The seawater rose and fell gently beneath the moonlight. The two on the reef rested for about an hour, and their soaked robes had already dried halfway in the night breeze. Shen Xiu sank his divine sense back into the map within his sea of consciousness, carefully comparing the locations and distances of the remaining three points of light. The lone island in the far east was surrounded by thunderstorms; the aura of that storm seemed to subtly resonate with the lightning power within him, perhaps connected to the legacy of some Thunder Lord. The fragment in the southern dense forest was marked most vaguely, as though some force had deliberately concealed it. The one buried beneath the yellow sands of the western desert, however, had the clearest boundaries of all the marks, as if it were waiting for him to seek it out.
"West desert first." Shen Xiu finally settled on a direction. "The fragment beneath those yellow sands has the clearest location. And going from the Eastern Sea, we'll pass through a continuous stretch of plains. We won't need to cross any major mountain ranges, so it'll save time."
Liu Qingyan had already wrung her robes completely dry. She rose and stretched her somewhat stiff shoulders, gazing at the faintly gleaming sea beneath the moonlight as she softly exhaled. "Then let's go. The moon is bright tonight—we can still make good time traveling by night."
The two did not linger. They rose into the air and flew southwest along the coastline. The sea wind blew in from the side, carrying the chill of night and the vast, tranquil breath of the ocean depths. The moon hung in the southeastern sky, spreading a broad silver-white passage across the sea as though paving the way for them. After passing through