The sea breeze of Luoxia Bay carried a warm, salt-laden dampness as it swept across the jagged reef stones along the shore. Elder Kai wore his faded, brim-worn bamboo hat and leaned on his dragon-headed walking staff, having stood on this beach for three full hours. The setting sun stretched his shadow long across the sand, while the tip of his staff traced absent, scattered lines — a habit that betrayed the anxiety within him.

Three days had passed since the date I had agreed with him for my emergence from seclusion.

"That boy... could something have gone wrong inside the secret realm?" Elder Kai murmured to himself, his aged fingers stroking the carved dragon's head atop his staff, a rare flicker of worry crossing his eyes. Three months ago, when I had entered the Sunken Realm beneath Luoxia Bay to cultivate in seclusion and break through to Foundation Establishment, he had said aloud that "life and death follow their own course" — yet right now, the knuckles gripping his staff had gone pale.

The Sunken Realm was an ancient spirit cave left over from a primordial age in the East Sea, its spiritual energy so dense it verged on liquefaction — an ideal place to break through one's cultivation stage, but one riddled with hidden dangers. My choice to enter seclusion here had been a gamble from the start. Elder Kai knew that, given my foundation at the mid-level of the eighth layer of Qi Refinement, a forcible charge at Foundation Establishment left little room for error. One misstep, and my meridians would shatter.

Crash.

Just as Elder Kai's gaze drifted toward the deep and darkening sea, his worry mounting, the calm surface suddenly erupted in a towering column of water!

A figure burst upward from beneath the waves like a soaring dragon, the seawater it carried transforming into a brilliant curtain in midair. Sunlight pierced through that curtain, scattering into a halo of seven colours. The figure hovered several zhang above the surface, robes snapping in the sea wind, a faint but unmistakable aura of spiritual energy wreathing its form. It was me.

"Elder Kai!"

My voice rang out with the clarity that comes only after a breakthrough, filling the entire bay, carrying within it the faint, steady weight of a mountain.

Elder Kai snapped his head upward. The cloudiness in his old eyes vanished in an instant, replaced by a sharp, radiant gleam. He watched my hovering form, sensed the vast and surging spiritual energy that belonged to a Foundation Establishment cultivator, and the creases on his brow — so deeply furrowed a moment before — smoothed all at once. Astonishment and delight broke across his face. "You rascal! You... you actually broke through?!"

I smiled lightly. My figure shifted, and I landed squarely on the sand before Elder Kai without a sound — not a single impression left in the fine grains beneath my feet. The control over spiritual energy at Foundation Establishment had already granted me the rudimentary ability to walk without a trace.

"Sorry to have made you worry." I clasped my hands toward him, my tone carrying genuine gratitude.

Elder Kai looked me up and down, his gaze sharp as a blade. "Wait — that aura of yours... peak of early Foundation Establishment?!" His voice was thick with shock. "Three months. Mid-level eighth layer of Qi Refinement to peak of early Foundation Establishment. Boy, just how many rare heavenly treasures did you consume?!"

I let out a wry laugh and touched the Sea-Suppressing Jade Pendant at my chest. The pendant was glowing with a soft blue light, resonating in a subtle harmony with the spiritual energy within my body. "No rare treasures to speak of — the spiritual energy inside the Sunken Realm was simply that dense, and with the pendant's assistance, I managed to avoid a great many detours."

The truth was that the breakthrough had been far harder than I had imagined. The spiritual energy of the Sunken Realm was potent, yes, but also wildly turbulent. Had the Sea-Suppressing Jade Pendant not helped me convert that energy, and had it not — at the critical moment when I consumed the Foundation Establishment Pill — guided the raging spiritual energy into my elixir field and shaped it into a stable foundation core, I would have long since perished.

"That's not all of it, is it?" Elder Kai was no ordinary figure; he caught the undertone in my words at once. "You stayed beyond the agreed date. Something more than just a breakthrough must have happened."

I nodded, and my expression grew serious. "Elder Kai, you're right. Deep within the Sunken Realm, I discovered something. Something concerning Baizhen Pavilion — and concerning the Xuanmen Regulatory Bureau."

Elder Kai's eyes sharpened. He gestured for me to continue.

"There is an ancient ruin within the secret realm," I said, recalling what I had found during my seclusion, my voice grave. "Inside the ruin stands a crumbling stone stele, covered in an old cultivation technique diagram. At first I paid it little attention, taking it for something left behind by a primordial cultivator. But when I circulated the Tide Saint Body Art to try and decipher it, the pendant reacted."

I raised my hand. The blue light of the Sea-Suppressing Jade Pendant intensified, and a stream of information passed through it into my sea of consciousness; I translated it into words. "The ancient knowledge stored within the pendant told me that the technique is called the Blood-Scale Devil Art — a method used by evil cultivators of the primordial age, practised by consuming the lifeblood of living creatures. Utterly vicious. But what truly chilled me was this: the core circulation pathway of the fragments carved on that stele bore a startling resemblance to the sinister, baleful energy I had sensed from the people of Baizhen Pavilion."

Elder Kai's expression darkened at once. "The Blood-Scale Devil Art? A technique from primordial evil cultivators? The dark arts those people at Baizhen Pavilion practise — could they be a branch of this devil art?"

"There's more." I drew a slow breath and spoke of the more startling discovery. "Beside the stele, there was a line of faded characters recording fragments about the lineage of this art. It stated that after the primordial evil cultivators were defeated, one branch of their descendants infiltrated the orthodox Xuanmen sects, hiding generation after generation, biding their time for a restoration. And the front they used to conceal their identity and covertly cultivate their power — it bore a striking resemblance to the way Baizhen Pavilion operates today."

"You're saying..." Elder Kai's voice grew heavy. "That within the Xuanmen Regulatory Bureau itself, there are descendants of primordial evil cultivators shielding Baizhen Pavilion?"

"It's the most reasonable conclusion I can draw at present." I nodded. "The extra days I spent in seclusion were to fully consolidate my cultivation — reaching peak of early Foundation Establishment — and also to extract as much information from the pendant as I could. Unfortunately, the stele was too damaged, and the pendant's sensitivity has its limits. I can only confirm with reasonable certainty that these primordial descendants do exist and are closely tied to Baizhen Pavilion — but as for exactly who they are, that remains unknown."

End of Chapter 53: The Secret of the Sunken Realm