The rift ran deeper than the mind could grasp, a midnight scar plunging into the earth. After minutes of swimming upward, rare ore lit both walls like constellations, and Cerqin’s excitement sparked bright.

“This rift couldn’t be from that rancid shark’s last blast,” Silver Luan said, voice calm as still water.

She sent her spirit probing upward, a silk thread through stone. The fracture stretched beyond ten thousand meters, a canyon carved by power.

Most of it was magical iron ore, humming with mana. The closer the veins drifted toward dragon-bone composition, the purer and rarer they gleamed.

“Dragon-bone breathes mana into deep rock, and it can sculpt a mining field this vast,” Silver Luan murmured, awe soft as tidefoam. “Elder Xuan You likely used that energy to open this rift.”

She sighed, then glanced at Cerqin, who kept mumbling English under her breath like a spell she couldn’t stop.

The mood turned with a flick of her tail. “Cerqin, you’re about to hit Sixth Rank, right?”

“Yeah.”

Her feelings came first—blurred as mist—then the thought: her body had been drinking power fast. The Love God’s gift fortified flesh, and that boosted state stayed like a warm ember. It left Cerqin unsure which memories were illusions and which were salt-wet real.

“Your climb’s kind of ridiculous…”

Three months past Fifth Rank, and she was already brushing Sixth. If other cultivators heard, some might faint dead away.

“Heh. I’m the chosen child.”

They rose fast, cutting upward through the rift like two quick fish, and slipped back into the wide seafloor’s night-blue hush.

“The resources are wild-rich… but mining them’ll be a pain,” Silver Luan said, tone steady.

Above them lay over ten thousand meters of cold weight. For mid-tier cultivators, that pressure was a mountain on the chest, worth a grim grin and grit.

And the Sea-within-the-Sea, the Dragonbone grounds, still lay farther down, a perfect drop into darker blue.

At over twenty thousand meters, even Cerqin, with a Fifth Rank body stiffened by training, felt the crush like stone hands. In a diving suit, she still had to grind her teeth.

She didn’t let Silver Luan carry her in a quick sprint upward. She wanted numbers, data like pearls.

By her estimate, entering the Dragon’s Remains bare—no diving suit, no cushion—took a clean Sixth Rank if you wanted to come out unscathed.

And at ten thousand meters, any sudden mess or sea-beast attack hit hard, like a hammer in a bell.

“These diving suits take rare stuff, and the price bites deep,” Cerqin said, forehead tight. “No way to mass-produce. We’ll need another path to mine.”

Without partnering the Sea Dragon clan and relying only on the Eastern Sea City Sanctuary, extraction would be a knotted net.

Even if the Sanctuary’s baseline was Fourth Rank, mid-tier strength, they couldn’t send a Sixth Rank, captain-level knight to swing a pick.

And in ordinary mines, the prisoners who did the digging almost never reached Sixth Rank.

“In short, if we can avoid the Sea Dragon clan, we avoid them.”

“You’re in the same camp,” Cerqin said, a teasing wave under the words. “Won’t your family scold you?”

“If we partner them for deep-sea veins, they’ll open their jaws wide and demand a king’s ransom,” Silver Luan snapped, cool fire under ice. “Our Silver Dragon line would get crumbs.”

“Alright…”

Cerqin didn’t know the Sea Dragon clan well. She couldn’t map the dislike in Silver Luan’s chest, thick enough to condense into a palpable current of emotion.

She tore the topic aside like peeling kelp. “When we’re back, let’s build deepwater gear. I remember Ming Duo’s high-tier Arcanotechnology manuals had designs we can twist for this.”

“Didn’t you say the Azuremist Empire sits inland, so you had no coastal kit?”

“True, no dedicated schemes,” Cerqin said, mind bright as lanterns. “But tech carries over.”

Ideas came like fish into a net. She already saw the steps, one by one.

From the reefed seabed to the surface was easy water. Silver Luan wrapped an arm around Cerqin’s waist, swathed her in mana like a shell, then shot upward with a clean whoosh.

Night lay deep on the sea. On the Black Dragon Battleship, crew worked like clockwork gears. Aileaf and Baili had just finished a chat and were heading back, when a knight ran up, breath ragged.

“The detector picked up Miss Silver Luan’s mana signature. She’s rising fast!”

A day of absence wasn’t long, yet it pushed nerves like a thin blade.

Aileaf and Baili stopped and turned to the waves.

Splash—water broke. Silver Luan cradled Cerqin, landed on deck, and pushed the spray back to the sea with a soft pulse of mana.

“Whew. How long’s it been?”

Seeing their faces light like lanterns, Silver Luan felt a touch of embarrassment and asked anyway.

“Less than a day. Where’d the current throw you? Why come back this late?”

With both safe, and Cerqin’s aura thicker like syrup, Aileaf finally let her worry sink.

“And Cerqin, you’re almost at Sixth Rank. Weren’t you supposed to need one or two months on steady grind?”

“Heh-heh.”

Cerqin slipped from Silver Luan’s arms, hands on hips in a little show, then grinned.

“We got swept beneath the seabed rock, into Illusory Dragon ruins. Found heaps of rare veins and critical materials, and snagged the Dragon’s Legacy.”

It was a haul hard to believe for under a day. Even with travel time, finding all that in a week would be luck wearing a crown.

“Illusory Dragon ruins?” Aileaf frowned, doubt rippling like a shadow.

“Wasn’t it the legendary Sea Dragon ruins? And you actually found them…”

After a quick explanation, Aileaf nodded, then eyed the milky-white origin crystal sphere in Silver Luan’s palm and clicked her tongue in wonder.

“Illusory Dragon…”

“Right, Aileaf—did those black sharks show anything?”

Why that swarm came here was still fog-thick.

Cerqin had guessed they smelled ruin-scent and gathered. But per Xuan You, that ten-thousand-meter rift was opened when Silver Luan fought the mutated one, and the top kilometer was blown by that mutant black shark.

Aileaf shook her head and offered her earlier thought. “They were drawn by something, that’s for sure. If it wasn’t the Dragon ruins, maybe something else happened here just before.”

“We’ll have to think that way…”

The waters around held quiet; no obvious anomaly lifted its head.

“Since we’re clear and safe, I’ll go finish my task first and be back in a few days,” Baili said, tone settled. “The fleet from Eastern Sea City should arrive tomorrow afternoon. I’ll leave reception to you, Miss Cerqin.”

“No problem.”

Cerqin hadn’t forgotten he had other work—there was a giant beast to cull in a nearby fishery zone.

“Want to wait two days and go together? On the way back?”

The Black Dragon Battleship moved well, and its overall speed beat any small boat.

Baili shook his head. “That area’s a raised seafloor plateau, reefs like a forest, water shallow. There’s an island nearby, a far-sea shoal. A medium battleship isn’t suited to thread that.”

“Got it…”

Cerqin nodded, thoughts ticking.

“The Black Dragon Battleship’s refit is in your hands, Miss Cerqin.”

“Huh? Uh… okay.”

The heat and sparkle in Baili’s eyes hit her like sun off waves, and for a moment, pressure pressed down.

“Even fast, we need to wait till we’re back,” she muttered. “You’re this eager already…”

“If there’s nothing else, start now.”

“We don’t have materials…!”

Large Arcanotechnology components aren’t things a small lab whips up. Even hand-crafted, we lack feedstock.

“Wait—maybe we do,” she said, mind catching light. “But I want a rest.”

“I want to rest too~” Silver Luan chimed in, her tail flicking up and down, tapping the deck. It looked forceful, yet made barely a sound, like a cat’s paw.

“Hm… suddenly, I don’t want to rest.” Cerqin’s eyes sharpened. “Let me think through the refit.”

“Tsk.”

“With those minerals below, a lot of old ideas can finally grow into steel.”

“How do we mine them? At that depth, extraction’s brutal,” Aileaf asked, worry like a fine drizzle.

“Heh-heh.”

Hearing Aileaf’s doubt, Cerqin turned her gaze to Silver Luan, a silent question like a glint on water.

“?”