153: Chapter 153 Underwater Treasure

Boom!

The sound of the water splashing exploded and carried far across the silent valley, startling the birds resting in the forest and sending them flapping into the sky.

The leaves by the pool trembled rustlingly, and several vines hanging over the water surface were whipped back and forth by the splashing water.

A figure holding a millstone-sized rock plummeted from mid-air straight into the center of the pool, sending a column of water shooting up over a person's height, which crashed against the surrounding cliffs and cascaded down, washing away patches of moss from the rock walls.

The surface of the water rippled violently for a few moments, bubbling up a long string of bubbles, before slowly returning to calm, leaving only ripples spreading towards the shore.

The commotion was too great.

The birds in the valley circled in the sky for quite a while before daring to return to their branches.

The beasts in the forest were startled and darted out from the bushes, pricking up their ears to look towards the pool, before retreating back inside.

Not long after, a slender figure emerged from the dense forest.

It was a young woman, appearing to be in her early twenties, dressed in a jade-green martial outfit, with a short sword hanging at her waist and deer-skin boots on her feet.

She stood by the side of the pool, one hand resting on a moss-covered rock, leaning half her body out to peer into the water.

The surface of the water had returned to calm, a deep, dark green like a polished piece of black jade, and nothing could be seen.

Only a few fallen leaves floated gently on the surface.

"Someone jumped in?" she muttered to herself, her brows furrowing slightly.

No, that wasn't right; the commotion just now was too loud, not something someone who had accidentally fallen in could make.

Falling in by accident would make a splash; that just now was a boom, like someone holding something and jumping in on purpose.

In this deep mountain forest, who would risk their life to jump into a deep pool like this?

Unless there was something down there worth jumping for.

She squatted down and reached out to test the water temperature.

Her fingertips shrank back the moment they touched the water—it was bone-chillingly cold.

In water at this temperature, an ordinary person wouldn't last half a cup of tea's time before cramping up.

She stared at the water for a long while, and her eyes suddenly lit up.

"No, it seems like they know how to swim.

To dare to jump into such a deep pool, their swimming skills must be quite good," she muttered to herself again, stood up, and brushed the water droplets off her hands.

"Could there be some treasure down there?"

Her swimming skills were not good.

Calling them not good was being polite; she could only splash around in shallow water and had to paddle back before swimming ten zhang.

But her older brother was a good swimmer.

Her older brother was nearby, also in this forest to gather herbs.

His swimming skills were leagues ahead of hers; he was more agile in the water than a fish.

She turned and ran.

Her deer-skin boots crunched rapidly on the fallen leaves.

Passing through several old pine trees as thick as a person could hug, and skirting around a dense thicket, she saw a tall figure in the distance, squatting by the stream washing his face.

"Brother! Brother!" she shouted as she ran, her voice echoing through the dense forest.

Jin Ze stood up.

He was a tall young man with broad shoulders and a thick back, the muscles on his arms looking as if they had been carved with a knife.

A broad-bladed short sword hung at his waist, its deer-skin scabbard worn with several scratches of varying depths.

He turned around and saw his younger sister running out of breath, the sweat on her forehead sticking loose strands of hair to her face, and frowned.

"What's wrong? Why are you so flustered?"

Jin Shuanger ran up to him, bent over, and took several breaths before she could recover.

She pointed towards the direction of the pool behind her, her voice intermittent.

"Over there... there's a pool over there... someone jumped in... a loud boom, the commotion was huge... it was like they were holding a rock and jumped down... that pool is very deep, there must be something wrong... maybe there's some treasure hidden at the bottom!"

Jin Ze raised an eyebrow.

A deep pool, someone holding a rock jumping down, a huge commotion—this didn't look like suicide; it looked more like treasure hunting.

For an ordinary person to jump into a deep pool was suicide, but if it was someone with good swimming skills, well-prepared, that was a different story.

He followed Jin Shuanger quickly to the edge of the pool, looked down at the deep water that was so dark green it looked black, and bent down to pick up a pebble and threw it in.

With a splash, the pebble sank, and he didn't hear it reach the bottom for a long time.

His eyes lit up.

"You wait outside.

Don't come down, the water is deep."

He drew the broad-bladed short sword from his waist and held it in his mouth, the blade gleaming coldly in the morning light.

Then he took a deep breath, leaned his body forward, and dove into the pool like a fish leaping out of the water.

The moment he entered the water, his body twisted.

That twist was extremely light and fast; the power from his waist exploded from the end of his lumbar spine, traveling along his spine to his legs.

His legs pressed together, toes pointed, and his whole body was like a whip being lashed out, snapping him a great distance forward.

Swimming Fish Movement Technique—his family's underwater martial art.

He had practiced this technique in the Bailong River for over a decade and had long since reached the mastery Realm.

The water was his territory, and his speed in the water was faster than the vast majority of fish.

He kicked his legs gently twice, and his whole body darted down several zhang deep.

The water slid past both sides of his body, creating almost no resistance.

His body maintained an extremely fluid posture in the water; with every twist of his waist and every kick of his legs, he borrowed the water flow to push his body forward.

Where he swam, there weren't even many bubbles.

The water grew darker and darker, the light from above grew weaker, and the surrounding pool water changed from deep green to dark green, from dark green to ink green, and finally to a color that was almost pitch black.

His eyes had long since adapted to the underwater light, and he could vaguely see things more than ten meters away.

Suddenly, he saw a black shadow.

It was the silhouette of a person, holding a millstone-sized rock in their arms, sinking downwards at an extremely fast speed.

Jin Ze's eye twitched—sinking with a rock was a method only an old hand would use.

Using a heavy object to speed up the descent saved stamina to deal with trouble at the bottom.

Anyone who could think of this method definitely had good swimming skills.

He kicked his legs violently, and his whole body chased after that black shadow like a torpedo leaving a tube.

He unleashed the Swimming Fish Movement Technique with full force, his body stretching into a blurred, streamlined shape in the water, each twist and kick propelling him several zhang forward.

As he got closer, he finally saw the black shadow clearly—it was a young man, looking a few years younger than him, wearing a cyan martial outfit, with a long sword hanging at his waist.

The rock he held in his arms was the size of a millstone, but the expression on his face was so calm that it didn't look like he was at the bottom of a dozens-of-zhang deep pool; it looked more like he was taking a walk in his own courtyard.

Jin Ze felt a bit suspicious.

Where did this person come from?

In such deep water, the water pressure was great enough to crush an ordinary person's lungs, yet he showed no sign of discomfort, his breathing steady and his movements composed.

It looked like there really was something underwater.

Thinking of this, he increased his speed again.

Lin Tian was sinking rapidly.

The rock in his arms dragged him through layer after layer of increasingly dark pool water, with water pressure squeezing in from all directions.

But the Dragon Roar Iron Shirt supported him steadily, his Internal Energy spreading throughout his whole body, the layer of "copper skin" beneath his skin heating up slightly, blocking the water pressure outside.

The Divine Turtle Breathing Technique operated slowly within his body, the Qi in his Dantian rotating in circles, pressing his body's need for air to the absolute minimum.

Suddenly, his back felt a subtle ripple in the water.

It wasn't the natural flow of the pool water, but the wake created by something moving quickly in the water.

That wake came down from above and was rapidly approaching his direction.

He looked up and, through the increasingly dark layers of water, vaguely saw a tall figure swimming towards him rapidly.

That person's posture in the water was extremely fluid, legs pressed together, body streamlined, and every twist and kick generated a powerful thrust.

Lin Tian narrowed his eyes.

There was actually someone else here?

Did they follow him, or did this person also have a treasure map?

Regardless of the situation, he didn't intend to let the other party catch up.

He loosened his arm, unhooked the autumn water sword from his waist to hold it in his hand, and at the same time kicked his legs violently, the White Dragon in the Waves Movement Technique exploding at the bottom of the water.

The power from his waist erupted from the end of his lumbar spine, his body was like a whip being lashed out, and his sinking speed increased by another thirty percent.

He reached the bottom.

Lin Tian's feet touched the mud and sand at the bottom of the water; it was soft, and he sank half a foot deep when he stepped on it.

He threw the millstone rock in his arms to the side, and the rock hit the mud and sand, kicking up a cloud of murky mud.

The light at the bottom was extremely dark, with only the faint diffused light penetrating from the water surface dozens of zhang above, barely enough to see the outlines within a few zhang.

The bottom was covered with a thick layer of mud and sand, along with some rocks of various sizes, which were covered in slippery algae.

Several fish whose names he didn't know swam past him, their fins glowing with a faint fluorescence in the darkness.

His gaze swept around the bottom, then stopped beside a crevice in the rocks.

There, half-buried in the mud and sand, was a skeleton.

The skeleton didn't know how many years it had been lying at the bottom, the clothing on it long since turned into part of the mud and sand, leaving only the white, ghastly skeleton frame still maintaining its posture from before death—one hand reaching forward, the finger bones gripping a rock,

the other hand protecting its chest, as if it wanted to hide something before dying.

Beside the skeleton, two things were half-buried in the mud and sand.

A scroll, light blue all over, made of unknown material, which hadn't been rotted despite being soaked at the bottom for so many years.

Beside the scroll was a lotus flower.

That lotus was only the size of a palm, deep blue all over, as blue as a crystal that had been washed by clear water countless times.

Every petal was so thin it was almost transparent, the edges glowing with a faint fluorescence, the veins on the petals clearly visible, as if someone had drawn them with an extremely fine brush.

It grew out from between the finger bones of the hand the skeleton was protecting its chest with, its roots dug into the skeleton's ribs, the stem as thin as a blue thread.

The underwater current brushed gently over it, the petals trembling slightly, emitting circles of light blue halos, dyeing the small area of water around it a ghostly blue.

The moment Lin Tian's gaze landed on that blue lotus, his breathing almost stopped.

He had studied herb knowledge with Elder Qian in Baicao Valley for so long, and he had worn out several books just on the illustrated guides of various Treasure Herbs.

The form, color, and halo of the lotus before him were exactly the same as the water lotus he had seen in his guidebooks.

A water lotus, an aquatic Treasure Herb.

Unlike Treasure Herbs that grew in soil, water lotuses grew at the bottom of extremely deep and cold water,

surviving by absorbing the Spiritual Qi in the water veins, growing extremely slowly, only growing one petal every ten years.

The water lotus before him had a full nine petals, blooming in layers.

Nine petals, at least ninety years.

A ninety-year-old wild water lotus, its medicinal power was so profound that it was far beyond what those three or five-year-old Treasure Fish in the Yunhai Fishery could compare to.

Lin Tian's heart jumped fiercely.

He had really found a treasure this time.

Just at this moment, the water flow above his head suddenly fluctuated violently.

Lin Tian looked up and saw that the tall figure had already chased down to the bottom and was swimming towards him rapidly.

When the newcomer's gaze passed over his shoulder and landed on the water lotus, the person clearly shuddered.

Even at the bottom of the water, even with the dim light, Lin Tian could clearly see the greed that suddenly exploded in those eyes—the eyeballs were bulging round,

pupils shrunk to the size of pinpricks, his breathing so rapid that a long string of bubbles leaked from the corners of his mouth.

"Treasure Herb! It was actually a Treasure Herb!"

In Jin Ze's mind, only these two words were echoing frantically.

He had entered the pool just to see what was down there; he hadn't expected to actually see a Treasure Herb.

A nine-petaled water lotus, how many years of age would that be?

How much silver would that be worth?

This was not something that could be measured by silver!

Heaven is helping me!

He kicked his legs violently, his body stretching into an arrow-like wake in the water, charging straight towards the direction of the water lotus,

one hand already reaching out, five fingers spread open, fingertips grabbing straight towards that lotus flower glowing with a ghostly blue light in the darkness.