Gurgle, gurgle!
Icy, bone-chilling water continuously surged from all directions, pressing against the hard concrete walls that surrounded her. Mo Yuan silently chanted the time in her heart, her hands gripping the rough parts of the stone wall, pushing with all her might to move her body forward.
The special ‘Aqualung’ stamp had less than 30 seconds remaining, yet the pipe still seemed endless. Mo Yuan bit her lip slightly, regretting her rash decision.
Just moments ago, after the main mission one prompt completed, she immediately turned and left the large courtyard without a second thought, ignoring the sudden sound that erupted like a nuclear explosion.
More than any of that, there was one thing she was desperate to confirm.
Although the terrain differed greatly from her memories, relying on the vaguely matching impressions and the system’s guidance, after many twists and turns, she finally found the pond in the back mountain…
Ten seconds, nine seconds, eight seconds…
A slight dizziness had already begun to cloud her mind.
Five seconds, four seconds…
A faint glimmer of light appeared in the pitch-black path ahead. Mo Yuan gritted her teeth, straining her muscles, which were already screaming with intense soreness.
Three seconds, two seconds…
Hearing the countdown, Mo Yuan drilled out of the long pipe and quickly channeled all her strength to float upwards.
“Pwah!”
Wet, icy air rushed into her lungs through her nostrils. After swimming nearly two kilometers with bated breath, Mo Yuan finally drew her first gasp of fresh air.
Drip! Drop!
Water droplets flowed across the smooth ceiling, trickling down the glistening, inverted stalactites to the ground. The surrounding darkness was eerily silent, broken only by the faint luminescence of the stone pillars. An ancient, imposing gate stood majestically within.
Mo Yuan cautiously swam to the shore.
Splash!
Water dripped onto the dark ground.
‘Jurchen script?’
After her senses scanned the surroundings, confirming no immediate danger, Mo Yuan retrieved a pair of weapons from her stamp album. She then carefully approached the gate to examine the characters carved upon it.
Though she couldn’t decipher their meaning, she had encountered this script before while researching Mount Changbai.
Mount Changbai, located in Southeast Huaxia, earned its name from the perennial snow on its main peak. This enchanting mountain range, a natural museum teeming with untold treasures, was also known as the ‘First Mountain of Guandong.’
These were merely superficial facts. In truth, it was the birthplace of the Manchu people and the ‘Dragon Vein’ of the Qing Dynasty. The concept of Dragon Veins had a long history; Huaxia had seen 24 dynasties, each with its own methods of locating these auspicious sites.
The earliest Dragon Vein of the Yellow Emperor was found in the Yellow River basin. It was widely accepted that the Dragon Veins of virtually all dynasties were linked to their origins and capitals.
Legend had it that all the Dragon Veins in the world originated from Mount Kunlun, the ‘Ancestor of Ten Thousand Mountains and Source of Dragon Veins,’ numbering over a hundred. During the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Taizu, inspired by a dream, dispatched Liu Bowen to traverse mountains and rivers, severing 99 hidden Dragon Veins.
Only one remained, nestled within Mount Changbai. Indeed, the Aisin-Gioro clan, who rose from Mount Changbai, eventually supplanted the Zhu family’s empire. During the Shunzhi reign of the Qing Dynasty, Dorgon, by imperial decree, ordered Mount Changbai to be sealed, making it an ancestral law.
For centuries thereafter, Mount Changbai remained strictly guarded by the Manchu people, only to be reopened during the Xianfeng era. As for the reason behind the封锁 [fēng suǒ] (blockade), Mo Yuan remained ignorant.
Any further information was classified at a general-level secrecy. As a mere major, what she already knew was considerable, but by a stroke of serendipity, she had acquired a fragment of the golden stamp, the ‘Myriad Spirit Orb.’
From it, she learned many secrets of Shamanism. The most crucial Shamanic treasure, the ‘Orb of Creation,’ was even said to defy fate and help one ascend to immortality!
She had initially believed her chance was lost, thinking her superiors had already uncovered Mount Changbai’s secrets. Yet, this Infinite Space instance happened to be Mount Changbai itself.
Though she didn’t know which historical timeline’s projection this was, if she could obtain the Orb of Creation here…
‘Defy fate.’
She sought neither immortality nor the so-called Grand Dao’s completion. Her greatest desire was to reverse her own destiny.
‘Yellow Turban Paper Man.’
Pulling a small yellow paper figurine from her pocket, she gently released it. The tiny paper person slid through a crack in the stone door.
Mo Yuan’s divine sense was tethered to the little figure.
Boom!
The stone door was pushed open, revealing a gentle light to her eyes.
A long corridor, five or six meters wide, was inlaid with stones of varying sizes, similar to luminous pearls, glowing in the darkness. The surroundings were utterly silent.
[Main Mission Two Completed]
[Main Mission Three: Survive!]
Listening to the cold system prompt, Mo Yuan’s heart sank slightly. Almost simultaneously, the stone door behind her abruptly slammed shut…
Thump-thump-thump!
The corridor stretched deeper, the increasingly dense spiderwebs hinting that this place had been undisturbed for a very long time. The corridor soon reached a dead end.
Mo Yuan frowned slightly, observing the thick stone wall before her. Main missions were typically purposeful, closely linked to the Infinite Space itself.
When a task like this appeared, it meant the Space judged the postman’s survival probability to be less than 5%. Thus, it prioritized the postman’s desperate survival. If they were fortunate enough to fall within that 5% survival rate, the Space would then issue further missions.
However, it was ironic that almost no postman who encountered this mission ever survived, a grim tale that circulated as a mere legend among them.
“Cackle, cackle…”
Just as Mo Yuan pondered her next move, a strange sound emanated from the other end of the corridor. It grew steadily stronger, a low, guttural noise, as if something was slowly approaching her.
Mo Yuan’s eyes narrowed. She ducked low, moving to the corner of the narrow path, and extended her senses backward.
Suddenly, a faint, metallic stench wafted from an unknown direction. The compass hanging at her waist spun violently, and a whooshing sound came from behind her.
With no time to dodge, Mo Yuan could only instinctively dive forward. Yet, something sliced her thigh, a tearing, agonizing pain that made her gasp sharply.
Rolling once on the ground, she glanced back to see a shadow emerge from the darkness behind her. It was a woman—no, to be precise, a female corpse!
Unlike the decaying zombies in movies, this female corpse possessed a figure that even Mo Yuan found herself envying: full breasts, a stomach without an ounce of excess flesh, and long, seductive legs that would make any man’s eyes burn with desire.
Had her face not been split in two, Mo Yuan might have mistaken her for a fellow postman.
‘Shaman!’
The Eight Trigrams compass on Mo Yuan’s body pointed to the Qian trigram, indicating extreme danger. Without a second thought, she prepared to flee, but a burning pain shot through her thigh.
She caught a glimpse of her thigh out of the corner of her eye; a palm-sized chunk of flesh had been gouged out, still half-hanging in the air, blood gushing from the wound. Had she not dodged so quickly, her bone would surely have been exposed.
“Cackle, cackle…”
The female shaman’s head split open like a flower, revealing a forked throat beneath, and she lunged forward.
‘Qimen: Displacement.’
Instead of dodging the charging female corpse, Mo Yuan directly activated her Qimen secret art. In an instant, a glowing stone landed, and at the same moment, Mo Yuan reappeared behind the female corpse.
Drawing a great saber from her stamp album, she poured all her strength and magic into it, bringing it down with a fierce chop.
“Clang!”
The great saber struck the female corpse’s waist as if it had hit a steel ingot, unable to cut through. “So hard!” The recoil numbed Mo Yuan’s arms.
She immediately discarded the now-chipped great saber and displaced herself to the side once more. Indestructible, like Vajra, shamans were no ordinary zombies. Before their death, they would be blessed by other shamans with various mysterious secret arts, ensuring their bodies remained filled with immense power even after death.
She had believed this to be mere legend, yet here she was, truly encountering one! This defense alone was probably comparable to a colonel’s!
Even though Mo Yuan prided herself on her strength, she knew perfectly well that she was no match for the shaman before her.
‘Heh, 5% huh…’
Her retreat sealed, and a dead end ahead, coupled with encountering such a monster in this situation…
Wisps of black gas emanated from the wound on her foot, the intense pain making her unsteady. Blood dripped onto the ground.
Boom!
At that moment, the ground began to tremble violently. The smooth stone walls crumbled piece by piece, and countless withered hands reached out from within.
Mummies!
An uncountable tide of mummies surged from the path she had taken.
‘Is this the end…’
Boom!
A colossal explosion erupted without warning.
“Hmph, you audacious demon! Such petty tricks, daring to flaunt them before this humble Daoist!”
With an angry roar, a green palm print descended from the sky. “Behold my Taiyi Divine… Palm!”
As if in a dream, Mo Yuan watched as the impenetrable, indestructible female shaman was utterly flattened into a paste by a single palm strike.
****