"He... did he just say there was treasure at the bottom of the pool?"
The Aromatic Silk Beauty asked quietly.
"Who knows what he meant."
The Ice Empress folded her arms, her tone sounding indifferent, but she took two steps toward the lake.
She stood where Zhang Lan had jumped in, her emerald-green dress swaying gently in the breeze off the lake.
"Anyway, if he can't get back up, I'll go down and fish him out."
The Snow Empress said nothing, merely closing her eyes.
Her spiritual power spread out again. This time, she did not probe the lake bottom, but swept around the shore in widening circles, as though sensing something.
The lake's surface was calm.
The icy-white half was still covered in thin ice, while waves of heat still churned over the fiery-red half.
But on closer inspection, a ring of hair-fine cracks was spreading outward from the center of the thin ice on the icy-white half, as though something beneath it had given it a gentle tap.
On the fiery-red half, bubbles began rising more densely than before, gurgling up to the surface.
Deep beneath the center of the lake, both forces grew restless at once.
And Zhang Lan had already been descending for a long time.
The instant Zhang Lan entered the water, the deep-blue membrane of light surrounding his Gravity Dome was squeezed by the forces of ice and fire simultaneously, giving off faint crunching sounds like footsteps on broken glass.
The water in the icy-white half was cold enough to crack bones, while the water in the fiery-red half was hot enough to cook flesh. The two forces collided at the boundary in the lake's center, forming a swirling band of turbulent currents that churned the water relentlessly.
He sank deeper.
Thirty feet.
Fifty feet.
A hundred feet.
The temperatures grew increasingly extreme.
The water on the icy-white side was no longer liquid. It had been compressed into a viscous mass, like half-frozen ice slurry, and every stroke of his arm took several times the usual effort.
On the fiery-red side, dense clusters of tiny bubbles began to appear. They rose from the lake bottom, growing larger as they climbed. By the time they reached Zhang Lan, they were the size of fists, bursting with scalding steam.
The two forces raged on either side of his body, while the boundary between them was like a pair of invisible scissors, continually shredding anything that tried to cross it.
Zhang Lan's Gravity Dome endured the relentless pressure.
He could feel his Soul Power draining faster, but the physical strength he had gained from the Ice and Fire Golden Body offset most of that drain.
The mingled power of ice and fire in his meridians surged from his dantian, forming a thin, two-colored membrane of light over his skin. Working in concert with the Gravity Dome, it kept the lake water's corrosive forces at bay.
Two hundred feet. Three hundred feet.
The light had vanished completely.
Thick darkness surrounded him. Only his gravitational perception was still working, tracing the rough contours of the lake bottom for him. The lake was far deeper than he had expected, like an inverted funnel, its space narrowing the farther he descended.
A thick layer of sediment coated the surrounding rock walls. Some places bulged like burial mounds; others caved inward like rift valleys.
Four hundred feet. Five hundred feet.
The space beneath his feet abruptly narrowed, then opened up just as suddenly. He had reached the lake bottom, but it was nothing like Zhang Lan had imagined.
The moment his gravitational perception spread out, he froze.
Slightly north of the lake bottom's center, two skeletons lay side by side.
They were immense-so immense that his gravitational perception could not encompass them in a single sweep.
The one on the left was silver-blue throughout, its bones coated in frost that would never melt. Every rib was like an arch cast from ice.
Its vertebrae were as large as millstones. From skull to tailbone, the entire skeleton resembled a colossal dragon frozen at the bottom of the lake.
The one on the right was crimson throughout, with dark-red patterns of light faintly flowing across the surfaces of its bones.
Its ribs were as thick as pillars, and its vertebrae were just as enormous, each bearing fiery patterns that shone from deep within the marrow.
The two skeletons lay side by side on the lake bottom, their skulls facing the same direction, their enormous jaws slightly open, as though their final roars before death were still caught in their throats.
Their skeletons were half buried in sediment, the exposed portions giving off an eerie, cold glow in the darkness.
The Ice Dragon King lay on the left, the Fire Dragon King on the right. Their utterly different lights met at the bottom of the lake, forming a hazy region of faint radiance.
Zhang Lan stopped several dozen feet in front of the two skeletons, suspended in the water.
He could sense that the Soul Power within these skeletons-or perhaps it should have been called divine power-had almost entirely dissipated.
Their divinity had long since drained away, and even their lingering auras were exceedingly faint.
But the bone itself, those surfaces tempered over and over by the forces of ice and fire for countless years, had become something far beyond ordinary Soul Bones.
Every inch of the skeletons seeped exceedingly faint threads of light. Silver-blue strands drifted from the gaps between the Ice Dragon King's bones.
Crimson strands drifted from the gaps between the Fire Dragon King's bones. Both kinds slowly rose from the lake bottom and flowed into the sharply divided waters overhead, becoming the inexhaustible source of the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well.
Zhang Lan stared at the two skeletons for a long time.
He had read about the origins of the Ice and Fire Yin Yang Well in a novel in his previous life, and he knew what lay buried beneath this lake.
But that had only been a description in a book. Compared with the real bones before him, so vast they took his breath away, those words had failed to convey even a tenth of their staggering impact.
The Ice Dragon King. The Fire Dragon King.
In ancient times, the Dragon God had descended into madness, and war had erupted between the dragon gods and the human gods.
These two dragons had been among the greatest fighting forces in that war, beings at the God King level.
After their deaths, their remains had fallen here. Their divinity dissipated, their Soul Power drained away, and after tens of millions of years, only these skeletons remained.
Zhang Lan swam between the two skeletons and glanced to either side.
On the Ice Dragon King's side nearest him, the bones of one hand were slightly spread, the finger bones as slender as icicles, piercing the sediment of the lake bed.
The Fire Dragon King's hand, meanwhile, was clenched into a fist. Crimson patterns of light pulsed over its knuckles in the darkness, like a frozen flame.
Within the chest cavities of the two skeletons, a fist-sized orb of light slowly rotated in each.
The orb within the Ice Dragon King's chest was silver-blue and perfectly round, with intricate patterns of ice flowing inside.
The orb within the Fire Dragon King's chest was scarlet-gold, likewise perfectly round, with flame-like patterns roiling within.
Each orb was enclosed by its dragon's ribs, like two stars locked in cages.
Dragon Cores.
Zhang Lan's pupils contracted.
He recognized what those two orbs were.
They were Dragon Cores, the cores the Ice Dragon King and the Fire Dragon King had condensed while alive.
Tens of millions of years had passed, and so much Soul Power had drained away, yet these two Dragon Cores still remained.
Though they were countless times weaker than they had been at their peak, the power within them was still so immense that Zhang Lan's gravitational perception rebounded the moment it touched them.
Zhang Lan swam between the two skeletons and glanced to either side.
On the Ice Dragon King's side nearest him, the bones of one hand were slightly spread, the finger bones as slender as icicles, piercing the sediment of the lake bed.
The Fire Dragon King's hand, meanwhile, was clenched into a fist. Crimson patterns of light pulsed over its knuckles in the darkness, like a frozen flame.
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