SS CH6

Wanghaichao (Watching the Ocean Tide)—it truly lived up to its name.

Seeing the surface of the underground river drawing ever closer, Ye Fusheng yanked Xie Li into his embrace and struck a palm toward the water, intending to kick up a pillar of water to alter the momentum of their fall. However, his palm force vanished without a trace, like a clay ox entering the sea. Cursing inwardly, he only had enough time to tell Xie Li to hold his breath before the two of them plunged into the water together.

The currents surged from all directions, far from the tranquility the surface of the river had displayed. It practically carried a force capable of crushing dead wood and breaking dry rot. Even more unluckily, there was a powerful suction force beneath the water that almost twisted the undercurrents into a vortex. Holding firmly onto Xie Li, Ye Fusheng was swept down by the undercurrent. After a dizzying, disorienting barrage of impacts, he crashed heavily against a rock, a sharp pain shooting through his spine. He had no idea how much time had passed.

The water pressure around them suddenly eased. Relying on his night-vision eyes, Ye Fusheng barely managed to discern that this was an underwater cave. Inside, it twisted and turned with countless bends, and hidden channels diverted the water flow, barely affording them a chance to catch their breath. As for that reckless brute, he had probably really gone and fed the fishes.

Having suffered such torment, his injured leg began to throb with a piercing, bone-deep pain. Ye Fusheng didn’t even frown. He felt the inner pocket of his robes to ensure the brocade pouch was still there, then looked down to see Xie Li struggling to lift his head from his embrace. Only then did he finally let out a sigh of relief.

The little rabbit brat had choked on a few mouthfuls of water. Right now, he sat beside him clutching the Duanshui Dao, as obedient as a hedgehog stripped of its quills. Unable to keep his hands to himself, Ye Fusheng pinched the boy’s cheek and sighed, “I’ve seen people rushing to the market, but I’ve never seen someone rushing to reincarnate. May I ask the Young Manor Lord, were you trying to learn from the Buddha sacrificing himself to feed the fishes? Or have you read too many storybooks and thought you’d definitely find a way out of a desperate situation and conveniently stumble upon an expert’s secret manual? Is a single blade really more important than your life?”

Clutching the Duanshui Dao tightly, Xie Li stubbornly refused to let go, muttering in a low voice, “Yes.”

Ye Fusheng shook his head. “You’re just like your father. A one-track mind with the stubborn temper of a donkey.”

Hearing this, Xie Li glared at him. “Who gave you the courage to recklessly criticize the Manor Lord?”

“A drop of water received in need is repaid with an overflowing spring. The grace of saving your life is immense! Never mind scolding your dad a bit—having you call me ‘Dad’ wouldn’t even be going too far, you little brat!” Ye Fusheng shook his head and sighed. “If I had a son like you, beating you three meals a day wouldn’t be excessive. Out of everything in the world to seek, you just had to seek death!”

Xie Li transformed into a silent gourd, stubbornly refusing to utter another word. Ye Fusheng leaned against the wall and stood up, sweeping his gaze around. The dim interior of the cave actually worked to his advantage right now. A damp, gloomy wind blew in from somewhere unknown. He held his breath, listened for a moment, and said, “The sound of the wind is coming from over there. Let’s go.”

Xie Li let out a sneeze, shivering violently as he hugged the Duanshui Dao. Ye Fusheng tilted his head back and rolled his eyes. Reaching into his robes, he dug around and pulled out a water-logged packet of ginger candy. Holding it out, he offered sincerely, “Will you make do with this?”

Xie Li: “…No, thank you.”

Dragging his rather stiff right leg, Ye Fusheng held Xie Li’s hand and waded through the water cave. Arriving before the entrance of another tunnel, Ye Fusheng crouched down, touched the moss on the ground, and praised in admiration, “Xie Manor Lord truly possesses incredible qinggong.”

Xie Li didn’t understand. Ye Fusheng pointed at the thick layer of moss and said, “Look closely at the top of this.”

Extending inward from the cave entrance grew thick, lush moss. It was soft, an inch long, and slippery to the touch. Beneath the moss was a marsh-like wetland; even a pebble tossed into it would instantly sink. Yet, atop this moss lay a very faint line of footprints. They appeared to have been left by a man, and the depressed edges were completely neat without the slightest slant. Someone had likely passed through here over a long period, stepping perfectly onto the exact same spots every single time, forming these prints over the years.

Who could frequently enter and exit the forbidden grounds of Duanshui Manor?

“The footprints only face inward, meaning there must be a way out if we go in from here.” Ye Fusheng crouched down. “Get on.”

Xie Li hesitated for a moment, then strapped the Duanshui Dao to his back and firmly wrapped his arms around Ye Fusheng’s neck. Ye Fusheng visually measured the area covered by the moss, and the corners of his lips curled up. Xie Li only felt his vision blur, and in the very next moment, his forehead smacked right into an inverted stalactite.

An utterly insincere apology drifted over: “My bad, I forgot I had a person on my back.”

Xie Li: “…”

He blinked, forcing his tears back down. However, he felt the movement beneath him stop. Ye Fusheng had already carried him past the mossy area and stepped firmly onto solid ground.

In the next moment, Ye Fusheng’s right leg gave out, and his entire body tilted to the right, dropping to a kneel. Xie Li hurriedly jumped off his back. In the pitch black, unable to see the situation clearly, he asked anxiously and frantically, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. You’re too heavy, and my knee couldn’t take it.”

Xie Li: “…”

The pain in his right leg grew increasingly intense. Both his knee and ankle joints began to burn and swell, almost draining him of the strength to walk. Ye Fusheng tossed the remaining soggy ginger candy whole into his mouth, reached out to tap a few acupoints, and massaged his meridians a couple of times before reaching out to grab Xie Li.

Xie Li held onto Ye Fusheng’s palm, which was entirely covered in cold sweat. In the darkness, he couldn’t see a thing clearly; he could only grip the man’s hand tightly, following his every step closely.

Ye Fusheng sat down on the ground and looked left and right. This was a spacious stone chamber. All four walls were made of polished bluestone slabs, yet they were mottled with deep gouges, while straight ahead…

“Young Manor Lord, take five steps to the left. There’s a large stone there. If you step onto it, you’ll be able to reach the lamp.”

Xie Li did as he was told. Inside was solidified oil, but unfortunately, neither of them carried a fire folder. And even if they did, after all that tossing about in the water, it would be useless anyway.

“What do I do with this?” Xie Li tried prying at it a few times but couldn’t get it down.

Ye Fusheng instructed, “Push the lampstand upward.”

With a kacha sound, accompanied by the grinding noise of a mechanism turning, Xie Li suddenly felt the wall he was leaning against flip over. His entire body was shoved inside following the momentum. In the next moment, the wall closed back up seamlessly, as if nothing had ever happened.

He was still young, after all. Suddenly finding himself in an pitch-black, unfamiliar place where he couldn’t even see his own fingers, and with the only person he knew cut off behind a stone door, he instantly panicked. He frantically slapped the wall and yelled at the top of his lungs, “What happened!? You…”

His shouts couldn’t penetrate the thousand-jin heavy wall. Ye Fusheng supported himself against the ground with one hand and slowly stood up. His gaze pierced through the darkness and landed on the wall straight ahead, where the clattering sound of iron chains echoed—someone had stood up.

A woman. A very wretched and disheveled woman.

Her hands were bound by long shackles that clattered noisily as she walked. Her long hair was as messy as a bird’s nest, and her body was wrapped in a tattered, torn robe. She was so emaciated she had almost lost her human shape.

Ye Fusheng sighed, “You are truly a beauty, but alas…”

With a crash, his hand caught a heavy iron chain swinging straight at his face. Who could have known that this skin-and-bones woman possessed such terrifying strength? He was actually swung up by the momentum and smashed heavily against the wall!

Slippery as a loach, Ye Fusheng yanked his hand free from the loop of the iron chain. He kicked off the wall with his left foot, borrowing the force to leap behind the woman, reaching out to strike the back of her neck. The woman leaned her upper body forward and simultaneously kicked backward with one leg. However, Ye Fusheng caught it perfectly. With a lift and a twist, he threw the woman a full zhang (ten feet) away.

With a crisp kala crack, the woman forcefully popped her dislocated ankle back into place. The two iron chains shook and lunged toward him. Their attacks were like thunderbolts and as swift as fierce winds, arriving right in front of Ye Fusheng’s face in the blink of an eye.

It was pitch-black here, yet she could always flawlessly pinpoint Ye Fusheng’s exact location. Either she suffered from a strange eye condition like Ye Fusheng, or… she had simply grown far too accustomed to this place.

As the fierce wind blasted his face, Ye Fusheng struck out like lightning. Both hands grabbed the two iron chains as he flipped mid-air. Pulled by his force, the woman stumbled two steps forward, but she smoothly twisted her waist. The iron chains broke free from Ye Fusheng’s grip, spinning like blooming lotus flowers, filling his vision with afterimages. Ye Fusheng narrowed his eyes and actually thrust his hand straight into the afterimages. With a hook and a yank, he caught one of the iron chains. Using his right palm as a blade, he chopped diagonally down onto the chain, emitting a resonant clang of metal.

A burst of loud laughter escaped the woman’s mouth. Chains forged from refined iron were incredibly difficult to sever even with swords and sabers, let alone a flesh-and-blood palm!

However, the chain snapped cleanly under Ye Fusheng’s palm.

Catching the severed half in his hand, Ye Fusheng slid forward like a fish gliding through water. In a mere instant, he brushed past the woman, and the half-chain wrapped tightly around her neck, forcing her to painfully tilt her head back.

The throat is a vital point, but Ye Fusheng didn’t share the hobby of ruthlessly destroying flowers. He tapped two major acupoints on her body with one hand, gave the chain a flick, and the woman was sent flying.

The pain in his right leg made it impossible to stand steadily, so Ye Fusheng simply sat down on the floor: “This Madam, from an exchange of blows grows friendship. Can we sit down and talk peacefully now?”

“Scram!” The woman propped up her upper body, but unfortunately, after struggling for a long time, she couldn’t manage to stand, coughing endlessly with a hand over her mouth.

She lifted her head. Traces of her elegant and dignified features could still be vaguely seen, but who knows how long she had been trapped in this sunless place, reducing her to a state neither human nor ghost. The seven parts of beauty she once possessed had been completely stripped away. No matter what kind of beauty she used to be, she was no longer pretty now.

“Did Xie Wuyi die, or was Duanshui Manor wiped out, for an outsider like you to be allowed to break into Wanghaichao?” The woman’s eyes were like a falcon’s, glaring at Ye Fusheng with gloomy vigilance.

It was rare for Ye Fusheng to examine a woman so rudely. From head to toe, he didn’t miss a single crease in her clothes, ultimately letting his gaze fall on her hand—that left hand. It only had four fingers. The pinky finger was cleanly severed at the base. The wound was old and jagged, looking as if it had been bitten off alive by some wild beast.

From their brief exchange just now, it was evident that this woman excelled in using whip-like weapons, and was extremely proficient at it. If she hadn’t been restricted by the heavy shackles and suffered such massive physical depletion, it wouldn’t have been easy for Ye Fusheng to take her down.

Nine fingers, excels with the whip, Duanshui Manor… In the entire Jianghu, there was only one woman who fit all these criteria.

“Rumor has it that the Manor Lord Madam of Duanshui Manor died of illness two years ago. The immortal couple everyone once envied ultimately left behind only a widower and an orphan, waiting alone in an empty manor. How pitiable! However…” Ye Fusheng walked toward her. “Why is Madam Xie, who should be dead, down here?”

Up close, every subtle expression on the woman’s face became much clearer. Her eyebrows and eyes were trembling imperceptibly. The little blood remaining in her face drained rapidly, and a flash of agony crossed her eyes. For a moment, Ye Fusheng almost thought she was going to cry, but she slowly calmed down again.

There are two kinds of people in this world. One kind can step on dog dung and find gold with their eyes closed, while the other chokes on their own teeth just drinking cold water.

Whether it was the Young Manor Lord of Duanshui Manor or anyone else, in Chu Xiwei’s eyes, they were no different from the weeds by the side of the road. He didn’t recklessly jump down after him to save a life, but simply because that little rabbit brat was still hugging the Duanshui Dao… Unfortunately, someone intercepted him midway.

That person’s movement techniques were bizarrely fast, and his qinggong was more than a whole level above his own. Chu Xiwei intended to spare him a glance so he could settle the score at a later date, but before he could even blink, the man had disappeared beneath the water along with the little brat.

The great river changed in the blink of an eye, full of raging undercurrents. Chu Xiwei only hesitated for a moment before decisively using his neigong to protect his body, switching his breathing to internal breath. Moving along with the river’s undercurrents, he was quickly swept into a water cave.

The mud in the water cave was damp and slippery, but there were only footprints of one person on the ground—small ones, clearly belonging to a child. Judging from the lingering traces in the cave, that unknown expert was clearly still alive, and the little brat was likely fine as well. At this thought, Chu Xiwei’s tightly knit brow finally relaxed.

He moved silently, drifting like a ghost. Treading over water without leaving a trace, he crossed that dangerous patch of moss and entered a pitch-black tunnel. Pressing his ear to the wall, he listened for a moment and detected the sounds of fighting not far ahead.

Chu Xiwei made a prompt decision, raising his foot to move forward. Unexpectedly, a deafening crash erupted from the rock wall to his left. The entire water cave trembled violently, and loose stalactites came crashing down with a clatter. He froze for a second, then raised a hand to push open a stone brick. His body suddenly deflated, flattening against the ceiling’s blind spot like a piece of paper.

The bizarre tremor came and went just as quickly. Chu Xiwei darted out like a phantom shadow. The wall on his left had partially collapsed, revealing a gap about a foot wide. He squeezed his way through.