Chapter 244
Chapter 244
At once, Roundy and I saw the rope in Old Cao’s hand writhe through the water like a living, agile viper, “swimming” toward the bottom of the pool…
The end in his hand kept feeding gently forward.
“This pool really is deep! I’ve already let out fourteen or fifteen meters, but I still can’t feel the bottom. The rope might not even be long enough.”
Old Cao looked surprised.
I knew that although his phoenix rope looked short and could be carried easily around his waist, it could actually extend to about twenty meters!
It was truly remarkable.
But if the pool was more than twenty meters deep, there was probably nothing we could do…
What did a depth of twenty meters mean?
It was nearly deep enough to swallow a seven-story building!
All I could do was pray silently that the pool was not quite that absurdly deep. Even if it connected to a crack in the underground rock or some narrow fissure in the mountain, I hoped it at least had a bottom so we could learn what was down there.
What exactly was hidden in this Yellow Springs pool where three forms of yin converged?
I had a powerful intuition that something strange was inside!
Finally…
Old Cao suddenly exclaimed with delight,
“The rope reached the bottom! This Yellow Springs pool is about seventeen meters deep.”
“That’s great!”
I grew excited too and stared fixedly at the pool.
Old Cao did not stop. He fed another two meters or so of rope into the pool before halting. Gripping the last meter in his hand, he smiled and said,
“Good. I still have three meters left. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to handle anything we found.”
That made sense. If the rope had been exactly as long as the pool was deep, it could only have served as a measuring tool. He needed extra length to bind something at the bottom and haul it up.
Old Cao slowly closed his eyes.
Relying entirely on spiritual perception, he controlled the rope’s leading end by thought more than ten meters below. Like a snake, it wound carefully across the bottom of the pool, searching for anything strange or evil…
Roundy and I held our breath and focused. We watched the surroundings for Old Cao in case some evil spirit or monster suddenly rushed out to ambush us. We had destroyed all the humanoid spider creatures, but in a sinister place like this, there was no such thing as being too careful!
Fortunately, everything went smoothly and no other evil creature appeared.
Perhaps the evil cultivator who had created this damned place believed that hiding it so deep underground and leaving more than a dozen humanoid spider creatures was enough.
Besides, the Yellow Springs pool itself was very deep. Ordinary people would be helpless before it, and even typical cultivators would have no solution.
So no other defenses had been left.
All of a sudden!
Old Cao’s eyes snapped open, and delight flashed across his face.
“I’ve got something! I can feel the end of the rope touching a supernatural object. It carries a very unusual power.”
I hurriedly asked,
“Is it living or dead? Can you bind it and drag it up?”
Old Cao shook his head.
“I can’t tell yet. Let me try first… Huh, wait! Why was that so easy? And it seems to be very small. That’s strange.”
He looked almost unable to believe it.
The end of the rope at the bottom of the pool had probably already coiled successfully around the supernatural object!
Roundy flapped its wings twice and stared excitedly at the water.
“If you’ve got it, then pull, Old Cao! Hurry and haul the thing out so we can see what it is. Some evil cultivator went to all this trouble to set up so many bizarre things deep underground.”
I lightly smacked the fat bird’s head.
“Stop rushing him! Let Old Cao reel in the rope in peace. We just need to wait patiently. The pool is seventeen meters deep, so it’ll take time to pull it up. And we have to be ready in case it’s dangerous the instant it leaves the water.”
Roundy muttered impatiently,
“I know, I know. You nag too much. And Wu, if you hit my head again, you’ll suffer the consequences. Lord Bird isn’t letting this go!”
I chuckled and ignored it.
The stupid bird had made that sort of “threat” more times than I could count. I always let the words go in one ear and out the other…
None of us spoke again. Silence filled the cavern.
The only sound was Old Cao pulling the rope from the water.
Before long, he warned us,
“Two meters left before it breaks the surface! Be careful.”
Roundy and I immediately readied ourselves, our curiosity also reaching its peak.
“Out of the water! Hah!”
Old Cao exhaled sharply, stepped back several paces, then flicked his wrist and hauled upward.
The thing bound in the phoenix rope came flying out of the Yellow Springs pool before us…
Splash!
A small spray of muddy yellow water burst from the turbid surface. The object really did appear to be small.
An instant later, a pitch-black object appeared in midair before us.
Then all three of us, Old Cao included, stared in disbelief.
The thing tightly bound by the rope was a palm-sized black iron token!
Roundy was the first to cry out.
“What’s going on? The strange thing at the bottom of this pool… is just a lousy iron token?”
Old Cao relaxed the force in his hands and gently lowered the object to the ground on the rope. It landed with a heavy thud.
Something stirred in my mind. I sensed that the scene was not quite normal.
Old Cao’s command of the phoenix rope was masterful. A black iron token barely larger than his palm should have landed as light as a feather after he bled off its momentum.
Yet it had still struck the ground with the muffled thud of a heavy object!
Sure enough, Old Cao spoke in a startled, uncertain tone the next moment.
“This thing is abnormally heavy! It doesn’t feel like ordinary metal. I’ve carried coffins for most of my life, so I’m exceptionally sensitive to weight. I could already tell something was off when I wrapped the rope around it and pulled it through the water. Once it left the Yellow Springs pool, its weight suddenly increased even further.”
That sudden increase was probably why Old Cao had failed to bleed off enough force, causing the token to thud against the ground.
Old Cao dragged the token on the rope until it lay near his feet. Roundy and I moved closer to inspect it.
It was indeed a black metal token, shaped like an elongated diamond. Its upper end formed a triangle, and the whole token was wider at the top and narrower at the bottom.
“Damn, seriously? Someone made all these complicated, bizarre things for one lousy token?”
Roundy’s bird eyes widened. It found the idea both unbelievable and contemptible.
Once he saw that it posed no danger, Old Cao unwound the phoenix rope from it. We could now examine it more clearly.
In addition to its shape, we could see strange talismans carved across its surface. Unlike the talismans concealing the flying-head creatures in the first underground chamber beneath the abandoned grave outside, these carried no evil or sinister air.
They seemed to be ordinary Daoist talismans, only extremely profound and obscure, making them difficult to understand.
I studied them for quite a while and recognized only one. It meant “convergence” and could absorb and contain all sorts of spiritual energy of heaven and earth, yin energy, earth baleforce, and more…
After hearing my explanation, Old Cao nodded slightly.
“Then it makes sense! Just as you said earlier, Xiao Wu, three forms of yin converge here. All that yin energy was actually meant to nurture this iron token.”
Exactly!
I continued, my voice turning puzzled.
“But neither the token’s aura nor the talismans on it are evil or sinister. That’s rather strange!”
Everything we had seen on the way here made it virtually certain that an evil cultivator had created this place. No righteous cultivator would ever produce damned things like flying-head creatures and humanoid spider creatures.
Yet the final aim of an evil cultivator, the object being nurtured here, was a mysterious black iron token that was not evil at all…
The fat bird spoke up again.
“Wu, Old Cao, Lord Bird suddenly thinks this black iron token looks familiar. I probably saw one when I lived in the Northeast…”
Really?
Delight surged through me, and I hurriedly said,
“That’s great! Fat bird, think carefully. What exactly is this strange little black iron token?”
Roundy stood on the ground with its head cocked, staring at the token for a long while. A rare expression of pain suddenly surfaced in its eyes, and it could only shake its head.
“I really can’t remember. I have a vague impression, but the moment I try to dig deeper, my head hurts. The harder I think, the worse it gets. Forget it, forget it… Lord Bird’s head is spinning. This is infuriating.”
It shook its head and backed away several steps, then turned its head aside huffily, unwilling to look at the token again.
Although I constantly bickered with the damned fat bird, it did not seem to be faking its discomfort. Perhaps the mysterious black token truly had stirred some terribly unpleasant memory, even if that memory itself was already lost.
“All right, all right, stupid bird. If you can’t remember, don’t force it. It’s only a lousy little iron token.”
Smiling, I rubbed its fluffy head.
Roundy gave a disgruntled grunt.
Old Cao reached down and picked up the token, an odd look flashing through his eyes.
“Just as I thought! This palm-sized token weighs more than twenty jin. It’s far heavier than ordinary steel or other metals.”
What?
Such a small token weighed more than twenty jin!
In disbelief, I took it from Old Cao. My hand immediately sank beneath its weight. It really was heavy. If I had not been prepared, I might have dropped it…
“What in the world is this thing? It’s made from a mysterious metal and has been absorbing vast amounts of extreme yin energy from a Yellow Springs pool deep underground.”
I turned it over and over again.
Old Cao patted my shoulder.
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll take it out with us. Ask Immortal Lady Qin when you get home. She’ll certainly know! There probably aren’t many things in this world she doesn’t know.”
Uh…
There he went again!
He really was Master’s number-one fanboy.