Chapter 129: Charging into the Ghost God Domain
Others rushed outward, fleeing the stone ship's Ghost God Domain for dear life, as if afraid their parents had shortchanged them by two legs. Only Chen Shi and the others bucked the trend, charging straight toward the surging Ghost God Domain.
Many brushed past them, surprised gazes landing on them. By now, Li Xiaozheng had donned a mask—a cheap pig-faced one snatched from a peddler's stall for half-grown kids, its plump round face perfectly hiding his features.
After all, he knew the experts from the great clans well and feared being recognized.
Li Xiaozheng summoned his primordial spirit to shield Chen Shi, Li Tianqing, and Blackie Pot. He thought to himself: "These two kids and this dog have freakishly bold guts. If it were me, no way I'd board the ship right now!"
Last time he boarded the stone ship with Li Tianqing, he knew its horrors all too well.
On the ship, nothing could be touched—not even the ground with your feet.
The slightest contact would instantly trigger the stone ship's Ghost God Domain, petrifying everything!
With his God Descent Realm cultivation, he could slow the petrification rate, but merely delay it.
His profound cultivation gave him keen senses; he could even feel his blood flow slowing, his heart function decaying rapidly, his bone marrow halting blood production and slowly turning to stone.
His joints grew rigid bit by bit, his hair transforming into stone strands one by one. Worst of all, his primordial spirit—his Divine Embryo—was petrifying!
Even his true qi turned sluggish, hard to circulate!
In the face of such horror, anyone would feel overwhelming terror—the dread of sensing death creep ever closer!
Many fear not death itself, but clearly feeling it draw near, nearer still, slowly stripping away your life... that fear directly crushes the Dao heart!
Buzz—
With a bizarre vibration, they plunged into the stone ship's Ghost God Domain.
The rundown shipyard before their eyes turned pristine and new. The cliffside mooring became a grand wharf, and the cliff-perched stone ship transformed into a Great Ming treasure ship, sails and banners billowing in the wind!
Splash!
The parched riverbed filled abruptly with raging waters, waves battering the banks. The Great Ming treasure ship rocked and listed toward the De River, on the verge of sliding in!
"Time's critical—Blackie Pot, track the time!"
Chen Shi sprinted toward the Great Ming treasure ship, speaking at top speed. "Total of three quarters of an hour. Remind us at the final quarter!"
Blackie Pot barked once.
At that moment, Xu family elder Xu Changsheng had shot into the sky, escaping the Great Ming treasure ship's Ghost God Domain scope, heart still pounding with aftershock.
His strength could hold off petrification for a time, but old as he was, he prized his life above all else and fled first chance.
Gazing down, he thought: "Wonder if my Xu clansmen escaped? Probably... just lose a few disciples. Huh—why are those folks charging against the flow?"
His eyes locked on Chen Shi and company. The trio and dog were swimming upstream toward the main vessel, already at its base.
"That middle-aged man—his silhouette seems familiar..."
His face shifted. He grasped the crux at once. "Governor Li's got real tricks! That brat's using us as battering rams!"
His expression flickered uncertainly before he gnashed his teeth and dove downward, beelining for the Xu clansmen!
"Li Xiaozheng, you dream of duping me—duping the Xu family?"
Chen Shi and the others reached the Great Ming treasure ship. Li Xiaozheng opened his mouth to warn against touching it but swallowed the words, realizing the ship's Ghost God Domain was already unfurled.
Chen Shi scooped up Blackie Pot and vaulted aboard. Li Xiaozheng and Li Tianqing boarded as well.
Li Xiaozheng enveloped them in his God Descent Realm mana for protection and immediately sensed the Ghost God Domain's onslaught—his mana growing faintly滞滞, as if petrifying too.
He poured everything into resisting the Ghost God Domain, but the death-nearing chill returned, fear gripping his heart.
He envisioned it: three quarters from now, primordial spirit petrified, body dead!
Chen Shi and Li Tianqing now felt the Great Ming treasure ship's Ghost God Domain's effects too, clearly discerning their own deadlines.
Such was the treasure ship domain's eerie trait.
The very instant one entered the domain, each person's fate was stamped plain as day.
Petrified folk littered the treasure ship's deck, alongside primordial spirits towering dozens of zhang and infant souls a chi tall—all fossilized.
Chen Shi hurried along and nearly slipped on a sphere. Peering down, he saw it was a petrified golden core.
Many such cores dotted the ground.
Likely the petrified golden cores of Golden Core Realm experts who boarded.
"Follow me!"
This was Li Tianqing's fifth boarding of the treasure ship. He led rapidly from the front. "I've cracked all prohibitions to the Stone Shoal Head except the talisman array! Avoid other spots—those harbor dire seals!"
Others couldn't crack seals, but Li Tianqing was a walking library, knowledge vast as the sea. His prior four trips focused on breaking ship seals, foiled each time by Li clansmen deadweight leading to total wipes.
His fourth, alongside Li Xiaozheng, went far smoother. They scoured en route and almost claimed the Stone Shoal Head—until stumped by Chen Shi's grandfather's talisman array, falling short.
He guided them deftly through the ship's pavilions.
Chen Shi glanced about. The tower ship stretched forty-four zhang long, eighteen zhang wide. The deck bristled with colossal ballistae, bolts arm-thick, heads basin-wide, tails chained to fine black iron links coiled heavily atop the machines.
What monstrous quarry demanded such fearsome arrows?
Li Tianqing hustled them into a structure, down twisting stairs, into the hold.
Cabins lined both sides for sailors and Ming troops, flanking a central corridor sloping down, strewn with stone figures in every pose.
Li Tianqing strode ahead, threading the statues. Chen Shi kept pace, stealing looks into the rooms, jolted. "Internal space this huge?"
The glimpsed quarters held bizarrely expansive innards, rivaling his family courtyard.
Yet adjacent rooms looked one-room cramped—while he saw roughly ten times that!
Chen Shi slapped a wall at random. Hidden talismans emerged inside: a gigantic taotie atop the ceiling, maw yawning—the mouth precisely the room door!
"So that's it!"
Chen Shi got it. Taotie: legendary ravenous beast, eats nonstop, no waste, belly an endless void.
Great Ming talisman masters etched taotie sigils in cabins, vastly expanding cramped quarters to fit more souls!
"Little Ten, keep up!"
Li Tianqing called over his shoulder.
Chen Shi hastened. Ahead yawned openness—a grand hall eighteen zhang square, four or five high. Midway hung a vast white tiger hide, seven seats arrayed with chairs beside.
The seven chairs: immense stone carvings. They stood not yet knee-high to them.
Star maps draped the chair backs.
"Beware the tiger skin!"
Li Tianqing raced on. "Don't lock eyes with the tiger skin eyes, lest the white tiger revives—tiger head on man's frame, primordial spirit realm, brutal beyond measure, slaying on sight! Trigger the White Tiger God and the chairs birth its seven mansions: Kui, Lou, Wei, Mao, Bi, Zi, Shen—massacre ensues, none flee!"
Chen Shi kept eyes low from the tiger skin, sidelong scanning: severed petrified limbs everywhere, gnaw marks galore.
Plainly, past intruders triggered the beast and perished horribly.
Li Tianqing ushered them through Western Palace White Tiger Hall into Eastern Palace Azure Dragon Hall, dragonbone suspended (true or false?), seven chairs for eastern stars.
Chen Shi mused: "East and west palaces mean north and south too. Other paths hit these halls for sure."
They pressed on sans probing, past Eastern Palace Azure Dragon Hall into a veggie patch.
Yes—a thriving vegetable garden inside the Great Ming treasure ship!
Chen Shi goggled. Lush rows brimmed with melons, fruits, greens aplenty!
Hundreds of ridges, each three chi six cun wide, fifty-sixty zhang long!
Chen Shi nabbed a ruby tomato, chomped—tart-sweet burst, saliva surging, crisp and thirst-quenching.
Field-fresh eats still viable!
He craned up: overhead in ship-space loomed a colossal primordial spirit head, swallowtail whiskers, locks exploding outward, eyes twin fireball suns lighting the patch sans true celestial bodies.
"Six hours on, those spirit eyes shift to moonlight—deadly peril!"
Li Tianqing blurted rapidly. "Moonlit by that skull risks fiendish taint!"
Beyond stretched cropland: corn, millet, potatoes, wheat, rice.
They dashed through amid clucks, quacks, moos, baas, oinks, neighs—to a stockyard packed with livestock, all bizarrely alive!
These spots stunned Chen Shi a hundredfold beyond the dragon-tiger halls.
At last, the Great Ming treasure ship's heart: an ancient temple in the hold.
Towering ship-temple, solemn grandeur.
On the fore-steps, they felt dwarfed.
Chen Shi tailed Li Tianqing up the steps to the templeface, head-tilting at the lintel.
"Stone Shoal Niangniang Temple!"
He composed himself, entering after Li Tianqing.
The nave enshrined Stone Shoal Niangniang's true form. Ere crossing the threshold, Chen Shi grunted unbidden, soul quaking, true qi dimming, mind icing over!
Terror divine-demonic aura billowed from within, shrinking him instantly—the temple god vast as eternity, self a mote adrift.
Stoutest Dao heart pulverizes before such gulf!
Then Li Xiaozheng's aura blanketed, parrying Stone Shoal Niangniang's pressure. Chen Shi normalized, but Li Xiaozheng's pallor showed his strain under the temple's weight.
They entered the hall.
Foremost: the beauty head on the central Divine Shrine.
Chen Shi's prior briefing pictured a beauty-carved stone, but reality dwarfed imagination—table-huge!
Table-sized stone front-center shrine, features exquisite, painting-born beauty, coiffure archaic, kerchief-bound tresses.
Scorch scars pitted the surface, flaking beauty's face—yet fine scrutiny evoked lost glory peerless.
Before Stone Shoal Head: strewn petrified corpses, shattered—not post-petrify slain, but spell-slain on entry!
Chen Shi motioned halt, scanning. Talismans blanketed the hall.
Finer than ship-giants, these brushstroke-delicate, needled across surfaces.
Talismans, scripts, god-tongue logs.
Myriad complexities fused seamless; nudge one, lightning doom! Entry sparked them—walls, dome, floor aglow, yellow talisman beams erect, scarlet runes blazing amid gold.
Ears filled with god-demon murmurs, stray thoughts rioting.
Chen Shi circled gaze: Grandpa's opus—all talisman breeds!
Some formations cracked, flawed.
"Grant a quarter-hour. I'll break it."
Chen Shi dropped his book-box, crouched, drew small knife. Blackie Pot pressed forward for blood.
Li Tianqing inked the stone.
Chen Shi brush-ready, Li Tianqing ink-bearing; one step front. Chen Shi eyed hovering sigil when rear erupted footfalls—dozen-plus Xu clansmen sedan-borne hastening hither.
Sedan-heart: whitehair elder Xu Changsheng, nightmare-bound. Young woman flankside wielded rat-tail tip, kneading his brow now-then.
"My peddled rat-tail tip!"
Chen Shi froze. Rat-tail tip wove seamless with Xu Cloud Dream Great Law!
Xu Changsheng nightmare-mired, dreamclouds drifting; elder's spirit grinned jolly, sleeves afloat, cloud-shod, ferrying all templeward.
Mirror-gleam flared then, darting fleet; six-seven folk mirrored to templefront!
Zhang elder Zhang Wenshu Zhangfolk-along alit, beard-stroking guffaw: "Word filial nephew Xiaozheng trapped in Great Ming treasure ship rent my heart knifelike—I rallied Zhang disciples rescueward! Little dreamed—"
Eyes murderous, Void Piercing Mirror summoned, griefmask: "—nephew perished shipboard!"
Boom!
Great Ming treasure ship canted, De River-bound slide. Ship-stood giant wood-plaques wind-talisman'd; sigils woke, sails ballooning windfull.
Treasure ship river-borne; prow-mountains rushed, torrent roared, mega-kun cleaved path fore.
De River torrent plunged cliff-pierce underworld channel.
Channel-top: True King Tomb precinct.
本章完。