"This is the last one. Most of the precious medicines were refined from the blood of my two senior—"
"Thank you, Master."
Before Faci could finish, Zhu Yuanzhang eagerly reached out and took the precious medicine refined from the blood of Xiao Tong, the former crown prince of Xiao Liang.
Everything was as before.
But this time, things were different.
After taking the precious medicine, Zhu Yuanzhang did not choose the Dingguang Demon-Subduing True Technique.
Instead, he chose the Mountain-Shrinking Fist.
Buoyed by Taicheng's dragon energy,
Zhu Yuanzhang once again saw the Bitter Sea.
But unlike when he had been guided by Dingguang Buddha, this time, Zhu Yuanzhang was not viewing it from the surface.
He was beneath the water.
Somewhere deep inside, Zhu Yuanzhang felt a guidance from his bloodline.
It was a call from the deep sea.
All around him was pitch-black, and cold seawater slid across Zhu Yuanzhang's body.
It brought him a strange sense of security.
There seemed to be something nearby. Though his vision in the Bitter Sea remained utterly dark,
Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes seemed to have adjusted to the dimness.
He could just make out things swimming around him, stirring faint currents that carried his body onward.
The water pressure around him gradually increased. Zhu Yuanzhang realized he was being swept toward the depths of the Bitter Sea.
As everything around him grew quiet,
Zhu Yuanzhang seemed to hear some sounds.
Sounds he had never heard before—or perhaps had heard by chance in the past, but had never paid any attention to.
They were hoarse, shrill cries.
They came from several different directions, surrounding Zhu Yuanzhang.
Zhu Yuanzhang focused on the nearest source.
He stared intently into the darkness, trying to make his eyes adjust to the black waters before him.
At last, a miracle happened. He actually saw the thing in the darkness.
The strange, loathsome creature that wandered in the shadows beside him day after day, always difficult to make out.
It had a human body, but the head of a fish.
Its limbs were thick and clumsy. It bounded through the water on feet with enormous webbing.
Gray gills on its neck opened and closed as it descended, keeping time with its bizarre, low growl, a sound that seemed almost capable of piercing a person's eardrums.
With a strange intonation, it endlessly conveyed its dark, bloody, cruel, horrifying thoughts to everyone it encountered—thoughts that pointed straight to the nature of the world.
[You have received the guidance of the Deep Ones (First People favored by Dagon)] [You have seen the lost ancient city of the East—Guixu]
With the system's notification, a vision flashed before him: ruins made of enormous stones of varying sizes.
Beyond the ruins lay a gigantic abyss on the seafloor, bottomless and dark.
The strange, loathsome creature that had followed Zhu Yuanzhang all this way stopped, standing atop a huge coral reef on the seafloor.
It stretched out a massive claw and pointed toward an ancient sea palace in the center of the ruins.
"Is it telling me to go over there?"
Zhu Yuanzhang could now see what these loathsome creatures looked like.
He could even understand some of what they meant.
Zhu Yuanzhang swam over.
He swam quickly.
He was in a very good mood.
It felt like he was home.
[You have crossed the Gate of Taboo and begun your first transformation]
The moment Zhu Yuanzhang stood before the stone palace,
the text displayed by the system changed abruptly.
A tingling sensation rippled through every part of his body.
He was about to shed his skin!
Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes widened. He nearly pressed his cheek against the stone gate in front of him.
The palace before him made him feel an overwhelming sense of familiarity.
He even found himself thinking,
How wonderful it would be if I could stay here forever.
Fortunately, the system panels flashing before his eyes kept hold of the last thread of Zhu Yuanzhang's reason.
[You are under the gaze of Dagon (Great Ocean Water)] [Deep One (spirit body) transformation progress: 17%] [You are under the gaze of Dagon (Great Ocean Water)] [Deep One (spirit body) transformation progress: 26%] [You are...]
System notifications appeared in dense clusters before Zhu Yuanzhang.
His gaze gradually cleared.
Then he saw that his limbs had become frog-like, covered in greasy, gray webbing. A look of horror flashed across his face.
"Wait, didn't I enter the Bitter Sea as a spirit body?"
"Could it be..."
Feeling the inhuman gazes fixed on him from behind,
Zhu Yuanzhang drew in a sharp breath.
"The Mountain-Shrinking Fist doesn't just transform the body!"
"It transforms the soul too!"
"Wait... what's this?"
Zhu Yuanzhang felt something on the stone wall in front of him pressing against his cheek.
He looked closely.
With the seafloor vision granted by [Deep One (spirit body) transformation progress: 46%],
Zhu Yuanzhang saw what seemed to be ancient writing carved into the stone wall.
The script was older than the bronze and bone characters from the pre-Qin era.
But it was slightly later than oracle bone script.
Back in school, Zhu Yuanzhang had once watched a TV program about deciphering oracle bone script.
He could vaguely recognize a few of the characters.
For instance, the name in the middle at the beginning of each line.
It was clearly derived from the same source as the oracle-bone character for "Hao."
But it was much simpler than the oracle-bone character for "Hao," which looked like a person dressed in some kind of sacrificial robes.
"Taihao..."
Zhu Yuanzhang softly read the name aloud.
He did not notice that the moment he spoke it,
most of the light in the entire underwater city seemed to be drained away in an instant.
The depths of the Bitter Sea sank into even deeper darkness.
The writing that followed was fragmented.
"Yichen, divination, Wang asks..."
"Bo, allow him to capture Fang..."
The characters carved into the stone wall were crooked and uneven.
Each one stood apart from the next.
They looked like a child's prank.
A glint flashed in Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes.
The sentence roughly meant:
"On the day of Yichen, Wang personally performed a divination."
"(Wang) asks (Taihao, the ancestral god): Bo (Wang's elder), will you allow him to go to war and capture Fang (the leader of an enemy tribe called Jiao)?"
The format was just like the oracle-bone divinations of the Shang dynasty.
At university, Zhu Yuanzhang had taken an elective course on pre-Qin history.
Thanks to what he had learned there, understanding this was not difficult.
But what came next was very interesting.
"Gengxu, divination, Dan asks..."
"An eclipse at dusk, Mao, ten sacrificial victims..."
"On the day of Gengxu, a diviner named Dan asked Taihao."
"An eclipse at dusk."
Zhu Yuanzhang hesitated slightly when he saw this.
He seemed to remember reading about this case in his previous life.
After thinking it over, Zhu Yuanzhang was sure.
"In the pre-Qin period, 'dusk' referred not to the sun, but to the moon."
"So this should refer to a lunar eclipse, not a solar eclipse."
"In other words, Dan asked Taihao: 'There's been a lunar eclipse. Is it acceptable to sacrifice ten sacrificial victims—an offering consisting of livestock and people?'"
Looking at the characters, which were clearly carved with more uneven pressure than the previous line,
Zhu Yuanzhang could almost see the fear on the recorder's face.
Was a mere lunar eclipse really worth making such a fuss over?
You'd think the country was about to fall the very next moment!
Before you continue