Chapter 305
May.
Zhenlong Divine Palace.
Deep within the Jade Sea, it lay on the ocean floor, tens of thousands of meters below the surface.
In the depths of that lightless abyss, a massive circular archway rose in silence, radiating a soft white fluorescence that lit the surrounding seabed for several li.
The archway was a striking composition: the upper half formed from a giant pearlescent scallop shell, its inner surface fracturing the white glow into scattered motes of light; the lower half a dense tangle of dark-red coral, deceptively soft in appearance yet laced with toxins and hard as stone.
The archway rose a thousand meters tall and spread seven to eight hundred meters wide, backing onto a vast shadow. Within that gloom, the faint outline of a three-story white palace trimmed in gold—ancient, exquisite—stood in silence.
A long jade staircase swept upward to the palace entrance. Fish-headed, human-bodied believers in long robes climbed it slowly, prostrating themselves with every step. White jade pillars engraved with silver patterns flanked the staircase on both sides, pale-scaled flood dragons coiled around each one.
They were the guards and overseers of this place.
As the dense throng of believers continued to kowtow, a faint vibration rippled through the seawater far above.