Sea God Scepter

In the icy, bone-piercing sea, Lu Changsheng and the others slipped into the depths of the ruins like a school of fish. He held the Sea God Halberd horizontally before him, the dark-blue runes along its shaft flickering in and out, propping up a sapphire light barrier about ten feet across that kept out all of the deep-sea pressure capable of crushing refined iron, as well as the marrow-freezing currents. Within the barrier, Lu Changsheng lowered his head from time to time to look at the golden scroll in his hand. The ancient route on the scroll glimmered faintly in the darkness, guiding them northward through the ruins.

Shi Jingtian, Lin Qingxuan, and the others followed closely behind. As the group continued deeper, the ruined, desolate scene around them quietly underwent an earth-shaking change.

At first, the sight of broken walls, shattered remains, and collapsed temple ruins gradually thinned out. In their place came a vitality almost dreamlike in its richness. The seabed was no longer dead sand and rubble, but was covered in a thick layer of moss that gave off a soft fluorescent glow. The moss was a magnificent blue-purple, like an enormous velvet carpet spreading through the gloom all the way to the edge of sight. Even more astonishingly, living creatures began to appear in this stretch of water in great swarms—

Palm-sized transparent jellyfish trailed long fluorescent tentacles, like strings of lanterns drifting through the seawater, casting wavering shadows along the path ahead; schools of tiny silver-scaled fish swam in neat formations around them, their scales reflecting the jellyfish's light like a flowing river of stars, dazzling and beautiful.

"This place... why does it suddenly feel stranger and stranger?" Shi Jingtian carried the Mountain Shaker Staff on his shoulder, looking left and right as he muttered,