Chapter 161: A Formation, a Stone Cave, a Skeleton...

Beneath the pool’s surface.

Shen Xiuhan guided the azure bubble, sinking slowly into the depths.

The light around him dimmed and dimmed until only the blue glow remained, casting a faint halo through the water.

Silt, loose stones, water-weeds — all drifted past. Now and then a fish swam by, flicking its tail alongside the bubble.

Before long, he reached the bottom.

His gaze swept left and right. His brow furrowed.

“Strange…”

The faint golden mote was marking a spot on the mud-wall directly to his left.

Yet all he could see was silt, rubble, and tangled weeds. Nothing else.

He tried pushing the wall. The mud was ice-cold and rock-hard. It didn’t budge.

Then, unwilling to give up, he rapped on it.

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

Through the water, he couldn’t tell whether the wall was hollow behind.

Shen Xiuhan withdrew his hand, pondered for a moment, then felt a sudden spark.

“Of course. If mortal eyes can’t see through it, then—”

The Void-Gazing Eye!

FLASH!

A flicker of gold, gone in an instant.

In his left eye.

The uncanny comma-jewel pupil materialized and began to turn.

Everything around him was transformed under that gaze.

The grain of the silt, the veins of the water-weeds, the texture of the stones — all rendered in flawless, hair-fine detail.

His focus settled at last on a palm-sized stone slab, half-embedded in the mud-and-rock wall.

Its surface was furred with dark-green water-moss, its color indistinguishable from the surrounding rubble.

At a glance, utterly unremarkable — easy to overlook entirely.

But under the Void-Gazing Eye, the anomaly in its material was immediately exposed.

This was no ordinary rock. It was a fine-grained, faintly luminous exotic stone, as different from the coarse mud-wall as jade from clay.

Shen Xiuhan’s gaze sharpened. He sent a thread of force to his fingertip and gave the slab a light prod.

SWISH!

In the next instant, his body went weightless. A violent, lurching sensation of displacement seized him, as though an invisible hand had wrenched him elsewhere.

The scene before his eyes transformed.

The dark pool-water vanished. In its place — a cavern, pitch-black all around, yet under the Void-Gazing Eye, every detail was crisp and clear.

Shen Xiuhan steadied himself and glanced back.

The mysterious stone slab hung in midair, emitting a faint glow.

Beyond it lay the pool he’d just left — visible through what seemed like a transparent membrane, separating the two spaces.

“Hm? This is…”

Shen Xiuhan’s gaze sharpened. He leaned in for a closer look.

From the outside, he hadn’t been able to see anything. But from within, the reverse side of the slab was laid bare.

It was carved with dense, interlocking symbols — elaborate patterns, half-seal-script, half-something-else — arranged with precise logic, like some kind of formation diagram.

At the very center sat a small depression, and embedded within it was a stone no larger than a fingernail.

Dark brown. Neither quite stone nor quite jade.

Shen Xiuhan brushed it with a fingertip. A warm, mellow sensation traveled through the touch, straight to his core.

Like a spirit-stone.

He pressed his lips together, reached into his robe, and drew out a stone of identical size. He held them side by side in his palm.

The two were virtually twins.

Only the one in the slab was dim — like an oil lamp guttering on its last dregs, its energy all but spent.

The one in his hand, by contrast, was lustrous and full, its inner reserves deep and potent.

“These are… Origin stones!”

Shen Xiuhan drew a sharp breath, surprise flashing through his eyes.

The Origin stone in his hand had been found long ago in the golden-tailed rat’s den at the foot of the Dali Mountains.

At the time, the Intelligence had noted it was useful for Astral Strength practitioners.

Now it seemed its applications went far beyond that.

Because if he wasn’t mistaken, the slab before him was a formation disc.

Its function: a concealment array — capable of hiding a space, masking its presence, and screening its qi-signature.

“No wonder no one’s found this place in all these years.”

Shen Xiuhan murmured, scanning his surroundings.

“Hidden at the bottom of a pool to begin with, then shielded by a formation that masks all traces. Without Intelligence guiding me and the Void-Gazing Eye to see through it, I could have searched a lifetime and never stumbled on this place.”

He let out a long breath, set his thoughts in order, and turned to survey the cavern properly.

But the instant he looked —

“Hm? There’s another one?”

Shen Xiuhan stared at the left-hand wall.

A short sword, no longer than a palm’s breadth, hung from a hemp cord in midair.

Its blade was solid black, reflecting no light whatsoever, its material uncanny — neither metal nor iron.

The hilt bore an identical slot, but the Origin stone within had long since been exhausted. All that remained was a tiny mound of grey-white powder that would scatter at the lightest touch.

“A sword-shaped formation disc… could this be a killing array?”

Shen Xiuhan’s gaze darted between the two walls, a tremor of realization running through him.

One concealment formation. One killing formation. One overt, one hidden. One to shield, one to strike.

The concealment array faced outward, fooling all comers. The killing array waited within, to slaughter any intruder.

Whoever had set this place up was meticulous and ruthless.

Had the killing array’s Origin stone not been depleted ages ago, the moment he touched that slab would have been his last.

A chill crawled up Shen Xiuhan’s spine. He drew a steadying breath and warned himself.

“This place is dangerous. Every step with caution.”

He rose slowly. The golden comma-jewel in his left eye turned, the Void-Gazing Eye illuminating every corner and detail with merciless clarity.

The water-cavern wasn’t large. Including the stone chamber at its far end, the whole space was no more than five or six zhang across.

The walls were slick, coated in a thin film of blue-green water-moss — cool and soft to the touch.

Water beads seeped through the ceiling, gathering to fingertip-size before dropping silently to the floor. DRIP. DRIP. The sound was crisp and hollow.

The ground was covered in a layer of fine sand. Footprints crisscrossed in every direction, varying in depth — all old traces, left who knew how many years ago.

Beyond this entrance passage, the cavern held only the single stone chamber at its end.

The chamber was perhaps three or four zhang square, its walls smooth and flat, corners sharp — clearly hewn by hand.

Inside sat a stone table and a stone pallet, both carved from the native rock. Rough. Austere.

On the table lay a slim volume. Its material was unclear, but it looked as crisp and fresh as the day it was written. On the pallet, a skeleton sat cross-legged.

The bones were arranged in perfect posture — spine straight as a pine, hands resting on the knees, palms up. Even after untold years, the figure still held the pose of deep meditation.

The moon-white Daoist robe had faded, yet the fabric remained intact. At the waist hung a small pouch of matching color, its contents unknown.

At the skeleton’s feet, a long sword lay broken into several pieces, discarded on the ground.

Shen Xiuhan stood at a distance and didn’t rush closer.

Because even from here, his eyes could count dozens of wounds across the skeleton — head to toe.

Saber-cuts. Sword-marks. Spear-holes. And several patches of blackened bone, plainly the aftermath of a virulent poison that had eaten through flesh before the end.

Clearly, this person had fled here mortally wounded and passed away in meditation.