It seemed the earlier mention of the Eastern Peak had only been an implicit hint; the true target was the Divine Stone of the Eastern Peak’s transport gate. The actual place to obtain the ancient relic turned out to be this unnamed sea.

Mingzhu let out a cheer.

Treading the soft, fine silver sand underfoot, listening to the waves breaking against the shore in rhythmic surges, lifting his face to a sky washed clean and jade-blue, Mingzhu felt his spirit expand without limit. A flood of accomplishment welled up in him — he simply had to shout aloud, or there’d be no containing the joy in his heart. Though they hadn’t yet found the ancient relic, now that they’d reached this place, was there still any need for confusion or worry?

Most importantly, this success meant not only that they’d found the right path to the ancient relic — they’d also quietly bested powerhouses like Ji Wuri and the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord. A relic those two couldn’t find, he and Yue Yang had located by joining forces. What did that prove? That his and Yue Yang’s combined effort surpassed theirs by a wide margin.

Caught up in the excitement, Mingzhu couldn’t help pulling Yue Yang into an impulsive embrace — and only after letting go did he realize how undignified he’d been, hurriedly pushing Yue Yang away and clearing his throat. “The treasure hunt has only just begun. We mustn’t celebrate too soon.”

“Very well. Under Young Lord Mingzhu’s correct guidance, this humble laborer will uphold the revolutionary line, unwavering for a hundred years.” Yue Yang declared his resolve.

“What nonsense are you spouting!” Mingzhu chided, sounding annoyed — but he didn’t reach for the golden hammer, proof that his mood was actually quite good, content to let the babbling Yue Yang’s nonsense slide.

Just as Yue Yang was preparing to strip down and dive into the sea to search for the ancient relic, a strange enormous wave slowly rose from the water, forming a wall-like ridge of sea that climbed several dozen meters before countless cascades of water slid back down from its crest, leaving behind a cluster of peculiar water-masses. Yue Yang and Mingzhu stared, slack-jawed, as the spray flew and those strange water-masses shifted and transformed, finally taking shape as a host of tidal giants — humanlike from the waist up, surging wave from the waist down.

The eerie part was that these tidal giants — gathering into form, scattering into water — were all puppet battle constructs.

Each stood a full hundred meters tall.

They drifted slowly shoreward from the sea, bearing down on the little island where Yue Yang and Mingzhu stood. Against these tidal puppet constructs, the small island looked decidedly tiny. Yue Yang and Mingzhu, by unspoken agreement, took each other’s hand and retreated in long strides toward the island’s center — though there was no escaping the tidal puppet constructs’ attack range at all, the act still felt, on some instinctive level, safer.

Mingzhu, careful as ever, counted and found there were a full hundred tidal puppet constructs. Enormous as they were, they could easily encircle the entire island. No matter which direction they fled, escaping the constructs’ converging assault was impossible.

“What do we do?” Mingzhu sounded a touch frantic. If there were only a single tidal puppet construct, a gold-tier construct could simply battle it. But there were a hundred here — how was anyone supposed to fight that? And these tidal constructs didn’t perish; scattered, they could regather in the seawater. Whoever had crafted these ancient tidal puppet constructs, they were one with the sea itself — so long as the sea didn’t run dry, they would never be destroyed. Forget using constructs to search; even if Yue Yang and Mingzhu fought them personally, there was no way to truly annihilate them.

“Wait — there’s definitely a solution. There has to be a way to break this. Give me a few seconds to think it through properly.” Yue Yang offered repeated reassurance.

“You think they’ll give you time to think?” Mingzhu swallowed nervously.

Several tidal puppet constructs that had drifted nearest the shore, closest to Yue Yang, had already begun swinging their fists, launching attacks. Some spat a torrent of water at Yue Yang and Mingzhu; some hurled a sheet of freezing rain; some swung great white fists congealed from sea salt, smashing down with unstoppable force.

Any one of these attacks would be no pleasant thing to take. And it was certain that the moment a single tidal puppet construct landed a hit, Yue Yang and Mingzhu would immediately fall into a passive position — letting more of the encircling constructs find their mark, after which the endless barrage would form an inescapable trap.

“Among all the elemental attributes — which one counters water?” Yue Yang, dragging Mingzhu in a swift retreat, dodged the first several strikes. But this could only buy a moment; it couldn’t evade the successive attacks of more and more tidal puppet constructs. Amid the hurried-but-orderly dodging, Yue Yang suddenly posed the question. Mingzhu, startled, immediately cried out, “Fool — fire, of course it’s fire! Fire counters water!”

Fire counters water!

That was true!

But hearing it, Yue Yang’s face fell. “Then how much fire would it take to counter a hundred tidal puppet constructs? We’d probably need a whole volcano!”

Mingzhu had no answer either. In the sea, tidal puppet constructs were an invincible existence. Even if an ordinary construct spat flames, what good would it do? The tidal constructs were composed entirely of water — never mind that boiling them all to steam was impossible, even if it could be done, they’d be replenished from the sea in an instant. So long as the laws left behind from ancient times remained unchanged, there was no destroying them.

“Then what do we do? If fire won’t work, how about trying wind — blowing them all up into the sky?” In her panic, Mingzhu genuinely couldn’t think of anything else.

“And then what?” Yue Yang, for the moment, couldn’t picture what kind of wind could blow a hundred-meter-tall tidal puppet construct into the sky.

“And then you dive to the seabed and fish out the ancient relic.” That was Mingzhu’s plan.

“And if the tidal puppet constructs fall back into the sea?” Yue Yang asked again.

“You can’t run?” Mingzhu clearly thought the man a fool.

“In the sea, I can outrun a tidal puppet construct?” For the first time in his life, Yue Yang felt a flicker of doubt about his own abilities.

“…” Mingzhu fell silent, apparently realizing this too was an impossible task. Diving into the sea to retrieve the relic might well end with the relic unfound and Yue Yang drowned by the tidal constructs — a snack for the fish and shrimp.

“All right. At this point we can only treat the dead horse as if it were alive.” As Yue Yang retreated, he stamped sand pits into the ground with his feet, his hands working in swift coordination — dropping ample magic-crystal material into the shallow pits, sparing no expense in placing a fragment of Divine Stone into each one, and then, circling back around, tracing out an extraordinarily complex rune array.

This entire process was completed while pulling Mingzhu along in flight.

At every moment, more than twenty tidal puppet constructs were attacking; no matter which side of the little island they fled to, there was no shaking the encirclement. The island was simply too small — less than a hundred meters in length and width, no more than thirty at its tallest. The tidal puppet constructs bearing down on Yue Yang and Mingzhu in its midst were exactly like a crowd of grown men bullying two pitiful little ants. Though the attacks couldn’t actually harm Yue Yang and Mingzhu, being battered without any chance to strike back was thoroughly demoralizing — all the more so soaked head to toe, drenched like a pair of drowned rats.

Rumble!

With the completion of Yue Yang’s rune array, new constructs were once again “grown” from the sand. These, however, weren’t like the obsidian giant of the first attempt — they were an entirely new variety of “sand construct.”

One sand construct after another burrowed up from the ground, and at Yue Yang’s will, immediately began swinging fists in a brawl against the tidal puppet constructs. With their loosely bound bodies, the sand constructs were clearly no match. Mass-produced at top speed, they couldn’t begin to compare with the tidal puppet constructs an ancient powerhouse had painstakingly crafted and left behind.

The two types of construct weren’t even in the same class. The tidal puppet constructs were at least platinum tier, while the sand constructs — being mass-produced in haste — were all silver tier, a full gold tier between them. From that alone, the gulf between them was plain.

The sand constructs were quickly smashed, scattered, and washed apart by the tidal puppet constructs, countless grains of sand crumbling continuously from their bodies. Under their opponents’ powerful assault, the sand constructs proved fragile as paper. Even with the great number Yue Yang produced, they couldn’t hold for long.

The tidal puppet constructs struck like tigers loosed among sheep — wherever their fists landed, nothing stood. And yet, like the tidal constructs, the sand constructs possessed the very same “regathering and regeneration” ability — one composed of seawater, the other of sea sand. The scattered sand constructs collapsed onto the island’s beach and, a moment later, rose swaying back to their feet. Many were smashed apart again before they could fully regather.

But however the tidal puppet constructs attacked, they couldn’t destroy these seemingly feeble sand constructs. The sand constructs were like deathless little roaches — knocked down once, they rose again; knocked down again, they rose once more; no matter how many times they fell, they were entirely unaffected.

Had the tidal puppet constructs possessed intelligence, they’d certainly have ignored these non-threatening constructs. But unfortunately, the tidal puppet constructs were only platinum tier, not Sacred tier. Entirely mindless, with no consciousness to guide them, they understood only to attack the nearest target — forever surrounding this swarm of sand constructs and striking endlessly, with no regard for whether doing so accomplished anything. As for Mingzhu and Yue Yang, hidden in the island’s center catching their breath and wiping their brows, the constructs ignored them completely. In their target selection, the two humans weren’t the priority — the swarm of sand constructs in front of them was.

What astonished Mingzhu even more was this: because the tidal constructs kept attacking the sand constructs, their seawater bodies inevitably picked up a portion of sand. From a little to a lot, the sand accumulated more and more, until several tidal constructs found their arms and torsos packed full of it, becoming composite bodies of both sand and seawater.

With their bodies full of sand, none of their functions were affected — these tidal constructs remained as they were — but their movements grew far more sluggish, like drunken men dancing. As more and more tidal constructs turned this way, their movements slowed further and further, until at this point they posed no threat whatsoever to Yue Yang and Mingzhu.

“Earth — among the Five Elements, earth can also counter water.” Mingzhu looked at Yue Yang with boundless delight and surprise. “How did you think of it?”

“Just born this clever — can’t help it.” Yue Yang had never known the meaning of the word modesty.

“Unbearable!” Mingzhu made a face as though about to be sick, expressing his contempt.

“Now, now, don’t worship me too much. I know in your heart you admire me tremendously — it’s only that your rebellious streak won’t let you say it out loud.” Yue Yang’s face wore the smug expression of I understand you completely.

“Never in my life have I met someone like this!” Mingzhu was nearly driven to distraction.

“Quite right — I guarantee you’ve never met a lad as handsome as me in your whole life. Envy is perfectly natural—” Before Yue Yang could finish, the golden hammer had already risen over there. Yue Yang promptly took to his heels — that golden hammer’s might was absolutely greater than a hundred tidal constructs combined, not something to provoke. By the time Yue Yang slipped through a gap in the battlefield and quietly leapt into the sea, the golden hammer in Mingzhu’s hand had long since vanished, and his face had instead taken on a faintly worried expression.

Joking was joking, and teasing was teasing. But when it came to serious matters, Mingzhu supported Yue Yang one hundred percent. Watching him now, diving deep into the sea to search for the ancient relic, it would have been a lie for Mingzhu to claim he wasn’t worried. In fact, he’d been worried even before this — and perhaps that was precisely why Yue Yang had deliberately used jokes to scatter Mingzhu’s attention, provoking him into irritation and anger to ease the anxiety.

Ten minutes passed. An hour. Two hours. Even half a day went by, and Yue Yang still hadn’t surfaced.

Mingzhu grew anxious as an ant on a hot pan. Many times he wanted to follow Yue Yang’s trail into the sea, but he bit down lightly on his lip, using the pain to restore his calm, and rationally abandoned the impulse.

Wait!

Waiting for him was the best course of action. Going down after him, the odds of failing to find him were enormous; even if he did find him, he might only become a burden. And the most foolish part — if he went into the sea, then when Yue Yang returned and couldn’t see him, he’d only worry more.

A full day passed, until the midnight hour with stars scattered across the sky.

Only then, with a splash, did Yue Yang break up from the water.

The instant Mingzhu saw him, he was wild with joy. Heedless of everything, he charged forward — sprinting across the beach where the tidal constructs and sand constructs still battled without cease — and before Yue Yang could even react, flung himself at him, knocking him down onto the sand, holding tight to this infuriating man he’d worried over for a day and a night, this man he’d meant to give a good beating to the moment he laid eyes on him — only to lose all composure entirely at the sight of his return.

“Are you crying?” The one who’d come back from the seabed wondered whether his eyes were playing tricks on him.

“Idiot — sand got in my eyes!” The one who’d waited a day and a night, worried a day and a night, refused to admit it.

“Sand really got in your eyes? Then let me blow it out for you.”

“I’ll blow your head!”

(End of Chapter)