A narrow boat thirty feet long was moored at the dock. Made entirely of metal, it floated on the Silver River. Judging from the texture of the liquid, Hu Xiaotian guessed that everything flowing through the riverbed was mercury. The fumes mercury gave off were poisonous, so despite their formidable martial arts, they held their breath as they followed Hong Beimo aboard.
The boat had no oars. Once everyone had boarded, Hong Beimo started it, and it traveled downstream with the current. Along both banks, watchtowers and pagodas stood beside the river, every building crystalline, translucent, and dazzlingly colorful. A closer look revealed that they were built entirely from gemstones of various colors, decorated with uniformly sized Night-Luminescent Pearls. Hu Xiaotian sighed inwardly. The Great Kang Treasury was empty; most of the wealth accumulated over the past few decades had been sent here. Hong Beimo had spent his entire life building an underground kingdom inside the Imperial Mausoleum whose riches rivaled the world, but his ambitions did not end there.
Farther ahead, a nine-story tower rose in the middle of the river. Unlike a traditional pagoda, it looked more like the signal towers commonly seen in modern architecture. A sphere hovered above its pointed summit, slowly rotating counterclockwise.
"Is that the Reincarnation Tower?" Ji Feihua asked.
Hong Beimo nodded. After passing the Reincarnation Tower, the iron boat reached a confluence with another river. Another iron boat was speeding toward them along that waterway. Hong Beimo slowed down; otherwise, the two boats would certainly have collided.
Hu Xiaotian looked over and saw a figure at the prow with flowing white hair and a youthful face beneath those crane-white locks: Old Madam Xu. Beside her stood Xu Lingkong. A violent shock ran through Hu Xiaotian. He had no idea why those two