Archfiend

Chapter 379: The Gold-Banded Staff (4)

Translator: XTB

As Zhao Ziqi flung the tags aside, he’d already flown a meter away. Soon, he charged over and threw the other tags, setting one in his palm. His expression grew serious.

Charles Taylor... Charles Taylor... He sunk into contemplation, wracking his brain for answers. Xu Yangyi’s gaze slightly flickered. He originally didn’t announce any hope. The Zhao Clan were famous earth masters in China, not necessarily proficient in the history of foreign countries. However... this tag, an American tag at that, actually made Zhao Ziqi remember something?

In in other words... this person was very famous in some field!

Which field? Unexpectedly, it was a field that the Zhao Clan engaged in!

A field... closely related to the supernatural, the mysterious cultivation world behind it as well!

Time went by minute after minute. Zhao Ziqi could only make out the soul of an outline, falling into contemplation from time to time and occasional flashes of understanding coming to him. After no less than ten-odd minutes, he finally raised his “head”. His voice was shaking in excitement, yet carried a kind of incredulous alarm at the same time. Big bro... I know who he is...

I also know... where we are...

He raised his head to look at the triangular sea that was 10,000 meters above. At five in the afternoon on December 5th, 1945, Charles Taylor flew with five ‘Avenger’ torpedo bombers from Florida’s Fort Lauderdale Navy and Aviation base. He guided thirteen students and after an hour...

He swallowed his spit. They vanished without a trace!

Big bro... do you know where he disappeared?

Xu Yangyi shook his head.

Zhao Ziqi shouted excitedly, Bermuda!

The Bermuda Triangle! They all disappeared above the Bermuda Triangle!

“You’re telling me... that we’re in the famous seabed tomb of the Bermuda Triangle?”

The Bermuda Triangle!

An unsolved mystery of the world!

With these words, even Xu Yangyi stared blankly. He looked at Zhao Ziqi in disbelief. “Ziqi, are you sure?”

I’m very sure! Look! Zhao Ziqi urgently pointed to the navigation devices. Lauderdale! Lauderdale! The take-off point! N-No wonder I felt this name was so familiar! The Bermuda Triangle is one of the world’s several major unsolved riddles! Crop circles! The mystery of the pyramids! Atlantis! Although the Zhao Clan is small, our legacy is long! I definitely wouldn’t remember these things incorrectly!

I say this name because I have a little impression of it! That’s right! It’s him! Charles Taylor led Flight 19! This ranks as the number one disappearance among Bermuda’s ten major disappearances! With a kind of excitement belonging to a specialist earth master, he now looked at the tiny triangle above. Could this... Could this be the truth behind the Bermuda Triangle? The disappearances are because it leads to a Lesser Thousand Realm?! Those missing mortals were all swept inside by the Bermuda Triangle’s formation protecting the Lesser Thousand Realm? So that’s why there weren’t any tracks?

Xu Yangyi mumbled to himself as he listened to all of this. This result was awfully strange, not even he dared to accept it. The truth behind one of the world’s unsolved riddle, a conclusion that mortals couldn’t arrive at even with a hundred roaming thoughts, was unexpectedly because the Bermuda Triangle was linked to a Thousand Lesser Realm! Naturally not a single trace was a found!

Ten minutes later, he raised his head, his gaze like electricity. He grunted lowly, and dozens of spirit rays rampaged, as if a hall was being razed or a cave was being leveled, and cleaned everything in area. The wreckages’ original appearances were revealed.

Zhao Ziqi cheered and immediately drifted everywhere. Not long afterwards, his voice echoed from all around.

Flight 201! Disappeared in Bermuda in 1984! Holy smokes! The First World War! The USS Cyclops lead by Captain G.W Worley during the First World War!!! It disappeared in Barbados! This... This is Joshua Slocum?! The first man to travel around the world by himself! This is his Seaspray! In 1909, he disappeared near the Caribbean Sea... He’s seriously here as well?

Zhao Ziqi only returned a full half an hour later. If not because his expression couldn’t be seen in his current state, Xu Yangyi dared to bet that his little bro’s face would already be flushed red in excitement.

I can’t believe it... T-This is definitely Bermuda’s sea grave! That’s why no wreckages were found in Bermuda, they’re all here! Big bro, we accidentally discovered a super shocking secret! If this info was released on Earth, it would definitely make countless explorers and experts go nuts!

Xu Yangyi nodded. Zhao Ziqi’s cultivation time was too short. Moreover, the youth’s constitution was special, and his contact with the outside world was extremely limited. It was because they were together that things were a little lively. All mature cultivators would only be aloof to such business that would astonish the mortal world.

Apart from those apex monopolies and governments, the mortal world couldn’t provide what a Foundation Establishment cultivator required. Xu Yangyi saw through the landscape and into its inner essence. From everything before his eyes, he’d already roughly guessed the direction of things.

“The Bermuda Triangle is one of the entrances leading into a Lesser Thousand Realm.” He strode forward and casually walked towards the historical remnants. “Mortals didn’t know, so they disappeared here. This is also the cultivation world’s most-used method. If they don’t want people to go, the best way isn’t to ban them, but just have them choose not to go themselves.”

“So...” He wandered over and looked at everything in the vicinity. “These people were the cultivation world’s necessary sacrifices. The result was quite perfect. Even now, nobody dares to enter Bermuda.”

“In that case...” He stopped in the middle of his stride, stroked the surface of a ship facing him, and mumbled, “...Is the ‘discovery’ of Lesser Thousand Worlds due to some cultivator inadvertently entering the ‘passages’ connected to Earth?”

He’d already entered the deepest part of the seabed graveyard. All that remained in the quiet surroundings was his fiery gaze. His words seemed ordinary, yet concealed a profound theory of titanic proportions!

How was it “discovered”?

After entering, one could only say that they had “seen”. If they left and told other people, only then could they say “discovered”!

Else not, who would know that you “discovered” something?

In other words... He took a deep breath.

This place... really could be exited!

“A specific time might be needed or a specific item... and this opportunity is quite likely the Sky Burial Festival!” His mind spun at rapid speed, and he muttered, “Once in ten years, so that’s to say the path opens once every ten years? Based on reason, there’s no way that China didn’t record this entrance. But, since the Cosmos Sun Stronghold crashed last time, no one’s been able to get into this realm again...”

“Some accident happened here and closed off the Bermuda entrance passage... that’s the only explanation.” He brought up his eyes to scan the area. “That should be it, since I haven’t seen any wreckage from the past fifty years.”

The area became a little quiet, and Xu Yangyi strolled around as he fell into contemplation. Already, he’d unknowingly walked several thousand meters. All of a sudden, he paused in step.

“Come on out.” Solemn-faced, he brushed an eye over everything around him and uttered, “You’ve been following me for so long, aren’t you tired?”

No voice answered him.

“Are you looking down on me...?” Xu Yangyi’s gaze calmly looped around. “Or are you that confident in yourself? Did you think I wouldn’t find you?”

“If that’s the case, you think you know what I’ve come here for?”

There was still no response.

“You’ve refused a toast only to be forced to drink a forfeit,” he laughed coldly. With a gentle wave of his hand, five fire-dragons snarled and rushed directly to an abandoned shipwreck.

BOOM! A purple inferno swayed, followed by a sharp groan. A half-a-person-tall shadow exploded out from the purple blaze!

Xu Yangyi didn’t relax one bit because the other’s body was small. This was in part because he felt... not one of his fire-dragons had injured this foe.

It was a monkey.

However, it wasn’t completely a monkey. Gold fur grew all over its body, yet all of this grew out from bone! In the two eyes of this skeletal monkey, dark-green fire floated. In addition to the golden fur all over the monkey’s body, ghostly qi filled the strange seabed grave like a forest.

Yet what commanded one’s focus was the qi wafting up from the monkey’s body.

Initial-stage Foundation Establishment!

“Interesting...” Xu Yangyi licked his lips. “Late-stage Qi Condensation is the highest in the Clearcloud Realm, and I can pinch them to death with a flip of my hand. There’s actually an initial-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator hidden in this triangle-shaped sea hole?”

“Are you unable to leave? Or do you not want to leave? Can you understand my words?”

The monkey didn’t react, only adopting an obvious battle stance. Xu Yangyi waited a few seconds and nodded. “After Foundation Establishment, all cultivators have a divine ability called Soul Searching.”

“I have no problem whatsoever using this move on you.”

“REEE!!!” As if it heard what he said, the monkey howled in fury and then pounced forward like lightning!

Boom! The light of Xu Yangyi’s eyes flashed. In the next second, a ring of white qi exploded around his body and formed a white protective barrier. With the monkey’s punch, however, the qi cover shattered without a moment’s delay!

Xu Yangyi stared vacantly for half a second. He’d never anticipated that his qi cover would actually be broken so quickly! This ordinary blow was surprisingly heavier than a thousand catties!

THUMP! A thunderous boom roared as the skeletal fist and the ground impacted against each other. On the brink of approaching crisis, Xu Yangyi’s body transformed into fog, and dissipated. A second later, he was already over a dozen meters away, terrible solemness now on his face.

“REEE!!!” the monkey howled menacingly. All its hair brightened with countless runes in the next second.

Craaack... As the runes gradually shone brighter and brighter, the skeletal monkey’s sternum and spine began to swell as if they were being inflated. In its skull, an orb of extremely condensed white light, even causing the surrounding air to oscillate, was repeatedly sucked in and spat out.

The monkey didn’t fire the orb straight away, though, because Xu Yangyi’s body was now gently moving. In the air, the demon slayer drew a string of afterimages. His true body couldn’t be clearly discerned!

This was the arcane combat of Foundation Establishment. The body didn’t need to be touched. It was absolutely unlike Qi Condensation cultivator’s integration of physique arts and qi, battles of mortal combat that promised freely dripping blood. Apart from Foundation Establishment cultivators who cultivated the body, the gamble of divine abilities, contingencies, and moves seemed as mild as clouds and soft like wind. Still, it was even more dangerous!

Without being struck in battle, there was no finish. After one was hit, not even slag would remain and the surrounding tens of meters would turn into flying ash.

“Clutching Wind, Seizing Shadow.” In concert, the ten-odd figures of Xu Yangyi looked indifferently at the skeletal monkey. This was the evolved move of Wind Brandishes Traces, but it hadn’t appeared in the newly opened Eternal Alchemy Canon.

Ten-odd hands rose up at the same time. In the next moment, the Ten Cardinals Purgatory howled in fury and came forth. All together, a hundred purple fire-dragons instantly evaporated the liquid in the seabed tomb! Resplendent purple light turned the surrounding area into a bright expanse!

Spoiler

1. The Bermuda Triangle is an area below the American state of Florida where many ships/plane are reported to go missing in legend. Crop circles are thought to be the work of aliens. They leave marks in vast stretches of fields. The pyramids are arguably Egypt’s most famous monuments. Atlantis, or the Lost City of Atlantis, is thought to be a mythical city that sunk into the ocean. Some considered it to be real, while others fake. Also considered as an “ancient, yet technologically advanced” society in some works.

2. Most of these are pretty self-explanatory, but a “Seaspray” is a specific type of boat.