At the north of the heaven, a beautiful ocean was surrounded by flowing silver sands. A dark divine palace floated upon the ocean. High up in the sky, countless stars sparkled, letting an enormous, splendid, milky-way-like silver starlight stream pour straight down and envelop the divine palace.
Surrounding the dark palace were numerous beautiful small islands. Luxurious palaces and mansions scattered on these islands, and from time to time, colorful clouds would rise from all of them.
Gong Gong trod on the two black dragons and flew to the divine palace with a group of people.
Looking from a distance away, this divine palace seemed nothing special. But under the gateway, the air moved slightly in front of the group, then everyone’s eyes shone. They found out that this divine palace belonged to the ancient Black Emperor. Not to mention anything else, each of the nine-thousand, nine-hundred and ninety-nine stars before the frontal gate of the palace was over three-thousand-meters tall!
Ancient divine gods were mostly enormous in shapes. Therefore, the size of these stairs was just normal. But in the eyes of Gong Gong and the others, this was just imposing. By simply looking at this divine palace, they all sensed a great pressure that was almost freezing their souls.
Raising a cloud, Gong Gong and the group of people walked upstairs. On top of those stairs was a broad square, embossed with the hydrographical maps of Midland and the four wastelands. On those embossments, hazy water flows were visible, along with faintly audible sounds of waves, muffled yet strong. They nearly disabled Gong Gong and his people from standing steadily.
Gong Gong and the group of people spent no time in enjoying the stunning scenery and all kinds of statues. Instead, Gong Gong held a dark seal and walked to the frontal gate with big steps.
He incanted a spell, following which, the dark jade gate of the divine palace, which was embossed with two coiling dragons, opened silently. A formidable wave of watery mist came out of the gate. Facing this strong watery mist wave, Gong Gong, Wuzhi Qi, Yu Ancestor and the other few strong water-kind creatures following behind them managed to hold still, but with some difficulty.
The poor ones were Dishi Cha, who insisted on following Gong Gong over, because he was ‘curious’, or ‘worried’, Yemo Tian and the current Chiyou. All three of them were not familiar with the water power. As the watery mist surged out, Yemo Tian screamed out the first, while he was sent flying away like a falling leaf, and rolled downstairs.
Dishi Cha was barely standing steadily. Seeing Yemo Tian was struck away, he panicked a little bit. As a consequence, he screamed as well, and was also sent flying away by the violent watery mist wave.
Chiyou reached out his hand and attempted to grab Dishi Cha. He might not have ended up so embarrassedly if he hadn’t tried, but once he moved, tens of turbid white torrents roared down and struck him away.
"Hehe!" Gong Gong, Wuzhi Qi and Yu Ancestor glanced back with a weird smile on their faces, then silently rushed into the divine palace, against the torrents. They and Dishi Cha were partners indeed, but they did love to see Dishi Cha, Yemo Tian, and their people suffer.
The divine palace was empty. At one time, thousands of divine gods used to worship the Black Emperor in this place. But now, nothing but an empty throne was left standing at the end of this great hall, all alone.
Upon the throne, a dark jade bucket silently floated in the air. The three-hundred-meter-square jade bucket had been sparkling with a dim light, and inside it, a tens of meters thick layer of water was rippling slightly.
Above the jade bucket, hair-thin wisps of watery mist had been slowly glowing out from the air. Over a long span of time, these thin wisps of watery mist could condense into a sesame-sized drop of water, gently dripping into the jade bucket and generating a silvery tinkle.
"The divine dark water bucket…The world essence water!" Yu Ancestor looked at that dark jade bucket with a pair of glowing eyes. He was so excited that his entire body was shaking.
Gong Gong looked at the dark jade bucket with a twisted face and shouted through his gritted teeth, "Old trash, I was going to purify my own body with this previous world essence water, and build an immortal, divine foundation for myself after I attained the throne of the Central Emperor…For the great plan, I will give you some to improve your power…But, if you fail, I will make you beg to die."
Yu Ancestor hurriedly kneeled on the ground and swore to the sky with reverence and awe, "Dear Lord, please trust me. If I still dare to make any mistake after getting such a great fortune, I will be too ashamed to see anyone in the world forever. If that truly happens, Dear Lord, you can do anything you want to me."
In the heaven, when Gong Gong and Yu Ancestor were still bargaining, Ji Hao activated the golden bridge and darted across the sky. At the time, he could already see the defensive magic screen of Pu Ban City from a distance away, and feel the warm light of the Pan Jia sun.
Abruptly, Ji Hao stopped, and sent the golden bridge back into his body. He wielded his hand and threw out tens of formation flags that sparkled with a starlight. Those flags landed around him and his friends and raised a dense watery mist, surrounding them.
"Ji Hao, what happened?" asked Man Man, "We’ve been traveling around all these days, and I feel so uncomfortable now. When we get back to Pu Ban City, I’ll have to take a nice shower with warm water! It would be even better if I can get a lava pool to take a bath!"
"Taisi, prepare the Nailhead Seven Arrow Book. I can’t stop worrying until we take out Yu Ancestor. His ‘transplant’ power is too weird. I don’t know how those former emperors plan to deal with him, but we have to make some preparation at least." Ji Hao patted Man Man on her head and then said to Taisi with a deep voice.
Taisi nodded seriously and murmured, "One Gong Gong has raised such a great flood. If we let twenty-seven more Gong Gongs return, we can all just stop living. We should kill this Yu Ancestor as soon as possible."
While murmuring, Taiji smoothly and quickly built a small altar, then put the Nailhead Seven Arrow Book on it. A spooky coldness was instantly released. Meanwhile, Taisi’s eyeballs turned gray-white. While twitching, he raised his arms, and started a strange dance around the altar.
"This is a blood offering… We need offerings!" Tremblingly, Taisi murmured.
Ji Hao pointed his finger up. The Taiji Universe mirror darted out and flashed with a clear light. All f a sudden, black and dark beams fell down from the sky and wove together, becoming a thousand-mile-radius web that swiftly sank into the water.
Following a cloud water clattering noise, countless water-kind creatures and tens of thousands of smaller shaped water-kind spirit creatures, who were hiding in the water, waiting for an opportunity to move, were captured. Before these water-kind creatures could even struggle, Yu Mu grinningly activated the Disease God Streamer and released countless locusts, which gave a bite on each of these creatures’ neck. Immediately, these water-kind creatures were all paralyzed.
A giant amount of spirit blood was drawn into the altar, while an especially dense, dark power started spreading from the book on the altar.
Taisi kowtowed for a few times towards the altar, then threw the poisonous sand, which was collected by Ji Hao from Yu Ancestor, onto the altar. A shrill howl was generated right away, while a bright stream of light flashed across the altar.