White River City.
The water near the city’s edges ran somewhat murky from the combined pollution of daily living and industrial machinery — the eastern dock gate, where ship traffic was heaviest, was worst of all, dark in places. But beyond three thousand meters from the city, the water cleared into a deep, luminous blue.
Most of the White River’s stretches were transparent.
And bottomless.
Yue Yang and Liuye went out in the morning, made their rounds to the Iron Guild and a few smaller shops, and concluded one modest ore transaction.
That wasn’t the point. It was cover.
He took Liuye to the tin-roofed dwelling where the Octopus Elder, Arrowfish Jifeng, and the others had set up, and spent some time in what looked like business discussion while learning what they’d gathered. The Octopus Elder and the others hadn’t been able to penetrate the mutant fishfolk’s inner circle yet, so the intelligence was limited — but their disguise was perfect, and no one questioned them for a moment. Who would know that the Sky Stairway still housed beings who had been cursed into the same mutant fishfolk form? Especially when news from the Sky Stairway had been completely cut off for thousands of years. The Octopus Elder and the others moved through White River City without a shadow of suspicion.
In White River City, if you were mutant fishfolk, you were one of their own.
“No rush. Some things can’t be forced, and we have plenty of time.” Yue Yang’s view was that waiting for the final moment to collect the results was the better strategy.
Let the mutant fishfolk carry on a little longer.
The Solar King was dead. Cang Long the Water Palace Master hadn’t even left a complete corpse. There was no reason to be concerned about a group of Sky Stairway defectors.
The Octopus Elder introduced several ‘friends’ he’d made in White River City at considerable expense — mutant fishfolk who clapped their chests and declared they’d always prioritize the Octopus Elder’s people for business. When Yue Yang mentioned he was feeling idle and wanted to take a small boat out fishing, they laughed, and after some theatrical hesitation one of them accepted a colored gemstone and went to drag out his personal pleasure craft — suggesting Yue Yang take it for a few days.
The unspoken assumption was obvious: the silver-faced young man wanted to take the pretty girl somewhere private. Fishing was what they were calling it. With a gemstone as encouragement, they were happy to facilitate.
The craft wasn’t large — one person could handle it. It was the kind typically rented to couples for riverboat excursions. The interior was fully equipped for exactly that category of activity.
When Yue Yang steered it out from the southern dock gate, the boat’s owner came running out personally to see them off. He exchanged a familiar word with the gate guards, and the usual entry and exit formalities were skipped entirely.
Given this level of cooperation, Yue Yang saw no reason to complain. He pointed the boat toward the first seal location on the treasure map and set out.
“Should I change into a diving suit?” Liuye was already eager before they were anywhere near the destination. A real adventure with him — she had to perform well.
“A diving suit might not be enough. There’s something strange about the water here. I keep sensing an unusual force concealed somewhere below the surface, but I haven’t been able to identify it yet. To be safe, put on the battle armor.” Yue Yang considered briefly, then recommended the extra protection. Better to have it if something unexpected happened.
The armor he was referring to was something he’d produced in the period after the journey — a synthesis of concepts drawn from the Angel Blade design he’d made for Yue Yu and the crystalline battle armor Wuhen had designed herself. He’d called the resulting work the Sky Tower Battle Armor.
The mass-produced versions made for the Sky Stairway’s dragon-rider guards used rare metals contributed by the various peoples and were designated Bronze-rank.
The ones made with Old Fox, Jun Wuyou, and Elder Yuehai in particular mind — personally forged by Yue Yang — were Silver-rank. Those old men probably wouldn’t get many chances to wear them, but the designation was there.
Then came the individually customized sets for Sea Fatty, Ye Kong, Snow-Hungry Wolf, and the Tianra Prince — each tailored to the wearer’s characteristics, styled nearly identically but differentiated by elemental attribute, using Ember-Drop ore, Thunder-Tone ore, and Spark-Flower ore crystals as primary materials, supplemented with Celestial Dragon Crystal Stones. Yue Yang had put his best available resources into these. They were Gold-rank.
No one knew, while admiring the design, that the dramatic aesthetics were the result of a particular transmigrator’s lingering childhood attachment to a certain variety of armored hero — which was also precisely why they were named the way they were and styled the way they were.
For Princess Qianqian, Luohua, Inan, Yue Bing, Liuye, and the other women in his circle, the armor naturally couldn’t look the same as the men’s sets.
Yue Yang was, without any pretense of fairness, entirely biased. The best materials went to his own people.
What Liuye was about to put on had been constructed from Dream Ice Crystal Gold, Celestial Star Soul Crystal, Sand of Eternity, and Moon Gems — all exceptionally rare even by Sky Realm standards. The result was a Quasi-Sacred tier armor of the highest quality. Even so, Yue Yang wasn’t entirely satisfied with it and considered it a first attempt. His real ambition was to eventually produce Sacred-tier and divine-tier armor — to ensure that no one could ever hurt the people he cared about, and that they’d be the ones doing the threatening rather than the other way around.
The transmigrator’s armored-hero inspiration meant that even the lowest-tier sets could shift their form freely at the wearer’s will — though the aesthetics couldn’t be guaranteed to impress.
Sea Fatty and Ye Kong’s sets could reshape themselves according to their owners’ intent, leaving no room for aesthetic disputes or fit concerns. But for Inan, Yue Bing, and Liuye, Yue Yang had been rather more decisive — he’d specified the final form early and made it non-variable.
In short: whatever they might want to change, he’d already had opinions, and those opinions were built in.
He did, of course, go through the proper motions of consulting them during the forging process and incorporating their feedback — the appearance of democratic participation, at minimum, had to be maintained.
Liuye was the most agreeable of anyone, and the moment Yue Yang said the word, she returned to the Grimoire World and changed into the magnificent Moon Battle Armor. A certain wolf’s mind had taken a brief wrong turn during the design phase, which was why the armor covered virtually everything — face excluded, the entire body was enclosed — and yet somehow still managed to look thoroughly striking.
Liuye came back out with her face red, head slightly lowered.
She stood in front of him and couldn’t quite bring herself to look directly at him.
“Not bad. A few details still aren’t quite right — I’ll refine it further when there’s time.”
“It’s already perfect…” Liuye shook her head, too self-conscious to say much more. She was quietly wondering how he’d known her measurements so precisely. The armor fit without a single gap anywhere — closer than anything she’d ever worn. Did he somehow know her body better than she knew it herself?
She decided not to follow that thought any further.
Even the brief moment it had crossed her mind was enough to make her feel unsteady.
But she’d already made up her mind about certain things, so in the end it didn’t really matter whether he knew or not. What mattered was keeping up, not dragging behind. Liuye clenched a small fist where he couldn’t see it. She was ready. The moment he gave the word, she’d give everything she had — just the two of them, and she would not let him down.
Yue Yang tossed a stillness puppet onto the boat’s deck to maintain its position and pulled off his outer jacket without ceremony.
Liuye moved forward immediately, just as Xiao Nu would have, and helped him into a close-fitting dive suit.
Yue Yang hadn’t made battle armor for himself.
Not because materials were short. Not out of any noble impulse to prioritize others first. He was simply greedy in a specific direction — his plan was to take someone else’s Sacred-tier or divine-tier armor rather than make his own. He had the Nirvana Battle Armor for fighting right now, and anything beyond that, he intended to acquire by other means. The Six Divine Artifacts included a Four Divine Armor, after all. Lady Qiluoxian had mentioned it had been taken by Ji Wuri. Yue Yang’s thinking was simple: deal with Ji Wuri, take the armor back. More satisfying than making one from scratch.
“All right — we’re close enough. Let’s go.” Yue Yang brought the boat to rest on the calm surface, set up a trigger-formation of Sky Realm runes on the deck, took Liuye’s hand, and jumped into the blue water with her.
Liuye’s heart lurched and then kept going, entirely beyond her ability to quiet it.
She understood the practical reason. He was worried about attacks the moment they entered the water, or concerned she might be disoriented in unfamiliar conditions. That was why he was holding her hand.
Even knowing that, she couldn’t get her heartbeat to settle.
His hand around hers, the Heart-Link bond activated automatically — their thoughts and intentions resonating between them at all times, no words needed. She felt his attention shift, and responded with a small nod, activating the Moon Battle Armor’s attribute conversion. The Moon Armor was different from the Bronze, Silver, and Gold sets — it could switch between wind, fire, water, earth, ice, lightning, light, and dark attributes, though only ice was its primary nature, and any other conversion meant reduced effectiveness. At full ice-attribute output, Liuye estimated her combat power would increase by at least a factor of ten.
The Night Empress had praised the Moon Battle Armor once, saying that if used to its full potential, it surpassed certain Sacred-tier treasures entirely.
With the conversion to water attribute complete, Liuye felt her energy field shift, and the faint breathlessness she’d been managing vanished. Her breathing opened.
She could breathe underwater now.
Freely, as a fish does.
And this was the armor Yue Yang still considered unfinished.
At a thousand meters down, the surrounding water was utterly dark. Looking up with full effort, Liuye could barely make out a faint memory of light. Looking down, she sensed something — a vast, dense energy buried somewhere below — but the bottom was nowhere in sight. She had no idea how deep this went.
Her instinct was to produce the Luminous Pearl the sea puffin had given her and light up the area. Yue Yang’s thought stopped her before she could move.
Beyond that, he’d activated his concealment ability and layered it with the Creation Domain, folding both of them into invisibility. He held her hand and descended slowly, carefully.
Fifteen hundred meters, and still no floor.
But even at this depth, even Liuye could hear it — a sound in the water, low and not loud, but in the absolute silence of this deep water, entirely clear. Nothing should have been down here making sounds. Was this the seal location from the map? But no — the map had that point at least three thousand meters out from where they’d entered. They shouldn’t be close enough yet.
The source wasn’t far. Three or four hundred meters at most, or she wouldn’t have been able to hear it this clearly.
The sound settled after a short while. Whatever had made it went quiet, as though nothing had ever disturbed the water at all.
Yue Yang drew her along, moving through the water lighter and faster than any fish, covering the distance in seconds. Liuye couldn’t see in the darkness, but through the shared resonance of the Heart-Link and Yue Yang’s extraordinary perception feeding into her own, she could sense the target through her spiritual awareness.
An underwater hill. Roughly five hundred meters tall.
What was this?