Mirror Disc
Long Tian remained crouched before the stone platform, motionless. The grayish-white disc inside the stone box, illuminated by the light of the Dragon Shadow's shadow, continuously reflected a uniform luster, its surface flawless and free of scratches. He held his palm about a hand's width above the disc, without directly touching it. The pulsation of the Origin Return Pearl formed an extremely thin sensory layer between his palm and the disc's surface. Within the range of his pulsation, the disc's surface glowed slightly, as if responding to a shared energy.
He placed his palm down, pressing it against the surface of the disc. It felt cool to the touch, smooth as a mirror, like a repeatedly polished stone surface, but denser than stone. With continued contact, it gradually adapted to the warmth of his palm. The pulse of the Origin Return Pearl traveled along his palm into the disc's interior. As his breath continued to flow into the disc, its color gradually changed from grayish-white to a silvery hue, like a metal surface being slowly heated, its atoms gradually altering their arrangement layer by layer under continuous heat conduction. The silvery hue persisted for a while, until it covered the entire surface of the disc, then ceased to expand outwards.
After the silver hue completely covered the inner side of the disc, a fine ray of light appeared, slowly radiating outwards from the center. The direction of the texture was consistent with the wavy line at the center of the silk map, but it shared the same origin as the vertical line texture on the Dragon Shadow's forehead. After the ray of light covered the surface of the disc, a brighter spot of light began to emerge at the center of the disc. The edge of the spot of light was clear, and the outline was vertical and slender, like a closed eye being illuminated by light.
Long Tian squatted in front of the stone platform, watching the light spot rise from the surface of the disc, then pass through the plane of the disc, extend upwards a short distance, and hover in the air. He felt the Origin Return Pearl in his chest cavity being pulled by a continuous external force after the light spot rose on the disc's surface. The force traveled from his chest cavity along his arm to his palm, then along the contact surface between his palm and the disc, merging into the light spot. After swirling once inside the light spot, it returned to the Origin Return Pearl along its origin. The new core also responded simultaneously, docking with the Origin Return Pearl, allowing the two forces to maintain a stable feedback loop in the transmission channel.
After completing its cyclical transmission, the light spot gradually narrowed, as if gathered from the edge by an unseen hand, converging into a slender, silvery-white pillar that extended from the surface of the disc to the top of the air chamber. Long Tian withdrew his hand and stood up. The silvery-white pillar remained even after he withdrew his hand, extending straight from the surface of the disc to the top of the air chamber, leaving a clearly defined ring of light on the stone surface at the top of the air chamber. After the light spot shone brightly on the stone surface at the top of the air chamber for a while, a circular outline slowly began to emerge on the stone surface along the outer edge of the light spot. A ring of fine serrations surrounded the edge of the outline, the spacing of which matched the spacing of the engravings on the base surface. After the outline fully emerged, the silvery-white luster on the disc surface changed from a uniform coverage to an uneven distribution with brighter edges, as if it were fading layer by layer, gradually returning to its original grayish-white tone.
Long Tian stood in front of the stone platform, watching the circular outline at the top of the air chamber continue to light up. The arrangement of the teeth on its edge was consistent with the pattern of the engravings he had seen on the Dragon Bone Marker Disc, as if it were a pre-set docking device waiting to be triggered.
He focused the light from the Dragon Shadow into a narrow beam, shining it towards the center of the circular outline at the top of the air chamber. As the light touched the outline, it began to slowly rotate along its circumference. The rotation was slow and the direction was fixed, like a slowly rotating locking ring. After rotating to a certain angle, a low vibration came from inside the stone surface at the top of the air chamber, and the entire top stone surface began to rise along the trajectory of the outline, revealing a narrow passage.
The passageway was smaller than the air chamber entrance, connected by stone steps hanging down from above. Long Tian extended the layer of light from his Dragon Shadow along the stone steps, illuminating a small section of space above the passageway. The space was small, like a secret chamber even smaller than the air chamber; at the edge touched by the light layer, some fine traces could be seen. Long Tian walked up the stone steps; when his foot stepped on the first step, the surface of the step did not vibrate, nor did any debris fall off. He continued to walk up a few more steps, bending down and stopping at the edge of the passageway entrance, standing at the entrance of the secret chamber.
The floor of the secret chamber was level with the edge of the passageway, roughly ten feet square and less than ten feet high. In the center of the chamber, there was no stone platform, only a disc identical to the one in the stone box of the air chamber—but larger, about two feet in diameter, embedded in the floor. The disc's surface was flush with the floor, and the seam between its edge and the floor was almost invisible. Long Tian squatted down in the center of the chamber, his palm against the disc's surface. After the pulsation of the Origin Return Pearl entered the disc, its surface gradually changed from grayish-white to silvery-white, covering the entire surface—a color identical to that in the stone box of the air chamber. The light patterns spread outwards from the center of the disc towards its edges. After reaching the edge, the patterns didn't stop but continued to extend outwards along the ground, like a toppled river of water covering an ever-growing area. The disc in the center of the air chamber connected with the disc on the floor of the sealed chamber along this path of light. The light layers on the dome air chamber and the light layers on the floor of the sealed chamber merged, forming a continuous light curtain. Within this light curtain, a series of images began to emerge—ships on the sea, the outline of a stone keel rising from the water, and layers of light... The illuminated marking discs and stone skeleton layers. Long Tian squatted in the center of the secret chamber, watching the images on the light screen continuously play and switch segment by segment, as if continuously presenting something, sequentially displaying images of each key node on the light screen. Yu Jin leaned in from the edge of the air chamber opening and squatted down beside him, also watching the images on the light screen, starting with the ships on the sea and the rising keel, watching all the content segment by segment. After the images finished playing, the brightness of the light screen began to continuously decrease, and in the instant before it completely disappeared, he saw the content of the last frame of the light screen—a complete topographical map of the sea, the position of the central marker perfectly coinciding with the extension point at the end of the silk map, more precise in scale than the silk map, like a final version that had been revised many times. Long Tian squatted in the center of the secret chamber, watched the last frame of the light screen, found the information that needed to be confirmed in the details of the complete topographical map, then stood up, walked back to the air chamber and passage, passed through the waterproof membrane again and returned to underwater, and surfaced along the keel passage.