The southern dense forest was nothing like Shen Xiu had imagined. He had expected a tropical jungle so dense it blotted out the sky and sun, with humid, stifling air, vines twining around every great tree, and fallen leaves piled beneath his feet like a carpet, soft and silent beneath each step. But when he actually flew into the area marked by a green point on the map, what spread before him was a succession of layered mountains and ravines. Towering pines and firs blanketed the slopes, sunlight filtering through their branches to cast dappled shadows across the ground. The air carried the mingled scent of pine resin and earth, crisp and bracing.
"This feels more like northern mountain woods, not a southern dense forest." Liu Qingyan landed on the horizontal branch of an ancient pine and looked around, slightly surprised.
Shen Xiu landed beside her, his gaze sweeping across the overlapping ridges and deep valleys. The marker on the map within his sea of consciousness did indeed point to this area, but when he extended his divine sense underground, he discovered that the fragment's energy pulses were not as clear and distinct as those of the previous fragments. Instead, they were wrapped in a gentle barrier that rippled like water, preventing his senses from directly pinpointing the exact location. The texture of that barrier felt familiar to him, resembling the time-worn runes on the altar beneath the Eastern Sea, yet more complete—more like a carefully maintained barrier than a relic eroded by the years.
"The fragment is covered by some kind of barrier." Shen Xiu withdrew his divine sense and said to Liu Qingyan, "The barrier isn't particularly strong, but it covers a vast area, almost the entire mountain range. Its purpose is to blur the fragment's aura, like