When Han Sen had lived in the Alliance, he had been good in the water. After spending several months in the Dream Lake, his talents underwater only improved. He had become so proficient that he could swim easily, even if he was tied up.
The last of the Spiky Turtles vanished into the Dragon Pool, and Han Sen was the first to jump in after them. Dragon Fifteen invited Xius to jump into the pool after Han Sen. Then Dragon Fifteen’s maid, Long Ying, followed Dragon Fifteen into the water.
Han Sen did not show off his abilities, though. He pretended to use a godlight to swim.
Dragon Fifteen and Long Ying were also comfortable in the water, performing just as well in the water as on land. They were Dragons, after all.
Xius swam behind them, her snake tail sending her smoothly through the water.
“Pure Dragons are strong,” Han Sen thought. “Dragon Fifteen and Xius are both Marquises, so Dragon Fifteen will be stronger than Dragon Thirteen was. That Long Ying is more powerful than either of them, though. She must be a Duke. There is no way I could beat them in battle.”
The pool did not seem large from the outside, but it was like a bowl turned upside down. It got wider towards the bottom. Han Sen could see many Spiky Turtles swimming beneath them. Down there, even the giant Duke class turtles did not look very big.
The pool was deep, and Han Sen could not see very much. He couldn’t see what might have been so alluring, so he just followed the turtles down.
Dragon Fifteen and Xius were not in a rush, and they simply followed Han Sen. They could talk underwater, so they didn’t even need to rely on clumsy hand signals.
The deeper they swam, the darker it became. When they were ten thousand meters down, however, a light appeared. It was like the light at the end of the tunnel.
Han Sen had never been there before, so he had no idea what the light was.
“Does this pool lead someplace else? Is it going back to the Ancient God space?” he wondered.
Han Sen swiftly realized that he was incorrect. The light was not an exit. As they went deeper, the blurry light resolved itself into an object. At the bottom of the pool, there was a large palace.
Han Sen didn’t know what material the palace was made of, but it gleamed with blue light. The radiance lit up the entire underwater world like some fairytale.
But the fairytale palace had mostly collapsed. It was in disarray, little more than a ruin. The turtles, however, accelerated as they saw it.
Han Sen looked around, but he did not catch a glimpse of the Dragon God. The thought that it was gone made him feel safer, so he followed the Spiky Turtles towards the palace.
Upon drawing closer to the palace, he realized that the palace was far bigger than he had originally thought. A single pillar was dozens of meters tall.
Han Sen looked over the palace, eventually picking out a stone table that was very large. Several human adults could lie flat on the table without covering its surface. It clearly belonged to a civilization that was neither human nor Dragon.
The bodies of the Dragon were quite similar to humans. They would have no reason to produce a relic of that size.
“What is this palace?” Dragon Fifteen asked Han Sen.
Han Sen shook his head, and he pretended to choke on water as he tried to answer. Then, using a godlight to clear the water away from his mouth, he said, “I don’t know. I told you, the Dragon God brought me here. I don’t know anything about this place. There is nothing I can do to prove it if you do not believe me.”
Dragon Fifteen stopped asking. He had forced Han Sen to swim down with them because he found Han Sen suspicious, not because he really wanted Han Sen to lead them. He couldn’t leave Han Sen alone, and he had to keep a watchful eye on him. It was the safest thing to do.
Xius, looking at the palace, said, “Fifteen, the legends say that the Return Ruin Sea belongs to the sea gods from the xenogeneic space. Is that true?”
Dragon Fifteen raised an eyebrow. “When the Dragon took over Return Ruin Sea, we didn’t find evidence of any sea gods. I don’t know if myths about them are true, for I’ve never discovered any sea god relics before. You seem to know a lot, though. Can you tell me if the palace is related to the conundrum of the sea gods?”
Xius smiled and said, “The sea gods are a higher race, according to the legends. They fell a long time ago, however, so no one knows much about them. There are bits and bobs lying around, scattered, in faint remembrance for their past existence. The ruins found prior to this were far smaller and less significant, though. Judging from the architecture, this really does seem similar to the style of the sea gods. I cannot be one hundred percent certain, of course.”
As they held their discussion, the Spiky Turtles reached the palace. Their purpose there was clear. They did not travel around the palace in search of something. Like arrows, they went straight past the palace to one ruin in particular.
Many Spiky Turtles stopped at a ruin that looked like a mountain. They floated in the water. When the giant Spiky Turtle brought the Turtle King there, the Turtle King squealed. The rest of the turtles surrounded the ruin and started to dig through the mound of rubble.
The rocks were the same unknown blue material. Whatever they were, they must have been very hard, as not even the Duke turtles could break them. They had to just displace them, instead.
All the turtles got busy moving the rocks away.
Han Sen and the others stopped some distance from the palace and watched the turtles dig through the ruins. They did not make a move.
The army of turtles quickly dug through the rubble, and something became visible beneath the collapsed ruin. As more and more of the rocks were moved away, the object became clearer.
Beneath the mountain of rubble was a statue of a sea turtle. It was a very strange sea turtle, though. It seemed to be standing on two feet, and it was clad in a weird set of armor. A circular helmet rested on the sea turtle’s head, and it held a hammer in each of its claws.
That statue was a dozen meters tall. It was very strange, but it seemed to be made from the same blue rock. The weirdest thing was the biped turtle that it depicted.
As Han Sen observed the statue, the rest of the turtles stopped moving. The Turtle King screamed, and the rest of the turtles lay down below it. It looked as if they were kowtowing.
The Spiky Turtle King floated down from the giant turtle’s head and swam over to the sea turtle statue.
“Are those turtles related to the statue? Are they blood related?” Long Ying asked with surprise.
“That might be a possibility.” Xius was looking at the statue and the Turtle King.
Long Ying wished to say something more, but the Turtle King had reached the statue. The plate-sized black body landed atop the helmet of the turtle statue.
