Beyond the rare minerals, the place is ink-dark, a sea within the sea with no sun, yet strange rare plants bloom like stars in black water.

What gnaws at them most is this: how did such a colossal hollow, this sea-within-the-sea, come to be, like a moon carved inside bone?

Normally, a dragon’s vast keel buried under silt wouldn’t leave a cavern so wide, not a cathedral of ribs and shadow.

The Sea Dragon fell in the age of gods, a time distant as cold constellations; the seabed shifts like dunes, just as their notes warned.

Above, that huge belt of stone reefs formed late, like scabs laid after the wound, layered by years of undersea storms.

Few chances fit. The Sea Dragon must’ve woven safeguards as it died; over ages, its dragonforce faded from the bones like lanterns dimming.

That’s why the dragonforce on these remains has thinned, a tide ebbing, leaving wet sand instead of roar.

The dragonforce decayed into common mana and seeped into the rock, like dye soaking cloth until color becomes earth.

The sea-crystal seams bore part of the earth’s crush like buttresses under a vault, but they’re brittle now, cracked by time.

Otherwise, they wouldn’t have slipped in so easily, like fish through a torn net.

“Can dragonforce really stay restrained after death?” Cerqin asks, curiosity pricking like a thorn in velvet.

Fear comes first, then reason: death scatters soul and mana like ash in wind; true death is the soul’s vanishing; without a soul anchoring the flesh, mana riots, then dissolves.

“Even a dragon’s aura couldn’t do that… ugh…” Cerqin mutters, repeats, and Silver Luan bumps her gently, a pebble in still water.

“Ordinary dragon aura can’t,” Silver Luan says, lips quirking like a knife’s edge catching light.

“But the Divine Dragon clan might. In our Half Dragonkin lore, their adults rival demigods, mountains that walk.”

“And it fits. Otherwise, this place wouldn’t stay hidden, a pearl in silt.”

If dragonforce blended like normal mana, it would’ve bled into nature; these bones would’ve been found ages ago, dragged up like a ruined ship.

They talk as they harvest, bagging rare sea-flowers and the precious parts from sea beasts, everything stowed in their storage space like shells in a basket.

Soon, their storage bracelets are stacked high, almost bursting, treasure pressing like foam against the rim.

This pocket holds more top-tier finds than expected, a trove like a reef teeming in moonlight.

Mining the sea-crystal will need careful talk later; this vein is unique, a vein that sings, and the Sea Dragon clan will go mad for it.

It’s easy to foresee, a storm brewing, and Silver Luan still doubts the Sea Dragons restoring their bloodline, a river recollecting its source.

The Sea Dragon clan allied with the Silver Dragon clan mostly because they lost their Ancestral Dragon Vein, a root cut from the tree.

If they reclaim the Ancestral Vein, the Silver Dragons and the smaller branches, few in number, may get swallowed like minnows by a whale.

Silver Luan won’t have it. From what she knows, once the Sea Dragons recover their line, their nature could shift, a current turning treacherous.

It spells danger for the Half Dragonkin, and for other races too, a storm rising beyond horizons.

In her eyes, they’re a breeding-obsessed race; give them strength, and they’ll do foolish things, like fire rushing into dry reeds.

The thought makes Silver Luan shake her head hard, like casting off clinging seaweed. Finding this relic so easily is beyond the map.

Better to toss the mess to the Sanctuary to handle, a net for bigger fish. Hugging a puzzled Cerqin, Silver Luan heads where the spirit scan points—the skull.

If divine dragon relics keep their dearest treasures, they sit in the head, like a crown on stone.

The Ancestral Dragon Vein—the Divine Dragon’s blood—the core dragon crystal, the reverse scale, all those mythic materials gather near the skull like rings around a star.

Maybe there’s even a shred of dragon soul left, a coal under ash.

But the closer they walk, Silver Luan feels wrongness rise like a chill current. The scan shows the bones aligned toward the front—the head.

The head reads hazy in spirit sense, fog on glass. No danger, barely a prickle, but the dragonforce there stands out like a drumbeat.

Yet as they near, the head’s pressure, once faintly pressing on the mind, grows weaker, eerily thinning like smoke.

“What’s going on?” Cerqin asks, doubt cold as brine. Silver Luan’s movements falter, and Cerqin’s unease climbs with each step.

It feels like a titanic gaze pins her, a cold spine in the water, hair lifting like kelp in a surge.

“Such crushing pressure…” she whispers, breath tight like a knot.

“Pressure?” Silver Luan blurts, feeling the opposite, calm like a still lagoon.

They draw closer. Silver Luan sees Cerqin’s tremor. She wraps Cerqin in mana, a warm tide, and the shake ebbs, retreating like surf.

“Different targets… The skull might only let dragon-blooded pass,” Cerqin says, exhaling, the weight still lingering like damp cloth.

“No… It’s not just blood,” Silver Luan answers, frown thin as a blade.

Now, more than ninety percent of Cerqin’s mana is Silver Luan’s, a mixed current. Without the Love God’s block, Cerqin would’ve become a puppet bearing dragonforce, a shell with a borrowed storm.

If it were only bloodline, Silver Luan would feel her own blood stir, a drum in the veins. This feels like some will making it hard on purpose, a gatekeeper testing grip.

“Don’t tell me a dragon soul still lingers…” Cerqin grumbles, eyes rolling like pebbles in a bowl.

Even if one lingers, it’s a remnant, mind faded like a dream; pulling off this kind of targeting is too clean, too precise.

Most high-tier remnants, after this long, can’t hold such art; their power draws from the realm of emotions, fog and echo.

If it’s emotion-force, no matter how strong, Cerqin doesn’t fear it; her heart holds its own lanterns.

But that pressure felt solid, a stone on the chest, not a mood.

“Let’s be careful… I’ve got a bad feeling,” Silver Luan says. Her scan keeps whispering no danger ahead, like a door open and a smile in mist.

“Hold on. I remembered something. I somehow missed it,” Cerqin says, face tightening like lines in frost.

“What is it?” Silver Luan startles, pulse a quick drum. “Something we missed?”

“Yeah… Stop first.” Cerqin frowns and slips down from Silver Luan’s carry, forcing past the strange feeling, like walking through cold rain.

She dismisses the Radiant Sanctuary state hanging on her, light dimming like a lantern covered.

“This sea-within-the-sea, inside the dragon relic, should’ve been sealed before we came,” she says, voice like a plumb line.

“Right…” The upper crack was blown open by that high-rank mutated black shark self-detonating, a bomb in dark water.

The tail end shows no other inlet or vent, just ribs and silt. It should’ve been sealed, a tomb without doors.

“Then how did those giant beasts we killed get in?” Cerqin asks. The question drops like a stone.

Silver Luan freezes, then her face shifts like shadow under a wave. She takes out the cores and materials they looted, lays them out like shells.

She studies them, brows knitting, a loom tightening. “Summoned beasts… old types… no dragon aura on them. So that’s why. But…”

Why didn’t we catch it sooner… the thought stings like salt.

“It’s illusion affecting the mind…” Silver Luan says, her small face sinking, dawn clouding.

She snaps back her spirit sense, keeping only a hundred meters, a lantern’s circle instead of a sea.

She gathers her mind and runs a self-check, a comb through hair; she finds a faint anomalous dragonforce clinging to her soul like mist.

“It used the soul to skew mana and spirit,” she sighs, a low whistle. If she weren’t Seventh Rank, even looking for it, she might have missed it.

She checks Cerqin’s mana. The absorbed overflow is disturbed too, ripples in a basin.

“Looks like it touched us while we slept,” Silver Luan says, and pushes mana into Cerqin, a warm river flushing stone.

The odd breath lifts; the dragonforce mana stored in Cerqin flips, then gets reabsorbed, a tide returning to its moon.

They meet eyes in the ink-dark seabed. Faces and pupils are silhouettes, but the after-chill matches, two mirrors fogged the same.

“It was biasing our thoughts,” Cerqin says, voice level as a blade.

“A high-tier mental illusion,” Silver Luan answers, calm like black ice.

They found it fast because they’ve met this trick before; in Eastwind City, and in the Imperial Capital, they were caught and cut by such nets.

“The pressure’s gone,” Cerqin notes, shoulders easing like ropes slackening.

“And the dragon aura feels heavier now,” Silver Luan adds, a weight like rain-laden clouds.

“It’s clearly using dragonforce as the vector. If it had ridden raw mana, we’d be in real trouble,” Cerqin says.

She remembers the Capital, that aberrant mana twisting Qianli, making him stab her. The scene burns like a brand.

“So raiding divine dragon relics isn’t simple,” Silver Luan murmurs, a laugh without heat.

No direct attack yet; but under control, a march to the skull could turn into a fall, a cliff under fog.

The illusion split them: it welcomed Silver Luan, it blocked Cerqin with pressure, two faces on one mask.

“Let’s go take a look anyway,” Cerqin says, curiosity rising like a lantern lit underwater.