The eerie blue light drifted ahead as Ning Qinghan followed Bai Qingxue through layers of churning undercurrents.
The deeper they went, the denser the water became, pressing in from all sides like an invisible hand. Her spiritual barrier hummed softly, casting a barely visible halo in the dark green depths.
Fortunately, Ning Qinghan soon caught sight of Bai Qingxue's back.
The frost-white figure hovered at the edge of an underwater cliff. The glow of her ice armor outlined her slender silhouette, her long silver-white hair drifting slowly in the water like soaked moonlight.
Ning Qinghan approached silently. Her bare feet stepped onto a coral-covered rock, her toes brushing against the hard, grayish-white surface, feeling its cold, rough texture.
She maneuvered around a broken mast protruding from the seabed. The iron nails in the rotting wood had rusted into dark red lumps, and long strands of seaweed clung to the edges, swaying gently in the current.
Then, she saw the altar.
It lay quietly in the center of a collapsed stone wall. Its material was so white it was almost translucent, resembling bones that had been steeped in moonlight for countless nights.
Seven low coral pillars ringed the edge of the altar, each carved with intricate patterns that gleamed dimly in the dark water.
Ning Qinghan stopped in her tracks.
Her gaze fell first on the patterns. She studied them for a moment, then followed their path downward to the carvings etched into the altar's base.
These lines were deeper and more tightly packed, arranged in a way that was entirely different from the outer patterns—as if the back of a piece of embroidery had been stitched with a completely different design.
Then, her pupils contracted imperceptibly.
Sensing Ning Qinghan's reaction, Bai Qingxue turned to look at her.
“You recognize this?” she asked.
Ning Qinghan replied,
“...Sort of.” She turned her head, avoiding Bai Qingxue's gaze, her eyes landing on the bottomless pit in the center of the altar. “There seems to be a similar formation array in the Holy Sect's Jade Pool, though the scale here is much smaller.”
She paused, seemingly weighing her words, before casually brushing the topic aside.
“But as for what it's actually used for, I can't say for sure. Maybe it's just a coincidence?”
Ning Qinghan turned away from the altar, her gaze drifting toward the faint yellow lights beginning to glow in the distant shadows. “After all, plenty of things in this world look alike.”
Just as she finished speaking, something stirred in the coral reefs surrounding the altar.
At first, they were merely dull yellow pinpricks of light, igniting sporadically like stars at the bottom of the sea opening their eyes one by one.
The lights drifted slowly through the darkness, emerging from behind tangled coral branches, squeezing through the cracks of shipwrecks, and crawling out from sediment-covered hollows in the seabed.
Soon, heavy silhouettes began to take shape.
Grayish-brown scales gleamed with a cold, metallic luster in the dark water. Each scale was as large as a human face, with razor-sharp edges.
They were several times larger than their counterparts on the shore, their limbs covered in a much thicker carapace, and the tips of their claws glowed with the same dark red light as the runes on the altar.
Now, they were closing in from all directions.
The first sea beast lunged at Bai Qingxue.
It cut through the water almost soundlessly, its massive body moving through the darkness like a drifting reef, yet its speed was terrifyingly fast.
Bai Qingxue sidestepped the attack as she struck the first note of the Frost Moon Chant.
The melody of 《Ice Condensation》 rippled through the deep water, sounding deeper and more resonant than it did in the air.
The seawater froze instantly wherever the sound waves reached. A layer of thin ice crept up the beast's right forelimb, freezing it from claw to elbow and sealing the entire leg in a translucent icy sheath.
The beast's movements faltered, its momentum carrying it off course. It scraped past Bai Qingxue and crashed into the coral pillar behind her.
The ice shattered upon impact, scattering into a cloud of silver glitter in the dark water.
But even more sea beasts were emerging from the shadows.
A second, a third, a fourth... they bore down from different directions. Dark red runes pulsed along their claws and between the gaps in their scales, their presence blending with the beasts' own auras to form a heavy, chaotic pressure.
Bai Qingxue raised her flute and played the next movement.
Her fingers danced over the holes of the flute, and the notes condensed into spinning ice blades that flew toward the two beasts charging from the left. The blades sliced through the water and tore through the gaps in their scales, leaving several bone-deep gashes along their shoulders and necks. Dark red blood welled from the wounds, clouding the dark green water.
The two beasts let out muffled roars and tried to retreat, but the pack pressing in from behind blocked their escape, forcing them to squeeze forward again through the narrow passage.
Bai Qingxue stepped aside, repositioning herself under the cover of the ice blades. With her and Ning Qinghan at the center, the surrounding water began to freeze at a rapid pace.
Wall after wall of ice rose from the seabed to the coral branches overhead, sealing them inside a translucent icy fortress.
Outside, the beasts slammed against the barrier. Their dark red claws scraped across the ice, leaving deep gouges and sending shards flying, yet the frozen walls held firm.
With every impact, a new layer of frost spread over the barrier, instantly reinforcing the weakened areas.
Ning Qinghan stood inside the barrier, her back pressed against the icy wall.
A thin layer of white frost had formed over her bare insteps. As she curled her toes, the frost cracked into tiny, delicate patterns.
Bai Qingxue turned around, her eyes immediately falling on the frost covering Ning Qinghan's feet.
Ning Qinghan followed her gaze and looked down, realizing the frost on her skin was beginning to bead into tiny droplets of ice.
She pulled her feet back slightly, tapping her toes against the frozen floor.
“It really is freezing down here,” Ning Qinghan said, her voice carrying a slow, reluctant drawl, as if she were merely a bit annoyed at being in the water for so long. “That ice armor of yours... care to share half?”
Bai Qingxue didn't rise to the joke.
Instead, she took half a step closer to Ning Qinghan, turning her left shoulder slightly to place herself directly between her companion and a widening crack in the ice wall.
Her gaze swept past Ning Qinghan's shoulder, focusing on the shifting shadows outside the barrier.
Seeing Bai Qingxue step in front of her to shield her, Ning Qinghan was briefly taken aback.
“You know...” Ning Qinghan spoke, her voice a little softer than before, almost as if she were talking to herself. “You don't really need to stand in front of me. It's not like I can't defend myself.”
Bai Qingxue didn't look back. “I know.”
“Then why are you standing there?”
Bai Qingxue remained silent for a beat.
She watched the shadows of the sea beasts gathering outside the barrier, their dark red runes glowing with increasing intensity in the deep.
She twirled the Frost Moon Chant between her fingers, a fresh layer of frost coating the jade flute.
“Aren't you a weak woman?”
Ning Qinghan glanced at her, as if trying to read her expression.
Then she looked away toward the cracks in the ice barrier, her toes lightly scraping against the frozen floor.
“Well, I'm honored then.”
Ning Qinghan spoke with her usual lazy drawl, though her voice had softened slightly.
“To think a weak woman's passing remark would be taken so seriously by Immortal Master Bai.”
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