Chapter 47
Chapter 47
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Translator: Ace
Chapter:
Chapter Title: The Petrified Treasure Ship
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Ghost God Domains often possessed unpredictable might, but they varied in strength. Some could only mutate cultivators at the Golden Core Realm; once they encountered someone who had formed a Nascent Soul, they were powerless to affect them.
While others could mutate even grand experts at the Body Fusion Realm!
Li Jindou was already at the Soul Transformation Realm, a grand expert who had formed his Primordial Spirit. Yet he had still fallen victim in this unassuming Kiln Works—it was like capsizing in a gutter!
He was frantic, babbling urgently at the two of them with wild gestures. But after porcelain-izing, his vocal cords were no longer flesh and blood, but ceramic. The sounds he made resembled bird chirps, incomprehensible to outsiders.
Seeing this, Chen Shi's heart stirred. He took out paper and brush from his book chest and handed them to Li Jindou.
The porcelain doll Li Jindou had become was only slightly taller than the brush. He gripped it and scribbled on the paper, allowing the two to finally understand his meaning.
Li Tianqing hurriedly said, "Little Ten, my grandpa has been mutated by the Ghost God Domain. It will take some time for him to suppress the mutation and restore his true body. The longer the delay, the deeper the mutation, and the harder it will be to reverse. We need to hurry back to the village!"
Chen Shi's eyes sparkled as he proposed, "As long as you're willing to pay a little, I can help your grandpa restore his true body."
Li Tianqing hesitated, then asked Li Jindou.
Li Jindou scribbled on the ground again. Li Tianqing flushed and said, "My grandpa doesn't believe you."
Li Jindou's face darkened. He thought to himself, "Tianqing is clever, but he has one flaw—he says everything that comes to mind."
Chen Shi had no choice but to let them be. He led the two out of the mountains.
"What did Senior Li encounter in the Kiln Works?" Chen Shi asked.
The porcelain doll Li Jindou was now hiding in his book chest, poking his head out to look around. Upon hearing this, he scribbled inside the chest. After a moment, he held up a sheet of paper.
The paper bore words like "kiln workers," "kiln cave," "jars," and "origin."
Chen Shi's heart stirred. Li Jindou must have gone to the Kiln Works searching for the origin of this Ghost God Domain, only to be hunted by the kiln workers.
From his writing, it seemed he had been captured by the kiln workers and thrown into a kiln cave, but managed to escape.
"Did you find the origin of the Kiln Works, Senior Li?" Chen Shi pressed.
Li Jindou nodded.
"What is the origin of the Kiln Works?"
Li Jindou hesitated, then drew on the paper. After half a day, he finished.
Chen Shi and Li Tianqing leaned in to look. On the paper was a statue with eight arms and four faces, seated in lotus position, each hand grasping a weapon.
The statue's features were filled with compassion, evoking pity for the world. Yet to the two viewers, it felt oddly eerie—far from compassionate, it sent chills down their spines.
"What statue is this?" Chen Shi asked, puzzled.
"Eight-Armed Fighting Mother Bodhisattva," Li Tianqing said.
Chen Shi knew nothing about such things and was about to ask more when Li Jindou held up another paper with the word "porcelain" written on it.
The two understood: the Eight-Armed Fighting Mother Bodhisattva was not a statue, but porcelain.
Li Jindou put away the paper and raised another, which read "very tall and very large."
"A massive porcelain Bodhisattva statue—that's the origin of this Ghost God Domain?"
As the two pondered, Li Jindou raised another paper reading "mobile."
Chen Shi and Li Tianqing both froze. Mobile? What did that mean?
Did it mean the Bodhisattva statue was mobile, or the Ghost God Domain?
"Both." Li Jindou held up the paper.
Chen Shi and Li Tianqing exchanged a glance, their faces turning grave.
"This Ghost God Domain and the Bodhisattva statue—it's one massive Evil!"
Li Tianqing murmured, "If it starts moving, won't everything living turn to porcelain wherever it goes?"
Chen Shi couldn't help shuddering. If this evil Bodhisattva moved, Huangpo Village would likely be the first to suffer!
"Fortunately, this evil Bodhisattva has never moved." He laughed, though he felt no confidence.
Never moved before didn't mean it never would.
Just as many believed the outer-heaven True Gods were eternal and unchanging—yet not long ago, nightfall had come a quarter-hour early?
Li Jindou had originally planned to search the Kiln Works for traces of the Tomb of the True King. Though he hadn't found the tomb, uncovering the origin of the Kiln Works' Ghost God Domain was still a great gain for Chen Shi.
He wanted to ask if he'd seen other porcelain dolls, but Li Jindou was terse with his words, so he held back.
Presumably, those porcelain dolls had been caught by kiln workers and melted in the kilns.
They returned to Huangpo Village. Li Jindou hid in the west wing, using his Primordial Spirit to suppress the porcelain-ization and attempting to restore his true body. Li Tianqing went to care for him but found he could offer no help, so he withdrew.
Li Jindou's porcelain-ization had been brief, and his cultivation profound. By dinnertime that evening, he had refined the porcelain from his head, restoring it as the foremost of the Six Yangs.
With his head restored, reversing the rest became much simpler. But his tiny body topped with a normal man's head looked utterly ridiculous.
Yet it was also extremely perilous—a slight mishap could snap his porcelain neck, sending the head rolling.
He didn't dare turn his head, much less lower it.
By midnight, with all quiet and Li Tianqing asleep, only Li Jindou remained diligently cultivating.
Then, whispers drifted from the courtyard—vaguely Grandpa Chen Yindu's voice.
"The moonlight is so nice tonight. I really want to eat people!"
"Blackie Pot, you smell so good! We should eat Blackie Pot first."
"Raising a grandson is for when you're hungry—start with Little Ten!"
"No, I can't bask in the moonlight... But they smell so good. My neighbors smell good too! There are guests today, can't go out... The guests smell good too."
...
Li Jindou shuddered in fright, nearly snapping his neck.
Distracted, his head rapidly porcelain-ized again. He hurriedly steadied his mind and suppressed it. This time, restoring his true body would take even longer.
The next day, Li Tianqing checked on him and saw Li Jindou no longer seated in lotus position, but lying in bed. Everything from his chest up had reverted to flesh and blood, but below the chest remained porcelain.
His adult upper body atop a dainty porcelain doll lower half looked profoundly bizarre.
Suddenly, Li Tianqing seemed to recall something. He rushed outside, shouting, "Little Ten, Little Ten! I might have found a clue to the Tomb of the True King!"
He dragged Chen Shi along, laughing, "Once we find the Tomb of the True King, I won't need to catch you, and I can go back to report success!"
Chen Shi followed him to the area near the Kiln Works.
Li Tianqing carefully surveyed the surroundings, then his eyes lit up. "Found it!"
He strode forward to an open patch outside the Kiln Works, dotted with sparse weeds but no trees.
Li Tianqing walked along the clearing, deeply excited. "This is a road—a road leading out from the Kiln Works!"
Chen Shi didn't quite understand.
Li Tianqing proceeded along the rugged mountain path, explaining, "When the road was built long ago, they rammed it with large stones, smashed mountain rock, and poured rice soup over it. Constant trampling kept it so solid that even after thousands of years, grass and trees struggle to grow. Look—dense forests everywhere else, but only sparse weeds here. That proves it's an ancient road!"
Chen Shi looked around and indeed saw the anomaly.
But the path was narrow, overgrown with low shrubs on both sides. Without close inspection, it was impossible to tell it was a road.
Chen Shi asked, puzzled, "Why are you looking for this road?"
Li Tianqing replied, "When the True King was buried, the fired porcelain and pottery had to be transported to the Tomb of the True King. In other words, if we clear this road, we can follow it straight to the Tomb of the True King!"
Chen Shi was full of admiration. "Tianqing, you know so much."
Li Tianqing laughed. "Whenever I had free time in the Li family, I read books. Read enough, and you learn a lot."
Chen Shi observed the surroundings. "But this road doesn't lead to the Tomb of the True King. I've been to the tomb many times—I'm very familiar with it."
"It's not a road to the Tomb of the True King?"
Li Tianqing was greatly puzzled. "Then where does this road lead?"
Chen Shi looked around, equally perplexed.
He had followed Grandpa Chen over nearly all of Qianyang Mountain, but never been here.
The two grew playful and followed the road. It wasn't smooth going—some sections broke off into cliffs, likely from earthquakes.
Chen Shi climbed down a cliff using vines, Li Tianqing boldly following. Soon they reached the bottom and continued along the severed path. The road actually widened ahead.
Suddenly, a dry riverbed came into view in the valley ahead.
The riverbed had been dry for who knew how many years, but stranded on it was a massive ship.
A gigantic ship.
A petrified tower ship!
Chen Shi was astonished. It was his first time in this strange place; he hadn't known Qianyang Mountain hid such a great river.
Though dried up, the riverbed's width still showed the river's former scale.
He had never seen such an enormous ship.
Soon, they entered the dry riverbed and followed it upstream.
The channel's ancient contours were visible: dozens of zhang wide. The water must have vanished swiftly, for the bottom still held some massive fish skeletons, also petrified.
The fish were enormous, with mouths full of vicious fangs. They could even pass through the fish's mouths and out the throat.
Looking at these bizarre giant fish fossil skeletons, Chen Shi suddenly realized, "This great river is the De River!"
Li Tianqing was baffled. "How do you know this is the De River? It should be on the other side of the mountain."
"Because these fish are unique to the De River—called Kun fish, they love eating people. Something must have happened back then to divert the De River."
He recounted how Granny Sha had used him as bait to fish, leaving Li Tianqing wide-eyed and thrilled. "That's fun! Little Ten, borrow her fishhook from Granny and hang it on me—let's try!"
Chen Shi thought it over and shook his head. "No, too dangerous. Easy to die."
Li Tianqing gave up.
They continued along the riverbed, which held not only fossilized giant fish skeletons but all sorts of bizarre aquatic creature fossils.
They reached the massive tower ship: forty-four zhang long, eighteen zhang wide. The hull was petrified, but wood grain was still visible.
"A petrified wooden ship? How could there be a petrified wooden ship? That defies reason."
Li Tianqing circled the ship, murmuring, "This ship was petrified by some strange spell. If the petrification were undone, it could still sail the oceans, cleaving waves before the wind. Wait—this ship's design... it looks just like the legendary Great Ming Treasure Ships..."
His expression went slack as he murmured, "Great Ming Treasure Ships—they really exist! Did the True King leave this ship? Could it hold the way back to our ancestral land?"
Chen Shi was baffled. "What's the ancestral land?"
"The ancestral land is Great Ming—the Divine Continent!"
Li Tianqing said excitedly, "Where our ancestors came from! Do you know our ancestral home? Do you know why this place is called New Township, West Ox New Continent? The ancient records in my Li family tell this history!"
He calmed his agitation and explained slowly.
Long ago, an eunuch named Sanbao, under orders from the Yongle Emperor of Great Ming, led a fleet of Great Ming Treasure Ships—27,000 strong—into the stormy, wave-tossed Dark Sea.
The fleet drifted for seventeen years, wandering the darkness, until they found an unknown continent in the lightless ocean.
A vast, uninhabited land teeming with exotic beasts and rarities.
The 27,000 Great Ming soldiers landed, felled trees, cleared forests, built cities and docks, naming it New Township.
Meaning: a new homeland.
New Township became the first Ming foothold, a port and city.
Eunuch Sanbao sailed back to report to the Yongle Emperor, who was overjoyed and named the new continent West Ox New Continent.
From then on, HuaXia people migrated endlessly, expanding territory until Great Ming unified West Ox New Continent.
Everyone now was a descendant of those migrants.
"We've been cut off from the ancestral land for ages. Since the True King fell and Emperor Jiajing reigned, it's been over 6,000 years with no new king sent to rule West Ox New Continent."