The Ferry Boat sailed onward. The deeper it went into the Nether River, the darker the surrounding light became.
The river water in particular became turbid once more.
Looking down from above, they found it bottomless, like an enormous black hole.
As the hull cut across the water, the wake was smoothed away in an instant, unable to leave behind even the faintest ripple.
The rock walls along both banks had long since vanished.
All that remained around them was boundless darkness. Xu Changqing and the others seemed to have entered a place before Chaos had been sundered, with no distinction between up, down, left, or right, no difference between light and shadow, brightness and darkness.
Only the Ferry Boat's protective barrier emitted a faint spiritual glow.
It looked like a lone star suspended in the night, the sole point of light in this world.
Time trickled by. Perhaps an hour had passed, perhaps longer. In this endless darkness, Xu Changqing and the others had long lost all sense of time.
Then, the Ferry Boat, which had been moving steadily, gave a slight shudder.
The movement was small, but they could all feel it clearly.
It was as though the bottom of the boat had struck something, or a tremor had risen from beneath the water.
"What was that?"
Fenglong straightened, lightning power circulating around him as sparks flickered at his fingertips. His gaze swept warily through the darkness.
With a tap of his finger, Xu Changqing sent a thread of pure Lunar Yin Force into the water and carefully probed below. After a moment, he said gravely, "There is Earth Qi, and it is growing denser.
"This tremor should have been caused by an abnormal movement in the Earth Vein."
Hearing this, everyone focused their senses.
Nü Tu, in