Li Bufan did not rush to pursue that scarlet fish. Instead, he moved across the seabed at an unhurried pace.
The farther he went, the more the seawater temperature rose. The number of glowing algae drifting around him steadily dwindled, replaced by even finer scarlet particles.
Those particles gave off dense fire-attributed Vital Energy. Li Bufan reached out, intercepted several, and examined them in his palm. He discovered that they were an extremely fine mineral dust, carried up from deep underground by the seabed's thermal currents and left suspended in the seawater for a long time without dispersing.
After traveling roughly a hundred li, the view ahead suddenly changed.
Li Bufan's gaze pierced through layers of surging seawater and saw a bright light slowly pulsing from the seabed several li ahead.
The light was not dazzling, yet it carried an incomparably pure gold-red hue, like a colossal eye sleeping beneath the earth slowly opening.
As he gradually drew nearer, the light became clearer and its outline more distinct, until it was fully revealed before him.
It was an undersea volcano.
The volcano was far larger than he had imagined. Its cone rose from the rocky layers of the seabed, reaching several hundred zhang high. Crisscrossing cracks covered its surface, scarlet magma light surging within them and illuminating the entire volcano like a translucent lantern.
The crater was roughly several dozen zhang wide. Deep within it came wave after wave of low, powerful rumbling, like the heartbeat of the earth echoing underwater.
The seawater near the crater seemed to have been boiled by that terrifying heat, constantly producing dense bubbles. The bubbles rose halfway up before being scattered by the even more scorching currents that followed, creating a chaotic scene like a pot of soup at a rolling boil.
Li Bufan