Encounter at Night

As time passed, secret meetings were held between people.

For a fleeting moment, Zhang Xuezhou thought the secret place should be filled with sparks and lightning, then fall to earth like a fiery meteor and land steadily.

But none of what he imagined happened.

The sound of gentle waves lapping against the shore came as this secret place appeared abruptly on the sea like an island.

"It's a rare opportunity to enter this secret place again!"

Carrying the not-so-heavy large gourd, the group quickly fled.

Once they left the secret realm and returned to the sea, everyone finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Gongsun Hong looked at the boundless sea and couldn't help but sigh a little.

"What's so difficult about it? I could never come to such a lousy place in my entire life!"

Li Shaojun muttered something, then urged Zhang Xuezhou to hurry up and catch some fish. Even if it was just a raw fish, Li Shaojun would eat it all.

"My feather was broken in the struggle, so you can only eat raw fish now!"

Zhang Xuezhou reached into the sea and scooped up a dazed, red-scaled fish onto the gourd-shaped boat.

This sea area is rich in fish resources, and the fish schools are extremely dense, so dense that you can almost reach out and catch them.

With a casual grab, Zhang Xuezhou scooped up a fish weighing six or seven pounds.

"This fish is incredibly stupid. It swims so nimbly, but when it gets caught, it doesn't move at all. Eating it would probably make it stupid to death!"

Li Shaojun grumbled, but didn't hesitate at all when he started eating.

After some haphazard tapping and banging, he carefully lit a handful of Six Ding Divine Fire, charring the fish until it was blackened.

Once he had a bit more strength in his stomach, Li Shaojun reached out and grabbed at the fish, scooping up several fish weighing over ten pounds each and putting them into the gourd boat.

Starving to the point of fear, Li Shaojun began to hoard food.

He lit a fire to grill the fish until he burned a hole in the gourd boat, at which point he was beaten up by Zhang Xuezhou and the others before Li Shaojun finally stopped.

"The sunlight here is a bit dazzling; this isn't good at sea. We should sail further away as soon as possible!"

Gongsun Hong urged them on, which made everyone stop focusing on replenishing food supplies and instead take out planks and keep paddling.

The gourd-shaped boat does not conform to ship design; its only advantage is buoyancy.

The group struggled to row, but the cultivators managed to keep going thanks to their advantage.

"Dongfang Shuo, if you were to refine this gourd, wouldn't it be wonderful if it could expand and contract at will?"

After scrolling for a while, Li Shaojun couldn't help but complain.

"What's the point of refining a rotten gourd?" Zhang Xuezhou waved his hand and said, "Don't try to fool me into using the Refining Treasure Technique for this kind of thing. I don't want to refine anything anymore!"

"Aren't you going to offer me a sacrifice?" Li Shaojun leaned closer and asked.

"If you take the gourd vine, aren't you afraid that the vine and gourd will come together and come to life, then suck you dry while you're sleeping, come back to life again, and suck you dry until you die?" Zhang Xuezhou replied in a low voice.

That's not very meaningful!

"With your pathetic fortune!"

Zhang Xuezhou gave a sarcastic comment, which completely extinguished Li Shaojun's little scheme. He then went back to slacking off, occasionally playing with the severed gourd vine, just like Zhang Xuezhou did.

At this point, everyone had no sense of direction and were simply paddling along with the waves.

With plenty of fresh water in the gourd and fish available for fishing at sea, everyone felt much more relaxed.

Zhang Xuezhou and Li Shaojun each had their own thoughts, while Gongsun Hong felt as if he had been reborn after a catastrophe.

Having lost 'Jiuyu' and the spiritual spring, and with his body still recovering, Gongsun Hong didn't want to ask for anything more at this moment.

Only by experiencing life and death can one truly cherish life and understand one's own needs.

For him, reaching the Sole Self Realm was almost the fulfillment of a lifelong wish.

He watched the direction of the seawater flow and felt the sea breeze from time to time, thinking about deciding on a direction and returning to land as soon as possible.

"Look, there's an island over there!"

There are still people up there!

From the first light of dawn to the first few stars in the sky, Zhang Xuezhou and the others finally saw a glimmer of light.

This delighted everyone, as they felt that the return to the mainland would be much faster than they had imagined.

This made all three of them put all their strength into paddling, even Zhang Xuezhou threw the spiritual wood he had refined into the water to use as a paddle.

The three shouted loudly, and as they drew closer, more torchbearers floated in the air, causing the three men's expressions to change.

"Who are you making such a racket here?"

The shout was deafening, and the person was wearing golden armor, carrying a torch, and Yufeng, clearly possessing extremely high cultivation.

There are hundreds of torchbearers in this area.

Zhang Xuezhou and the others fell silent, feeling as if they had stumbled into the lair of an unknown powerful force.

"We were shipwrecked here," Gongsun Hong called out. "We'd like to ask you all for directions back to the mainland!"

"The mainland is in the west, what are you doing heading east?"

When the reply came, everyone immediately realized they had completely gone in the wrong direction.

Of course, if the other party acts maliciously and gives them the wrong direction, they will be even more unlucky.

"Wall Water Yu, who are you, fellow Daoist?"

"They are three people from a shipwreck!"

"The sky and earth in this area are almost boiling over. How could it be the result of an ordinary shipwreck? What kind of ship were they on?"

"A big gourd boat!"

"Gourd?"

A voice from afar asked several questions, and then someone else walked on the wind.

They definitely couldn't win in a fight, and they couldn't escape these skilled fliers.

Even Zhang Xuezhou and Li Shaojun, who could fly, remained silent. Gongsun Hong couldn't help but let out a cold breath, feeling that everyone's bad luck was endless.

"The whereabouts of the Water-Dividing General suppressed by the North Sea Eye are unknown. It's very likely that he has forcibly possessed someone else's body. Summon them all for inspection!"

When a general wearing a military crown arrived riding the wind and saw the gourd boat that everyone was riding, he shouted and quickly waved his hand.

Suddenly, more than ten cultivators appeared in the air, flying towards them against the wind.

Some cultivators carried torches, others carried luminous pearls, and still others carried lanterns for illumination.

Zhang Xuezhou and his companions didn't notice how bright the lights were from a distance, but by the time the other party flew over a hundred feet and arrived in front of them, Zhang Xuezhou were already under a blinding light.

"Stop attacking! We surrender!"

Li Shaojun was the first to yield, followed by Zhang Xuezhou who also raised his hands, and then Gongsun Hong who repeatedly offered explanations.

"Fellow travelers, we've truly suffered a shipwreck! We only managed to escape this desperate situation and have a few bites of fish today!"

"It's a cultivator!"

"His cultivation level isn't weak!"

"Arrest them all!"

Gongsun Hong's explanation was of no use.

Zhang Xuezhou and Li Shaojun wisely surrendered early and allowed themselves to be restrained, while Gongsun Hong, who was still explaining, was hit with a ruler by a Daoist priest.

A faint purple light passed over Gongsun Hong's body, and Gongsun Hong cried out in pain and fell to the ground.

Only after someone jumped onto the gourd boat, grabbed a rope, and tied up Zhang Xuezhou and the others did the tense atmosphere subside slightly.

Someone used a zipline to attach a gourd, and when someone gave a push, Zhang Xuezhou and the others, along with their boat, were pulled over.

As they got closer, Zhang Xuezhou and the others realized that the seawater was pitch black, and there were also huge rocks that were constantly being smashed by raging waves.

The place where the many people were holding up the light was not an island or a mainland, but a jumble of messy reefs, without a trace of soil or vegetation.

This place is clearly unsuitable for human habitation, yet many powerful cultivators, as if searching for a priceless treasure, have been tirelessly searching this area.

The fact that Zhang Xuezhou and the others were tied up did not interrupt the pace of the search. Some of them even turned over some pebbles by the reef, conducting an extremely careful search.

"You've been arresting people without properly guarding Shen Gongbao; that's really something, just like your usual style!"

A slightly teasing voice came over, which made Zhang Xuezhou perk up.

"Third Prince, we've met before!"

Zhang Xuezhou raised his head and saw a young man in golden armor and red robes not far away. This made him exclaim, and he finally knew the origin of this group of great cultivators.