A Spectacle at the Bottom of the Pool

The still, ripple-free Blackwater Pool drew gaze after gaze, and several people were rushing toward it.

Beneath the water, Pang Jian knew only that when the Cicada Wing Sword entered the pool, it lost all its spiritual nature and wondrous properties.

He had no idea that after he plunged underwater again, Jin Yang—who had been investigating the pool's mysteries—had his hand corroded by the water.

Having caught his breath, Pang Jian continued watching the Cicada Wing Sword circling overhead. He endured the torment and waited for a miracle, hoping to escape the massacre Dark Ghost had brought down upon them.

Time trickled by, second by second.

A strong swimmer, Pang Jian could hold his breath for a long time. Underwater, he could see the Cicada Wing Sword whistling back and forth.

Before he realized it, the wounds split open on his hands had stopped bleeding.

The faint glow released by the Phoenix Bone seemed to be slowly shrinking, illuminating an ever-smaller area.

I wonder if I can cultivate the Pot-Heaven Qi Cultivation Art underwater...

With the thought, beside the Phoenix Bone's dimming light, he tried to clear the many distracting thoughts from his mind.

He stopped circling the Phoenix Bone and let his body sink slowly, quietly entering a state of calm focus.

As he visualized the Spirit Sea in his dantian, he immediately sensed the strangely blue-black Spirit Pot reappear, naturally absorbing the power nearby that it could draw in.

Gradually, he discovered that within the pitch-black, freezing pool lay an incredibly strange power, surging toward the Spirit Pot in his dantian.

The power hidden in the black water carried a distinct acidic, poisonous quality, as though it could corrode any flesh and blood.

He was immediately startled.

Just as he was about to stop practicing the Pot-Heaven Qi Cultivation Art, he discovered that the first wisp of acidic, poisonous power to enter the blue-black Spirit Pot was also stripping away the cotton-like dregs and impurities in his Spirit Sea.

Moreover, this time, the speed and efficiency far surpassed those of the Profound Yin Power within the gray-white rocks.

The small world in his Spirit Sea showed no sign of anything amiss after he absorbed a wisp of the acidic, poisonous power.

This can be absorbed too? It can cleanse the impurities in my Spirit Sea?

Pang Jian found it unbelievable. He marveled inwardly at the wonders of the Pot-Heaven Qi Cultivation Art, then let his body keep sinking as he maintained the blue-black Spirit Pot's circulation.

He soon made a new discovery.

When he remained calm and focused, in a state of practicing the Pot-Heaven Qi Cultivation Art, the pores on both his arms and across his chest could draw... air from the freezing black water.

Only then did he realize that water contained air too; ordinary people simply couldn't breathe it through their mouths and noses.

Why could he suddenly do it?

Why could he draw air from the water only through his arms and chest?

He suddenly remembered how his arms had become as hard as iron and his strength had abruptly surged when Dark Ghost cultivators attacked him. He also recalled the dream in which countless phoenixes soared through his bones.

As distracting thoughts flooded his mind, his practice of the Pot-Heaven Qi Cultivation Art was forced to stop. He abruptly came to his senses.

He forced himself to calm down again, returned to a state of quiet focus, and resumed practicing the Pot-Heaven Qi Cultivation Art as his body continued sinking.

"Jin Yang!"

Outside the pool, the two Dark Ghost leaders cried out in alarm.

As they watched Pang Jian sink slowly toward the bottom and the small patch of pale light around the Phoenix Bone gradually fade, Jin Yang's once-handsome face grew dark with fury and agitation.

He suddenly turned around.

A bizarre sight met his eyes: a lifelike Blood-Colored Phoenix Bird was dancing gracefully in front of Ouyang Duanhai's chest.

"Whoosh! Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!"

The Cicada Wing Swords patrolling the water's surface and keeping watch on Pang Jian shot back at Jin Yang like silver lightning, summoned to deal with the strange creature before him.

But he quickly realized that Ouyang Duanhai, whose eyes had gone blank and who had lost his mind, wasn't coming for him.

Before the remaining Cicada Wing Swords could reach Jin Yang, Ouyang Duanhai—who had killed numerous Dark Ghost cultivators and used his blood-red feathers to absorb the essence of their flesh and blood—suddenly leaped high into the air, then plunged into the Blackwater Pool with a splash.

Jin Yang had been on high alert, his left hand reduced to bare bone already poised to form a hand seal and activate his talisman treasure. But Ouyang Duanhai hadn't paid him the slightest attention.

Jin Yang stood there, dumbstruck.

As Ouyang Duanhai entered the water, a viscous blood-red glow suddenly enveloped his skeletal body.

He was visible in the black water for only a moment before it swallowed him completely, hiding him from view.

"He wasn't corroded away! He didn't dissolve!"

Holding up his fleshless left hand, Jin Yang was overcome with frustration and despair. Staring at the spot where Ouyang Duanhai had vanished, he shouted hysterically, "That boy Pang Jian and this mad creature—they weren't dissolved by the black water!"

At that moment, the two Dark Ghost leaders at the Pulse-Opening Realm who had rushed to rescue him finally arrived, one after the other.

"Jin Yang, your hand?"

The man wearing a Golden Mask saw the white bones of his raised left hand and cried out in shock. "I told you long ago that you shouldn't have shown yourself and gotten involved! What are we supposed to do? How can we explain this to the leader when we go back?"

He feared the leader's punishment. Just thinking of the man's brutal methods made him shudder, even before he had returned.

"We have a way to regrow flesh on bones."

Jin Yang drew a breath and forced himself to calm down. He stopped wasting time talking about it and said gravely, "There's something strange about the black water. It has a bizarre power that corrodes flesh and blood. I was careless and got caught by it."

"Didn't we inspect the water not long ago? There was nothing unusual about it," the other Pulse-Opening Realm leader said, puzzled.

"That was then. This is now."

Jin Yang took a glove from the leader wearing the Golden Mask and put it on. Baring his teeth, he said, "Maybe we overlooked some detail last time."

The two Dark Ghost leaders at the Pulse-Opening Realm looked at the pitch-black water, unsure whether that was really the case.

"After the earth split open, nothing terrifying came out. Those people lied to us."

The leader who had dropped the Silver Silk Giant Net watched as several of his subordinates dragged Ning Yao over in the net. He said coldly, "Looks like I'll have to question her myself."

"They weren't lying."

Jin Yang's face turned icy. He snorted before continuing, "There are things Zhang Heng didn't tell you, but he explained them clearly to Hong Tai. The first Phoenix Bone they encountered did have terrifying vines shoot out of the ground fissures. The vines attacked the Shangguan Family and then devoured them."

"And the reason I took such an interest in that hunter was that Zhang Heng told me the Blood Moon's Eye of Imprint had chosen him!"

The two leaders hadn't known the details, but Jin Yang had known them all along. He simply hadn't planned to tell them.

"What do we do now?"

After hearing that it was true, the two glanced toward the fissures in the earth, suddenly gripped by worry again.

"Only cultivators at the Xisui Realm can shed their mortal bodies and breathe underwater through the pores in their skin. That boy named Pang Jian has been underwater for a long time. I don't know if he sank to the bottom after dying, or if..."

Jin Yang frowned deeply and stared gloomily at the pitch-black surface. "Let's wait a little longer!"

The two had no choice but to wait obediently.

Yet neither Pang Jian nor the mad Ouyang Duanhai surfaced.

"Han Duping escaped!"

A Dark Ghost cultivator suddenly shouted from outside the valley.

When the masked leader rushed to the Blackwater Pool out of concern for Jin Yang, the defenses there had naturally weakened considerably, allowing Han Duping to slip away.

"Forget him. He's just someone who knows how to survey arrays. He doesn't matter much."

Jin Yang stopped the two from giving chase.

As they spoke,

A hazy blood-red shadow slowly emerged among the leaves of the ancient tree where Jin Yang had been hiding. Concealed in the dense foliage, she gazed from afar at the Blackwater Pool and at Jin Yang and the others as they conferred.

No one noticed her presence.

"There's more than a Phoenix Bone at the bottom of the pool. As far as I know, refining and forming every drop of Phoenix Marrow requires a vast accumulation of flesh and blood," she murmured softly.

She had arrived at the bloody battlefield long ago, but she wasn't in a hurry to enter the Blackwater Pool. There was no suitable cover around its banks, making it inconvenient for her to conceal herself.

"This drop of Phoenix Marrow is extraordinary. I wonder what kind of strange object gathered such a surging mass of blood and flesh essence."

Deep in the Blackwater Pool.

Immersed in cultivation, Pang Jian let his body sink slowly, focusing on drawing in the acidic, poisonous power from the freezing water.

An indescribable sense of satisfaction gradually welled up inside him. He felt a power so immense that only the word "boundless" could describe it!

The vast energy was swallowed by the blue-black Spirit Pot like a giant whale drinking the sea, rapidly cleansing the impurities and dregs in his Spirit Sea.

He had absorbed the Profound Yin Power a wisp at a time, but now, in the pool water, he felt as if he were drifting through a boundless ocean of energy!

He didn't know that as he practiced the Pot-Heaven Qi Cultivation Art underwater, the water around him was gradually turning clear.

As the Spirit Pot absorbed the acidic, poisonous power in the water, he became a glowing source of light, purifying the darkness around him.

A long time later, he felt his feet touch something solid, so he opened his eyes underwater.

To his astonishment, the water at the bottom of the pool where he stood was clear and bright, no longer black as ink.

He looked down first at what he was standing on and saw an olive-green scale.

His gaze wandered. Soon he spotted several oval black spots. Looking farther... he discovered the thick, broad body of a python!

Pang Jian turned deathly pale.

He had hunted for years in the Cenji Mountains and seen countless pythons, but never one as enormous as this!

Compared with the black-and-white patterned python ridden by Hong Tai, the Dark Ghost leader, the giant serpent at the bottom of the pool was like a little earthworm.

The giant python was coiled around the Phoenix Bone that pierced the bottom of the pool, seemingly trying to twist it apart or shove it over.

The flesh on its tail had long since rotted away, leaving only enormous vertebrae that beat weakly against the floor of the pool.

When the bones of its tail struck the earth beneath the water, they seemed feeble, yet the bottom of the pool still shook like an earthquake.

Its winding tail had thrashed against the ground, triggering the earthquakes around the Blackwater Pool. Its frenzied struggles had also torn the ground above into countless fissures.

From where Pang Jian stood, he could see only the serpent's body coiled around the Phoenix Bone, its fleshless bones beating again and again against the rocky floor.

Shaken to the core, Pang Jian drifted away from the Phoenix Bone and moved to the side for another look.

Then he saw the enormous head of a python, its lower jaw pressed against the bottom of the pool.

A colossal, sharp Phoenix Bone, like a spear reaching into the heavens, pierced down through the python's head and pinned it to the pool floor.

Its enormous head couldn't move. No matter how it twisted its tail and body, it couldn't escape the Phoenix Bone's fatal strike.

In a daze, Pang Jian seemed to see a gigantic Phoenix Bone fall from the sky and, as it plunged into the Blackwater Pool, drive through the head of a giant python coiled on the bottom, killing it on the spot.