Even a small pond measuring two zhang in length and width, let alone one ten or a hundred times larger, would have its water instantly evaporated.
Even the most powerful illusion would fail to hold if its foundational medium were destroyed.
However.
Just as she stood there with full confidence, waiting for the array to break, she realized a long time had passed.
Even the ripples caused by her recent attack had faded back into stillness, yet the array still refused to break!
All around her remained the flat, pitch-black surface of the sea.
"What?"
"Can this array truly not be broken?"
Su Wenjiu knitted her brows tightly, the playful look from moments before entirely gone.
Her gaze shifted toward the only point of reference in front of her—the white lotus.
"I simply refuse to believe it."
She launched herself directly into the air above the water, unleashing the full speed of the Moon Profound Realm as she flew toward the white lotus.
Sun rise, sun fall.
Two days passed in the blink of an eye.
Su Wenjiu's slender, delicate body stood upon the surface of the water. Though her exquisite face remained pretty, it could no longer conceal the exhaustion and weariness written across it.
Gone was the calm and poised demeanor she had worn over the past two days.
Replaced instead by a flustered look that flickered in her eyes from time to time.
For despite flying at her absolute limit toward the white lotus for two full days, she had still failed to escape this tiny pond.
Nor had she managed to touch the white lotus; in her field of vision, it remained stubbornly one zhang away.
"What kind of illusion is this?!"
Su Wenjiu bit down hard on her lower lip.
The overwhelming sense of helplessness brought on by exhausting every possible method without finding a way out unconsciously bred anxiety within her.
She even tried using a communication jade slip to call her sect for help, but it was like tossing a stone into the vast sea, receiving no reply whatsoever.
Right at that moment, she suddenly felt a strange disturbance in the water beneath her feet.
Instinctively, she shot straight up into the air.
Ascending a thousand zhang and looking down at the water's surface, her eyes widened in shock.
For swimming through the water below was a colossal creature.
It was fully ten thousand zhang in length.
Its entire body was red and hazy, indistinct to the eye, resembling both a dragon and a flood dragon as it slowly cruised through the depths.
As it moved, the surface of the water gradually parted, revealing its arched spine. Viewed from above, it looked precisely like a mountain range stretching continuously for dozens of miles.
Yet its massive body was not what terrified Su Wenjiu the most.
What truly terrified her was the aura emitted by this behemoth.
The aura was not directed at her; it was merely a tiny, stray wisplike leakage of its natural presence.
Yet just this stray, unintended wisp of aura made Su Wenjiu's scalp tingle. She had not the slightest doubt that if the creature so much as exhaled a breath toward her, her soul would scatter and she would perish utterly.
At the same time, a terrifying possibility dawned on her, one so dreadful it made her shudder to think about it...
Chapter 11: Casting a Dragnet in the Bitter Sea — Is This Even Human?
That was the realization that the expanse of black sea where she now found herself was not any sort of illusion at all.
Instead, she was in the true, physical world.
For as everyone knew, illusions had their limitations. Although stronger casters could reduce these limitations, an illusion remained an illusion and could never compare to the real world.
Yet everything she had encountered and witnessed before her eyes simply could not have been created by an illusion.
At this thought, Su Wenjiu's breathing grew ragged.
Despair gradually crept across her face.
If this truly was reality, then the chances of her escaping were virtually nil.
Yet she simply could not fathom how such an existence could possibly reside within this tiny mountain peak!
Looking up, snow began to fall from the sky.
This only made Su Wenjiu's heart grow even colder.
"No, I cannot die here. I must get out."
Gritting her teeth, Su Wenjiu forced herself to fly toward her only point of reference—the white lotus.
For in an environment like this, without a reference point, even a profound cultivator would lose all sense of direction.
"Snowing again, is it?"
Inside the courtyard hall.
Zhong Qing, lounging in a recliner and reading a book, lowered it and slowly raised his head to look at the snowflakes drifting outside the door.
Zhong Qing actually liked snowy days.
Since ancient times, there had been the saying: a timely snow promises a bountiful year.
Once upon a time, he too had harbored the dreams of a chivalrous swordsman wandering the snowy jianghu with a blade.
He remembered it from his grandmother's countryside home in his past life.
It was also a season when thousands of pear trees seemed to bloom overnight with white blossoms. In his youth, he had taken the white plastic lining from a bag of urea fertilizer, cut it into a rectangle, and draped it over his back like a cape.
Then he chopped down a bamboo stalk from the mountain behind his house, tied a red ribbon to it, and strapped it to his waist.
Wind and snow filled the skies, a swordsman set forth on his journey, leaving not a single blade of foxtail grass standing for three hundred meters.
Even after transmigrating, he had indulged in a xianxia dream for a very long time.
Only to have the edges of his passion gradually worn down by a dog of a system that stubbornly refused to grant him any cultivation.
Even now that this trash-tier bond system had been activated, it was still hard for him to recapture the burning, chuunibyou-era passion of his youth.
After all, why cultivate yourself when you can just lie down and watch your cultivation rise automatically?
Since that was the case, why bother working hard?
So taking things slowly was perfectly fine.
Though he wasn't invincible yet, with the buffs from the trash-tier bond, invincibility would come sooner or later.
Of course, finding a second good-for-nothing disciple was still necessary.
After all, once he had a second trash-tier disciple, the feedback from the disciple's cultivation would reach ten thousandfold, and it would stack between both disciples.
However, the dog system hadn't given any hints yet, so for the time being, Zhong Qing could only let nature take its course.
Yet, with nothing to do, he always grew bored out of his mind.
So he rose, picked up the self-made bamboo fishing rod in the corner, draped a straw raincoat over his white robes, stepped out the door, and headed toward the small pond behind the mountain.
This pond had also been obtained through daily check-ins.
Zhong Qing knew that nothing gifted by the system's check-ins was ordinary. Though he still hadn't figured out the pond's exact functions and only knew the system had named it the Bitter Sea, it didn't affect his fishing there.
During all these years living alone on the mountain, before he had any cultivation and was unable to fast, this pond had always been one of his food sources.
However.
The moment he reached the edge of the pond, he couldn't help but be dumbfounded.
For he saw a woman as beautiful as a celestial fairy darting frantically up and down within the pond.
At times she wore a look of despair, at times she broke down in agony, and at other times she cheered herself on before resuming her frantic dashes up and down.
This scene made Zhong Qing, standing on the bank, look utterly absurd.
Yet Zhong Qing was long past the point of finding such things strange.
The Bitter Sea had been acquired through a check-in four years ago and had remained right here ever since. Over these four years, it was not once or twice that living creatures had accidentally strayed into it.
There were ordinary birds and beasts, as well as exotic spirit beasts endowed with considerable cultivation.
After blundering into the Bitter Sea, aside from those few who drowned inside, every single one of them ended up darting aimlessly up and down within its bounds, unable to find their way out for the longest time.
In fact, when he first discovered this bizarre phenomenon, Zhong Qing had been puzzled for a long time.
Brimming with curiosity and unable to bear the mystery, he had walked down into it multiple times himself.
Yet this strange phenomenon never happened to him.
The water of the Bitter Sea was barely chest-deep; if you dove in and took a single plunge, or gave a few kicks at worst, you could swim straight from one end to the other.
Of course, Zhong Qing also figured that since he was the master of this Bitter Sea, it was understandable that such strange phenomena would fail to affect him.
Still, having a human fall in—and a woman at that—was indeed a first.
Fortunately, he had experience.
And he had long since prepared a dragnet by the bank.
The purpose of the dragnet was to scoop out the carcasses of any dead beasts in time to reduce pollution, and whenever he came across exotic spirit beasts that looked like they might taste good, it allowed him to improve his diet.
As for those that were neither dead nor appetizing, once netted, he would simply release them back into the wild; after all, watching them dart up and down while he was trying to fish only got in the way and irritated his eyes.
Thus, faced with this woman, he made no exception, aimed the dragnet, and scooped her right up.
Down in the Bitter Sea at that moment.
Su Wenjiu was truly on the verge of a breakdown.
The cultivation she was so proud of was utterly powerless once trapped in the Bitter Sea.
No matter how desperately she flew or how fiercely she bombarded the sea with attacks, it was all in vain.
Just as she stood on the brink of collapse, she suddenly noticed a gigantic net appearing in the sky above her!
A stormy sea of shock surged in Su Wenjiu's heart.
In this boundless black sea, a net had actually appeared in the sky?!
Instinctively, she tried to dodge the net.
Yet she found that this net spanned the entire world within her field of vision, leaving her almost no room to resist as she was scooped directly inside.
The next moment.
She felt a massive force transmit from the net, dragging her forcefully in a single direction.
With that tug, she felt as though her body had crossed through the void and spanned across rivers of stars, leaving her dizzy, lightheaded, and her mind a complete blank.
Yet right while her mind was still blank, a gentle voice sounded beside her.
"Young lady."
Su Wenjiu snapped out of it, opened her eyes, and discovered that a white-robed young man wearing a straw rain hat had somehow appeared right beside her.
The young man was youthful in appearance, looking gentle and refined, holding a bamboo fishing rod with scattered snow piled on his shoulders as he gazed down at her.
Under these circumstances, the moment she saw the young man, Su Wenjiu gave a start and instinctively retreated.
After taking two steps back, she happened to bump right against the bank of the Bitter Sea.
Turning her head, she looked at the black water pond, which was merely two zhang long and wide, and only then realized she had walked right out of that boundless black sea realm.
"I—I actually came out!!"
Su Wenjiu was both shocked and overjoyed, tears almost welling up in her eyes.
Amidst her agitation, she also shifted her gaze back to the young man before her.
Chapter 12: The Master of the Bitter Sea, It Was Actually Him?!
A single glance told her something.
Aside from his extraordinary temperament, the young man showed nothing out of the ordinary.
She couldn't detect even a tiny ripple of cultivation on him.
Yet she certainly wasn't foolish enough to mistake the young man before her for an ordinary person.
Being able to pull her effortlessly out of that black sea realm was proof enough of his extraordinary nature.
And with not a trace of cultivation fluctuating from his body...
There was only one explanation: his cultivation had reached the realm of total and perfect self-control.
"May I ask if it was senior who saved me?"
Su Wenjiu asked carefully and respectfully.
Zhong Qing did not deny it and simply nodded.
If he hadn't fished her out, this woman probably would never have managed to walk out of the pond's boundaries on her own.
"This junior Su Wenjiu, thank you, Senior, for saving my life." Su Wenjiu hurriedly bowed and expressed her gratitude.
After a round of profuse thanks, she couldn't help but voice the question weighing on her mind.
"Dare I ask, Senior, just what kind of place is this pond?" Su Wenjiu looked back at the small pond with lingering fear, unable to keep herself from asking.
"The Bitter Sea."
Zhong Qing replied indifferently.
"The Bitter Sea?!!"
Hearing this, a clap of thunder echoed in Su Wenjiu's mind.
She had once heard elders of her sect speak of an opposing-heaven magical treasure belonging to the Buddhist sect of the ancient holy lands, which bore the name Bitter Sea.
Legend had it that those trapped within the Bitter Sea could never escape for all eternity.
*Bitter sea without bound*—this was precisely what it meant.
"S—Senior, is this Bitter Sea the very same Bitter Sea of the ancient Buddhists?" Su Wenjiu asked with ragged breath.
Sitting on his small stool, baiting his hook and casting it back into the pond while listening to Su Wenjiu's questions, Zhong Qing couldn't help rolling his eyes.
You're asking me, but who am I supposed to ask?
Still, since it came from a system check-in and the system produced nothing ordinary, this Bitter Sea might genuinely be the one Su Wenjiu was asking about.
"If you say it is, then perhaps it is." Zhong Qing replied calmly.
Hearing Zhong Qing put it this way, Su Wenjiu drew in a sharp breath of cold air.
Thinking back on it now, cold sweat was already pouring down her back.
She had actually—actually taken a stroll through the Bitter Sea!!
"Ah, looks like a fish is biting."
At that moment, the float in the pond bobbed, and Zhong Qing's eyes lit up.
Following the sound, Su Wenjiu looked over and was immediately struck dumb with amazement.
This person was actually fishing in the Bitter Sea?
Before she could recover her wits, she saw Zhong Qing pull up his line, hauling out a two-inch-long fish glowing entirely fiery red, though she had no idea what kind of fish it was.
And upon seeing this fish, Su Wenjiu retreated several steps in sheer terror, her entire face turning deathly pale.
Because the instant she laid eyes on this fish, she instantly recalled the behemoth she had encountered while trapped in the Bitter Sea.
Looking down at it from above, it had resembled both a dragon and a flood dragon, its entire body glowing fiery red.
Especially its arched spine; though the size differed, that shape and those scales were things Su Wenjiu would never forget even in death.
Amidst her shock, the fish's gaze turned toward her.
Immediately afterward, a telepathic voice dropped into her mind: "Little one, we truly share a bond. I never expected you to escape the Bitter Sea as well."
This telepathic message rang in her mind like a thunderclap.
The fish pulled up before her eyes was genuinely that colossal creature she had run into inside the Bitter Sea!!
Her expression instantly turned frantic with panic.
And the look she cast toward Zhong Qing beside her became one of profound, unfathomable awe.
Using a single bamboo pole to fish out a being from the Bitter Sea that rivaled a divine beast—what kind of godlike method was this?
"Little one, you need not be surprised. He is the master of the Bitter Sea, and he is the one helping me break free from it."
"You and I were both saved by him; his grace of salvation is a second birth to us."
"You are human, so perhaps you still have a chance to serve our benefactor well."
"As for my role, it is nothing more than adding a dish of steamed or pan-fried fish to the benefactor's dining table."
"Cherish this well, I am entering the cycle of reincarnation now."
Just as the telepathic voice faded, the fish had already been dropped into Zhong Qing's fish guard.
Yet Su Wenjiu's heart remained in turmoil for a long time.
The master of the Bitter Sea.
What kind of concept was that!!
She could no longer fathom it.
Looking at Zhong Qing again, her initial feelings of polite gratitude had completely transformed into fearful submission.
It was much like an ant with self-awareness, looking up to tower over an adult elephant.
"That's right, I haven't asked you yet. Why did you run all the way to my Mufu Peak?" At this moment, Zhong Qing rebaited his hook, turned his head, and asked Su Wenjiu.
This single question.
Left Su Wenjiu utterly dumbfounded.
If her guess was correct, the Zhong Qing before her was most likely the master of Lin Feng as well.
And her very purpose in coming here was to negotiate with Lin Feng's master and take Lin Feng away to become her own disciple.
She had even considered using force if Lin Feng's master refused.
Yet now, how could she ever dare to speak of such a thing?
Where would she find the face to say it?
Looking back on it now, falling into the Bitter Sea didn't seem like such a bad thing after all.
If not for the accident of falling into the Bitter Sea, she probably would have charged straight up to Zhong Qing's face to demand a disciple.
Who knew if she would have been blasted into ashes upon arrival?
Though she had suffered a major loss in the Bitter Sea, at least it had saved her life.
"Hmm?"
Seeing that Su Wenjiu remained silent for a long time, Zhong Qing couldn't help turning his head to look at her.
Faced with Zhong Qing's gaze, Su Wenjiu grew extremely nervous.
She hadn't prepared an excuse yet, so she could only bite the bullet and say awkwardly, "Senior, if I said I was just passing by... would you believe me?"
"What do you think?"
Zhong Qing turned his head to look at her.
"Ha-ha-ha... I wouldn't believe it either."
Su Wenjiu wished she could find a crack in the ground to crawl into. Faced with Zhong Qing's inquiring gaze, she grew so flustered she was almost ready to cry.
Yet right at that moment, a youthful figure flashed across the snowy landscape, landing right beside the two of them.
"This disciple pays respects to Master."
The newcomer was none-other than Lin Feng.
"Disciple, what made you suddenly think of coming to see me? Is something the matter?" Zhong Qing smiled.
"Master, it's like this. In another month or so, I'll probably reach the Chen Profound Realm."
Lin Feng said respectfully: "Once I reach the Chen Profound Realm, I have some personal matters to attend to, so I'm coming to request your permission in advance. I may need to go down the mountain at that time, and I hope Master will grant permission."
"Since you have matters that require you to go down the mountain, of course that's no problem." Zhong Qing smiled, reached out, and patted Lin Feng's head, speaking gently.
However.
Upon seeing Lin Feng, Su Wenjiu felt her whole body go numb.
It was truly a case of dreading something and having it happen anyway.
She had been dodging frantically, terrified that Zhong Qing would spot her.
Yet how could Lin Feng possibly fail to see someone as big as her standing right there?
With a single glance, he instantly recognized Su Wenjiu.
"It's you?"
Lin Feng looked at Su Wenjiu in astonishment.
Su Wenjiu's heart sank to the bottom.
"Oh, you know each other?"
Beside them, Zhong Qing looked at Lin Feng and couldn't help asking.
"Reporting to Master, in order to consolidate my cultivation and gain some practical combat experience, I was training in the mountain forest a hundred miles away, and I ran into her during my training."
Lin Feng answered respectfully and truthfully beside him: "She said my cultivation progress was astonishing, told me to leave Master, take her as my master instead, and become her disciple..."
Chapter 13: Divine Phoenix Bloodline? Sorry, Still Not Enough to Meet the Conditions to Be My Disciple
"Nonsense."
Before Lin Feng could finish his sentence, Su Wenjiu let out a sharp shout, abruptly cutting him off.
"I clearly said that young man, your cultivation is progressing at a shocking speed, and I wanted to know where you studied so I could ask to become a disciple of your master as well, rather than wanting you to become my disciple."
In the nick of time.
Su Wenjiu said with a flushed face.
Su Wenjiu's words left Lin Feng completely baffled.
The young boy scratched the back of his head and blinked his eyes.
"Is that really what you said? But I remember you didn't put it that way!" Lin Feng said with a puzzled expression: "You even said you hailed from a holy land in the Eastern Region and that joining a holy land would be much better for me than staying at Mufu Peak."
"You misheard."
Su Wenjiu hurriedly explained, "Though I did say I came from a holy land, what I actually said was that even in my holy land, I had never seen a disciple whose cultivation progressed as rapidly as yours, which is why I couldn't help wanting to seek entrance into Mufu Peak myself."
"Then what about when you offered to give me an eighth-grade sword? How do you explain that?" Lin Feng asked again.
"That was... that was... that was because I wanted you to put in a good word for me, and the eighth-grade sword was the reward."
In order not to offend the Zhong Qing before her, Su Wenjiu pushed talking nonsense with her eyes wide open to the absolute extreme at this moment.
Her survival instinct could be called maxed out.
As she spoke, fearing that Zhong Qing wouldn't believe her, she quickly cupped her fists and bowed to Zhong Qing respectfully and earnestly: "Senior, it truly is like this. When I saw this little brother's cultivation progressing at such a shocking speed, I knew at once he must have an extraordinary master."