~~
Though he was carrying such immense force, Hao Shuai's escape light remained swift. In the time it took to drink a cup of tea, the bottom of the Gui Water Sea was already faintly visible. Once he broke through this layer, he would have truly breached Huanbo Pool's Great Five Elements Restriction.
Hao Shuai urged his vital energy, and the yellow clouds surrounding him immediately thickened. He surged forward and slammed into the bottom of the Gui Water Sea.
He felt the world spin around him. Then a brilliant light filled his vision. When he opened his eyes, he found himself in an extraordinary place.
He looked up. The pool hung in midair, hundreds of feet above the ground, its surface shimmering and crystalline. Looking more closely, he saw that the entire circumference of the cave ceiling was made up of springs.
The cave mouth was nearly perfectly round. Water jetted in from all directions, converging at the center to form a whirlpool. It then gathered into a massive column that plunged a thousand feet, like a slender crystal pillar hundreds of feet long, topped by an enormous glass mirror.
The floor of the cave was several times larger than the one above. Where the water fell at the center lay a bottomless pit, several feet across, which caught the column neatly. The surrounding area was therefore completely dry, without a trace of flooding.
The ground was as flat as a whetstone, and the quartz and mica in the surrounding walls reflected one another, bright as day. It only made the wonders of the universe seem all the more extraordinary—things he had never seen in his life—and he could not help marveling at them.
Set into the circular walls were five tall cave dwellings, colored blue, red, white, black,