Chapter 42 Meeting Xian Yue: Part Two
"During the third lifetime during which I had not made any progress," Xian Yue said. "My frustration had reached such a peak that I visited a seer in a distant country. She was able to instill in me a technique that would let me peer into the possibilities of the future, though when I used it - the knowledge cost me dearly. I lost eight hundred years of lifespan in exchange for several points of knowledge. One, that once this dress would be completed - even though I had never thought of it as more than a curious side project - that I would ascend to the Hinayana realm. And two, that it would be completed by a certain person, and in a vision I had of said person - I saw them flying to the peak of a mountain wearing a strange costume. A costume I'd never seen before, with a red cape billowing in the wind behind them."
Tang Ze realized what she was talking about. "Was that me during the sect entrance exam?"
Xian Yue nodded. "And once I saw that, I knew that I had to reach out to you as I had finally chanced upon the moment I was waiting for. I've been trying to contact you via dream, but your cultivation base was so weak that you couldn't even detect my soul. I had waited so long for you that my body could not withstand the ravages of time after I had sacrificed so much of my lifespan for those pearls of knowledge, and I was left in this state. I have been like this for the last two thousand years."
Tang Ze couldn't feel a drop of Qi from her, though given the difference in their cultivation realms, that was to be expected. What was more odd to him was that he couldn't even see her before he had entered the first minor realm of Qi Condensation, though he guessed that might've just been how souls worked in this world.
"So, I'm destined to finish this dress one day?" Tang Ze asked. "Is that it?"
Xian Yue shook her head. "Destined implies that you are certain to do it - but the future is never certain. I only saw the most likely possibility that would help me break through. You may or may not actually be able to do it. As a crude example, I could kill you right now and then the future that I had foreseen would never come true, would it?"
Tang Ze understood. "Alright - but what are the criteria for 'finishing' this dress?"
Xian Yue shrugged. "I can only ask you to try to solve it to the best of your ability. I don't know what it will look like when it's finished, and I have no clues to help you - only that I have seen a future in which you do so. In other words, it is possible."
"So it's trial and error then," Tang Ze, trying to take a closer look at the dress.
As he examined it, Xian Yue bit her lip. There was a third bit of information that she had also gotten at the time, though she was withholding it for a good reason.
It was that she would fall in love with and marry the man who would finish that dress.
She had scoffed at that idea, because that memory of being left at the altar so many lifetimes ago was still engraved into her mind. Still, she had not completely written off the idea. Even if it was just a marriage of convenience - she would do it if it would help her ascend to the next realm.
That was how desperate she was to finally taste that higher realm of power after so many millennia. If that was what it took to motivate him, she would happily tell him that she would marry him once he was finished.
The urge to advance was like a constant itch in her soul - she could just barely taste the power of the Hinayana realm but could never make it her own. It was always just out of reach, something that she could scrape her fingertips against now and then but never grasp fully.
The higher one went in the realms of cultivation, the greater the allure of advancing became. Eventually, cultivators would forsake love, money, wealth, and happiness for the sake of advancing.
For someone like her, who had abandoned all other material pleasures for the sake of cultivating, such a draw was even greater.
It was as if there was a glass of water being kept just out of reach of a person dying of thirst.
Case in point, the second Hinayana realm cultivator who had emerged in the Raswatian Empire was a man by the name of Teng Ming. He had heard a prophecy, which had been deduced in much the same way that Xian Yue had, that the next Hinayana realm cultivator would be a woman.
He was also an Eternal Soul cultivator at the time - and when he heard of this, he made use of this knowledge by finding a way to turn himself into a woman. Once he had ascended to the Hinayana realm, he simply turned himself back.
That was how strong the draw of advancing was - Teng Ming had not thought for even ten breath's time before deciding that changing his gender was worth it if it gave him a slightly better chance of ascending.
In her previous lives, Xian Yue had not understood why demonic cultivators behaved the way they did. She had always followed the righteous path in every single lifetime.
Now though, she felt that she could somewhat understand what would drive them to commit such atrocities for the sake of advancing. It was oftentimes said that the only reason that righteous cultivators were righteous was simply because the benefits of becoming demonic at that time and place were not high enough for them to outweigh the downsides - she had scoffed at that idea in the past, though no longer.
If she could ascend to the Hinayana realm and was told that she had to kill ten million innocents to do so - could she truly say that she wouldn't do so? She would like to believe that she would have the strength to refuse, but on the other hand, she couldn't deny that her heart might waver at that offer.
More than even a drug addict seeking out their next fix - that was just how much she craved ascension to the next major realm!
Even if she had closed her heart off to the idea of love or ever marrying again millennia ago, in the face of increasing her odds of advancing, she would gladly throw those long-held principles away in a heartbeat.
The reason she held her tongue on this matter though was that part of that prediction said that the two of them would truly fall in love, and she feared that if she told him so, it would not come true even if it would've otherwise happened. Forcing people to fall in love rarely worked, and so she figured it was a safer bet just to not mention that part of things.
As it was, it was said that this would happen after he was successful, so it wasn't going to be an issue for now.
Tang Ze stopped examining it.
"Any ideas?" Xian Yue asked. She didn't expect him to solve it within an instant, but she couldn't help but feel her heart flutter at the slim prospect that he might've already seen a solution.
"If I'm being honest, not really," Tang Ze said. "I'm not even sure where to begin."
"No issue," Xian Yue said. Inwardly, she was quite disappointed, but she didn't let that show on her face. She had waited so long for his arrival, a few more years or even decades were nothing to her. "With time I'm sure that you'll succeed." She was reassuring herself more than she was Tang Ze with that statement.
"I do have a question though," Tang Ze said.
Xian Yue gave him the sweetest of smiles before saying, "If you ask me to take off my garments again, I'm going to break both your legs. You won't need them to fix the dress." Inwardly though, she was hoping that he wouldn't ask for that as a form of payment in exchange for helping her, because she wasn't sure if she could refuse.
"What - no!" Tang Ze said. How could she even break his legs in her current state anyway - he wondered? Xian Yue had said that she could kill him rather casually, and if she had her actual body he didn't doubt that such would be the case.
But did she have some way of attacking him even while she was just a soul? She was able to 'see' things going on outside this place somehow, so it was possible.
Anyway, he wasn't curious enough to want to experience that firsthand.
"I wanted to ask - why are you living like this? Like as just … soul? Even if you do climb to a higher realm, won't you still just be… well, this?" Tang Ze asked. He couldn't imagine someone wanting to stay like this for even a few years, let alone thousands of them.
Xian Yue replied, "When one ascends to the Hinayana realm, their body and soul are completely transformed as they fuse together. Were I to do it, my body would be reformed as that of a Hinayana realm cultivator. In other words, I would have a new body at that point in time."
"Still, doesn't this all seem… so elaborate?" Tang Ze asked. "Why not just reincarnate and try again?" Although this realm was called 'Eternal Soul' the 'eternal' part was a bit of a misnomer in the sense that it was not truly eternal.
Although it could survive much longer than her body had, Xian Yue's soul would still slowly deteriorate over time. A soul without a body was inherently unstable, it was only at the Nascent Soul and Eternal Soul realms that they could exist without one for any considerable amount of time.
"I have already failed over the course of three lifetimes," Xian Yue said. "And though we can peer into our past lives, this is still limited. I am one who specializes in the soul path, so my ability to peer at my past lives, and to recall them after I reincarnate is greater than my peers at the same level, but it is not failproof. Even before the first life I remember living, I must've gone through thousands of reincarnations which I do not remember. And reincarnation washes the soul before it is placed in another body - I can't be entirely certain that my memories will carry over into my next life. I can take steps to make it more likely that it will happen, but even a trained soul path cultivator cannot guarantee it. And even if my memories do reawaken - what if I don't reincarnate into a world where cultivation is possible - like your world for example? I can somewhat influence these factors such as where I will be reborn, but there is always an element of chance involved. I can't be certain that things won't go wrong in my next life. Compared to that, this is the surer bet."
For example, even if there was only a five or ten percent chance of failure, the more often Xian Yue would roll the die, the more likely it would be that she would eventually fail. And failure would mean all the effort of her recent past lives would be washed away by the river of time - she would essentially be starting on her next life after that from scratch.
And if she continued to do so over and over, she would certainly lose at one point in the future. Who knew if her next life would be more suitable for advancing than this one anyway?
That was why she had taken all of these measures and was placing her hopes on Tang Ze.
"Ah," Tang Ze said.
Chapter 43 Deepcurrent Surfaces: Part One
Cultivation was not a safe or reliable path to travel upon - that was one of the first lessons that had been imparted to Tang Ze. One would have to take risks at multiple points, and there were never any guarantees. At Qi Condensation and Qi Refinement stage, it was relatively safe, but there would come a point in every cultivator's journey where they would have to take a leap of faith of sorts. They might end up clearing the chasm and soaring on forward, or failing and smashing against the chasm's floor.
But, if they did not choose to leap at all, they would never advance.
Xian Hue knew that success was not guaranteed even if she bet on Tang Ze, but it was still the best of her available options.
Tang Ze examined the dress for a while more before getting up. "Sorry, I have to get back to my sect, but I'll look into trying to fix this."
Xian Hue had a lot of things set up to work on the dress, but they were old and not the sort of things that Tang Ze was used to working with. He would also need far more time to go over the mystery of how the dress had been made. "I can't promise I can do this, but I can try," he attempted to reassure her.
Xian Hue nodded. "Let me know if you need my help in any way."
"Out of curiosity, what do you intend to do after reaching the Hinayana realm?" he asked her.
"I - honestly haven't thought of that yet," she admitted. He chuckled but did not ask anything further as he prepared to leave.
One thing had greatly surprised her - something that had not gone as per her expectations during their meeting.
Why had he agreed to help her out so quickly?
She had prepared various things to bargain with him for his aide. Threatening him wasn't likely to work, simply because threatening people when it came to art rarely if ever succeeded.
There was a famous story about a poet who was so renowned that an enemy warlord spared his life but demanded that he write a new poem every day under punishment of death instead. The poet attempted to do so for a week, but further than that, found that he could not continue.
The warlord, in a stroke of mercy that was unlike him, recognized that art could not flourish under duress and let the poet go free.
One could catch a songbird and keep it in a cage, forcing it to sign on command, but it would never sing as freely as it would were it soaring through the air.
And this dress was a work of art, Xian Yue realized that.
If Tang Ze was going to find an answer, Xian Hue felt, it would be of his own accord. She could not force him to find an answer by holding a sword to his neck. If she had wanted to enslave or imprison him here with her until he found a solution, she had plenty of methods to do so - she simply realized that doing so was counterproductive.
She had prepared rewards in advance for him though - her hand in marriage was only a last resort (as it was in her current form she had little to offer a man); she knew the locations to various inheritances and some lost techniques that even a Nascent Soul cultivator would've killed for.
And yet, despite preparing all of those things - none of them had been necessary at all.
He had just agreed to help her.
Tang Ze was helping her for a simple reason- because he had been moved by her story. Much like her, he had been stuck at a bottleneck with little hope of succeeding at the time, only her situation was so much worse. And he had managed to overcome this due to an unexpected act of kindness from the Komainu. Given this, he was more than willing to give it his all when it came to this kind of project.
And putting that all aside - he just thought it was a fun challenge. Even something as simple as that was enough to motivate him.
And so, he put his fake beard back on, and then teleported back to the sect.
Once he was back in their common living quarters, he opened the door to his room to find another copy of himself sitting there.
That was because the Tang Ze that had gone to meet with Xian Yue had been a clone created by magic - his original body had been safe here back in the sect.
This was one of the precautions he'd taken while going to meet with her. After all, following the incident with Xu Feng, he wasn't going to immediately agree to help everyone he ran across. Not to mention this situation had been far more suspect than the one with Xu Feng. He had created this clone and allowed it to wander around the sect, even having it speak with his squad members first; in order to make sure that it was indistinguishable from his original self.
Another precaution that he'd taken was to cast a spell that allowed him to detect lies. Xian Yue had not lied to him, but this was not enough for him.
Tang Ze snapped his finger and his clone disappeared, with all the knowledge that the clone had accumulated being transferred to his memory.
Before he made any further moves to help Xian Yue, he would need to dig further into her background to make sure that he wasn't helping some kind of demonic cultivator who would slaughter half the country once they had reached the Hinayana realm. He was fine with helping her for the sake of helping her, but he was not going to help someone evil.
That didn't seem to be the case, but it made sense to verify some of what he'd heard from other sources. Since she had passed away two thousand years ago, he now had a lead that he could follow to learn more about her.
The Raswatian Empire had stood for over a hundred thousand years. Although the Imperial Family had maintained the line of succession up till this point, things had not always been rosy in the empire.
There were times of peace, and times of turmoil. Oftentimes, though the times of turmoil were times of great suffering, these were also time in which heroes rose up, in which star cultivators were born, and new techniques and treasures were discovered.
Many of these new techniques and treasures had long since been lost to time, however. Some people simply didn't see it prudent to share their learning and died, taking their knowledge to the grave with them. Some of them left inheritances which were destroyed before they could be discovered. Others were just destroyed out of spite.
It went the same for some plants and species as well. One hundred thousand years of cultivators trying to snatch anything that was valuable and throwing attacks that obliterated entire valleys at times was more than enough to cause many plants and animals to go extinct. As an example, the pandas were barely hanging in modern times.
One such treasure that had supposedly been lost to the ravages of time was Feng Shuiyu's notebook. She had been a very famous alchemist of her time, and had a habit of sailing out near a certain lake. Unbeknownst to her, the mermen who lived in the lake at the time had taken none too kindly to humans polluting their habitats, and as such, when she sailed out one day, they drowned both her and her boat.
Sadly, Feng Shuiyu had known nothing about this feud, and was an innocent bystander in this whole kerfuffle. Even after peace had been made, nothing really came of things other than people bemoaning the loss of a famous alchemist and then moving on with their lives.
Although heroes rose up all the time, they also fell all the time as well.
And it was to this specific lake that Yin Tiang and Tang Ze teleported one day.
Yin Tiang grumbled about Tang Ze wearing his wizard outfit to get them there, but then again, Yin Tiang didn't really have any better way to get to this place given how far away it was from their sect division.
The two of them were here for one simple reason - it was said that when Feng Shuiyu drowned, her notebook in which she wrote most of her findings was also lost with her. And they were here to see if they could retrieve said notebook.
"Are you sure her journal is even going to be intact - given you know, it's been underwater all this long?" Tang Ze asked.
"Yes," Yin Tiang said. "Alchemists usually write their recipes in books which have to be very durable in order to last for centuries - most of them are imbued with Qi and are impervious to the elements. Two years back a small fire broke out in our sect library and a single book wasn't charred - did you know that?"
"Hmm… so it might still be useful," Tang Ze said. "But, we're not even sure if she had it on her when she y'know… drowned? It was just a rumor it was with her, right?"
Alchemists usually kept several notebooks, and it made sense that she would have kept at least one with her on her person to jot down any sudden strokes of inspiration that she had. But, this was not a certainty. And even if she had such a notebook on her, if only a few pages of it had been filled it would be next to useless.
"Well, only one way to find out," Yin Tiang said. "We explore the lake!"
Even if the odds of finding it were low, the fact remained that cultivators had ventured into territories and sought treasures with far less likelihood to exist than this. Yin Tiang had heard the story from his father, and had been fascinated with the same ever since he had been ten years old. Why then would he back out from taking a chance to see if he could really find it?
Naturally though, there was a reason that few people had tried to do this before them. While cultivators were powerful, very few of them knew techniques for lasting underwater for large amounts of time. It wasn't just about holding your breath for long - seeing in the darkness of the depths, handling the pressure of the water itself - all of these required special techniques to handle which most did not see the point in specializing in.
Yin Tiang would've had little hope of discovering this himself for that matter, but he wasn't alone in this endeavor. He had Tang Ze and his talent helping him.
Of course, Tang Ze's talent had its own limits.
Since it was dependent on the integrity of whatever costume he was wearing, it meant that if he were to take a dive underwater, the clothes themselves would start to get damaged. As they got damaged, he would be able to rely on less and less of the character he was cosplaying as powers', and so on and so forth possibly leading to his demise.
As it was, this character he was going to rely on was a bit special in the sense that aside from some boxers, Tang Ze wasn't going to be wearing much at all, but he needed something else.
This character was called Deepcurrent. He starred in his own little superhero show back on Earth, and the lore went that he was the son of a group of sentient fish creatures that lived at the very bottom of the ocean. One day, he got interested in what lay above the ocean's surface, and then emerged onto land where initially people began hunting him down thinking he was some sort of sea monster. However, he saved a group of fishermen lost at sea and then became hailed as a hero.
The typical episode would go like this: humans or occasionally an evil race of some deep water creature was causing trouble, Deepcurrent was called to save the day, the enemy would narrowly escape, and then Deepcurrent would have to chase them. A final battle would ensue, and within twenty minutes the story would be concluded before the next villain of the week came around.
All in all, it was your traditional superhero fare, but as you might expect, Deepcurrent had a number of powers that were quite useful in this particular situation. He was said to be immensely strong and nearly indestructible while underwater - enough to lift up a mountain. He could naturally breathe and talk underwater, had a built-in sonar ability, and could telepathically control fish.
Chapter 44 Deepcurrent Surfaces: Part Two
The problem was in portraying Deepcurrent given the costume didn't have much in the way of clothes that one would need to make. A speedo was all that was needed, it was the rest of the body that was the problem.
He was designed to be a fish-like creature, and as such had dark green skin all over. While Tang Ze could try to make gloves and shoes that would somewhat mimic his webbed hands and feet, the skin was another deal altogether.
Not to mention, it was hard for anything to hold up while underwater.
That necessitated the use of waterproof body paint, which was not easy to come by. Yin Tiang, when he got to know of this, had spent time trying to make his own - and they had finally come up with an alcohol and oil-based solution that somewhat worked.
The issue was that even this had its limitations, as even if you put it on your skin and the water didn't wash it off, the body would naturally sweat and that would cause it to slowly disintegrate. If he was back on Earth he probably would have been able to find a better solution, but here, this was the best that Yin Tiang could come up with.
And, despite its drawbacks, it should have been able to last for a few hours at least.
Tang Ze found that he couldn't use his power to make better costumes, unfortunately. He couldn't become a wizard and make one out of magic, its powers would not work, nor could becoming a shapeshifter and then turning into a picture-perfect representation of that character work. He had to make the costumes normally through his own effort.
Back on Earth, Tang Ze would not usually do things like this. He didn't like putting on body paint or applying huge amounts of makeup for his costumes, so this was a novel experience for him as he began dabbing his entire body in green bodypaint.
After that, were the designs that Deepcurrent had on his body. He had to get near the lake's surface so he could see himself properly - and this still took him nearly an hour to get it all reasonably right.
At least, he hoped it was right. One new problem he was running into was that he had no references to really draw upon, and he didn't remember all the fictional characters he'd seen that well. Did Deepcurrent have those black markings on the left or the right? Did he have three pairs of gills or two? Wasn't his face a different shade of green than the rest of his body?
There was some trial and error which could work by seeing how each change affected how close the costume was to the original, but it was extremely tedious to keep changing things and seeing what the difference was.
'I really need a makeup artist' - Tang Ze thought to himself, though he knew that was a pipe dream.
The 'gills' were just streaks of black paint, and no matter how hard Tang Ze tried, he could not find contacts in this world or an alchemical solution that might have the same effect, so while Deepcurrent had yellow irises, there was no known way for him to replicate that.
There were a few webbed accessories attached to his head, and overall, he was about thirty percent accurate to the character once he was done. And given just how overpowered Deepcurrent was while underwater, that should easily be more than enough.
"Remember though, the paint won't last forever," Yin Tiang said. "So before something like that happens, you need to surface up."
"Yeah, yeah, I know," Tang Ze said. "Though, what about the mermen? They won't get mad that I'm in their territory, right?"
"They have a city under the lake, but they don't really rule the entire territory of the lake, you know," Yin Tiang said. "Try to avoid them, and see if you can spot anything worth taking."
"Alright,' Tang Ze said. As it was, they were mostly confident that even if they got the mermen somewhat riled up, Tang Ze could just run away and they'd teleport back to the sect before anything major could happen.
So there would be no harm done.
With a deep breath (even though this was unnecessary), Tang Ze dove into the water.
He hadn't been very good at swimming back home, but as a consequence of his new abilities, he found that being in the water was quite pleasant.
For one, although he had been feeling cold before, he now felt like it was quite warm. Not warm in an uncomfortable sense like on a hot day, but as if the water was just right.
Swimming in the lake felt so natural, like it was where he should've always been. What on Earth was he doing spending all that time on land for?
His 'gills' though they were nothing more than painted lines, seemed to work fine enough as he had no need to surface to breathe.
The most important thing though was the fact that his eyes were working much better than they otherwise would. It was like his vision was better than even a hawk's as he could see nearly every detail in the murky depths.
Tang Ze clicked his tongue, letting out a number of sound waves, which went out before bouncing back towards him, making a mental picture in his head.
The best part of all of this though, was the mobility. It was almost like flying - he just had to think of where he wanted to go and within the blink of an eye, he would be there, not feeling the slightest bit of fatigue at all.
He tried testing his powers to read the minds of fish, though he didn't find anything very interesting. Turns out that fish did't have very complicated thoughts.
In the distance, down below, he could make out some lights and structures which he guessed belonged to the mermen city. A bit of him was curious as to what it was like and wanted to give them a visit, though as far as he understood, they were fiercely independent and did not like outsiders. Going close might end up getting him a trident to the rear, so Tang Ze made a mental note to stay as far away from it as possible.
Although Tang Ze could move much faster than he could've otherwise imagined - to the point where the mere friction would've skinned him alive normally, he could not bring out his full speed. The reason was that his costume itself had no special powers, and was vulnerable to the elements. He had already lost a flipper in the short amount of time he had been down here, and if he moved any faster, he would also end up losing things like the prosthesis he was wearing to simulate fins.
And if his costume was damaged too much, it would lead to him losing too much of his powers. And then he would end up taking more damage to his costume. He might end up sinking like a stone, or asphyxiating if he lost his ability to breathe underwater.
He had to admit one thing - the lake was huge! It was closer to being a pocket of the sea rather than just a lake, although he could somehow tell that it was filled with freshwater. Even with his abnormal speed, it would take him ten minutes to lap the lake.
Not to mention it was extremely deep, if he wanted to, he could dive to the point that no light filtered from above, or even from the mermen settlement.
Still, his eyes seemed to work perfectly even in this kind of environment, and he had his sonar to guide him as well.
With a few clicks, he noticed a huge number of creatures moving towards him - squid!
Each of them was about the size of a car back on Earth, and they were all a bright shade of scarlet. What was remarkable was just how many there were; soon, hundreds if not thousands of them were passing him by, to the point where he was surrounded by a cloud of squid.
Tang Ze sent out telepathic waves towards them, and while they could tell that he didn't belong down there, they didn't strike him down or otherwise try to do anything to harm him. Right, Deepcurrent also had the ability to make friends with any fish he encountered - though Tang Ze wasn't sure how far that ability would go.
Could he make friends with the mermen like that?
Squid would normally not live in fresh water like this, so the squad that Tang Ze had encountered was likely some species unique to this world.
As he went deeper, still finding nothing interesting, he suddenly froze.
He wasn't sure what it was that he had just detected, initially thinking he had found some kind of underwater mountain. However, his sonar was telling him that it had just moved.
This thing, which felt like a behemoth to his sonar, had actually moved ever so slightly.
His eyes could barely make out the outline of a shadow at this distance, but his sonar was able to give him a much better picture.
That was not a huge rock - it was a massive… fish? Squid? He couldn't really tell.
Immediately, Tang Ze backtracked as his brain struggled to comprehend just how massive this thing was.
He could not even make out what the exact shape was of whatever it was he was looking at, even with his sonar. It was something so big he had initially mistaken part of it for the lake floor, though that movement (even if it was just a slight shift from its point of view, it felt like a monumental shift to him) signaled it was something else. What he thought was a massive valley within the floor of the lake was the gentle dip towards what Tang Ze guessed was an eye.
He had heard that 'there's always a bigger fish' - but this was ridiculous. He didn't even know if what he was looking at was a giant merman, crab, or cephalopod, because he couldn't capture the whole thing with his sonar in one go, and as such the image generated in his mind was quite broken and disjointed, as if he was looking at a scattered jigsaw puzzle of an image.
In a flood of panic, he sent out his mind towards the... thing for lack of a better term. It was thankfully asleep, or maybe hibernating, as its mind was very slow. He didn't dare do anything that might even have a remote chance of waking it up. Even its mind made his own look like a flea before an elephant, whatever it was, it gave the mental energy of something that was unfathomably ancient, that had existed since long before the Raswatian Empire was even a dream.
Likely no human had ever gone this deep before, or else he'd have seen records of it somewhere. Either that, or whoever went down so deep never came back up.
Both of those thoughts terrified him.
Even with his otherworldly strength underwater, which was combined with the passive strength he had gained from another costume and then boosted by ten percent kudos to his cultivation, he did not feel at all confident in taking whatever was down there in a fight.
It looked like something that, were it to be awakened, could possibly endanger the whole empire. Seeing it no longer made the water seem like a fun and safe place to be, but a prison that he felt he needed to get out of as soon as he could.
Chapter 45 Deepcurrent Surfaces: Part Three
It was good thing that what it was was asleep - actually, its mind was even more somnolent than someone who was asleep, it was definitely hibernating, he was sure of it now as he reflected on that.
And good thing too - Tang Ze couldn't imagine how, even if it somehow consumed everything else in the lake, it would be able to fill even half of its belly. What kind of carnage would it cause once it woke up?
He hoped that he would never have to find out.
Then again, the lake was pretty deep - he realized, as he began to surface. Despite his abnormal speed, he still couldn't even begin to detect the traces of light coming from the surface. In his search for treasure, just how deep did he end up going?
In his haste to get back to the surface, he passed far closer to the mermen settlement than he otherwise would have. But, this did not even cross his mind, with him only wanting to get away from whatever that thing lurking in the depths was, and he was soon out of the eyesight of the mermen anyway.
If he was back on Earth, surfacing so fast would have no doubt given him some form of decompression sickness, but Deepcurrent was naturally immune to such things.
He peeked out of the lake's surface, and spotted Yin Tiang. "Hey - I couldn't really spot anything worth taking, and no journal either. But the lake is way deeper than I thought, I'll give it another try, but I wouldn't get your hopes up."
Yin Tiang nodded as Tang Ze dived back down, this time only wading into the relatively shallow water. He could see a small cloud of discoloration around him as he moved - the waterproof body paint was beginning to dissipate, and he didn't have long before it would be completely gone.
He didn't find much of importance near the shallower beach bed - there were tons of things that were shiny, but it was mostly just trash like old bottles and the like. He found a handful of copper coins, but it was not even worth the effort to collect them. The paint that he had applied to his body was in itself far more expensive than any of these coins.
"No good," Tang Ze said, coming back to shore and approaching Yin Tiang. "Nothing worth taking."
"Ah, well, I guess I should've seen that coming," Yin Tiang said.
"A question though - is there some story of a big sea monster - or I guess, lake monster living in this lake?" Tang Ze asked. Tang Ze described what he had seen to Yin Tiang.
"Never heard of something like that," Yin Tiang said. "With that said, even if you couldn't get anything else - do you mind picking up some Freshwater Serpentweed? We can at least sell that to get something back." If Yin Tiang had never heard of it, maybe it was something that was older than this empire itself. How long had it been hibernating within the depths of this lake for?
"Freshwater Serpentweed?" Tang Ze asked. Yin Tiang told him that it was a plant that looked quite like seaweed, but grew in large quantities slightly deeper in the lake. It could be used as a somewhat valuable ingredient in the refinement of various pills.
"Alright," Tang Ze said. They had already come out so far, so they might as well try to recuperate something of value from this whole journey. Not to mention, at the very least, this would not involve going deep into the water.
To where that thing was...
Tang Ze shuddered even now at the memory of that creature.
He had bought a special towel with oil-cleansing substances to help him wash off the layer of body paint. It was getting to be slightly irritating for his skin, which is why he never really liked costumes like these which involved having to put on a full layer of body paint.
That said, Tang Ze had seen people back on Earth completely covered in paint - sometimes gold or silver, or other colors if they were trying to be orks, aliens, or some other creature that required changing your skin color. Those people were quite dedicated, and back home, he had told himself that he too once wanted to try such a thing but had never gotten around to doing so... and he had ended up here before he could ever act upon such a desire.
And yet, here he was, not only doing that in a new world - but also not just as a hobby but something that was quite useful.
The two of them had brought lunch for such an occasion. There was a human settlement out in the distance, but it was too far to conveniently walk to unless they wanted to fly or use magic.
While they were eating, however, Tang Ze's actions had unwittingly caused quite the commotion beneath the surface of the lake's seemingly tranquil surface.
The mermen settlement of the lake was not a huge force - numbering only about thirty thousand or so. There was a much larger mermen settlement near the coast of the Raswatian Empire but that was a seawater mermen settlement; these mermen were adapted to freshwater.
They only had a single town which had been created using a special ability of the mermen to grow sponges in a way that allowed them to become huge and shaped like buildings. At the same, time, they could also be made to grow as hard as stone.
The mermen for the most part had a peaceful coexistence with humans, who had learned that it was not a good idea to dump a large amount of trash into their lake long ago. Although their population was too small to generate a good number of high-level cultivators, on average, they were stronger than humans especially underwater. They had a number of other features that allowed them to save themselves while living in the lake - a form of magic that could control the waves, weapons that could fly through water as if it was air, and the ability to retreat into the depths of the water if they were defeated where humans could not easily follow them.
It was thanks to these advantages, and the fact that there was nothing of extreme importance in the lake in the first place, that they were left to their own devices by the humans.
Naturally though, they had their own groups of sentries and scouts around their settlement, and though Tang Ze might've not thought much of zipping by them while surfacing, they were immediately on guard upon noticing the same.
From their point of view it was bizarre - a creature emerged from the depths moving at a speed they could barely keep track of, but instead of approaching their civilization, it zipped away and turned towards the surface with the speed of a torpedo.
Only two of them got a good enough look at this thing to be able to describe it when they went back to report to the other mermen.
The mermen burst into a flurry of activity like they hadn't in decades, speculating on the identity of this stranger. This was akin to a military helicopter flying over a remote uncontacted tribe back on Earth.
Although the two of them had gotten a closer look at Tang Ze when compared to the others, this was only relative - and they were also unsure about the finer details.
The younger mermen had no idea what to believe, and the elders had not heard of anything like this either.
It was only when one of their priests was consulted that they got something resembling an answer.
"Based on the description… could this be Ma'akt?" one of the priests wondered.
The mermen religion was complex, and in the stories that made up their beliefs, there were creatures which could be loosely termed as 'minor gods' which would occasionally visit the mortal mermen. Ma'akt was one of them - whose name translated to 'one who is as fast as lightning.'
Given the speed with which they had seen that creature move, this theory began to gain traction and spread like Greek fire among the mermen civilization.
The mermen king, Jiao Ming, naturally heard of these stories, and was approached by his High Priest, Jin Lei regarding the same.
"Your Highness, I trust that you have heard the stories of Ma'akt descending from heaven to meet with us?" Jin Lei asked.
The mermen king was sitting in his throne room - which was located in a palace made not of sponge, but of coral - a rarity for them that had to be imported from their brethren living near the coast. He sat upon a throne adorned with gold and silver, and as his High Priest continued, scratched his chin in contemplation.
"Your Highness, in the days of old," Jin Lei continued. "It was common for us to offer sacrifices to the gods."
Back in the olden days, every month, the mermen would sacrifice a young boy to the temple of Mar'chel, Ma'akt's uncle. And every seven years, seven virgins would be strangled in honor of J'abal, mother of the lesser gods.
With time, such practices were decreed as being 'barbaric' and had been phased out by the kings that came before Jiao Ming.
"What are you getting at?"
"Your Highness, our city has been in peril the past few years," Jin Lei said. "Our foundations have been sinking without us having an explanation for why." The mermen civilization was built atop a rock, though for some reason, the foundation upon which they had built their homes was beginning to crumble from beneath them. A section of their city had already collapsed, with no one having a clear explanation as to why. "Isn't it clear then, than this is a sign from the gods that we have lost their favor? And to see that Ma'akt himself has visited us. But, think of this - even though he passed by our city, why did he not stop by to visit us? Is this not a further sign that we have lost the favor of the gods, that although he was in our waters, he did not deign to even give us a message or engage with us?"
Jiao Ming did not fully agree with Jin Lei, though there had been talks of their city losing the favor of the gods for several years by now. Jiao Ming had attempted multiple times to hold large congregations or grand sacrifices to them, to no avail. Their city continued to sink, with no one being able to give an answer why even now, and it seemed the gods continued to scorn them.
"Perhaps," Jiao Ming said. "But those guards don't even know for sure what they saw." Their descriptions were rather hazy and unreliable, able to essentially be molded into whatsoever people wanted them to be in order to suit their own desires - such as with the priests of the city who badly wanted this to be some kind of portent from the gods. Jiao Ming highly doubted that Ma'akt had genuinely descended from heaven to come visit them.
That said, the priesthood had quite a large influence on the general populace.
And though he was an absolute monarch, even he was subject to the whims of the crowd.
If word got out that he was treating this matter lightly, it would cause an uproar, perhaps even greater than with the fact that their city seemed to be mysteriously sinking into the earth.
Given this, he had to do something to appease them.
But what?
"Perhaps one of these facts could be dismissed as a coincidence, Your Majesty," Jin Lei continued, placing pressure on the king. "But these many coincidences coming together cannot simply be a coincidence."
"What would you have me do then?" Jiao Ming said through gritted teeth. He had to restrain himself from yelling out 'Get to the damn point already!' Jin Lei was speaking with an excessively servile tone, though Jiao Ming could notice the glint in his eyes that communicated that the High Priest knew that he had the king cornered.
And despite this, the king could do nothing.
Chapter 46 Deepcurrent Surfaces: Part Four
"We should seek out Lord Ma'akt," Jin Lei continued. "And offer him a proper… tribute as atonement for whatever sins we have committed to make him so angry. Only then will the gods be appeased and we would have a chance at saving our glorious city."
Tribute.
That word could mean many things, though when it came to the gods, for the mermen, it almost invariably meant live mermen sacrifices. And to appease a god who had descended to meet them, the sacrifice of an ordinary merman would not suffice, but it had to be one of the royal family.
"Fine then," Jiao Ming said, knowing that he had little choice in the matter. He had several wives and concubines, and he selected among the youngest of his daughters. "Tell them to offer Zhi Yun to Ma'akt then. Send our finest warriors to Ma'akt, and should he wish it, I will bend the knee to him myself."
The only reason that Jiao Ming was even going along with this was, in addition to the severity of the situation, he did not believe in the slightest that they would actually find Ma'akt. It was more likely than not those two guards had simply gotten drunk last night and were seeing things.
Jin Mei smiled. "Your Highness is truly wise! To give up his own flesh and blood for the sake of his people - no doubt the people will remember his sacrifice for eons to come!"
After eating lunch, Tang Ze and Yin Tiang decided to take a little nap under the shade of some trees before Tang Ze started putting on another layer of waterproof body paint to dive into the lake and grab some Freshwater Serpentweed.
"Now remember," Yin Tiang said. "No matter what happens, we need to avoid the mermen as much as possible. We wouldn't want to cause some kind of incident."
"Right," Tang Ze said, moving closer to the water to apply the bodypaint while glancing at his reflection. He was sure he had passed somewhat close by their city, but he had immediately rocketed off in the other direction, so he was also sure that nothing too bad should have come of it.
Just as he thought such, he noticed his reflection in the water was slightly odd. He had been trying to finish the layer of body paint on his face - but that looked far too alien for it to -
-and before he could finish that thought, a group of mermen emerged from the water. There were twenty of them in total.
The mermen were able to go onto land for very short periods of time, though they didn't like it - much in the same way that humans couldn't live underwater for a very long period of time but could manage to dive for a certain duration if it was needed. They looked far more like fish than like people, and they wore a strange green armor which Tang Ze remembered was some kind of mineral they mined. Their weapons were made of the same green mineral, and these weapons could move through water as if it were air. Some of them were earing golden ornaments like earrings or necklaces.
Tang Ze turned around to Yin Tiang, and they both exchanged a 'We really screwed up didn't we?' look instantly.
As it was, the mermen and the humans were living in peace, at least currently. It looked like Tang Ze had unwittingly riled them up somehow - and if it turned out that they had somehow precipitated an inter-species conflict, the bloodshed that would ensue was a distant thought in their minds. What they thought of before all of that was that their heads would absolutely be the first things on the chopping block should such a thing happen.
Both of them were preparing to kowtow ten thousand times and break their arms if that would calm the mermen down, though before they could even begin apologizing, the mermen all bowed their heads instead.
"Leader of the First Trident of King Jiao Ming, Captain Hai Long, greets Lord Ma'kat!" the one kneeling in the front said.
Yin Tiang looked between Tang Ze, and Tang Ze glanced back. They were able to communicate a few things from expressions alone, and had somewhat understood that they weren't in big trouble. At least not yet.
The mermen warriors remained as is for a while, until Tang Ze said, "Raise your heads!"
They complied, and took a good look at Tang Ze. None of them dared show it in their facial expressions - but they all though that Ma'kat looked quite different than what they had been expecting.
Tang Ze had almost finished applying his body paint, but he still looked very human. And that surprised them - for their religious dogma said that the gods had made the mermen in their image. Yet, why did Ma'kat look more human than he did a merman?
Not to mention the strange accessories that Tang Ze was wearing - just what were they?
However, these were warriors who were very nearly convinced that Tang Ze was actually Ma'kat, and so none of them dared voice any concerns or issues they may have had with his appearance.
"Lord," Captain Hai Long continued. "We seek you on behalf of King Jiao Ming, and would like to apologize for the offenses our people have caused against the gods."
"That is ah, alright-" Tang Ze tried to say, though at the moment, his mouth had gone dry and his words were softer than a pin drop on a busy dance floor - that is to say, no one other than him heard them.
"As such, we offer you tribute," Captain Hai Long said, and one of the warriors standing behind him fetched something from the water.
Within a fishing net which looked like it was made of silver, there was a small creature - initially Tang Ze thought that it was some kind of fish, though a closer look revealed it to be a small merman, which was clearly a child. It was richly dressed and adorned with gold and pearls, though the moment it saw Tang Ze, it started wailing.
"This is Zhi Yun, one of the daughters of His Majesty Jiao Ming himself," Capatin Hai Long said. "His own flesh and blood, who he offers as recompense for his misdeeds." He then jabbed Zhi Yun with the blunt end of his trident and scowled. Zhi Yun stopped crying though still looked just as tearful as she had before.
Now, both Yin Tiang and Tang Ze still had no clue what was going on, but the context was more than enough for Tang Ze to figure some things out. "Well… ah, in that case, you may tell your king that I, Me-Ma-" he coughed, "Ma'kat have been touched by his willingness to offer his own child. I ah, am willing to overlook all of his misdeeds, and as a gesture of my forgiveness, you may ah, take Zhi Yun back. His mere willingness to offer such is more than enough to earn my forgiveness."
Tang Ze really hoped that this would work and that the two of them hadn't just dug an even deeper hole for themselves.
To this there were various cries from the mermen.
"We do not deserve lord's kindness!"
"So wise!"
"At last we have been blessed!"
"Lord Ma'kat," Captain Hai Long said, now bowing once again. "We once again offer you Zhi Yun, as we cannot take an offering back to the king. With what face will we tell him that the gods rejected his sacrifice? And with what face will Zhi Yun return, knowing that she has been rejected by the gods?"
"No, no," Tang Ze said, trying his best not to burst into sweat - because the more he sweat, the less long that the body paint would last. At least right now he looked sort of alien, and could maintain something of a façade. "Consider it my… ah, act of mercy."
"In such a case, will Lord Ma'kat save our city?" Captain Hai Long asked.
"Save your city…?"
"Indeed, the fact that the ground beneath us has been sinking has caused us great trouble, Lord," Captain Hai Long said. "We request that you please show us your mercy by relieving us of this sword that hangs above our heads."
Tang Ze tried to get out of this, but was unable to, and eventually resigned himself and agreed to go with them back to their city.
Before that though, he said he needed to have a word with his 'trusted servant' aka Yin Tiang.
"What are you doing?" Yin Tiang whispered hurriedly to him.
"I don't know, but how are we going to explain how we messed up this badly to anyone?" Tang Ze asked. "Do you know who Ma'kat is?"
Yin Tiang shook his head. "The mermen are very isolationist, but based on context he sounds like some sort of god."
"Yeah, I figured that too," Tang Ze said, sounding annoyed - but if Yin Tiang, who had researched the lake quite a bit beforehand was unable to tell him more, it was likely that no human could either.
"So what now?" Yin Tiang asked.
"I go down and hope that they don't suddenly declare war on us," Tang Ze said. They were too deep into this - while he was sure that the mermen would be angry if they found out that Tang Ze had wandered too close to their airspace (or waterspace he guessed) he was sure they would be even more mad if they found out they had been deceived and that Tang Ze wasn't Ma'kat.
As such - there was only one option. And that was to double, triple, and then quadruple down on their lie!
"Good luck then," Yin Tiang said. There was no further help he could provide in this situation. "Try not to start a war, m'kay?"
"I'll try," Tang Ze said.
Anyone among the mermen soldiers who had any doubts as to who Tang Ze really was were more than convinced the moment he began to move in the water.
"So fast!"
"He truly lives up to his name!"
Some of them had noticed that he looked suspiciously like a human who was wearing some kind of body paint, but upon seeing how he moved in the water so gracefully and agilely, these doubts were put to rest.
It looked like Tang Ze, even when restricting his speed, could swim to their city and back fifty times over in the time it took them to get there. They had to request that Tang Ze slow down while swimming, because they didn't want to leave their 'god' without an escort.
Tang Ze was convinced then that he could likely handle all of the mermen if it came to a fight - the issue was that he was trying to avoid such a fight if possible.
The mermen were essential to the ecosystem of the lake - otherwise the Raswatian Empire, if it truly wanted to, would've eradicated them long ago.
He also didn't want the other humans, most of whom were mortals, to suffer due to something he had done. While they swam towards the mermen settlement, he kept racking his brains for what to do next.
Chapter 47 Deepcurrent Surfaces: Part Five
"You… what?!" King Jiao Ming said, nearly speechless as Captain Hai Long narrated what had happened to them.
It looked like Jiao Ming had been terribly wrong when it came to his belief that Ma'kat did not exist - because these soldiers, all of whom he trusted, all had the same account when he probed them.
"He appears slightly different than what the murals and artists would have us believe," Captain Hai Long said. "But if anything, the tales do not do enough justice when it comes to describing his speed. He truly is nearly as fast as a lightning bolt!" Well, to take that literally was a bit of an exaggeration, but he moved faster than anything they had ever seen before.
The only reason that Jiao Ming had agreed to send the soldiers in the first place was because he had been rather certain that they would come back empty-handed.
Suddenly, something struck him. "How is Zhi Yun?" Although he had many children, and didn't have the time to care for each of them personally, he had never seriously considered giving her away. It was only the pressure of the crowd that had compelled him to make a token gesture like that.
"Ah, Lord Ma'kat is truly kind and generous indeed," Captain Hai Long said. "He returned your daughter, saying that he was greatly moved by your act of sacrifice, and that as a show of mercy, he would be giving her back to us."
While Jiao Ming was greatly relieved by this, it also planted a seed of doubt in his mind. That was not at all how Ma'kat acted in any of the legends - he was the kind of person to kidnap and marry any young maiden that met his fancy if the tales were to be believed. He was still more merciful than many of the other gods in the sense that at the very least, he didn't eat those he considered beneath him.
He felt a pang of pity for Zhi Yun. Although she was not in the direct line of succession, he did have the faintest bit of paternal feelings towards her as she was his child, though he tried to bury this sentiment in his heart. However, no matter how hard he tried to suppress it, the feelings and various questions that came with them would not stay put and continued to resurface in his mind. How would Zhi Yun react later on when she became old enough to truly understand what he had done? Was an explanation of 'I didn't think it was real' actually sway her heart at that time? He shifted uneasily on his throne as he pondered the same.
His thoughts were interrupted by Captain Hai Long continuing to wax on about how great Lord Ma'kat was. It was clear that he was completely taken by this figure, and as the soldiers would share their stories with the rest of the populace, they too, would be completely enamored with this figure. Hai Long was one of Jiao Ming's most trusted warriors, though Jiao Ming also knew that the captain was quite devout as well. The reason he had chosen him was the fact that he believed that if this 'Ma'kat' truly was an imposter, Hai Long would be able to sniff that lie out immediately.
But this idea had backfired on him.
Whether this figure was Ma'kat or not, by this point, his subjects would treat him as such. And that meant that Jiao Ming could not openly oppose him - if he did so, he would soon find his head on a pike.
"Forget all of that for now, where is Lord Ma'kat?" Jiao Ming asked. He hadn't seen him come in with the guards.
"Ah, Lord Ma'kat is truly merciful and generous," Captain Hai Long said. "When he heard of our plight, he said he would first try to stabilize the ground beneath our feet, and then said he would meet with us. He has gone to investigate the cause of why our city is sinking right now."
"Eh?" Jiao Ming said, dumbfounded. That sounded even less like Ma'kat - no, that didn't sound like any of their gods for that matter!
The gods of the mermen religion rarely did anything nice without demanding some kind of tribute first, oftentimes demanding dozens if not hundreds of sacrifices. On the contrary, they were very quick to anger, killing mortals for the slightest perceived insult.
That was how their religion depicted the gods - and so to hear something like that completely took him for a spin.
"You should have demanded he come into the city regardless," Jiao Ming said, a trace of anger in his voice. "How will the people react when they see that one of the gods themselves has visited us, and we did not extend the slightest bit of courtesy to them?" It didn't matter if Ma'kat was a god or not, even if they were to treat a normal guest in that matter people would spit on their sense of hospitality.
Captain Hai Long shuddered, but composed himself nearly instantly. "I can only apologize for my mistake, but Lord Ma'kat did not agree no matter how many times we begged, and this one did not dare put pressure upon one of the gods."
Jiao Ming sighed. "Well, so be it. Tell the people to start preparing the largest feast seen in our city's history - we will welcome Lord Ma'kat properly when he comes back!"
As Tang Ze looked up towards the surface, he could not help but remember his mother's words.
'You shouldn't lie, because to cover up a single lie, you will need to tell a hundred more lies!'
But, there was little he could do right now.
He knew that one thing he couldn't do at all was to walk into the city, because if he got that close to the mermen, he was sure that his cover would be blown rather soon.
Instead, he tried to focus on the task at hand.
The mermen were wondering why the bedrock upon which they had built their city, which had stood firm for many thousands of years, suddenly seemed to be collapsing.
Tang Ze's plan was to solve this crisis, and then tell the mermen he had to run afterwards.
As it was, this was not too out of place for an episode of Deepcurrent. A foreign tribe of fish were having some kind of trouble, like a sea monster attacking them, or fishermen poaching them, and they would come to Deepcurrent for help. And Deepcurrent, being the hero he was, would help them out.
Only he wasn't sure where to begin when it came to solving this issue. He was not actually Deepcurrent after all, even if he was pretending to be him.
Why was the bedrock collapsing? It wasn't like he had any power that would let him 'talk to the earth' or something along those lines.
He went closer to the city's foundations, and after getting nowhere, did the only thing he could think of.
That was to ask himself, 'What would the actual Deepcurrent do in this kind of situation?'
The answer came to him immediately. He would probably say something like 'One can find the answer to any problem if only one learns to listen the ocean!' That had basically been Deepcurrent's catchphrase, and something that he said nearly once every episode.
Of course, the ocean, being a body of water, could not talk, but this was often interpreted by the Deepcurrent fandom as learning to listen to nature.
Then again, it could also be interpreted as listening to the fish.
Tang Ze let out a wave of ichthyoeidekinesis towards the rock, and to his surprise, he got a response from a large number of fish.
The thing was that the signals seemed to be coming from inside the bedrock somehow? How was that possible? Unless it was hollow from the inside?
That might make sense as to why the foundation was weakening then. Was there a group of underwater moles digging out under the mermen city?
Tang Ze couldn't find a way into the bedrock, and it was here that he once again asked for help from the only source he could rely on - the fish themselves.
How could he get inside?
A mental map began to form in his mind as he dived deeper - deeper than the mermen would normally go, until he found a narrow crevice. It would've normally been hard for someone his size to fit through, but he had Deepcurrent's supernatural underwater strength right now, and chipped away at the rock with his fists whenever it got too narrow.
Once he had traveled some distance, he found himself in a large cavern and saw the fish who he had been sensing.
"Crabs?" Tang Ze muttered, seeing millions of them in the crevice. They had made nests in the rock.
It was clear now what was happening - this huge crab colony was slowly digging away under the foundations of the city!
Well, it wasn't like they were actual moles, but his initial hunch had been correct.
That said, had it been something else like a natural phenomenon, there really wouldn't have been anything that Tang Ze could've done to help them out.
This, however, was something that he believed he could solve with relative ease.
He just had to convince the crabs to leave - however this turned out to be harder than just reaching out to them with his mind and asking them to go away.
While some of the crabs were receptive to this kind of hypnosis, some of them began to fight. A lot of them were bigger than the others, with one of them being as large as a truck - and these resisted his urging of asking them to leave.
Not to mention that even if he did clear out all of them this way, there would be a second problem in where the crabs would all go. That in itself could cause a huge ecological headache.
That said, now that he knew the root cause of the matter, he could just tell the mermen this and have them deal with it. It was their problem in the end, and they likely had a better idea of how to deal with this than Tang Ze did. They also could probably find a solution that wouldn't damage the ecology of their environment that much.
He might've been able to come up with a better solution had he more time, but the thing was that even now, his body paint was beginning to thin. And Yin Tiang did not have much more left, so he needed to get out of here.
He swam out, though he marked the place where he had entered the cavern so that the mermen would be able to find it before going near the city. It was likely there was an even deeper entrance below it, which is how the crabs had gotten in the first place, but Tang Ze had no desire to go any deeper into the lake after what he had found earlier.
It was here that his heart fell as he saw that the mermen had prepared quite the welcoming party for him.
Chapter 48 Deepcurrent Surfaces: Part Six
Someone, whom Tang Ze assumed was the king, was at the forefront of the welcoming party, but there were around four thousand other mermen behind him. Some of them were dressed in resplendent armor, while others were civilians either carrying musical instruments or chanting what Tang Ze could only guess were hymns. There was quite a bit of noise as they spotted Tang Ze, though Tang Ze still couldn't risk going any closer to them.
They would ask him to stay in the city, and he was already running out of time, with the paint layer around him growing thinner and thinner.
Tang Ze did not dare get any closer, but that did not mean the same was true the other way around.
Jiao Ming swam forward, waving his hand as a signal, telling the others to wait as he went to go speak with Ma'kat.
It was only natural that the most prestigious among them would go to meet a god.
Not that Jiao Ming was convinced even now that who he saw before him was truly Ma'kat, but he did not let this show on his face as he stopped some distance before Tang Ze.
"I, King Jiao Ming, greet Lord Ma'kat," Jiao Ming said. He was at a respectable distance from Tang Ze and did not approach unless asked to.
"Greetings," Tang Ze said. Jiao Ming frowned - why did that voice sound like that of a scared child instead of an ancient lord of the seas? "I uh, have found the root cause of why your city is sinking…"
Jiao Ming's eyebrows narrowed. Was this stranger telling the truth?
Even if he hadn't bought into the 'Lord Ma'kat' story, he was just as worried as everyone else about the city sinking.
"There is a colony of crabs undermining your city," Tang Ze said.
He hadn't wanted to do this earlier, but decided that it was most appropriate to make use of his telepathic abilities to communicate with fish to let their king know what was going on.
To Jiao Ming, it was a very strange and uncomfortable sensation. Though the television series always described one of Deepcurrent's abilities as being able to 'make friends with any creature of the seas' (not literally as it was also used on freshwater creatures in some episodes), its actual effect was essentially to mind control them.
But, right now Tang Ze only had about a fourth of Deepcurrent's powers, and mermen were intelligent creatures and so not easily subdued.
In any other circumstance, Jiao Ming would've taken such an attempt to be equivalent to an attack on his person, but he paused as images entered his mind of a location beneath their city whereupon they could enter to find this crab colony.
"I must thank Lord Ma'kat for his wisdom," Jiao Ming said. "And I invite him to feast and dine with his followers."
"Ah, sorry that isn't possible, I have to ah, run," Tang Ze said, flustered as he racked his mind for an excuse to leave.
Jiao Ming once again found this person's lack of confidence in their voice to be quite telling. It was as if they were a rather poor actor than the real thing.
"Yet, the glory of my people will be greatly diminished if it were to be known that one as esteemed as yourself turned his nose to our hospitality," Jiao Ming said.
"Ah, maybe but ah, my father calls for me, like, now," Tang Ze said. If he was a god, surely his father would also be important.
"Ah, if your father Mal'char calls for you, what can mortals like us do?" Jiao Ming said.
"Right, sorry, but I do have to dash," Tang Ze said.
That confirmed for Jiao Ming that this thing, whatever it was, was not Ma'kat. Ma'kat's father was killed by his brother in their mythos, and was also not named Mal'char - that was a name he had made up on the fly.
And yet, he did not call out Tang Ze on this. By now, he was aware that his own people had bought the lie hook, line, and sinker - and as such, pulling the wool from their eyes would only lead to extreme confusion and panic.
Not to mention, he already potentially had what he had truly wanted all along - a way to save their city!
Although Jiao Ming was not aware of this, he was behaving in this manner partially because of Tang Ze's mind control. Though it hadn't overtly affected him, it had subconsciously influenced his thoughts so that they would line up in a manner which suited Tang Ze's own.
Instead, as he went back to his subjects, he ordered them to deal with the crab issue after relaying what Tang Ze had told him, though he made up some other excuse as to why Lord Ma'kat had to leave without gracing them with his presence - namely that his sons had suddenly fallen into danger and he had to go rescue them.
"But, rest assured, Lord Ma'kat told me that he would come by to visit us in person when the time is right," Jiao Ming said. "Though, the time in the realm of the gods moves differently than ours, so it might end up being a couple of thousand years. Still, rest assured that his blessings are with us!"
It would later turn out that although that thing had lied about being Ma'kat, the information on the crab colony was indeed true, and their city's foundations were soon stabilized once again.
He did make a note to appoint a new High Priest as soon as was feasible though. It was clear that the one they currently had did not have any clue as to what he was talking about.
While Jiao Ming was returning to his subjects, Tang Ze quickly swam up to Yin Tiang who was waiting for him on the shoreline.
"Come on, let's get out of here," Tang Ze quickly urged.
"What happened?" Yin Tiang asked- he had been pacing back and forth for quite a while, wondering what it was that was going on beneath the water's surface.
"No time to explain," Tang Ze said, changing into his wizard costume. "But, I think I gave them just enough to convince them - and there shouldn't be a fight… I think? Anyway, we've done enough damage as it is - let's get out!'
Yin Tiang did not need to be told twice as they went back to their sect.
"...and after that happened, Yi Tiang and I hightailed it out of there," Tang Ze recounted.
"And then what happened?" Xian Yue asked.
She was watching Tang Ze looking over the dress, trying to figure out what it was that was missing.
He had managed to piece together a few vital pieces of information during the times he came to visit Xian Yue over the past few weeks.
One, whatever pieces were missing needed to be sewn in using Qi within the threads. The amount of Qi was low enough that he could use a simple iron needle to thread it - the issue was with the thread itself. He would need something stronger than normal silk. But, this was not hard to arrange for - though he might not have more than a few pennies to his name, Xian Yue had accumulated quite a bit of treasure over the centuries and was more than happy to give it out if it might help him solve her problem.
On top of that, whatever he sewed in had to match with the rest of the dress… now this was the real hard part. He couldn't figure out what the pattern he was looking for was, given the rest of it was so scattered in terms of both theme and material.
Very little of the original dress even remained.
What was he looking for?
The only conclusion that he could come to was that the real answer lay with Xian Yue. This dress was a collage of her life, so there was likely something that she was missing that had to be put there, metaphorically speaking.
However, last time, when he had brought this up, she shrugged and simply said that she didn't know. She had pinned all her hopes on Tang Ze, but he hadn't the slightest clue how to proceed any further.
The answer had to be out there - after all, she said she had seen a possible future where he would do so. It was like being given a test question - the teacher wouldn't have handed him a question that couldn't be solved. But that didn't mean that Tang Ze knew the answer.
He had been talking about his recent escapades with the mermen simply to fill in time, but he was so lost in thought that Xian Yue had to repeat the question before he registered it.
"Oh? What happened after?" he said. "Well, I didn't dare go near that lake again after that, but Yin Tiang had a way of asking things in a roundabout way about what happened after we left - and as far as we can tell, nothing happened to the human village, so it looks like the mermen took it well. That, or they didn't take it badly enough for war to break out."
Xian Yue sighed. "The two of you though - being so reckless. What if what you had done got yourselves into trouble? Or caused trouble for the empire? The Emperor wouldn't give a damn about saving the two of you, you know? You would find yourselves either exiled or having your heads offered to the mermen as atonement."
"Yeah," Tang Ze said. "But, thankfully it all blew over… at least it looks like that… don't know what they are going to do about the crab issue though."
"If you're suffering from a crab problem," Xian Yue said, winking slyly, "there are medicines for that."
Tang Ze chuckled. "You don't make very good jokes, you know that?"
"You try being funny after being stuck like this for so long," Xian Yue said.
She took no offense at Tang Ze's remarks, she had had very little contact with anyone in so long, and no one came to visit her except for him. Even before that she had been quite introverted and recluse - avoiding human contact as much as possible, and as such her social skills were rather lacking.
"Oh - I was actually meaning to ask," Tang Ze said. "Do you know anything about a lake monster?" He described what he had encountered deep within the dark depths of the lake.
"I haven't heard of anything like that," Xian Yue said. "Whatever it is, it sounds like some kind of ancient desolate beast. It's a good thing you didn't end up waking it - otherwise not even your corpse would've made it back to the sect."
Tang Ze shuddered. He had suspected that. "But, you don't have an idea of what exactly it might be?" He knew what he encountered was strong and powerful, but still, he wanted to have some idea of just how strong and powerful it was.
"No," Xian Yue said. "And I think this goes without saying, but don't go back to that lake."
"I'm not," Tang Ze said. If it were up to him, he would never go back within a hundred miles of it knowing what lurked beneath, let alone that little incident with the mermen.
Silence fell between them, with Tang Ze not making much progress at all, until Xian Yue asked him, "Can you tell me more about your world?"
"What would you like to know?" Tang Ze asked. "There's a lot I could tell you, but there was no real cultivation or magic back there, so it's kind of, you know, boring."
"I doubt that - even mortals have amazing stories of bravery and honor," Xian Yue said. She had little in the way of entertainment, and while she could go snoop around the place, after so many lifetimes, there was little that she found to be engaging or entertaining within this world. It was as if she'd seen it all when it came to things in this world. Something from a different world though - that might actually feel fresh and engaging for a change.
"I guess," Tang Ze said. "But, where do you want me to start?"
"How about starting with your dream?" Xian Yue asked.
"What dream?" Tang Ze asked.
"Whenever I tried to contact you, I would usually find that you were already dreaming. And it was almost always the same exact dream," Xian Yue said, and Tang Ze's spirits fell. He knew what dream she was talking about. "What was going on? I saw you in a crowd with other people. Is there any significance to that dream? Or is it something random?"