Chapter 47: The Evolution of Suten, and the End of the Sea-Floor Tomb!

Chapter 47: Si Teng Evolves, The Seabed Tomb Concluded!

"Be careful, I hear some movement inside!" Wu Yu glanced at the other two, sliding the Chengying Sword directly into the crack of the stone door, and then swiping it downward. No matter what was hiding behind the door, it was bound to get hurt by this move!

With a swift kick, he burst the stone door open. Instantly, a burst of red light flooded into view, illuminating the entire secret chamber!

"Goodness gracious, what is this? A coral tree?" Fatzi gasped in a cold breath. "A priceless treasure!"

Before Wu Yu could speak, he felt a restless and urgent stirring coming from the zither case. Si Teng, who had originally fallen into a deep sleep to properly recover from the depletion of the past few days, suddenly woke up and transmitted a sense of intense yearning to him.

This tree was not some decorative coral tree at all; it was alive! It was a genuine, living Blood-Origin Scavenger Tree that had lived for over a thousand years!

It was an absolute ominous entity, nourished by human blood for a century. Once formed, it had to be fed daily with rotting corpses as fodder, and after another century of cultivation, it would finally mature and become usable.

It possessed a naturally powerful hallucinogenic ability. Anyone exposed to its light for too long would become its slave, tirelessly searching for fodder and blood for it.

This would continue until one day, the enslaved person would offer their own body to it, hanging themselves from its branches to quietly rot away and become its new feed. Rumors said that the older the Blood-Origin Scavenger Tree, the more skeletons hung from its branches.

However, the one before their eyes clearly lacked those grim ornaments. Instead, many bronze bells were tied to it, surrounded by red threads bound according to the rules of the Big Dipper constellation.

"So this is the true control center of the entire tomb!" Wu Yu slapped his forehead and immediately understood.

Using the power of this Blood-Origin Scavenger Tree as its foundation, Wang Zanghai had ensured that his sunken ship ancient tomb's mechanisms continued to operate normally after all these years!

"Eh? Is that Ah Ning?" Tianzhen suddenly spoke up at that moment. "Looking at her state, it seems she was just hiding right here!"

Toward Ah Ning, Tianzhen undoubtedly held the most complicated feelings.

He had treated her with absolute sincerity, only to be betrayed and sold out the moment she turned around, not to mention that she had tried every possible way to kill him along the way!

Yet, seeing Ah Ning in this condition, he still couldn't help stepping forward to wake her up. "Ah Ning? Are you alright?"

"Ghosts! There are ghosts!"

"Who are you!"

"Let me whisper it to you, I just saw a ghost!"

Ah Ning behaved as if she had lost her mind, leaving Wu Tianzhen completely at a loss.

"Crack!"

Wu Yu walked up behind her and knocked her unconscious with a single blow. "Take her out and wait. Fatzi, you too."

"What are you planning to do, little brother?" Wu Tianzhen couldn't help asking, though his body very honestly caught Ah Ning as she fell.

"Don't you think the bells on this thing look familiar?" Wu Yu rolled his eyes in exasperation. "If Ah Ning had kept running around earlier, she would very likely have triggered these bells!"

"These bells... Hiss! Could it be that Wang Zanghai also went to King Lu Shang's palace?" Tianzhen suddenly realized. "That means, that means Third Uncle must also have some connection to these places!"

"We can investigate these matters after we get out. Leave this place to me. You and Fatzi wait for me outside. If you're hungry, drink more water. I'll resolve this place as soon as possible!" Wu Yu said.

"Alright, I understand." Tianzhen and Fatzi nodded. Then, each carrying an unconscious person, they walked out of the secret chamber and secured the stone door behind them.

Wu Yu took a look around, placed the scanner down to complete its scan, and then stood right at the doorway, blocking the gap of the door.

"Little Si Teng, I'll leave the rest to you!" Wu Yu took Si Teng out of the zither case. At this moment, she was too weak to even leave her flowerpot on her own.

However, the moment Si Teng approached the Blood-Origin Scavenger Tree, her roots instantly pierced into the tree trunk.

The almost dazzling red light began to dim gradually. Meanwhile, Si Teng's two small leaves grew into three, then four, and finally became enveloped in a ball of red light.

"System, is Si Teng going to be alright?"

" Host, rest assured. This Blood-Origin Scavenger Tree is probably over three thousand years old, and since it belongs to the wood element just like Si Teng, strictly speaking, it can also be considered a kind of flora spirit, except it hasn't formed a human shape or attained high intelligence yet."

"Therefore, after Si Teng absorbs its energy, she can refine almost seventy percent of it directly! Unlike the water monkey's blood, where at most one or two percent was useful and required painstaking effort to process." Clearly, the system held a disdainful view of those water monkeys.

"It seems this really is a treasure!" Wu Yu sighed inwardly. "Can Si Teng take human form this time?"

"No. Taking human form requires the convergence of at least ten thousand years of energy. However, this time Si Teng will undergo a major evolution, which will be of great help to you in the future, Host."

"Alright then." Wu Yu nodded, and simply decided to sit down and practice his breathing exercises. Otherwise, who knew what troubles might await them once they went outside? Gaining a bit more power early on would provide an extra layer of safety.

And this session of cultivation lasted the entire night.

Finally, feeling something crawling onto his body, Wu Yu snapped his eyes open, and the Chengying Sword in his hand almost slashed out instinctively.

In the next second, however, looking at the vine—roughly the thickness of a finger and braided like hemp—wrapped around his wrist, he froze in surprise.

"This... Si Teng?" Wu Yu instantly understood and rejoiced. "You've successfully evolved?"

At this moment, Si Teng looked more like a thirty-centimeter-long little green snake.

Yet Wu Yu could sense that with just a single thought from him, Si Teng could grow into a hundred-meter-long, indestructible vine!

More importantly, Si Teng possessed intelligence, so her existence was undoubtedly like adding wings to a tiger for him!

Looking over at the Blood-Origin Scavenger Tree, he saw that it had completely withered, devoid of any remaining light.

Wu Yu then snapped off the clappers inside the bells one by one, and only then nodded with satisfaction.

Pushing open the stone door and seeing the half-dead states of Fatzi and Wu Tianzhen, he knew he couldn't delay any longer. He found the right spots, secured the dynamite charges, and detonated them immediately!

Sure enough, the moment the structure fractured, seawater poured in instantly. If they had listened to Fatzi and dug a盜洞 (robber tunnel), escaping would have been utterly impossible; they would have simply suffocated here.

But now it was different. The dynamite had blown away nearly half of the ship's roof. As long as they found a safe spot to dodge and waited for the seawater to fill the hull, they could swim straight out.

All of this took mere moments to complete.

Underwater, Wu Yu motioned for the others to follow closely, then swam rapidly toward the surface. Unexpectedly, upon turning his head, he saw countless water ghosts staring at him in unison, followed by an overwhelming cascade of black hair surging toward them.

"You guys go first!" Wu Yu made a hand gesture and swam in the opposite direction.

"!!!" Tianzhen and Fatzi were already exhausted to the extreme, and each of them was carrying another person. If they became entangled with the water ghosts, the outcome was unimaginable.

With no other choice, they had to head up first. If they didn't cause trouble for Wu Yu, at least there would still be a chance!

Just as Wu Yu was about to draw the Chengying Sword, his arm was suddenly pulled by a mysterious force, and as if guided by an external control, his arm swung while Si Teng shot forward.

The finger-thick Si Teng instantly multiplied in size several times over, and her slender vines swept across the area like an overwhelming tide. The water ghosts were no match for her even for a single round; most of them were swiftly annihilated, and soon Si Teng carried Wu Yu directly up to the surface of the sea.

"Phew, you're amazing!" Wu Yu breathed a sigh of relief, smiling as he looked at Si Teng, who had wrapped herself back around his arm.

Gazing at the blue sky, white clouds, and Tianzhen and Fatzi waving excitedly to him in the distance, he couldn't help sighing, "It's wonderful to survive once again."

In a place where Wu Yu could not see, a paper crane slowly leaped out of the sea surface and flew into the distance.