The moment Liang Qu stepped out of the academy, he spotted Li Libo waiting at the entrance. A quick glance left and right revealed no one else nearby; he was clearly waiting for Liang Qu.
"What brings you here?"
Squatting by the curb, Li Libo looked up at the sound of his voice, spat out the blade of grass in his mouth, and grumbled, "I've finally found you! I asked Senior Brother Xiang, and he said your classes end at the close of the Shen hour. I showed up a quarter of an hour early to wait, but after waiting forever, you were nowhere to be seen. So I went and asked that old fellow at the gate, and he told me you hadn't come out yet. I felt embarrassed to barge in and disturb those scholarly prodigies, so I toughed it out and waited for over two hours! Did you hook up with some wealthy family's daughter in there?"
"I wish. My classroom is filled with nothing but kids."
"Then what were you doing all this time?"
"I had some business to take care of and ran late. Have you eaten? If not, my treat. We can grab a bite together."
"Sounds great!"
Beaming with delight, Li Libo joined him at an inn to order food and eat.
"Speaking of which, why do I feel like you've changed a bit?"
"Changed how?"
"You're not as tanned, and you seem taller."
"I'm still growing, and I haven't been out fishing much these past few days. Come on, out with it—why were you looking for me?"
"Heh, I almost forgot." Li Libo pulled a sheaf of papers from his breast pocket and slapped them onto the table. "Village Elder Chen sent someone to the martial hall to look for you today. He said the River God Sacrifice is being held tomorrow at noon. You're the chief celebrant and have to read the ceremonial text in public, so he wants you to read through it a few times in advance to smooth it out. The procedural order is written down here too, so you can familiarize yourself with it. When he couldn't find you, he had to send someone to the martial hall. Since I knew you were at the academy, the messenger had me pass it on to you."
"All right, got it. Actually, could you do me a favor? Go back to the martial hall and fetch the large wooden chest from my room."
"A wooden chest? Sure, I'll go check and bring it over."
Liang Qu took the papers, folded them neatly, and tucked them into his robe.
He had not forgotten Chen Zhao'an mentioning that he would serve as chief celebrant for the River God Sacrifice—a prime opportunity to make an impression.
The ceremonial text would hardly be in plain speech; composed of arcane characters rarely used in everyday conversation, it was bound to be a mouthful. It truly warranted practicing beforehand. And when the time came, he would need to dress formally.
The cloak, robes, and Cloud-Treading Boots gifted by his senior brothers were items he had been loath to wear and afraid to leave at home for fear of theft. Now, they would finally serve a purpose.
After finishing their meal, Li Libo fetched the wooden chest, handed it to Liang Qu, and hurried back to practice his martial arts.
Their opportunity had not come easily; both he and Chen Jiechang trained like madmen every single day, never once returning to Yixing.
Were it not that tomorrow's River God Sacrifice required their presence, neither of them would likely have set foot in Yixing for the next three months.
Such diligence surpassed even Liang Qu's by a margin. After all, not only did he have to take his boat out and study, juggling multiple tasks, but he also occasionally slept in and played with his three beasts.
Shameful, truly shameful. He could not afford to be so indolent in the future.
Carrying the wooden chest, he made his way to Pingyang Wharf to pole his boat out. Arriving at Shangrao Landing, Liang Qu slapped the water to create ripples, and an enormous beast gradually surfaced.
Its long, pitch-black body remained half-concealed in the night, dense scales gleaming faintly. The displaced water parted and surged over it, washing through the crevices between scales before trickling back into the river.
Cannot Move was now three and a half meters long. Even if it grew no further, it was fully deserving of being called a giant crocodile.
Stowing the ceremonial text and clothes safely inside the cabin, Liang Qu stripped down to his breeches and dived into the water. Escorted by Cannot Move, he swam toward Fat Catfish.
Along the way, Cannot Move swayed from side to side, begging for praise—for this time, the one who found the treasure wasn't Fat Catfish, but Cannot Move itself!
While digging underwater burrows, Cannot Move had stumbled upon a unique landform. It was exceedingly well hidden, yet inside lay an unexpected sanctuary. Without a stroke of luck, an ordinary person would never have found it.
Liang Qu patted Cannot Move's head in encouragement.
It was just a pity he had nothing good on hand to offer as a material reward. Even so, having its head patted made Cannot Move thoroughly delighted, its tail whipping through the water and sending up a long stream of bubbles.
Upon reaching the spot, Liang Qu looked up, utterly astonished.
Beneath the water stood such a gigantic boulder. Looking up, it rose nearly twenty meters high, roughly the size of a small apartment building.
At the base of the rock, Fist—now the size of a human head—was patrolling the area. Spotting Liang Qu, it paddled over and clutched onto his shoulder.
Beside them, an unassuming stretch of silt suddenly swelled, and the four-meter-long Fat Catfish shook off the sand and swam forward.
Surrounded by two giant beasts and one small creature, Liang Qu felt a subtle thrill, as if he truly were a water god commanding ten thousand miles of rolling waves, wielding dominion over the waters.
With a wave of his hand, myriad aquatic soldiers paved the way.
Yet the moment he thought of Brother Toad, Liang Qu's petty pride vanished into thin air.
Tomorrow he would be reading a ceremonial text in honor of Brother Toad. For now, he would endure—sooner or later, he would feast on a dry pot of spicy frog!
Yielding to gravity, Liang Qu sank toward the riverbed.
In water, humans have a point of neutral buoyancy.
Typically, at a depth of five meters, the body naturally floats upward, returning to the surface without doing anything.
However, at a certain depth, the chest cavity compresses, reducing overall body volume. One no longer floats upward but begins to sink freely. Without added weights, this transition point is usually around thirty meters.
Here, the water already exceeded thirty meters in depth, allowing Liang Qu to descend effortlessly to the riverbed.
Led by Cannot Move, Liang Qu located the burrow it had excavated beneath the rock. Crawling inside, he discovered a massive fissure at the base of the boulder, a full three meters wide, with faint light seeping through.
Liang Qu slipped into the fissure and swam toward the light. After four or five meters, the path took a sharp ninety-degree turn, ascending straight up like a sheer cliff.
Along this cliff-like vertical shaft grew a vine as thick as a man's torso, resembling the beanstalk that led to the giant's realm in Jack and the Beanstalk.
It was the source of the illumination, emitting a bright, eerie glow in the darkness that was remarkably distinct.
Liang Qu leaned in and took a bite; it was impossibly hard, completely unyielding to his teeth. He had no choice but to climb upward along the vine. After barely ten meters, he suddenly broke the water's surface. With wet hair clinging to his head, he stared blankly at the open expanse before him.
The deepest interior of the rock wasn't filled with water, but air!
Looking around, he saw an inverted dome arched over a semicircular platform, its ceiling reflecting rippling, eerie blue light.
The entire boulder acted like a gigantic dome, trapping all the air within this sealed space.
Liang Qu did not hold his breath; Cannot Move had already explored it, proving the air inside was safe.
It was just that as a crocodile, its vocabulary was limited, preventing it from offering a more detailed description of the cave. It had merely conveyed: rock, hole, plant growing inside rock, glows.
In reality, the internal chamber resembled an inverted eighth note: the bulbous head was the cavern he now saw, while the bent stem formed the passageway.
Gripping the vine, Liang Qu climbed onto the platform inside the rock and stood upright. The clearance was ample enough for him to stand tall. A quick scan revealed, tucked away in the farthest corner, a plump plant as large as a human head.
It looked remarkably like a mushroom, its short stalk white, thick, and chubby, but its cap bore a striking resemblance to a lingzhi mushroom. It was rooted deep within a stone fissure.
A water lingzhi!
After spending the past few days studying, Liang Qu was no longer the ignorant novice he had once been. At a single glance, he recognized it as the underwater treasure plant: a water lingzhi!
Just as he stepped forward, a rock-like mass on the shadowy cavern wall that blended completely into its surroundings suddenly shook loose and shot straight toward him!
Chapter 61