Cyber Era Witch
Chapter 1018 - 804: An Audience with the Divine Dragon Pan Yuan

Chapter 1018: Chapter 804: An Audience with the Divine Dragon Pan Yuan

Far away from the eerie second floor of the Dragon Gate Mansion, Lu Jing trudged down a black rocky ridge, once again activating her recorder.

"... Below the Dragon Gate Mansion lies the depths of Weak Water. Visibility is extremely poor; before, faint daylight filtered through the water, but now, not even that exists..." she murmured lightly as she walked, recording her notes.

"Enough with the recording. Watch out for enemies," Wang Jingxuan said briskly.

Lu Jing lowered her head to inspect the road ahead of them — one of the few things she could still see clearly.

A narrow path stretched before her, flanked by stone walls that left just enough space for two or three people to walk side by side. The path wasn’t straight; it twisted and meandered.

A primitive rocky trail like this ought to be rugged and hard to traverse, yet Lu Jing found the surface beneath her feet smooth and flat. Why?

Suddenly, she understood. They weren’t the first to come here. Hundreds of generations of ancestors had passed through this tunnel, wearing it smooth with their straw sandals and bare feet. As she listened to her own footsteps, it felt as though she was hearing the echoes of history itself.

Li Qingyan was badly injured, trailing behind them sluggishly. No one hurried her along. Wang Jingxuan stopped at the exit of the tunnel and gestured for Lu Jing to check the murals on the walls.

Following Wang Jingxuan’s pointing finger, Lu Jing saw the rock walls adorned with numerous murals. Judging by the vibrancy of the pigments, she suspected someone might have refurbished them mere months ago; they were stunningly intricate.

Lu Jing silently stared at the murals. The artists had painstakingly depicted a giant dragon, likely Pan Yuan, coiling through the clouds, its immense body snaking across the heavens. But rather than being the focal point of the artwork, Pan Yuan’s image was overshadowed by depictions of human conflicts and warfare.

Beneath Pan Yuan’s long and imposing figure, people waged relentless battles on the ground below. They hunted, built altars, and constructed cities, while Pan Yuan soared untouchably above, its gaze carved with exquisite precision, as if watching over all who traversed the tunnel.

Pan Yuan, we’ve come to find you, Lu Jing thought to herself. If you truly are the deity that once ruled Xia, then appear and aid us now.

In the next instant, Lu Jing realized how laughable her hopes were. The mural she had just seen spelled out the truth, didn’t it? No matter how humans fought and struggled on the ground, Pan Yuan didn’t intervene.

People naively believed that their complex rituals had secured the blessings of Pan Yuan — good harvests, favorable winds and rains. But it was never true. It was all just the workings of natural law.

Heaven and earth are merciless.

Passing through the mural-lined tunnel, Lu Jing saw the stone corridor abruptly give way to an expansive meadow.

It was almost unimaginable that beneath Weak Water, in such pitch-black darkness, there could be a lush field of grasses, swaying like an emerald carpet awaiting footsteps.

Clutching her rifle, Lu Jing moved forward, her throat dry as sandpaper. The roar of Weak Water cascading to the depths reached her ears with a thunderous magnitude she only now noticed; before, the sound had deafened her to silence.

A black pool lay ahead. This was the true bottom of Weak Water.

Lu Jing turned to look back at the Dragon Gate Mansion. The golden splendor of its gardens, courtyards, and endless mansions perched atop the distant cliff still shone vividly, stretching infinitely beyond the horizon. Were it not for its known vacancy and eerie nature, Lu Jing might have mistaken it for the fabled Mirage City itself.

Only upon looking back did she realize just how far the three of them had traveled together — at least fifty or sixty kilometers.

Sent by Miss Lu down into danger, they had ventured through the vast expanse of the Dragon Gate Mansion to Weak Water’s deepest point.

"We’ve arrived." Lu Jing turned to look behind her.

Wang Jingxuan still exuded a strange sense of poise and calm, in stark contrast to her once timid demeanor; meanwhile, Li Qingyan was utterly exhausted.

"That’s it... where Pan Yuan truly slumbers?" Wang Jingxuan stared out at the water-covered meadow.

Through the surrounding darkness, Lu Jing caught sight of an astonishing spectacle in the distance across the water.

It wasn’t a sprawling complex of classical gardens and mansions like the Dragon Gate Mansion, but a majestic palace.

The true... Dragon Palace!

One would have to climb a thousand white jade steps to reach its doors. The main hall stood resplendent, and the auxiliary buildings and surrounding corridors were solemnly grand. Vermillion walls, golden tiles, a palette reserved for emperors alone.

Its glowing entryway was illuminated by countless lights. The palace rooftops twisted sharply, with hanging lanterns dangling from the eaves. The flickering flames of the lanterns seemed almost alive, swaying as if beckoning for them to approach.

Lu Jing scanned the surroundings for a suitable vessel to ferry them across. Reaching the Dragon Palace was imperative.

Feeling her way through the darkness and along the ancient, trodden paths laid by their ancestors, she eventually stumbled across an altar. At its center sat a jade cup filled with multicolored soils, each layer densely compacted. Behind it sat a massive cauldron, its surface engraved with secret scripts.

"This must have been where the ancients performed sacrifices to Pan Yuan," Wang Jingxuan carefully examined the altar.

"I’ll decipher what’s inscribed on this cauldron," Lu Jing said, transferring the inscriptions into an eight-trigram cipher and relaying them via her communicator to Xu Yang and Lu Sizhou’s respective outposts.

As before, both teams quickly sent back identical interpretations to assist in deciphering the content.

After interpreting the text, apart from hymns and praises to Pan Yuan, Lu Jing also discovered how the ancients had crossed the water.

They descended to the depths of Weak Water, offering their blood on the multicolored soils to summon a giant turtle, which ferried them to the Dragon Palace across the water.

"We have to offer blood to summon the turtle. Do you agree?" Lu Jing turned to her companions.

"Do it," Wang Jingxuan nodded, while simultaneously reaching out to steady Li Qingyan, clearly with no intention of using her own blood.

Lu Jing extended her hand toward the vessel holding the multicolored soils, and with her sword, "Four Points True Gold," she sliced open her palm, letting droplets of blood fall onto the soils.

Holding their breath, they stood in silence, waiting for the legendary turtle described in the inscriptions to appear.

Minutes ticked by when the ground beneath the depths of Weak Water began to tremble faintly, as if a colossal being stirred beneath the surface.

They watched the pitch-black waters with unease, retreating instinctively, their weapons ready for combat.

Boom!

The ear-splitting sound of water breaking erupted!

In an instant, a shadowy mountain-like figure surged upward from the darkness. Lu Jing’s body trembled uncontrollably, her strained nerves on the verge of snapping as an all-encompassing fear flooded her mind, threatening to quash every ounce of courage she had.

Beside her, Wang Jingxuan swallowed hard, looking utterly petrified but standing her ground — a stark deviation from the person Lu Jing once knew, who would have fled immediately.

Li Qingyan struggled to even remain upright, her breaths shallow and labored.

As described in the cauldron’s inscriptions, the giant turtle had appeared, its immense stature leaving Lu Jing with an overwhelming sense of insignificance. The turtle stretched close to a hundred meters in length, its shell towering like a fortress, its skin a landscape of grotesque, muscular knots and ridges, forming an almost monstrous pattern. The blessed darkness spared her from witnessing its full horror.

Paralyzed, Lu Jing swallowed hard, using her Digital Mind to anchor her rationality before taking a hesitant step toward the turtle.

It raised one of its forearms from the depths — its right front claw was as wide as a roadway, and its fingertip resembled the industrial arms of cranes.

"We... go up," Lu Jing said, her voice trembling, as she approached one of the turtle’s foreclaws.

Each step felt like walking the narrowest tightrope in the world as she traversed the turtle’s calloused claw. Each footfall reminded her that she was treading on something living — cold and damp, sending chills from the soles of her feet to the pit of her stomach.

Wang Jingxuan and Li Qingyan followed her lead, scaling the turtle’s claw cautiously. Lu Jing couldn’t fathom how they mustered the courage to engage with such a creature willingly.

Upon reaching its shell’s edge, Wang Jingxuan had to fire a grappling hook to hoist herself and the others onto the top. The shell was so expansive that even its cracks were vast enough to hold a person within them.

Each of them chose a crevice to lie in, as if they were slipping into tombs made of keratin.

The turtle turned, paddling through the depths toward the Dragon Palace. Every mighty stroke of its limbs sounded like the churning of a giant engine.

Lu Jing felt as though she was pressed against some prehistoric biological machine. She could feel its unparalleled heart pumping torrents of blood throughout its body, sustaining the massive creature’s movement.

At first, she could hear Wang Jingxuan quietly sobbing, though this too subsided after a while, leaving Lu Jing impressed with her companion’s fortitude.

Even Lu Jing herself wept silently, consumed by confusion, sorrow, and despair.

The power of the Longevity Candy kept her suspended in a haze — not entirely dreaming, yet never fully awake. The drug stripped her of any rebellion, any agency, eroding her thoughts slowly but irreversibly.

Still, she knew as long as sedatives were available, she could stave off madness for a little longer — long enough to encounter Pan Yuan. By then, her mission would be complete, and she could finally take her rest.

Lu Jing wished desperately that this was just a nightmare. When she awoke, she hoped to see the faces of those she wanted to see most.

She longed to return to the Northern Archipelago.

Despite her fragmented memories — torn apart by the effects of the Longevity Candy — Lu Jing wanted to go back, to see her true friends again.

To see those who wouldn’t abandon her.

As the turtle reached the shore where the Dragon Palace stood, it came to a slow halt, like a giant ship docking at a harbor.

Lu Jing wanted to move but was paralyzed by fear. Her icy body felt glued to the fissures of the turtle’s shell. Gripping the edges of the crevice, she gradually crawled out, helping the frail Li Qingyan along the way. Wang Jingxuan was the first to descend from the turtle’s shell.

An unnatural calm sat on Wang Jingxuan’s face, a strange blend of deep terror and profound serenity intersecting within her expression.

Lu Jing looked at her in bewilderment but quickly shifted her focus to the Dragon Palace itself.

They had finally reached the threshold of their destination.

Roaring waves sounded behind them as the giant turtle slowly retreated from sight, vanishing once more into Weak Water’s inky depths. There would be no turning back now. The altar was missing on this side; they couldn’t summon the turtle again even if they wanted to return to the surface.

"A thousand steps, and we’ll reach the Dragon Palace," Lu Jing muttered through gritted teeth, supporting Li Qingyan as they ascended.

Their footsteps landed on the white jade steps.

Then, abruptly, the beating of wings broke through the air as a creature with the head of a dragon and the body of a bird swooped down, circling above them.

The creature was humanoid in size, its left hand wielding an axe and its right hand gripping a halberd, both weapons looking ferociously lethal.

"Screech!" The Dragon Sparrow Guard scraped its weapons together, releasing faint sparks of electricity. One strike could easily annihilate them all.

"... I have to take a Longevity Candy," Lu Jing said, retrieving a sugar pill from her pocket. She turned to Wang Jingxuan. "I need a sedative... Jingxuan, quickly, hand me the sedative!"

Wang Jingxuan remained motionless.

Her expression was disturbingly peculiar, a blend of intense fear and profound calm.

A foreboding thought surfaced in Lu Jing’s mind.

"You— You used... used up all the sedatives?!" Lu Jing stumbled forward, her body leaning precariously.

"I-I’m sorry, Sister Lu! I was too nervous!" Wang Jingxuan nearly burst into tears, backing away quickly. "Just take the candy already! If not, it’s gonna kill us!" With that, she turned and bolted up the stairs, making a mad dash toward the Dragon Palace itself.

The Dragon Sparrow Guard howled, charging directly at Lu Jing and her companions.

A surge of fury flared in Lu Jing’s heart. She wanted to chase after Wang Jingxuan, but turning to see the utterly debilitated Li Qingyan, she stopped.

A bitter despair filled her — there was no one left to save her.

Lu Jing pushed Li Qingyan aside, then bit into another Longevity Candy, cracking it and swallowing it whole.

In that moment, Lu Jing was immortal.