Chen Yu hovered in midair, the sea breeze whipping his white robe into a flapping roar, yet he did not immediately fly toward the reef isles.
He still had one important thing to do.
"Olivia."
His divine sense lightly touched the silver-white outline of the dragon soul deep within the castle.
Olivia's dragon soul was already curled up on the lawn, sunning itself, the tip of her tail lazily drooping over the edge of the nursery as she prepared to take a midday nap.
Hearing Chen Yu's transmitted voice, she opened her eyes, rolled over on the castle lawn, and asked lazily,
"My Majesty, anything else? Otherwise I'm really going to take my nap."
Chen Yu said, "Haven't you always been curious about the secret between me and that alchemist?"
"A whole new world is right before your eyes. Step out and see for yourself."
A flash of golden light erupted in his palm, and a miniature castle shot out of the glow, floating above it.
The castle was only the size of a cake — silver-gray stone walls, towering turrets, a flower pavilion, a nursery — every detail intact, only shrunk countless times.
If you looked closely, you could even see a tiny silver dragon lying on the grass.
Inside the castle, Olivia felt the entire structure shake suddenly, then the scene before her spun wildly.
When she looked out through the castle's dome, the snowy plain she had watched for decades suddenly vanished from her sight, replaced by an immense sea.
The blue ocean stretched to the edge of the horizon under the midday sun, the surface fragmented into billions of golden sparkles. The swells were gentle and profound.
A flock of seabirds skimmed the crests in the distance, water droplets flicked by their wings briefly shining rainbow colors in the sunlight.
Farther on, black reefs of various sizes dotted the sea, and the outlines of a few verdant islands could be seen on the distant horizon.
She flew to the top of the castle; her vertical pupils reflected this entirely unfamiliar sea.
"Where is this? Why is the mana here almost inert?" she asked, sounding out of place.
A silver dragon's perception of mana is as instinctive as a wolf's sense of scent. She sensed the external wind and immediately detected something wrong: the mana in this sea was fundamentally different from that of Zeyarila.
Zeyarila's mana is alive, flowing like wind and seeping like water; it can be guided, shaped, and consumed.
But the mana here hardly moved. It was more inward, more still, as if pressed into some deeper structure, not easily exchanging with the outside.
"We've left Zeyarila."
"Left... Zeyarila?" Olivia's vertical pupils widened slightly.
Her dragon soul rose from the castle top, circled once in midair, scanned the surrounding environment with her senses, then returned to rest on the pavilion railing.
This time her tone lost several degrees of laziness and gained a rare seriousness. "Is this another material plane, or a dream?"
She had seen other dimensions before. The silver dragon had roamed the Astral Realm for longer than most human kingdoms had existed; she had witnessed countless demiplanes made from broken thoughts and discarded magics.
But the small sea before her was too intact to be a dream.
The saltiness of the seawater evaporated in the sunlight with a real smell, the seabirds' flight paths carried the unmistakable patterns of living beings, and the rhythm of the waves obeyed the physical laws of a real ocean.
This did not feel like a dream.
Chen Yu thought for a moment. Explaining it using Xu Xuan Heaven cultivator terminology would only complicate things, so he chose a phrasing Olivia could understand directly: "You can treat this as another material plane, not the same place as Zeyarila."
Olivia fell silent for a moment, then let out a sigh.
"The continent's mages have spent their lives exploring the Astral Realm, trying to find other material planes hidden in the void."
"The Dawn Council is said to have built several observation outposts along the Astral border; the Elves search with ancient star maps, and the dragons' stone carvings mention worlds beyond our world."
"So the new world was actually not far from us?"
"If those mages knew this, I can imagine how mad they'd go."
She lightly fluttered her silver wings and landed in front of the railing, her vertical pupils fixed on the deeper reef isles; her gaze fell on a patch of sea that looked no different from the rest, and uncertainty flashed across her dragon eyes.
"My Majesty, let's go forward and take a look. I keep feeling something is drawing me."
Chen Yu's eyes followed her gaze to that direction.
His divine sense had just done a rough sweep of this sea; apart from scattered reefs, a few schools of bottom-dwelling fish, and low-ranked sea fiends hiding in crevices, there had been nothing remarkable.
But Olivia was a silver dragon; her soul-sense was more sensitive than his divine sense at certain frequencies. If she said something was drawing her, there had to be something he had missed.
He suddenly remembered another question.
"By the way, don't you have any other impressions of my present form?"
Olivia turned her dragon head back and scanned Chen Yu from head to toe with vertical pupils, then blinked, sounding slightly puzzled.
"Impressions of what? Majesty, are you asking me to tell you your rounded body looks especially radiant today in the sunlight?"
"Uh..."
Chen Yu realized the problem.
In Olivia's eyes, he was still a slime.
But he now clearly looked like an exiled immortal in a white robe and jade crown, handsome and elegant.
He turned to Silver Sparrow. "How about you, Silver Sparrow?"
Silver Sparrow tilted her head, seeming a little puzzled, but her answer was definite: "Master is still Master, nothing has changed."
"The gel's transparency is slightly higher than this morning; it may be because of digesting the blueberry cake."
Now he could confirm: creatures from Zeyarila could not see his human form; even Silver Sparrow, born in Zeyarila, perceived him as a slime.
Strange. Could it be that his one-soul-two-bodies condition was more complicated than he thought?
There might be a deeper link between his slime body and his human form that had not yet been untangled, and that link could involve not just shape recognition but also a special relationship between the two worlds.
After a short murmur, Olivia's voice pulled him out of his thoughts.
"My Majesty, let's go see ahead. That pull is getting stronger, like something is actively calling me."
Chen Yu had a vague idea of what was attracting Olivia.
It was probably the missing Legacy Pearl of the Eighteen Islands of Zhan County in the South Sea — the pearl that made Guanshan Dao Master risk offending an unknown Sword Immortal to reclaim, the Sea-Suppressing treasure.
Strange things kept stacking up.
A dragon from Zeyarila being drawn to a true dragon's pearl from Xu Xuan Heaven — two completely separate worlds producing a cross-planar connection uniquely centered on the species "dragon."
He couldn't help but entertain a bold thought: what if Olivia swallowed the Legacy Pearl?
The thought barely formed before he pushed it down.
He could beat Guanshan Dao Master, but he might not survive an all-out siege by every Golden Core-level master across the Eighteen Islands.
The Legacy Pearl was the core of the sea-securing array for the entire archipelago; whoever held it would instantly become the enemy of every island.
Unless he could find a sea-suppressing treasure that could replace the pearl, taking it would turn the Eighteen Islands from potential allies into implacable enemies.
Best not to mess with someone else's royal treasure.
Chen Yu gathered his thoughts, his figure turning into a golden rainbow piercing the sky, and he flew with the hovering castle into the depths of the reef isles.
Olivia lay against the castle railing, the sea breeze gently rippling the silver sheen of her dragon soul; she continued observing the unfamiliar ocean carefully, occasionally letting out a soft exclamation.
Chen Yu did not know what she was seeing; to him, the reef isles looked like any other: seawater, reefs, and the silver fish that sometimes leapt out and plunged back in.
As they closed in, a dull roar and the sound of rolling sea reached them.
There was clearly a magical duel taking place ahead.
But when he arrived at the battlefield, there was no one left — only a ruined expanse of reef.
Olivia suddenly warned, "I can feel that pull getting stronger."
Chen Yu swept his divine sense and finally detected Guanshan Dao Master's figure; he seemed to be chasing several sea fiends.
"Let's go."
Chen Yu's figure again became a swordlight as he pursued, soon drawing near Guanshan Dao Master.
Suddenly, the Dao Master's figure halted ahead.
The robed Daoist stood on a reef rock, the Sea-Suppressing Divine Cauldron in his hand restored to palm size and floating at his side.
He faced forward with furrowed brows; his dark robe whipped in the sea wind, the sleeve stained with dark green sea-fiend blood, evidence of a fierce battle just fought.
Without turning, he knew Chen Yu was approaching, and his solemn voice entered Chen Yu's ears.
"Congratulations on breaking through to Golden Core."
"But this is a critical moment. There is no time for congratulations; rather, I must trouble you for assistance."
Olivia and Silver Sparrow were both within the Gel Network and naturally heard Guanshan Dao Master's voice.
"The rumored miraculous transmission magic and the same miraculous perception are exactly like that person." Olivia murmured.
Only at this moment did she dare confirm she had not entered an illusion; she had in fact come to a new world.
She had arrived in the hometown of that ancient alchemist.
Chen Yu landed beside Guanshan Dao Master. He didn't need to ask; he already knew why the Dao Master had stopped.
Before them, the sea had been cut off.
The entire surface of the ocean was blocked by a force beyond natural law; the water flowed vertically down the edge without struggling, producing a deep and continuous thunder.
His divine sense probed downward but extended hundreds of miles without reaching an end.
To the sides it sensed only a slight arc of sea, as if a colossal circular maw large enough to swallow the entire basin had opened beneath the seabed.
All waters funneled here with none returning.
The Abyss.
Rumored to be the sea's end.
It was also the only place the vanished Ancestor Cloud Cliff had ever been recorded to have gone during his decades of absence.
Chen Yu withdrew his gaze from the Abyss and turned to Guanshan Dao Master: "If the dangers in the Abyss mean little to someone at Golden Core, why did you stop your pursuit?"
Guanshan Dao Master bowed deeply to him; the dark robe sleeve rolled in the wind, and his tone grew even more grave.
"You may not know. From my investigation, those evil cultivators who stole the Legacy Pearl were merely pawns controlled by sea fiends. The true mastermind behind the theft is the sea fiends within the Abyss."
"Although we don't know how they found Old Thief Wu's remaining Sun-Stealing Golden Wheel, it is evident the sea fiends stole the Legacy Pearl for only one purpose — to become dragons."
"Become dragons?" Chen Yu's eyes flickered.
"Exactly." Guanshan Dao Master said solemnly. "The Legacy Pearl is inherently a true dragon's pearl. With it as the core, we Southern Sea cultivators set up a Sea-Suppressing Array across the Eighteen Islands of Zhan County, calming the surrounding waves and saving the islanders from tsunamis."
"But the dragon pearl is ultimately true dragon property. If it falls into the hands of sea fiends and combines with the Dragon-Forming pool water preserved deep in the Abyss, a Golden Core-level fiend king could be refined into a true dragon in only a few days."
"Golden Core fiend kings have long occupied the Abyss; at this moment they very likely have formed a nest of alliances."
"Even if I am in a hurry, I dare not charge the formation alone. Once trapped inside, not only might we fail to retrieve the pearl, but without a Dao Master defending Guanshan Island, those fiend kings will seize the opportunity and invade."
"So I have already sent urgent messages to the other Dao Masters of the remaining seventeen islands. The fastest group can arrive within half a day."
Chen Yu said, "Since I'm already here, then depart at once."
"The longer time drags on, once the sea fiend kings become dragons, the threat will not be limited to the Eighteen Islands."
Hearing this, Guanshan Dao Master first displayed gratitude, then shook his head with a long sigh.
"If you are willing to help, I am truly grateful. But there is an even greater problem now."
"The Sun-Stealing Golden Wheel was Old Thief Wu's concealment treasure used during his reign in the Southern Sea. It specializes in hiding: not offensive or defensive, yet it can make whatever it covers completely disappear from divine sense."
"I just scanned the depths of the Abyss with my divine sense hundreds of times and could not find the traces of those sea fiends. I have no idea where they've fled. Brashly rushing in would be like searching for a needle in the ocean."
He sighed, the sound laced with frustration.
"If only a true dragon were here. True dragons and dragon pearls have innate resonance; the true dragon's soul would stir wherever the pearl is, and divine sense cannot be concealed."
"This is a dragonborn trait no artifact can block."
"But if a true dragon were here, would I have had to chase for days? In the Southern Sea, no one has seen true dragon traces for over a hundred years."
True dragon?
Chen Yu looked down at the tiny castle floating in his hand.
He did not have a true dragon, but he did have a giant dragon from another world.