The dull thud of a seabird striking iron still echoed in his ears. Chen Wuya had not moved his feet, yet his gaze had already settled on the distant sea. Deep within the mist, a dark outline slowly emerged, like wreckage that had sunk to the ocean floor only to be pushed back up. He raised a hand, his fingertips slicing through the air as three blue lights flared in sequence and hung motionless in midair.
Bai Zhi stepped out of the cabin, the flexible sword on her shoulder hanging along her spine. She glanced at the outline, then at Chen Wuya's fingers. "The anchor points are stable?"
"Three." He lowered his hand. "Enough."
Mo Feng crouched beside the control console, where the mechanism compass gave off a low hum. He turned the gears, and the needle jerked sharply, pointing southeast. "The current has changed. It's not a natural tide. Something over there is drawing it in."
Chen Wuya nodded. He had long sensed that the rhythm of the seawater beneath his feet was wrong—not waves driving waves, but something dragging them inward toward a single point. Like a funnel flowing in reverse, swallowing every stir across this stretch of sea.
The three said nothing more. Misaligned Force flowed, and their figures vanished from where they stood one after another. Three steps later, they landed on a reef jutting above the surface. A hundred zhang ahead, a black-stone structure lay half-submerged, its twisted spires protruding from the water like a row of broken teeth.
"This is the stronghold?" Bai Zhi asked in a low voice.
Mo Feng narrowed his eyes and swept his gaze around. "There are runes on the walls, but they aren't foreign script. They're part of an array. It can only be sustained by using living people