"Not tentacles..." Feng Qingping's voice suddenly tightened. "They are entities condensed from toxic miasma!"
Suisui leaped from Li Nanzhu's shoulder, its soul fire suddenly flaring. A surging emerald ice mist poured out, instantly coating three incoming tentacles with white frost and slowing their movements. Feng Weilan seized the opportunity, the golden glow on his long blade erupting. The frozen tentacles shattered into a spray of ice crystals.
"Suisui's life force can suppress them!" Li Nanzhu's eyes lit up, but she immediately looked at Suisui with concern. She didn't know how much using its life force like this would affect it, but fortunately, the soul fire in Suisui's eye sockets flickered just as before, showing no visible change.
"Fly out on your swords!" Feng Qingping threw out her silver flying sword. Just as Li Nanzhu was about to leap onto it, her expression changed drastically—the flying sword had barely risen three feet off the ground when it began to tremble violently, plummeting as if struck by an invisible sledgehammer.
Feng Weilan reacted instantly, thrusting his long blade into the mud as ripples of earthy-yellow spiritual energy spread out.
"A flight-restriction field," his voice was grim. "I'm afraid a restriction has been placed over the entire Blackwater Marsh."
More tentacles surged from the swamp. Suisui continuously exhaled ice mist while Feng Qingping's water spirit barrier spun rapidly. Li Nanzhu took the chance to throw out five thunder talismans, and lightning exploded within the black mist in blinding blue-violet arcs.
"Go deeper!" Feng Qingping channeled her water spiritual energy, condensing several pieces of floating ice on the swamp's surface. The three moved forward with difficulty across the ice. Suisui perched on Li Nanzhu's head, occasionally turning back to breathe ice mist and delay their pursuers.
Li Nanzhu kept looking back to observe their surroundings, only to notice a terrifying phenomenon: "These shattered tentacles are regenerating!"
Once the ice fragments fell into the black water, they wriggled like living things and began to reform. More terrifyingly, the ground beneath their feet was constantly collapsing, forcing them to keep moving deeper into the swamp.
"Watch your step!" Feng Weilan suddenly grabbed Li Nanzhu's back collar. The spot where she had just been standing collapsed, and three barbed tentacles lunged out from the black water. Feng Weilan formed a hand seal with his left hand, and an earthen wall suddenly rose from the ground, temporarily blocking the tentacles.
Suisui breathed ice mist again, its range doubling this time. Li Nanzhu took the opportunity to pull three more thunder talismans from her storage bag. The lightning exploded within the ice mist, forming an electric net that temporarily cleared a path.
"These tentacles are mimicking us," Feng Weilan said in a low voice, his blade flicking away a tentacle trying to sneak an attack.
As if to prove his words, the newly appearing tentacles were coated in a layer of slime. Suisui's ice mist only froze the surface, while the interior continued to surge. Worse still, a dull vibration echoed from the depths of the swamp.
Feng Weilan suddenly halted, thrusting his blade into the mud. "The terrain is changing." He narrowed his eyes, surveying the area. "The road to the east has been submerged by black water."
No sooner had he spoken than the mud pit to their left bulged, forming a wall of black waves. Suisui breathed ice mist once more. "There are too many..." Feng Qingping's expression was grave. "No matter how strong Suisui is, it can't freeze the entire swamp."
Watching the churning black water, Li Nanzhu suddenly realized a horrific fact—these tentacles weren't independent entities at all; they were part of the entire swamp! With every step forward, the path behind them was submerged by new surges of black water.
"Get up on that tree!" She pointed to a slanted, withered poplar nearby. The moment the three leaped onto the trunk, the black water below rose by three feet, with countless tentacles swaying beneath the murky surface.
Suisui breathed three successive bursts of ice mist toward the water, temporarily freezing a five-zhang radius.
But soon, black water from further away surged in to fill the gaps. Li Nanzhu noticed that the swamp's terrain was changing erratically, forcing them toward the deeper parts where the vegetation was denser and the black water thicker.
"We can't stop." Feng Weilan suddenly cut a strip of his robe and wrapped it around his sword hilt. "I'll lead the way. Follow me."
He leaped into the water temporarily quelled by the ice mist. The golden glow on his blade completely retracted, replaced by a dull earthy-yellow radiance. Wherever the blade passed, the surface of the swamp briefly stopped flowing, forming solid ground for them to stand on.
"Go!" Feng Qingping pulled Li Nanzhu along as they followed closely. Suisui kept breathing ice mist on both sides, but it was clearly starting to control the range—not because it lacked power, but because it realized this war of attrition had no end.
The three struggled forward in the deepening swamp. Sometimes they would find a slightly elevated hill, only for it to be submerged by black water a moment later. Sometimes they thought the ground ahead was solid, only to step onto it and find it was a floating meadow.
The most dangerous moment came while crossing an open stretch of water, when dozens of tentacles suddenly lunged from below. Feng Weilan had to unleash his full metal spiritual energy to cut a gap, his blade sizzling as it was corroded.
"This isn't working..." Feng Qingping leaned against a semi-withered pagoda tree, panting heavily. "Our spiritual energy is draining too fast."
Li Nanzhu suddenly noticed fine claw marks on the pagoda tree's trunk—it was the mark Suisui had left earlier! They had circled back to where they had been half an hour ago.
This meant that in the constantly shifting terrain, they were actually going in circles.
"We must find a way to break this," Feng Weilan gripped his blade tighter, shielding Feng Qingping.
Feng Qingping suddenly stopped, the array disk in her palm spinning rapidly. "Something's wrong..." She stared at the shifting terrain. "This cycle is too regular. I need to reverse-engineer the swamp's changes! Protect me!"
The runes on the array disk lit up one by one, their light flickering across her face. Li Nanzhu and Feng Weilan stood back-to-back, guarding her, while Suisui breathed continuous ice mist, building a fragile barrier around the three.
"Found it!" Feng Qingping suddenly looked up, her eyes bright with intensity. "The terrain resets every seventeen breaths, but there's a flaw—" She pointed toward the thickest area of black water to the southeast. "The spatial fluctuations there are the weakest. That's the only possible exit to break the cycle!"
Without a word, Feng Weilan brandished his blade to clear the way. The earthy-yellow spiritual light on his blade surged, and solid ground extended beneath their feet. Every step they took landed precisely on the nodes Feng Qingping indicated.
"Keep up with my rhythm!" Feng Qingping held the array disk in her left hand, her right hand constantly calculating. "Three steps left—watch out for the corrosive poison below!" Her warning exploded simultaneously with a tearing sound.
As Li Nanzhu took her second step, a burning sting pierced the sole of her boot. The black water had somehow seeped through the ice, climbing her ankle like a living thing. Suisui dove down, its ice mist freezing the toxin, but its soul fire dimmed for a moment—the frozen black water was actually devouring its life force.
"Thirty zhang to go!" Feng Qingping's voice was already hoarse. "The next node is—"
Her words were cut off by the ground suddenly bulging as a tentacle as thick as a barrel burst from the earth, its surface covered in barbs. Feng Weilan blocked with his blade but was knocked back three steps by the massive impact, a trickle of blood appearing at the corner of his mouth.
Suisui's soul fire suddenly flared, and its bone body rapidly restructured and deformed, turning into a thick bone whip. It suddenly wrapped around the waists of the three, a brilliant green light bursting from between its joints.
"Hold on!" Just as Li Nanzhu shouted, the bone whip lashed out like a spirit snake, carrying the three into the air—not flying, but sliding at high speed just above the surface of the swamp.
Those tentacles that tried to pursue were frozen in place by the ice crystals swept up by the whip's tail. Ahead, the faint silhouette of grey-white solid ground appeared.
However, just as they were three zhang from the solid ground, a sudden change occurred!
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