After hesitating again and again, Jiang Chen steeled himself. Figuring he was already here anyway, he headed back down and pressed his hand firmly against the Three-Life Stone.
He held his breath and focused, waiting for over a minute, but nothing unusual happened.
His expression froze.
"Was my guess wrong? Is this just an ordinary boulder? Not every stone that sinks into the Wangchuan River is a Three-Life Stone..."
He realized he had made an assumption out of habit: whenever the Wangchuan River came up, he thought of the Three-Life Stone.
"Not necessarily. Let me test it again."
Looking thoughtful, Jiang Chen suddenly raised the Black Iron Anvil in his hand, poured all his strength into it, and smashed it down hard on the boulder.
There was a bang.
The stone was completely unscathed. Instead, the violent recoil left his entire arm numb.
After using Demon Transformation to become the Six-Eared Macaque, he was an Eight-Step King. With Complete Demonization, his strength had nearly reached the ninth step.
Yet even under these circumstances, wielding a Supreme Powerhouse Artifact, he had failed to chip off so much as a fragment.
Jiang Chen's pupils narrowed to slits.
"It really is the Three-Life Stone?!"
Before he could even react in shock, a ripple suddenly came from farther below, in the depths where almost no light reached and the river water was pitch-black.
The next second, he felt a sharp pain in his chest, as though something had struck him.
Then he was sent flying out of the Wangchuan River.
As this happened, Jiang Chen struggled to look down, only to discover that a lower leg bone had struck him. What astonished him was that the bone was translucent and crystalline, wondrous beyond belief.
He compared them and felt that perhaps even the Yin