"These clams..." Chu Mo picked up a shell fragment and transmitted his voice to Lin Feng nearby. "It looks like something deliberately smashed them."
At his words, Lin Feng immediately swam over, took the fragment, and examined it closely. He recognized the Deathly Qi on it at once, his brows knitting tightly.
Before long, Yue Mian sent word that she had found another Coldwater Clam fragment. The two hurried over to inspect it and likewise found faint Deathly Qi clinging to it.
Deathly Qi, yin baleful energy. Such things were hardly unfamiliar to disciples of the Duo'e Sect.
Their fellow disciples, the Yin Spirits within their banners, all carried similar auras to varying degrees. Everyone had long grown accustomed to them.
But familiarity was one thing; precisely identifying the source of the Deathly Qi in these waters was rather more than they could manage.
There were simply too many possible causes of Deathly Qi, from certain Demon Beasts to leaking yin veins and lingering traces of evil cultivators' spells... It was by no means something ordinary cultivators could easily unravel.
After briefly exchanging glances, the three decided to split up, extending their Divine Sense to its utmost range and carefully sweeping every reef and ocean trench.
As expected, within the time it took an incense stick to burn, each of them found similar Coldwater Clam remains in different directions.
The three gathered again. His brows tightly furrowed, Lin Feng said, "Plenty of Demon Beasts like eating Coldwater Clams—Frostfang Fish, Profound Water Apes, Jadeclaw Crabs, and so on.
"Among them, Ink-Scaled Flood Dragons and Profound Water Apes are usually the ones that smash the shells with brute force. But the problem is..." He paused.
"Both are purely water-aspected Demon Beasts. Their attacks couldn't possibly leave Deathly Qi behind."
The situation before them was decidedly strange: the Coldwater Clams' deaths did not resemble the work of natural predators, and the Deathly Qi here was like a tree without roots, hardly seeming to have formed naturally either.
The three looked at one another in silence, unable to make sense of it for the moment.
After a while, Lin Feng sighed helplessly. "We won't get anywhere just thinking about it. Let's head up first, then check a few other areas."
Chu Mo and Yue Mian nodded in agreement. Without further delay, the three swiftly swam upward.
Since they no longer needed to divide their attention to inspect the spirit clams on the return trip, they moved much faster than when they had descended.
Within the time it took an incense stick to burn, they leaped out of the water one after another. The glow of the Water-Avoidance Pearls at their waists dimmed, and their protective bubbles quietly dissipated.
The first thing Lin Feng did after reaching shore was take out a blank scroll and begin recording the spirit clam yield here and the conditions in the surrounding waters.
The sect mission called for inspecting resource sites, verifying recent yields, assessing potential risks, and mapping the surrounding waters-not merely discovering why the spirit clam yield had declined.
His brush flew as he precisely sketched the waters they had explored, marked the distribution of spirit clam colonies and the areas where they had died, and noted their unusual findings in small script.
"Done." Lin Feng briskly copied the contents of the main scroll onto two secondary scrolls and handed them to Chu Mo and Yue Mian. "Keep one each and update them as we investigate further. Let's head to the next site."
Over the following days, Chu Mo and his companions followed their sea chart, traveling throughout the waters of the Thousand Currents District, visiting both areas with declining yields and those producing normally.
Most of the time, however, they returned empty-handed, finding only shattered clam shells strewn across the depleted sites, along with faint Deathly Qi. Even after repeated discussions, they reached no conclusions.
Chu Mo, however, was not entirely without gains. He inspected the waters by day and made time at night to study Liu Xian's talisman arts, soon making considerable progress.
At the same time, he did not neglect the foundation of his cultivation, never slackening in circulating his cultivation method and meditating.
This busy, repetitive life was not interrupted until the third month.
Beneath the waters near the southeastern edge of the Thousand Currents District, Chu Mo picked up a black scale in surprise.
The scale was roughly palm-sized, its edges sharp as blades and cold to the touch. A wisp of Deathly Qi and yin baleful energy lingered on its surface without dispersing, several times denser than what they had found in other waters.
[Damaged ink scale]
"Senior Brother Lin, Senior Sister Yue," he immediately transmitted. "I've found something here."
Lin Feng and Yue Mian swam over at the news. When Lin Feng saw the black scale in Chu Mo's hand, his expression instantly changed. "This is... an Ink-Scaled Flood Dragon's scale? But why would there be Deathly Qi..."
Deathly Qi seeped from the scale as though it had been produced by the Ink-Scaled Flood Dragon itself. That truly defied common sense.
"Junior Brother, where did you find it?"
Chu Mo pointed, and Lin Feng followed his gesture. A deep fissure cut across the seabed, pitch-black, leading who knew where.
After probing it briefly with his Divine Sense, Lin Feng transmitted with a grave expression:
"This trench is very deep, and we don't know what's inside. We shouldn't enter recklessly. Let's work out a safe way to investigate."
"I do have a method," Chu Mo suddenly said.
"What might that be, Junior Brother..."
Before Lin Feng finished speaking, he saw that Chu Mo had already taken out a small Dark Banner.
The banner was barely more than a foot long. Its fabric stirred without wind, a faint, eerie light flowing across it as an almost imperceptible chill spread outward.
Lin Feng's gaze sharpened. He scrutinized the Profound Banner, a trace of surprise flashing through his eyes, and asked through voice transmission, "Junior Brother Chu, did this soul banner of yours... come from the sect's Merit Hall?"
"Huh?" Chu Mo nodded. "How did you know, Senior Brother?"
Lin Feng laughed and pointed at the Profound Banner. "This model has been one of the Merit Hall's bestsellers these past few years. Quite a few fellow disciples have bought one."
"Uh..." Chu Mo paused, taken aback. He had not expected the Profound Banner to be a standard-issue Spirit Embryo. The steward at the Merit Hall had made it sound so mysterious that he had thought it was something special.
Shaking his head, he stirred his thoughts slightly. An eerie light flashed across the Profound Scenery Refining Truth Banner, and a soul was summoned forth, taking the form of that bronze-skinned burly man.
"Greetings, my lord!" The burly man's soul immediately bowed upon appearing.
"Go down and investigate what's inside." Chu Mo raised a hand and pointed at the deep fissure.
"As you command." Without hesitation, the burly man leaped down into it.
Who knew how Mu Yun had trained him, but the burly man was now utterly and sincerely devoted to Chu Mo, without a trace of his former defiance. Even the name above his head had turned green.
Chu Mo concentrated on controlling him, sharing his vision through the connection between the soul banner and the burly man's soul.
At first, there was only oppressive darkness and the flow of icy seawater, but as he descended farther, the Deathly Qi seemed to grow ever denser.
Just as Chu Mo was fully absorbed in the soul's exploration, a ripple of aura suddenly came from the dim waters behind him to one side. Two health bars were rapidly drifting toward them.
[Level 7 · Heaven's Will Sect disciple] [Level 5 · Pure Water Abbey cultivator]
The health bars moved swiftly, reaching them in the blink of an eye. At the same time, the newcomers spotted Chu Mo and his companions.
The Heaven's Will Sect disciple in the lead wore a yellow robe, while the other was dressed in black.
The two initially froze upon seeing Chu Mo's group, clearly not expecting to encounter other cultivators. Then the Heaven's Will Sect disciple looked the three of them over and frowned. The name above his head instantly turned blood-red!
"I wondered who it was. So it's you vile spawn of the Duo'e demonic sect!"