"Ruins? I am naturally well aware of those."
Li Fan was a frequent visitor to the depths of the Congyun Sea.
He was no stranger to the ruins scattered across the seabed.
"Are you saying these ruins belong to that lost civilization?" Li Fan asked.
Zhao Erbao shook his head. "No, no, no. These ruins are native to the Congyun Sea..."
"Wait, that's not right either..."
Zhao Erbao scratched his head and gestured in a circle with both hands. "The place known today as the Congyun Sea wasn't a sea to begin with."
Li Fan started slightly.
Zhao Erbao continued, "This was originally a stretch of dry land. But one day..."
"It was suddenly inundated by seawater."
"Those ruins at the bottom of the Congyun Sea belonged to the civilizations that originally lived on the surface."
"Inundated by seawater..." Scenes from the seabed in his past life and present surfaced in Li Fan's mind.
The exit from the Great Xuan was an abyss beneath the sea.
The entrance to the Li Realm was a well inside undersea ruins.
Refining his avatar and searching for Heavenly Crystal Spirit Sand had also taken place within sizable undersea ruins.
...
He had witnessed these ubiquitous undersea ruins many times, and he had also witnessed the scene of the Congyun Sea drying up.
Since this place could turn from a sea into mountains, was it not possible that before becoming a sea, it had not been one either?
Theoretically, it should have been very easy for him to raise such a question.
And yet...
Something had been meddling with his thoughts.
It had caused him, knowingly or unknowingly, to overlook this point.
It had even led him to proactively look for other explanations for the formation of the undersea ruins—such as assuming they were created by islands destroyed by wind calamities.
Looking back now, those continuous ruins stretching across the seabed did not look at all like sunken islands.
"This method of confounding the mind is exceedingly similar to that of the Longevity Heavenly Venerable. Yet by comparison, it is slightly weaker. Once one wakes up to it, one's perception will no longer be affected."
"Above Dao Integration, below Longevity...?"
In an instant, several thoughts flashed through Li Fan's mind.
Meanwhile, Zhao Erbao kept talking smoothly.
"And the curios I have been collecting all belong to another, entirely different civilization."
"It appeared out of nowhere, as if it had dropped straight from the sky."
"Just like..."
Li Fan suddenly spoke up. "Just like this Congyun Sea?"
Zhao Erbao slapped his hands together in excitement. "Exactly!"
"Back then, carrying that doubt, I searched the seabed of the Congyun Sea, excavating everywhere."
"After studying the faults in the seafloor across various regions, I made an astonishing discovery."
"You see, it is commonplace for mountains and rivers to shift. Perhaps one day, this vast Congyun Sea will turn back into dry land."
"However, that process of transformation usually takes several years, or even decades."
"Yet!"
Zhao Erbao raised his voice, repeating emphatically, "Yet!"
"Back then, its transformation from dry land into an ocean took merely a single fleeting instant!"
Zhao Erbao grew more and more agitated as he spoke. He walked over to the miniature model of the Congyun Sea in the room.
With a point of his finger, the seawater in the model gathered into a sphere and flew into Zhao Erbao's palm.
The sunken hollow of the model slowly flattened out to its original form.
"Just like this!"
Holding the mass of seawater in his grip, he slammed his palm down hard.
*Bang!*
Under that strike, the earth sank deep. Seawater surged out from between his fingers, instantly filling the entire depression.
Fields turning into an ocean had truly taken nothing more than a single palm strike!
Li Fan could not help but recall the topographic map around the Congyun Sea he had seen before.
It had not been "as if" someone had carved an opening out of the continent—someone *had* forcibly cleaved an opening out of it!
"That palm strike... that palm strike..."
Envisioning the scene from that time, Li Fan was struck with awe, swept away by the grandeur.
Zhao Erbao drew back his hand and stared blankly at the newly reshaped model of the Congyun Sea, lost in thought.
After a long silence, Zhao Erbao slowly spoke again. "These relics I collected were likely swept along by that boundless seawater and brought here together."
Li Fan suddenly remembered the two human skeletons he had seen at Master Yin's place.
*They weren't the same kind of people.*
*So that's how it is.*
Though almighty experts above Dao Integration could distort people's thoughts and veil their traces, the world never lacked extraordinary talents who could perceive past events through scattered clues.
His spiritual intuition grew increasingly tranquil. It seemed Zhao Erbao was not lying.
Li Fan pondered for a moment, then asked, "What you mentioned earlier about something being attached to these relics—could it be related to that palm strike?"
Zhao Erbao hesitated briefly before confessing honestly, "The palm strike that formed the Congyun Sea back then held power so terrifying it bordered on the Great Dao itself."
"The objects swept along with it were inevitably tainted with a trace of Dao charm."
"Even though they have been buried deep beneath the sea for thousands of years, that Dao charm still lingers upon them."
"From a single piece, the Dao charm is too faint to detect."
"Yet the more pieces gathered, the more evident it becomes through the resonance among these lingering Dao charms."
"If the collection reaches a certain scale, perhaps the complete Dao charm can be reconstructed,"
"Allowing one to witness the glory of that original strike."
Hearing this, the prompting in Li Fan's spiritual intuition finally dispersed.
*So this is where my opportunity lies.*
*The palm strike that submerged the sea...*
Seeing Li Fan make no response for a long time, Zhao Erbao cautiously added, "The reason I didn't use a storage ring to transport these relics earlier was that these lingering Dao charms are extremely fragile."
"If they are put inside and taken out again, the lingering Dao charm upon them could very easily be destroyed."
"That's why I had to do it by hand."
Li Fan nodded slightly, accepting the explanation.
"Come, take me to see this Dao charm of the sea-submerging strike!"
Not daring to refuse, Zhao Erbao led Li Fan down the stone pillar's stairs to the largest storeroom.
Inside stood hundreds of assorted relics of diverse styles.
There were porcelain vases, porcelain bowls, small bronze cauldrons, and even ordinary household iron pots and shovels.
Li Fan closed his eyes to sense them.
Within this storeroom, a peculiar rhythm truly flowed in gentle ripples.
However, it was still exceptionally faint, far too weak to comprehend any divine ability from it.
"Roughly how many more pieces are needed to bolster this trace of Dao charm to the point where one can comprehend it?" Li Fan asked.
Zhao Erbao looked troubled. "That is hard to say. At the very least, it would need to be several times what I have currently collected."
"These relics are scattered everywhere across the seabed. Gathering them by one person's effort alone is truly fraught with difficulty."
He paused, glanced at Li Fan, and said, "However, if that young girl with the Spirit-Attuned Treasure Physique lends a hand, it will definitely be much easier."
Li Fan smiled an enigmatic smile.
"Then you two had better hurry. You don't have much time left."
He extended a finger and tapped it between Zhao Erbao's brows.
"From this day forth, you will work for me."
Chapter 130