well. Zhang Xiaohua no longer dared to delve further downward. That sensation just now—there were no words to describe it.
“It felt like… a fear and submission rising straight from the heart. A kind of instinctive lowering of the head. As if I’d encountered a natural-born predator far beyond me in power. Yes, that must be it. Just like when I was a child and got bitten by a snake in the fields—ever since, I’d flinch at the mere sight of one. But this… this was ten thousand times stronger! Could it be that there’s a man-eating serpent down there?!”
Zhang Xiaohua hesitated—not about retreating back to the shore, but about whether or not to release his divine sense again, to see what exactly was lurking outside.
After a moment’s thought, Zhang Xiaohua gritted his teeth, formed a hand seal, and first drifted upward. Then, in the blink of an eye, he poured all the willpower of his Pill Heart from his Mud Pill Palace into his divine sense and sent it sweeping downward with full force.
In that instant, an endless trembling rose from within. Even the direction of his retreat changed. And in that fleeting moment—as fast as a white colt darting past a gap—his divine sense swept forcefully through a vast sea of lava. What he saw was blurry, yet unmistakable—
A giant eye! A massive, tightly-shut, vertical eye!
Zhang Xiaohua couldn’t believe it, yet that eye was truly that massive—then how enormous must the creature’s body be?
“What’s more, this monster is clearly in slumber, showing no sign of conscious thought. Yet even its unintentional, unconsciously released divine sense is so vast and oppressive—it feels as weighty as a towering mountain. And that pressure isn’t even the real issue. The real problem is that just by coming into contact with that divine sense, I felt an instinctive urge to kneel, a crushing sense of helplessness, dread, and awe. What in the world is this thing?”
“Well, who cares what it is. Let it be whoever or whatever it wants. From what I remember, there was no mention of this creature in True Person Fire Dragon’s jade slip. He likely never encountered it. Since it didn’t awaken even ten thousand years ago, there’s no reason it would wake up now. True Person Fire Dragon cultivated in this sea of fire for so long and never disturbed it—I shouldn’t be the unlucky one to wake it, right? My luck can’t be that bad… Sigh. But then again, True Person Fire Dragon never descended into the lava, so of course he didn’t disturb it. From now on, I won’t go down there either.”
“Aiya, how did I end up so deep? Why haven’t I reached the top after all this time?”
How could Zhang Xiaohua have known? During that brief moment of reckless probing, he had already strayed far from his original path. Still, he wasn’t too flustered—his one and only thought now was to get as far away from that monster as possible.
As for where he ended up, as long as he remained somewhere on the island, it didn’t matter how deep—he could always burrow his way back up with his Earth Escape.
Sure enough, when he finally surfaced from that stretch of fire sea, a brilliant canopy of night-luminescent pearls greeted him overhead, shining brightly—as if mockingly saying, “Buddy, you’re lost.”
Zhang Xiaohua looked up at those dazzling night pearls and grinned, baring a row of sparkling white teeth just as brilliant.
He wasn’t panicked. First, he sat cross-legged to recover his True Qi, letting his racing little heart calm itself. Only then did he fully release his divine sense—and just as expected, he had strayed far from True Person Fire Dragon’s cave. His divine sense wasn’t being suppressed at all and quickly found a cave far above his head.
Rubbing his hands together, Zhang Xiaohua chuckled and got up from the ground, heading toward the edge of the lava. But just then, his gaze was drawn to something suspended above the lava—
“What’s that thing? Black and shadowy… floating between the magma and the flames… it’s actually hovering in midair?!”
Zhang Xiaohua first walked closer for a careful look—turns out, it was a longsword, just silently floating there in midair.
If it were the Zhang Xiaohua of old, though he might have found the floating sword strange, he might still have casually reached out to grab it. But ever since encountering the restrictive formations left behind by True Person Fire Dragon, he had developed a wary respect for anything that defied common sense. So instead, he cautiously released his divine sense to inspect it more thoroughly.
As expected, the longsword was enveloped in a small restriction—not one that blocked divine sense. Zhang Xiaohua looked the sword over, and a peculiar feeling rose in his heart.
“This doesn’t even look like a longsword. It’s more like a thick rod, just barely shaped like a crude sword. Huh, that’s odd—why can’t my divine sense penetrate it? If it were something ordinary, that usually means there’s a restriction in place. But this thing has no such barrier, yet I still can’t sense anything inside. What kind of bizarre item is this?”
But by now, Zhang Xiaohua had already seen so many strange things in a single day, he was almost numb to it all. A dead object that divine sense couldn’t penetrate? Might as well take a look once it’s in hand.
After studying the restriction around it, Zhang Xiaohua came to a realization.
“This seems like a simple formation—it’s using the fire-attribute Yuan Qi from the magma to temper this sword. There’s no defense mechanism to prevent someone from taking it. Looks like someone back in the day was using this place to refine the weapon, but for some reason… they just left it here? Never came back for it?”
The longsword was very close to the lava’s edge—within easy reach. Zhang Xiaohua still acted with great caution: he extended his divine sense to keep watch while forming a hand seal with his right hand, ready to burrow into the earth at the slightest sign of danger. Meanwhile, his left hand reached toward the sword.
But when his left hand grasped the hilt, the small formation didn’t show the slightest reaction—it truly seemed to be just a refining array.
As soon as he touched the sword, Zhang Xiaohua was surprised to feel not the burning heat he expected, but a chill that seeped into his hand. He was overjoyed—an item that had been tempered over lava for so long yet was cold to the touch must surely be some kind of treasure. However, when he tried to pull it out, for the first time, it didn’t budge.
“Oh? It’s actually this heavy?”
Zhang Xiaohua exerted another five parts of his strength, and only then was he able to lift the sword-like object out of the refining array.
Ever since he’d begun cultivating the Big Dipper Divine Fist and started tempering his bones, his arm strength had grown rapidly. Now that he had reached the seventh level of the Big Dipper Divine Fist, the strength in a single arm had reached nearly fifteen thousand jin. Yet now, it had taken several thousand jin of force just to lift this inconspicuous sword. How could that not leave him staring in astonishment?
Lifting the longsword that weighed several thousand jin up before his eyes, Zhang Xiaohua examined it carefully again under the dim glow of the surrounding firelight.
It was something resembling a sword embryo—already somewhat shaped like a longsword, but more like a thick, elongated rod. If not for the pointed tip at the front and its insufficient length, one might as well just call it a club.
The sword still carried that cold sensation in his hand, but it wasn’t the kind of chill that seeped into the skin—it was more of a subtle, internal coolness that made it comfortable to hold. Its exterior didn’t reveal much, so Zhang Xiaohua lightly swung it a few times. Fortunately, while heavy, the longsword was still manageable for him to wield. Glancing at the stone wall nearby, Zhang Xiaohua gathered his strength and thrust the sword into it.
In his mind, it should have pierced the rock as easily as stabbing tofu—smooth and effortless. After all, aren’t all the peerless divine swords in the novels said to possess such understated, supreme sharpness?
Unfortunately, reality turned out to be far from what he imagined. The sword did pierce the wall… but only a few inches. Some loose earth crumbled down, and that was it. It was, in fact, even less effective than an ordinary sword. Where was the grandeur of a peerless divine blade?
Zhang Xiaohua gave the sword a few more swings—awkward, half-hearted sword flowers that looked neither elegant nor proper. He let out a bitter laugh.
“This is clearly just a long cudgel. Why even bother shaping it like a sword? If it were a bit longer, I might as well go to Dalin Temple and swap out that so-called Dharma Sword Art for a Dharma Cudgel Art instead. At least that’d be better than this thing that can’t even pierce stone.”
The sword, while unimpressive in both appearance and effect, was already in his hands—so even if he had complaints, Zhang Xiaohua wasn’t about to give it up. After thinking it over, he ultimately decided against placing it in his money pouch space.
This clumsy thing weighed over five thousand jin—who knew if that pouch could handle it? That storage pouch was his secret treasure, one that still made him grin every time he remembered it. There was no way he’d casually risk testing its limits. If something went wrong and it got damaged… oy, how would he carry all his good stuff then?
He tried sticking the longsword into the ground, but no matter how he tried, it wouldn’t go in. Not wanting to waste strength on it, he could only toss it to the side. Then, he summoned his flying sword, formed a hand seal, and his figure vanished into the flames once again—this time, cheerfully prying luminous night-pearls off the walls as he went.
After all the luminous pearls embedded in the rock wall had been gathered and stuffed into his money pouch—now his personal spoils—Zhang Xiaohua reluctantly bent down to pick up the longsword lying on the ground. In truth, Zhang Xiaohua was well aware that beneath this desolate island, there were surely more such hidden chambers where luminous pearls could be found. Had it been before today, he would’ve long since grown impatient, eagerly releasing his divine sense to search them out.
But just now, he had witnessed the might of that lava-born monster with his own eyes—an overwhelming force that stirred a primal fear in his heart. It was a submission that came from the depths of his being, an instinctual reverence of the lesser toward the greater, a dread etched into bone and soul. How could he still summon the courage to do anything that might alarm such a creature? Even if the chance was one in ten thousand—he wouldn’t dare.
Picking up the longsword, Zhang Xiaohua’s gaze lingered on the dark red magma. He narrowed his eyes slightly and stared at it for a long while. That shiver of terror which had gripped his very core had stayed his hand—but at the same time, it also stirred within him a thread of defiance. A thought rose unbidden from the depths of his heart: “Perhaps we shall meet again!”
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