Chapter 131: Turtle Nine

With a dizzying swirl of motion, Liang Yan felt a tremendous force impact his back, and then everything returned to calm.

He opened his eyes to find pitch-black darkness all around.

He had never expected that this teleportation would end with him flat on his back, tumbling over—what an utterly wretched sight.

"He who would take must first give."

These were the small characters Liang Yan had seen earlier in the mouth of the golden dragon head.

"So the key to opening the teleportation portal was none other than that half-bottle of Star River Sand!"

He struggled to sit up from the ground, feeling as though every bone in his body had come apart.

"If this Star River Sand truly possesses the miraculous effects Zhao Xinzhen claimed, let alone Foundation Establishment cultivators, even those in the Gathering Origin realm would be tempted. Perhaps only a greenhorn like me, who had just stepped onto the path of cultivation, would discard it simply because of some baffling phrase."

Thinking this, Liang Yan smiled self-deprecatingly. When he tossed the Star River Sand into the dragon's mouth, he had been driven by desperate circumstances with no other choice. He had never imagined it would actually activate the teleportation array and send him to this place.

He sat cross-legged, quietly circulating the "Hunyuan Art" to mend his internal injuries while observing his surroundings for any movement.

The injuries Liang Yan sustained were merely superficial. Blessed with a naturally robust physical body, under the circulation of his technique, he was fully healed in just a short while.

With his injuries completely recovered, he casually formed a hand seal, casting a beam of golden light to illuminate the darkness and inspect his surroundings.

However, it would have been better not to look; the moment the light revealed the scene, his heart gave a violent jolt!

Sitting cross-legged directly opposite him was another person!

This individual was dressed in tattered rags, with hair that was half-black and half-grey, and eyes so turbid that they showed only the whites without pupils. At this very moment, the old man had brought his weathered face right up to Liang Yan's, almost nose to nose.

At this sight, Liang Yan drew a sharp breath. He had extreme confidence in his Hunyuan Art; forget about a person's breathing, even within a radius of several zhang, the falling of a leaf would not escape his acute senses.

Yet this person had been sitting right in front of him, and he hadn't sensed a thing!

"Could it be that this person doesn't breathe?" A bizarre thought arose in Liang Yan's mind.

Bolding himself, he looked at the old man again, only to see his breathing steady and even—undoubtedly a living person.

"May I ask who Your Excellency is?"

Liang Yan made no rash moves. He could not sense any cultivation base from this man. Either the person's cultivation far surpassed his imagination, or he truly possessed no cultivation at all.

Whichever the case, there was no need for him to act rashly.

Yet the person opposite him made not a sound; instead, he extended his right index finger and tapped lightly toward the center of Liang Yan's palm.

Liang Yan felt a start and instinctively pulled back his hands, only to find that the old man's index finger adhered like a clinging vine, following his palm closely.

In that instant, Liang Yan had the suffocating feeling that there was no way to evade it.

The old man's index finger finally came to a rest, tracing and writing two characters directly onto Liang Yan's palm:

"Turtle Nine!"

Only then did Liang Yan understand his intent, and he asked with a mixture of shock and doubt:

"Is this Senior's name?"

The old man wore a dull expression and nodded slightly at him.

Sensing that this person bore no ill will toward him, Liang Yan relaxed slightly. He turned to look into the surrounding darkness, burdened with too many questions, and asked again:

"Does Senior know where this place is?"

"Refining Thunder Sea," the old man wrote on his palm.

"Refining Thunder Sea?"

Liang Yan's face showed doubt. Although it was dark here, everything around was completely tranquil without the slightest trace of thunder qi; how could this place be called the Refining Thunder Sea?

Moreover, the name Refining Thunder Sea felt somewhat familiar to him, but where he had seen it before, he could not remember for the moment.

He shook his head and asked Turtle Nine opposite him: "How did Senior arrive here? And why are you trapped in this place?"

This time, Turtle Nine did not answer. Instead, he wrote on Liang Yan's palm:

"Forbidden to speak!"

Feeling the three words traced on his palm, Liang Yan furrowed his brow. Turtle Nine seemed to sense his mood and continued to write on his palm:

"I am under a silence curse. I cannot speak with my mouth, only write with my hand. Even so, many things still cannot be written."

"I see," Liang Yan said in sudden realization. "This must be another masterpiece of the tomb's master!"

Hearing this, Turtle Nine made no reaction at all, simply sitting quietly in place.

"Even if you don't say it, I can figure it out!"

With that, Liang Yan stood up, raised his hand to cast another spell that strengthened the golden spiritual light before him, and began inspecting the surroundings.

To his surprise, this dark space was not large. Before long, Liang Yan reached a wall made of piled thatch. Walking along the perimeter, he finally discovered that the place he was in was actually a thatched cottage.

Yet for some strange reason, his spiritual light could only illuminate a radius of three inches around him, which was why he had been unable to see the full picture earlier.

Since it was a cottage, there had to be a wooden door.

Liang Yan was now standing right in front of the wooden door.

After a brief hesitation, he finally placed his hand on the wooden latch, deciding to pull the door open and see what lay beyond. Turtle Nine remained sitting on the ground behind him with a blank expression, appearing entirely indifferent to his actions.

With a creak, as Liang Yan pulled the door open, a fierce and overwhelming pressure surged straight toward his spiritual sea from outside.

Rumble!

Liang Yan's soul felt detached, as if he had been jolted out of his body in a fraction of a second.

Outside, black serpents danced wildly, radiating terrifying divine might.

This place was actually a sea of thunder!

Within the thunder sea, bizarre black lightning surged and leaped frantically, and the thatched cottage where he stood was merely a lonely island adrift in this boundless ocean of lightning.

Stunned by this majestic natural terror, Liang Yan's mind was completely paralyzed; he couldn't move a single step, and his heart leaped into his throat.

At that very moment, Turtle Nine flickered his hand, and a pitch-black light the size of a goose egg shot out, instantly landing in the center of Liang Yan's palm.

The moment the object touched his palm, a gentle warmth suffused through it. This comforting sensation seeped deep into his heart, allowing Liang Yan's scattered wits to return. Without a moment's hesitation, he slammed the wooden door shut with his backhand and quickly bolted the latch, locking that overwhelming heavenly might outside.

Still shaken from the fright, Liang Yan looked down at the object in his hand and realized it was a mottled turtle shell. He turned to look at Turtle Nine and forced a wry smile:

"It was this junior's rashness. Thank you, Senior, for saving my life!"

With that, he tossed the turtle shell back to Turtle Nine. Turtle Nine caught it, reached out to write once more on the ground:

"This is the Daoist Sect's Taiyin Divine Thunder; one cannot simply barge through."

"Taiyin Divine Thunder, Refining Thunder Sea..." A thought suddenly flashed through Liang Yan's mind, "Could this place actually be the Daoist Sect's Three-Nine Grand Array?"

Upon hearing this, Turtle Nine revealed an unprecedented look of astonishment. He raised his head to look at Liang Yan and nodded approvingly.

"If this truly is the Three-Nine Grand Array, how could the likes of us possibly survive?" Liang Yan said with a bitter voice.