Chapter 308: Breathing

【Stretch】

Like a genie from legend, unsealed after eons, the ancient creature within—coiled for a thousand years—burst forth, and none could fail to marvel that such a towering, omnipotent being had once been trapped within a vessel no wider than a palm.

That was the sensation when linking to the spiritual perspective.

The depth and breadth of perception extended, while the boundaries of self blurred; extended fingertips reached into every corner within reach, tasting every particle and sliver of space filtered through.

The senses “touched” mist, sand drifting through air, heavy and fine, moving in strands and sheets, revealing a general upward current. Like a boiling pot, things below surged upward in competition; this region churned and brewed something.

The source of the anomaly remained undiscovered, though he had indeed strained his spirit to its limits—had it not been for this, he would never have known it had expanded to such a scale; the vessel carrying the team and supplies looked almost frail within it, let alone the people aboard.

It was not merely a range, but something tangibly real.

In the open perspective, a strange question arose in his consciousness: was he a vast, formless spiritual entity gazing down upon things, or was he the fragile creature who needed a few thin planks to keep from drowning in water?

This dislocation was deeply dangerous, but now was no time to stop—he tried to accelerate, to swiftly sift out concealed signs of activity. Whatever was pursuing them could not be small; even if it swam, it should leave clear, discernible disturbances.

Ripples rose and fell, their amplitude increasing, mingling with spray from freezing rain, strange undulations, ruptured bubbles. Yet not a single trace of movement.

After the oarsmen stopped, the boat glided forward by inertia, clinging to the surface, drifting with the current. Logically, they should have been caught up by now—yet beyond the tightening tension, nothing approached.

The hum in his ears persisted, growing louder, as if not one voice but many, alternating and continuing one after another.

Kraft turned his attention underwater, hoping it was some clever creature clinging beneath the hull to evade detection—but he was disappointed again.

Nothing moved except bubbles carried by undercurrents and a few grains of silt.

【Bubbles, silt?】

Should such things be present in the lake water?

It was not just beneath the boat—the entire water volume within sensory range had become unlike his memory. The dim light, deliberately maintained to avoid notice, obscured vision, while his focus on hunting the imagined pursuer had overlooked this.

The once pure, black-crystal water rapidly fractured with cracks and bubbles, turning into frosted glass.

“Where is it?” someone asked. They had prepared for battle, but the silent observer and the rising hum in their ears signaled that this was unlike any other time.

Dizziness and nausea followed, as if seated in a violently bumpy carriage—the extreme imbalance, akin to violent shaking, gave even the cultivators raised beside water their first-ever experience of seasickness.

The reaction was especially pronounced in some: Green violently retched, trying to expel a meal long digested, his pupils flickering like plucked strings, trembling up and down.

This place was an endless mystery, always revealing a new face just when one thought they understood it fully.

“Nothing’s following us!” Kraft did not explain; like a man leaning down to reach a small object fallen between tables, he strained his spirit downward with all control.

Water, silt, bubbles—deeper down, all grew murkier.

Even when his spirit stretched to its limit, the perception zone nearly pulled into a long, downward-pointing spindle, he still did not reach the lakebed.

Below, it was hard to call it water—solid matter made up nearly half its composition, better described as a churning, viscous slurry, constantly spewing strings of bubbles.

Still a bit short—the lake’s depth far exceeded reason—but even without seeing what happened, he knew the lakebed was in violent turmoil.

“Nothing’s following us—it’s this place that’s the problem,” Kraft declared. “Row faster!”

“Where to?”

“Anywhere! Just don’t stop!”

No longer caring to hide, the cultivators seized spare wooden oars and plunged them all into the water, straining to push the boat away from the increasingly bizarre currents.

Kraft did not sever his spiritual senses. Deep in the silt, he felt something familiar.

Layers were disturbed; the boundary between the surface and the depths was no different from a drumhead—struck, roaring, vibrating.

Translated into ordinary senses, this became distorted spatial awareness: violent shaking causing dizziness, nausea, unsteady movement—the deeper and more sensitive one was to the other side, the worse it became.

If he now severed his spiritual senses, it would be like being thrown into a blender.

A cry reached his ears; Kraft reluctantly diverted a sliver of attention to his vision and saw it came from a cultivator staring over the boat’s side.

The increasingly murky water had drawn their attention.

In the instant the thought flashed through his mind, one oar lost power—the holder, in the emergency, had suddenly been drawn to the silt and bubbles beneath the water, frozen in place.

【Seen?】

The small lamp inside the boat’s hull could not illuminate underwater—it had to be a new light source.

The illumination improved imperceptibly: still pale and thin, but now rising from below—from the lakebed, hidden beneath sludge.

At that moment, his spiritual senses touched something beyond silt and water.

A straight edge—not the near-straight lines of natural lake rock or jointed pillars—but unmistakably artificial.

A second, a third, until the sixth—forming a perfect geometric shape: the base of a prism, being lifted upward.

Then more—like a page of movable type—the lakebed, composed of assembled prisms, rose unevenly, trembled, and emitted intensely penetrating light.

“Look at the boat’s hull. Don’t turn your head.”

The cultivators obeyed, locking their eyes on the flame of the oil lamp inside the hull, moving their arms mechanically and thinking of nothing else.

Had they looked over the side at that moment, they would have witnessed a sight seen only once in a lifetime.

Beneath the muddy water, countless hexagonal shapes like a beehive rose upward, radiating threads of white light—a pale, dim, soul-striking celestial glow, as if the boat were rowing backward through the air, sailing across the eerie, shifting surface of the moon.

Between the prisms, amorphous supporting biomass extended fine filaments and membrane-like filter structures, churning silt and undercurrents, exhaling in rhythmic bursts of bubbles.

The humming merged into one, then fractured into countless tones, issuing an invitation.

Accompanied by a muffled, prolonged suction, vortices tore through the water behind them; the nearest even pulled the stern off course, dragging the boat backward several feet.

But their response was timely.

When this perhaps ten-minute-long respiration ended, the boat had largely escaped the glowing waters, avoiding the lakebed’s recruitment.