Below the Bitter Sea

"This is the last one. Most of the precious medicines were taken by my two disciples..."

"Many thanks, Zen Master."

Before Faci could finish, Zhu Yuanzhang impatiently reached out to take the precious medicine refined from the essence blood of Xiao Tong, the former crown prince of Xiao Liang.

Everything was as it had been before.

But unlike the previous times.

After consuming the precious medicine, Zhu Yuanzhang did not choose the Dingguang Demon-Subduing True Technique.

Instead, he chose the Mountain-Shrinking Fist.

Borne aloft by the dragon aura of Taicheng.

Zhu Yuanzhang once again saw the "Bitter Sea."

However, unlike when he was guided by the Dingguang Buddha, this time, Zhu Yuanzhang's perspective was not on the surface of the water.

It was beneath the surface.

In the darkness, Zhu Yuanzhang felt a guidance bestowed upon him by his very bloodline.

It was a call from the deep sea.

All around was pitch black, and the icy seawater brushed past Zhu Yuanzhang's body.

It brought him a strange sense of peace.

There seemed to be something in the vicinity, though within the Bitter Sea, his vision remained shrouded in total darkness.

Yet, Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes seemed to have adapted to the current light.

He vaguely saw something swimming around him, creating faint currents that pushed his body further forward.

The surrounding water pressure gradually increased, and Zhu Yuanzhang realized he was being swept into the depths of the Bitter Sea.

As the surroundings grew quiet.

Zhu Yuanzhang seemed to hear some sounds.

Sounds he had never heard before, or perhaps, had heard by chance once but had never paid any attention to.

It was a hoarse, shrieking roar.

There were several different sources, pinning Zhu Yuanzhang right in their center.

Zhu Yuanzhang fixed his gaze on the source closest to him.

He stared intently into the darkness, trying to force his eyes to adapt to the pitch-black sea.

Finally, a miracle occurred; he actually saw that thing within the darkness.

That strange, abominable creature that had wandered in the darkness beside him all these days, yet had been so difficult to see clearly.

It was a creature with a human body but the head of a fish.

Its limbs were thick and its movements clumsy, relying on its webbed feet to leap through the water.

The grey gills on its neck opened and closed as it dived deeper, beating a rhythm that accompanied its strange, low, ear-piercing roar.

Carrying a certain eerie tone, it constantly conveyed to everyone it encountered their dark, bloody, cruel, and sensational thoughts—thoughts that pointed directly to the essence of the world.

[You have received the guidance of the Deep One (a progenitor favored by Dagon)]

[You have seen the lost ancient city of the East—Guixu]

Following the system prompt, a ruin constructed of giant stones of varying sizes flashed before his eyes.

And behind the ruins, a bottomless abyss on the ocean floor.

The strange, abominable creature that had always accompanied Zhu Yuanzhang stopped, standing in place on a massive undersea coral reef.

It stretched out a giant claw and pointed toward the ancient ocean palace in the center of the ruins.

"Is this telling me to go over there?"

Zhu Yuanzhang could now not only see the appearance of these abominable things.

He could even understand a portion of their intent.

Zhu Yuanzhang swam over.

He swam very quickly.

His mood was very pleasant.

He felt a sense of returning home.

[You have stepped through the Gate of Taboo and begun the first transformation]

The moment Zhu Yuanzhang stood before the stone palace in front of him.

The text displayed by the system changed abruptly.

And from every part of his body, waves of numbness surged forth.

He was going to shed his skin!

Zhu Yuanzhang widened his eyes, his cheeks practically pressed hard against the stone palace gate before him.

The palace before his eyes gave him an incredibly intimate feeling.

He even birthed a single thought.

If I could stay here forever, how wonderful would that be.

But fortunately, the system panel flickering before his eyes maintained the last shred of Zhu Yuanzhang's sanity.

[You are being watched by Dagon (Great Ocean Water)]
[Deep One (Spirit Body) conversion progress: 17%]
[You are being watched by Dagon (Great Ocean Water)]
[Deep One (Spirit Body) conversion progress: 26%]
[You are being...]

Dense, crowded system notifications rose before Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes.

Zhu Yuanzhang's gaze gradually became clear.

Subsequently, he looked at his own hands, which had transformed into something resembling a frog's—greasy, gray, webbed appendages—and a flash of horror crossed his eyes.

Wait, didn't I enter the Bitter Sea as a spirit body?

Could it be that...

Feeling those non-human gazes fixed upon him from behind.

Zhu Yuanzhang drew a sharp breath.

The Mountain-Shrinking Fist doesn't just modify the physical body!

It modifies the soul as well!

Wait... what is this?

Zhu Yuanzhang felt something on the stone wall before him digging into his cheek.

He narrowed his eyes to look.

Under the enhancement of the underwater vision provided by [Deep One (Spirit Body) conversion progress: 46%].

Zhu Yuanzhang saw that the stone wall before him seemed to be carved with some ancient characters.

These were characters even older than the bronze inscriptions and seal scripts of the pre-Qin era.

Yet they were slightly later than oracle bone script.

Because during his school days, Zhu Yuanzhang had once watched a television program about exploring oracle bone script.

He vaguely recognized a few of the characters.

For example, the name centered at the beginning of each line.

It was clearly from the same origin as the "Hao" character in oracle bone script.

However, it was significantly simpler than the "Hao" character in oracle bone script, which resembled a person wearing some kind of sacrificial attire.

"Taihao..."

Zhu Yuanzhang softly recited the name.

He did not notice that when he spoke this name.

The light of the entire undersea city seemed to be drained away by more than half in an instant.

Plunging the depths of the Bitter Sea into an even deeper darkness.

The subsequent text was intermittent.

"Yichen, divination, Wang divines"

"Bo, permit it, capture Fang"

The characters on the stone wall were crooked and distorted.

One character, one pause.

It looked just like a child's prank.

Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes flashed.

The meaning of this sentence was roughly:

"On the day of Yichen, the Wang personally performed divination."

"(The Wang) asked (Taihao, the ancestral god), Bo (the Wang's elder), whether they could launch an expedition to capture Fang (a hostile tribal leader named Fang)."

This format was extremely similar to the oracle bone divinations of the Shang Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang had taken an elective course on pre-Qin history during his university years.

Following the textbook, understanding this was not difficult.

But what followed was very interesting.

"Gengxu, divination, Dan divines."

"Evening has an eclipse, Mao, ten lao..."

"On the day of Gengxu, a diviner named Dan consulted Taihao."

"Evening has an eclipse."

Seeing this, Zhu Yuanzhang hesitated for a moment.

It seemed he had seen this case in his previous life.

After recalling, Zhu Yuanzhang was certain.

"In the pre-Qin period, 'evening' did not refer to the sun, but to the moon."

"Therefore, this should refer to a lunar eclipse, not a solar eclipse."

"In other words, Dan asked Taihao: a lunar eclipse has occurred, is it permissible to slaughter ten lao (a sacrificial unit consisting of livestock and humans) to offer a sacrifice?"

Looking at the characters, which were clearly carved with varying depths of force compared to the previous entry.

Zhu Yuanzhang could almost see the terror on the recorder's face.

A mere lunar eclipse—was it worth making such a fuss over?

One would think the country was about to perish the very next second!