Zhu Yuanzhang amused himself by joking around.
It was a way to steady his barely holding-together sanity.
[Deep One (spiritual form) transformation progress: 84%]
By now, his entire body was covered in black fish scales.
All five toes and all five fingers had fused together.
They had turned into webbed feet like those of the reptilian creatures behind him—the Deep Ones.
Drip, drip, drip...
A sound like water dripping onto stone rang beside his ears.
It was an utterly ordinary sound in everyday life, but now it made Zhu Yuanzhang's skin crawl.
After all,
the Bitter Sea was still a sea!
Hearing water drip in the depths of the ocean was eerie no matter how he looked at it.
Judging by the words on the stone walls,
this enormous stone palace sunk beneath the deep sea must have had a real-world counterpart.
That would be truly unbelievable!
At the very least, Zhu Yuanzhang had never heard of any city sinking underwater before the Qin dynasty.
The system window had stopped flickering, and its stillness briefly restored some clarity to Zhu Yuanzhang's mind.
"Since I appeared right in front of this ancient stone palace,
"then whatever dragged me into the Bitter Sea surely didn't bring me here just to look around outside."
Zhu Yuanzhang put both hands against the stone door.
He pushed gently.
Thud, thud, thud.
It sounded as though some mechanism had been activated.
The stone door, which had seemed utterly immovable, slowly swung open.
The interior of the stone palace came into view.
Zhu Yuanzhang's first impression was that it was dark.
Pitch-black. A deep, impenetrable black.
The torches on either side were lit.
And somehow, thousands of meters beneath the sea, Zhu Yuanzhang caught the stale, dry smell of a place long sealed off from fresh air.
Unbelievable.
Zhu Yuanzhang walked into the palace.
What he saw came as a great surprise.
The ruined statues in the center of the palace were not, as he had imagined, two idols of the Outer Path "Dagon," worshipped exclusively by the Deep Ones.
Instead, there were two statues—a man and a woman—that had clearly been deliberately smashed. Their heads were nowhere to be seen; only their damaged lower halves remained.
Just like the maliciously broken pillars and overturned offering tables around them.
This wasn't an altar to Dagon.
It looked more like the final remnants of a destroyed ancient civilization.
This was getting stranger by the minute.
"What's this...?"
Zhu Yuanzhang picked up an intact ox shoulder blade from the ground.
"Oracle bone script?"
Unlike the surrounding palace, which looked as though it had been deliberately destroyed, these few bones had been scattered evenly along the path leading to the two ruined statues, yet remained remarkably well preserved.
It was as if they had been left there on purpose for later-day intruders like Zhu Yuanzhang to read.
Zhu Yuanzhang held the oracle bone in his hand. It felt cool to the touch.
It radiated a chill that seemed to come from antiquity itself.
Some of the characters on the bone seemed to have been deliberately erased.
The many other characters, so ancient that even people in the twenty-first century had never seen them, left Zhu Yuanzhang baffled.
Using what little he could recall of a few of the characters,
he struggled to make out the words on the ox bone.
"...On the day of Wu Xu, divination: The king's tour will bring no disaster..."
"Second month... at Qi... the king... Zhong Ding... came to attack... the Blue Barbarians."
The first part was easy enough to understand.
It was probably a Shang diviner making a prognostication for the king about disasters.
The meaning of the rest wasn't especially obscure, either.
It seemed to say that
in the second month, in Qi Territory, Shang King "Zhong Ding" attacked the "Blue Barbarians."
A mere dozen or so characters.
The time, place, people, and event.
It was all laid out plainly.
Zhu Yuanzhang couldn't help but admire the wisdom of the ancients.
Judging by this, the palace must have been left behind by a state in Qi Territory called the Blue Barbarians, which had been destroyed by the Shang dynasty.
But there were still many unanswered questions.
Zhu Yuanzhang looked around.
An ancient structure built from enormous stones.
A palace sunk beneath the deep sea.
Records of divinations carved onto stone tablets for a state's rituals.
And ox bones preserving oracle bone script, left behind by the Shang people to boast of their military might.
"What are the Blue Barbarians? Why did their palace sink into the deep sea?"
"Most importantly, what's their connection to Dagon? How could their palace exist in the Bitter Sea?"
"And those Deep Ones outside the palace—the system called them the 'First People.'"
As the [Deep One (spiritual form) transformation progress] reached 100%,
an invisible force suddenly spread around Zhu Yuanzhang.
In an instant, it thrust him out of the Bitter Sea.
The moment he was expelled from the Bitter Sea,
Zhu Yuanzhang looked up, as if sensing something.
Inside the stone palace, the two ruined statues had somehow been restored.
They had become two enormous Deep One statues, a man and a woman, their faces impossible to make out.
They stared silently at him.
Boom!
White light flashed.
Zhu Yuanzhang's consciousness returned to Taicheng.
"Lean closer, Minghe."
"I shall pass on the Sangqiwo Jataka Secret Technique to you, so you can control the Tiger-Skin Monk Robe and survive this calamity."
Faci's hollow voice came from beside him.
Where Zhu Yuanzhang couldn't see, Faci looked at him, now completely transformed into a [Deep One], and a nearly imperceptible flash of disappointment crossed his eyes.
"This disciple will obey."
Zhu Yuanzhang replied.
His body suddenly felt unbearably heavy.
As if he were inside a furnace.
Even breathing made his throat burn.
A faint call came from beside his ears.
It was a call from "home," deep in the endless sea east of Jinling.
"Minghe!"
The hollow voice rang out again, like a cracked temple bell.
Zhu Yuanzhang shuddered. A White Bone Dharma Image seemed to appear before his eyes.
A great annihilation! A great terror!
His mind, which had begun to drift under the whispers in his ears, cleared at once.
"Thank you, Chan Master Faci."
Zhu Yuanzhang pressed his webbed hands together in thanks. They had fused into one, slick with mucus.
"No need. Adapt to your new body as soon as you can."
Faci showed neither revulsion nor disgust as he looked at the hideous, terrifying creature before him.
His green-glowing eyes, like ghost fire, seemed to see straight through that ugly shell and into the essence beneath.
"Refine this demonic body with the Great Wisdom Zen Technique as soon as possible. That way, you can better cultivate the Sangqiwo Jataka Secret Mantra, avoid the great calamity within Taicheng, and preserve the Tongtai Temple lineage."
I don't believe a word of that!
Zhu Yuanzhang raised an eyebrow.
But he remained respectful as he replied,
"Since cultivating this demonic body, I've often heard some kind of call from the sea. It seems I have to dive to the bottom of the ocean to fully refine and integrate this body. Only then can I use the Great Wisdom Zen Technique to neutralize it."
"...So that's how it is."
Hearing Zhu Yuanzhang's nonsense, Faci fell silent for a moment.
He had clearly been taken in.
After all, with the myriad Dharma methods of Buddhism at their disposal, the eminent monks of Tongtai Temple had far too much time on their hands.
Otherwise, who would practice such an unorthodox art?
Let alone one that required mastering the inhuman Great Wisdom Zen Technique first.
"Perhaps Heaven truly hasn't abandoned Tongtai Temple... I have a verse here. Recite it diligently, and perhaps even in your Merfolk body, you'll be able to wear the tiger-skin monk robe."
"Merfolk?"
Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes flickered at Faci's words.
"..."
Seeing the bewilderment in Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes,
Faci fell into thought.
He seemed to be wondering just how far the Scripture Transmission Hall of Tongtai Temple had fallen for its disciple to be ignorant of even the most basic knowledge.
Faci spoke slowly.
"They are attendants of the Outer Path Demon God Dagon. They are born in the sea, and among the fishermen of coastal regions, there are frequent tales of wild Merfolk attacking fishing boats and coming ashore to abduct women and children."
"At this point, your Mountain-Shrinking Fist will need the water veins of the four directions to advance further."
"But don't even think about trying that. The royal aura in the Qinhuai River is now flowing eastward. The moment you enter the water, I fear the killing tribulation of Heaven and Earth will drain you dry."
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