jdhmnovel Chapter 401 Ruins (Page 12)
Chapter 401 Ruins (Page 12)
The car drove along the winding mountain road, and the scenery outside the window rushed past.
Lin Qiye sat in the passenger seat, clutching a yellowed piece of paper in his hand, his brows furrowed.
The note contained three obscure and difficult-to-understand prophecies:
"Beneath the stone statue of the Luoxin woman lies the key to escaping one's predicament."
"At the end of the Aurora River sits a being great in both the past and the future!"
"But all of this is futile before the Supreme Dragon!"
"What do these three sentences mean?" Lin Qiye murmured to himself, his fingers unconsciously tapping on the car window.
"Don't overthink it." Zhang Yun, dressed in black, grinned from the driver's seat, one hand on the steering wheel and the other resting on the window, his posture casual. "What dead ends, what predicaments? With me, I'm invincible!"
Lin Qiye glanced at him sideways: "Zhang Yun, what do you know?"
Zhang Yun shrugged, his smile mysterious: "Heavenly secrets cannot be revealed."
Lin Qiye narrowed his eyes, feeling that this guy was hiding something.
...
A few hours later, the car stopped in front of a secluded diving equipment shop.
The shop is small, the signboard is faded, and the glass window displays various diving suits, oxygen cylinders and underwater lighting equipment.
"Why do we need to buy diving equipment?" Haruki Amamiya asked, entering the room with a puzzled look.
“The prophecy mentions the ‘River of Aurora,’ which I’ve researched. It probably refers to a special ocean current on the seabed,” Lin Qiye explained. “Moreover, the ‘Liaoxin Woman Statue’ is very likely in the underwater ruins.”
Garan stood to the side with his arms crossed: "I don't need diving equipment."
Zhang Yun leaned lazily against the door frame: "I don't need it either."
Lin Qiye and Amamiya Haruki exchanged a glance and walked helplessly toward the counter.
The shop owner, an elderly man with a wrinkled face, was wiping an old-fashioned diving bell. Seeing them enter, he said without looking up, "Choose one yourself; the price is on the tag."
Lin Qiye picked up a lightweight diving suit and checked its airtightness. Amamiya Haruki, on the other hand, chose an underwater propulsion device and asked in a low voice, "What do you think the 'Supreme Dragon' in the prophecy is?"
Lin Qiye shook his head: "I don't know, but it doesn't sound like a friendly entity."
Just then, the shop door was pushed open again.
A man in a black trench coat walked in, his hat pulled low, revealing only half of his pale face.
His footsteps were light and almost silent as he walked straight to the equipment rack on the other side and picked up a set of deep-sea diving equipment.
Lin Qiye and Amamiya Haruki both became alert at the same time.
—This person has a dangerous aura about him.
The man in black seemed to notice their gazes, turned his head slightly, a faint smile playing on his lips, then paid the bill and turned to leave.
“That person…” Haruki Amamiya frowned, “something feels off about him.”
Lin Qiye nodded: "Let's go and see."
The two quickly paid the bill, grabbed their gear, and rushed out of the store.
The man in black had disappeared from the street, but a trail of wet footprints remained on the ground, as if he had just climbed out of the sea.
"They've headed towards the docks!" Haruki Amamiya whispered.
They quickened their pace, navigating through several narrow alleyways, and finally spotted the man at an abandoned dock.
He was standing at the edge of the pier, looking down at the dark sea, and then—
"thump!"
He jumped straight down without the slightest hesitation.
Lin Qiye and Amamiya Haruki rushed to the dock. The sea had returned to calm, as if nothing had happened.
"This guy... just dived right down?" Haruki Amamiya was shocked.
Zhang Yun, dressed in black, looked at the mysterious man with amusement on his face. He knew that this mysterious man was actually an ally, but neither he nor Lin Qiye knew of each other's existence.
This mysterious person is a paratrooper from the Upper Evil Society, sent to locate the human circle and provide signals to the Night Watchers Wu Xianglan and the Knights outside.
However, Zhang Yun, with his wicked sense of humor, didn't want to talk about it.
Instead, they watched the show.
Subsequently.
Zhang Yun, dressed in black, stood on the dock with his hands in his pockets and a playful smile on his lips, watching Lin Qiye and Amamiya Haruki clumsily jump into the sea.
"Pfft!"
"Pfft!"
Water splashed everywhere, and the two were quickly swallowed by the sea.
Jialan stood on the shore, tilted his head and looked at Zhang Yun: "Aren't you going down?"
Zhang Yun stretched lazily: "What's the rush?"
He strolled leisurely to the beach, looked down at the dark sea, and suddenly grinned: "Watch closely—"
"Shh-!"
He raised his hand and waved it, the tip of the God-Slaying Spear slicing across the sea surface. In an instant, an invisible force cleaved the seawater like a blade!
"Boom--!"
The seawater parted to the sides, forming a bottomless trench that led straight to the seabed!
Zhang Yun, hands in his pockets, strolled leisurely down the dry seabed as if taking a walk.
seabed.
Lin Qiye and Amamiya Haruki, wearing heavy diving suits and carrying oxygen tanks, gradually froze under their masks.
They stood on the dry seabed, with not a drop of water around them. Only the seawater, parted by divine power, formed towering walls of water on both sides, and they could even see schools of fish swimming overhead.
Lin Qiye: “…”
Haruki Amamiya: "..."
Garan followed from behind and couldn't help but burst out laughing when he saw the two of them.
"Zhang Yun! You bastard!" Lin Qiye gritted his teeth and took off his mask, veins throbbing on his forehead.
Haruki Amamiya silently took off his diving suit and looked at Zhang Yun with a resentful expression: "If you had said you could part the seawater, why would we have dressed like this?"
Zhang Yun shrugged, looking innocent: "You didn't ask."
Lin Qiye took a deep breath, trying to calm himself down: "...Never mind, let's find the ruins first."
The group walked along the seabed, and soon an ancient stone building came into view.
The entrance to the ruins is covered by barnacles and coral, but the exquisite carvings of the past are still visible. Ancient runes are engraved on the door frame, faintly radiating a faint energy fluctuation.
Just as Lin Qiye was about to take a step, his eyes suddenly narrowed, and he raised his hand to stop everyone: "Wait!"
He crouched down, carefully examined the ground, and then took out a small detector from his backpack and pointed it forward.
"Drip-drip-"
The detector emitted a soft alarm sound and flashed a red light.
"An infrared alarm." Lin Qiye frowned. "Left by that mysterious person."
Haruki Amamiya narrowed his eyes: "It seems he doesn't want to be followed."
Lin Qiye gave a soft hum, took out a hair-thin tool from his tool bag at his waist, and carefully approached the alarm device.
"I'm a professional in this area."
He deftly moved the wires with his fingers, and the red light on the detector gradually dimmed and eventually went out.
"It's done."
Zhang Yun watched with great interest: "Oh, Captain Lin has this skill too?"
Lin Qiye glanced at him: "One of the essential courses for the Night Watchmen."
...
Mist.
The sea off Hokkaido was shrouded in thick fog, with visibility less than ten meters.
A small fishing boat floated quietly on the gray sea, its searchlight casting a faint beam of light through the mist.
Wu Xiangnan stood at the edge of the deck, holding a signal receiver in his hand, the red dot on the screen flashing continuously.
“The signal has arrived,” he said in a low voice, his gaze grave. “It’s from the paratroopers, and they’re located underwater.”
The knight stood beside him, his white cloak motionless in the damp sea breeze, as if even the mist dared not touch the hem of his garment. He lowered his head slightly, a golden glint flashing in his emerald eyes.
"In other words, the entrance to the artifact is at the bottom of the sea." The knight's voice was calm, yet carried an undeniable authority. "The gap in the human realm is there."
Wu Xiangnan nodded, turned around and dragged two sets of diving equipment out of the cabin, and began to check the airtightness of the oxygen cylinders and masks.
The knight glanced at it and said indifferently, "I don't need that thing."
Wu Xiangnan was taken aback: "The pressure underwater is immense; without equipment—"
Before he could finish speaking, the knight placed one hand on the hilt of his sword and leaped into the air—
"Pfft!"
His figure was like a white shooting star, falling straight into the sea with barely a splash, as if the sea itself made way for him.
Wu Xiangnan: "..."
He looked down at the bulky wetsuit in his hand, sighed, put it on silently, and then jumped into the sea.
The icy seawater instantly enveloped his entire body. Wu Xiangnan adjusted his breathing, and the beam of his diving light pierced the darkness, illuminating a small area ahead.
As he descended deeper, the surrounding light gradually disappeared, leaving only bottomless darkness. He glanced down at the depth gauge—150 meters.
"This place... really has an entrance?" he wondered, but the signal indicated the location below.
Just then, a white figure swept past him—it was a knight.
The knight was not wearing any diving equipment, yet he moved freely in the deep sea, without even his clothes being moved by the current, as if he and the seawater were in different spaces.
He glanced back at Wu Xiangnan, signaling him to follow.
The two continued to descend until—
300 m.
Suddenly, Wu Xiangnan's diving light shone on something, and his pupils contracted sharply.
—A mirror appeared on the seabed.
No, to be precise, the entire seabed has become a gigantic mirror!
The mirror's surface was smooth and pristine, seemingly boundless, as if covering the entire seabed of the Sea of Japan. Their figures were reflected in the mirror, yet subtly distorted, like a projection of another world.
The knight hovered above the mirror and reached out to lightly touch it.
"Om-"
Ripples spread across the mirror's surface, like ripples breaking the stillness of water with a pebble, spreading out in concentric circles.
Wu Xiangnan swam closer and stared in shock at the scene: "This...this is the entrance to the human circle?"
The knight nodded: "This might be the divine artifact 'Yata no Kagami'. Takamagahara may have used it to create the human world."
...
Deep within the ruins,
The faint sound of footsteps echoed between the dim stone walls.
Lin Qiye stood beside a broken stone pillar, his fingertips gently tapping the stone surface, a faint smile playing on his lips.
"That mysterious person entered first; we don't know if he's friend or foe, he's quite dangerous..." he murmured to himself, then looked up, a sly glint in his eyes. "Let me find him first!"
As soon as he finished speaking, he raised his hand and waved—
"Om-"
Space distorted slightly, and an illusory portal unfolded beside him, with a sign on the door frame: "Gods' Mental Hospital".
The next second, dozens of figures wearing blue and white striped hospital gowns filed out of the door.
Zhang Yun leaned against the wall, watching this scene, his mouth twitching wildly, his shoulders shaking from trying to suppress his laughter.
Lin Qiye coughed lightly and said seriously, "Mission objective: Find a man wearing a black trench coat and a hat, and prevent him from damaging anything in the ruins."
The patients nodded in unison, then scattered in all directions, their movements surprisingly agile for someone with a mental illness.