115: Chapter 115 Snatching the Monument in the Dark River Leads to a Whirlpool

The explosive blast wave completely materialized into a shockwave, like an invisible giant hand, ruthlessly pushing everything inside the well shaft outward.

Lin Chen felt as if his back had been struck by a siege hammer; a sweetness rose in his throat, and he instantly lost his balance.

He, Senior Sister Mo Xuan, and the Grey Shadow, who had also been sent flying by the blast, were like rocks tumbling down a cliff, helplessly swept up by the violent air currents and plunged headlong into the darkness at the bottom of the well shaft.

"Splash!"

The bone-chilling river water instantly submerged his head.

The current was far more rapid than he had imagined; this was no ordinary groundwater, but a rushing dark river.

The murky water, carrying vast amounts of silt and gravel, furiously scoured his body. His vision was pitch black; he could see nothing.

He tried to stabilize himself, but the wound on his right arm, slashed by the hook blade, erupted in waves of tearing pain under the stimulation of the icy river water.

Even worse, the pain was not merely physical; a cold, alien energy, seemingly capable of freezing Qi, was burrowing deep into his Meridians through the wound.

The Grey Shadow's hook blade was poisonous!

Lin Chen's heart sank. He immediately diverted a strand of Qi to try to seal the wound, but it had little effect.

The cold poison was extremely domineering and was actually slowly eroding his Qi.

Just then, in this pitch-black, turbulent current where one could not see their own fingers, a sudden change occurred.

At the wound on his right arm, the blood tainted by the poison was not immediately washed away by the rushing river. Instead, it emitted a faint, yet impossible-to-ignore, dark light.

The light did not resemble fire or spiritual radiance; it was a profound glow that seemed to devour all surrounding light, illuminating the murky water in a small area around his arm, making its contours distinct.

This eerie scene happened to fall into the eyes of Senior Sister Mo Xuan, who was struggling in the water not far away.

She had been disoriented by the explosion, and her Divine Sense was damaged; it was only through sheer willpower that she had not passed out.

When that faint light ignited, she instinctively looked over, and her pupils instantly contracted to the limit underwater!

"That light..."

"Impossible!"

In the top-secret, restricted archives of the Tianji Academy, a legendary substance had once been described in a few sparse lines—the void crystal essence.

The archives recorded that any living being who had come into close contact with the void crystal essence would have their Origin essence blood permanently altered and contaminated. Under specific conditions, it would emit a unique light named "Abyssal Light."

This light was the only beacon for tracing the whereabouts of the void crystal essence!

And this Lin Chen before her, a nameless Loose Cultivator—why would his blood emit "Abyssal Light"?!

The immense shock even made her temporarily forget her own predicament.

Just then, a black hook-rope broke through the water like a venomous snake, accurately wrapping around her ankle and yanking her backward!

It was the Grey Shadow!

The cold poison instantly surged along the hook-rope. Senior Sister Mo Xuan felt her ankle go numb, and half of her body lost all sensation.

Despair welled up in her heart. This madman was actually still trying to seize the fragment in such a situation!

She instinctively hugged the scorching metal in her arms tighter, but the Grey Shadow's strength was immense, and it looked like he was about to drag her into the deeper depths of the water.

In a split second, a resolute thought flashed through her mind.

She suddenly flipped over, and using her last ounce of strength, she hurled the metal fragment toward the direction where the "Abyssal Light" was shining—the location of Lin Chen!

"Catch it! This has..."

She wanted to shout "The Tianji Academy's tracking mark" to warn Lin Chen that this thing was a hot potato, and that it was also the real reason she had detonated the Geothermal Chamber—to use the earth's core fire to erase the mark.

However, before her words could fully escape, a flame as black as ink suddenly ignited with a "whoosh" on the hook-rope wrapped around her ankle!

The black fire not only failed to extinguish in the water but burned even more fiercely. It spread rapidly along the hook-rope, instantly swallowing the rest of her words and dragging her body violently backward.

Lin Chen was busy fighting the poison in his body when he suddenly saw a dark shadow flying toward him.

He reached out his left hand almost instinctively and grabbed the object.

It was scorching to the touch; it was indeed that mysterious metal fragment!

The moment the fragment touched his palm, the stone ring on his right thumb, as if it were a beast fully awakened, suddenly erupted with an unprecedented heat!

A visible beam of white light burst out from the face of the stone ring, piercing through the water like a searchlight, precisely locking onto the fragment in Lin Chen's left hand and beginning to scan it rapidly back and forth.

"So it really was you who stole the core component of the 'Abyssal Crystal'!"

Seeing this, the Grey Shadow not far away let out a raspy voice laced with uncontrollable rage and greed for the first time.

He abandoned Senior Sister Mo Xuan, twisted his body in the water, and like a slippery black fish, lunged rapidly toward Lin Chen. The black hook blade in his hand aimed directly for the right hand where Lin Chen wore the stone ring!

Abyssal Crystal? What was that?

Thoughts flashed rapidly through Lin Chen's mind, but the current situation did not allow him to ponder.

Just as he was about to swing his sword to defend himself, the ground beneath him suddenly vanished!

There seemed to be a massive drop or branch in the dark river here; a powerful vortex formed without warning, and a tremendous pulling force instantly acted upon the three of them.

The Grey Shadow's lunging figure stalled, then was pulled out of control by the even stronger force of the vortex. He was swept in and instantly vanished into the bottomless darkness.

Only the stubborn black flame on his hook-rope struggled and burned on the surface of the water for three breaths before finally extinguishing with a "puff."

Lin Chen and Senior Sister Mo Xuan were also sent tumbling by the peripheral force of the vortex, but fortunately, they were not sucked into the center and were instead thrown into another, relatively calmer tributary.

The crisis was temporarily averted.

Lin Chen gasped for air, endured the excruciating pain, swam over to Senior Sister Mo Xuan, and grabbed her cold arm.

Senior Sister Mo Xuan was on the verge of collapse, but she stared at him intently.

Lin Chen ignored her gaze and dragged her along with the current.

He had to find an exit as soon as possible, otherwise, the poison in his body would claim his life sooner or later.

Senior Sister Mo Xuan's gaze, however, fell on Lin Chen's left arm.

Under the continuous scanning of the stone ring's white light, the ancient runes on the metal fragment seemed to come alive. They were transforming into streams of tiny golden light, crawling along the fingers holding it, following the veins of his arm, and slowly spreading and penetrating into his body.

"Don't move!" Senior Sister Mo Xuan suddenly struggled to speak, her voice weak but urgent.

She extended her trembling right hand, pressed her index and middle fingers together, and with a unique technique, struck lightning-fast toward a vital point on the inside of Lin Chen's left elbow joint.

This was a unique technique of the Tianji Academy for controlling the flow of energy from Magic Treasures, called the "Pulse-Intercepting Finger," which could temporarily block the intrusion of foreign energy.

She did not know if these runes were good or bad, but to let them intrude into the body of an "Abyssal Light" carrier—heaven only knew what would happen!

However, the moment her fingertips touched Lin Chen's skin, a powerful force of backlash erupted from the path of the spreading golden runes!

"Urgh!"

Senior Sister Mo Xuan groaned, feeling a piercing numbness in her fingertips, and her entire arm was rendered limp and weak by the shock.

This... were the runes defending themselves?!

They had already treated Lin Chen's body as a host and would not allow any outside interference!

Just as the two were lost in their own thoughts, a huge net, shimmering with faint specks of light, vaguely appeared in the murky water ahead.

Qin Ruowei!

Lin Chen's spirits lifted, and he swam with all his might toward the large net.

Qin Ruowei had been waiting at the designated exit of the dark river. She was dressed in tight-fitting night-traveler clothes, staring coldly at the rushing water.

The special fishing net in her hand was woven from ten-thousand-year-old deep-sea vines, making it incredibly tough. More importantly, every knot was adorned with a dark green detoxifying bead made from the fruit pit of a seven-heart begonia.

When she saw two figures being washed down by the current, she did not hesitate to cast the large net, accurately catching both Lin Chen and Senior Sister Mo Xuan, and then yanked them violently onto the shore.

"Splash—"

The two were dragged out of the water and slammed heavily onto the wet rocks.

Qin Ruowei did not immediately go to help them up; instead, she scanned the net with sharp eyes.

She saw that among the dozens of emerald green detoxifying beads on the net, the three near the wound on Lin Chen's right arm had turned as black as ink and were still slowly emitting wisps of black gas.

Merely coming into contact with the water flowing from the wound had exhausted the full efficacy of three detoxifying beads.

The Grey Shadow's black fire poison was even more domineering than she had anticipated!

"Let's return to the safe house first." Qin Ruowei made a prompt decision, packed up the net, and hoisting the almost immobile Lin Chen and Senior Sister Mo Xuan, one on each side, she quickly vanished into the night.

Half an hour later, in the secret chamber of the safe house.

Lin Chen sat cross-legged on the floor. The wound on his right arm had been dressed with a special ointment by Qin Ruowei, temporarily suppressing the spread of the poison.

His face was pale as he regulated his breathing to recover.

Senior Sister Mo Xuan was leaning against the corner on the other side. She was more severely injured; her Divine Sense and Meridians were heavily damaged, and she could barely move a finger at the moment.

Qin Ruowei was squatting on the floor, carefully examining the metal fragment that had been through so much trouble.

"Strange..." She suddenly furrowed her brows.

"What is it?" Lin Chen opened his eyes and asked.

"The surface of this thing," Qin Ruowei held the fragment up to the perpetual lamp and pointed to several places on it, "has a few new scratches. They are very shallow and don't look like they were caused by a fight."

Hearing this, Senior Sister Mo Xuan struggled to muster a bit of energy and said weakly, "Bring... bring it to me to see."

Qin Ruowei handed the fragment over.

Senior Sister Mo Xuan struggled to pull out a special Magical Artifact resembling a magnifying glass from her badly damaged Storage Pouch. She brought it to her eyes and began to carefully measure and compare the new scratches.

A moment later, the color drained completely from her already paper-white face, replaced by a complex expression mixed with horror and fanaticism.

She suddenly raised her head, staring fixedly at Lin Chen, her voice trembling slightly with excitement:

"These are... coordinates! They are precise coordinates deduced based on the Heavenly Stems, Earthly Branches, and stellar positions! But... they point to the Tianji Academy's highest Forbidden Ground—the seventh floor of the Library Pavilion!"

The seventh floor of the Library Pavilion?

Wasn't that the legendary place where the relics of the Tianji Academy's Ancestral Master were kept, a place even the current Dean had no authority to enter without permission?

How could this fragment have a connection to that place?

Lin Chen and Qin Ruowei exchanged a glance, both seeing deep shock in each other's eyes.

However, neither of them noticed that just as Senior Sister Mo Xuan uttered the words "seventh floor of the Library Pavilion," beneath the surface of the plain, unremarkable stone ring on Lin Chen's right thumb, a thread of invisible blood-red silk, like a waking slender snake, quietly slithered around once.

In the distant Southern Region, inside a blood-colored palace built atop an active volcano, an old man wearing crimson robes, who had been meditating with his eyes closed, suddenly snapped his eyes open.

In front of him, on a compass formed of boiling blood plasma, a needle pointing north began to vibrate violently without warning.