A rank one water-repelling pearl cost five hundred low-grade spirit stones, an essential item for venturing out to sea. Gu Ningyun and the others each bought three.
That way, if one was accidentally lost, they would have a replacement.
They had already left the shop, but Jiang Yao turned back and bought one more.
Water-repelling pearls were uncommon inland, and Jiang Yao, seeing one for the first time, was too interested in its mechanism, so he bought an extra one to dismantle and examine.
Although Gu Ningyun was also curious, she knew nothing about artifact refining, so she didn't bother with it.
The water-repelling pearl came with an intricately carved hollow casing made of refined iron, perfectly encasing the smooth, seamless pearl.
A sky-blue cord, seemingly woven from some kind of water grass, was attached to the casing. Gu Ningyun tied the cord behind her neck, and once Wen Xuan and the others were ready, she infused spirit energy into her water-repelling pearl and jumped into the sea.
A gentle current spread from the water-repelling pearl on her chest, clinging to her body like clothing, enveloping her snugly.
Gu Ningyun moved her body, then asked, “Wen Xuan, Wen Xuan, can you hear me?”
Wen Xuan awkwardly paddled a few strokes and leaned closer.
Her lips moved, and Gu Ningyun, who had learned a few words of lip-reading from Jiang Yao earlier, read that Wen Xuan was saying, “Huh? What did you say?”
Gu Ningyun cleared her throat and raised her voice.
“I said, can you hear me?”
Wen Xuan frowned deeply, pointed to her ear, and frantically waved her hand, “What are you saying? I can’t hear you!”
Again, Gu Ningyun could only understand what Wen Xuan was saying by reading her lips.
Was this water film really affecting sound transmission so much? The merchant had said cultivators could communicate normally underwater.
What a scheming merchant!
Gu Ningyun extended her divine sense, intending to use divine sense transmission with Wen Xuan.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jiang Yao and Mu Chenze holding their stomachs, laughing wildly.
They made no sound, but their laughter was exaggerated, their faces red, unable to even maintain balance in the water.
Jiang Yao even accidentally dog-paddled a couple of times.
Just then, Jun Luo submerged, “Ningyun, why were you so loud just now? Could it be that you’re exploring the effects of heavenly lightning body tempering on vocal cords?
Actually, this body tempering not only strengthened the resilience of our vocal cords but also significantly enhanced all our five senses.
I clearly heard your first question.”
By this time, Mu Chenze and Jiang Yao had burst into laughter, saying between chuckles, “Haha, oh, I can’t hold it in, ha…”
Wen Xuan also pounded her leg, roaring with laughter.
Gu Ningyun instantly knew she had been tricked.
“Alright, you, and you two!”
She breaststroked closer and flicked each of them on the forehead.
The three of them had never swum before, so they couldn't dodge and had to meekly take the flicks.
As for Jiang Yao’s accidental dog paddle while trying to dodge, Gu Ningyun even raised her chin and snorted coldly.
After adapting to the water, the five of them began to dive.
Before boarding the ship, they had bought relevant jade slips in Donglin City, primarily to instruct cultivators on how to use spirit energy to propel themselves and move freely in seawater.
Additionally, it included swimming techniques that relied purely on physical movement, without using spirit energy.
They were a bit clumsy when they first entered the water, but after diving several hundred meters, they gradually became more adept.
Gu Ningyun subtly channeled wind spirit energy behind her, and her body, enveloped by the water film, shot down deep like a nimble little fish.
Underwater was different from the surface; besides being unable to breathe or use the ground for leverage, as the diving depth increased, the wind spirit energy in the water became scarcer.
At first, there were still sparse, multicolored spirit energy specks scattered among the blue ones.
Further down, other colored spirit energy specks grew fewer and fewer, until only pure blue—water spirit energy—remained.
Even Gu Ningyun, with her top-grade wind spirit root, couldn't absorb any wind spirit energy.
It was the first time since she began cultivating that she encountered a situation with no external wind spirit energy, and Gu Ningyun felt a momentary unfamiliarity.
The wind spirit energy in her dantian slowly depleted. Gu Ningyun subconsciously recalled what she had learned in her spirit energy application class, and the spirit energy she infused into the water-repelling pearl became a fraction more stable.
The rate of spirit energy consumption imperceptibly slowed. If before the water film had enveloped her clothes as well, now it clung directly, even merging, with her garments and skin.
After this subconscious adjustment, the water film's protective effect on her body did not diminish, but the efficiency of spirit energy utilization improved.
The merchant who sold the water-repelling pearl was very good at downplaying the less favorable aspects.
Most areas of the East Sea are about five thousand meters deep.
After using the water-repelling pearl, Gu Ningyun could calculate, based on the pearl's varying spirit energy consumption at different depths, that a typical Qi Refining level eight cultivator's spirit energy could indeed sustain the water-repelling pearl for five days at a depth of five thousand meters.
With Gu Ningyun's repeatedly compressed spirit energy in her dantian, she could last ten days.
However, if one accounted for the spirit energy consumed by activity underwater, her personal spirit energy reserves would last a maximum of six days.
This didn't even consider the consumption from potential underwater combat.
Gu Ningyun's divine sense swept over the fourteen bottles of yellow-rank high-grade Spirit-Replenishing Pills in her storage ring; each bottle contained ten pills.
These were part of the rewards the sect had distributed after the New Disciple Competition.
Her own spirit energy was constantly recovering automatically, and at a much faster rate than cultivators of the same stage. Moreover, her dantian had ample spirit energy reserves, so usually, a fight would end before her dantian's spirit energy was fully depleted, or just as it was depleted.
These Spirit-Replenishing Pills had never had a chance to be used before, but they would be perfect for this underwater exploration. If they ran out of pills due to extensive combat, they had Wen Xuan, an alchemy cultivator, and could simply buy a few more bottles from her at any time.
Visibility in the seawater grew lower and lower, only occasionally meeting glowing marine creatures swimming past them.
By the time they had submerged three thousand meters, the surrounding seawater was completely dark. Even with Gu Ningyun's Body Refining level twelve eyesight, she couldn't see Wen Xuan beside her.
They were currently in the seawater, relying purely on divine sense for sight.
Most of the fellow cultivators who had come down on the same ship, being at the Foundation Establishment stage, had long since dived to unknown depths.
Behind them, other cultivators who had entered the sea a little later were catching up, leaving only a few Qi Refining stage cultivators lingering at the back.
Gu Ningyun and the others were not disturbed by these cultivators; they simply maintained their own rhythm, descending at a steady pace.
As they reached over four thousand meters, faint blue light appeared scattered in the deep sea.
As they dove deeper, the lights became more numerous and brighter, like an underwater starry sky, exquisitely beautiful.
In these depths, where sunlight rarely reached, the more beautiful the sight, the more dangerous it was.
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