16 - Mermaid's Tomb (1)

Chapter 16: Mermaid’s Tomb (1)

Xiao Ran embarrassedly shifted his gaze from the other’s body to the frozen lake, saying: “Let’s go.”

The young man’s blushing face was so cute. It took a lot of effort for Yiye Feihua to resist his urge to pull him into his arms and kiss him. He looked down at the buff halo around the soles of the young man’s feet and his face showed great appreciation before his eyes turned to the bottomless frozen lake. He asked: “A hidden instance? How did you find it?”

Yiye Feihua was worthy of being a great god and he noticed some hints at a glance. This level of intelligence was probably unmatched throughout Shenzhou.

Hearing his question, the young man didn’t answer. He only smiled, a slightly smug look in his eyes.

Yiye Feihua understood clearly, too. His family’s youth was always very capable.

There wasn’t much to say. The two people activated their ‘environmental adaptation’ status separately, and one of them dove into the icy lake.

The ice-cold lake water permeated them, but the degree of adjustment from their ‘environmental adaptation’ status was limited. An extreme environment such as this still had an impact on their human bodies. However, before Xiao Ran’s body even had time to tremble, something small and warm was pushed into his hand.

Xiao Ran opened his eyes and saw that a piece of red blood Jade was helping him relieve the chill in his body.

Fire Cloud Jade: Continuously releases fire energy to maintain a suitable human body temperature. Lasts five minutes. 1

Fire Cloud Jade was both a rare item and a rare material. It dropped randomly from the large-scale, max-level, weekly instance Huoyun Palace. The burst rate was extremely low. Yiye Feihua wasn’t a Shenzhou player, after all, and even he only had one such rare item.

Xiao Ran was about to push the jade back immediately, regardless of how willing Yiye Feihua was, but his body was flexible underwater, and he immediately swam to the bottom.

The evil faction Fengdu was a very gloomy place. In order to fulfill the career task for Dragon of the Abyss, 2 he had dived into the Abyssal Cold Spring who knows how many times. This frozen lake was nothing, but the young man’s worried and anxious appearance secretly made our number one master feel refreshed.

Xiao Ran had no other choice but to secure the Fire Cloud Jade against his palm with his thumb, and quickly swam toward Yiye Feihua.

Yiye Feihua was admired by everyone in Fengdu. He was a great god with friends everywhere. In Shenzhou, he could be a solo player, ascending atop the mountains and descending into the sea alone. He was accustomed to the wind and rain. He had touched the bottom of the sea countless times, and was naturally familiar with the system’s routines. He took Xiao Ran to the deep trench at the bottom of the lake, and then swam forward into it.

Four or five minutes later, the two men emerged from the water.

System: You discovered The Mermaid’s Tomb.

Yiye Feihua climbed out from the water first, then stretched his hands out to the young man’s back and picked him up, face to face. As soon as he emerged from the water, the wet marks on their equipment were refreshed by the system.

Xiao Ran got up and looked around. The birds and flowers around him were all fresh and uninhibited. Not far away from them was a small mountain village, and behind the village were slender paths and fields. It looked like a paradise, completely different from frozen lake wrapped in silver on the other side.

Xiao Ran and Yiye Feihua walked toward the mountain village. When they were about to approach the entrance, there seemed to be a barrier in the air in front of them, blocking them from the mountain village.

System: Your team is not large enough to resist the attack of the Sirens and cannot enter the Mermaid’s Tomb. 3

The system’s announcement was intriguing: ‘not large enough’ rather than ‘strength’ or ‘insufficient level’ showed that in terms of strength alone, they weren’t really incapable of defeating the sirens, but the instance had a strict requirement on the number of people. They only had two people, so they couldn’t get in.

Xiao Ran turned his head, saying: “Are you looking for someone?”

Yiye Feihua glanced at the buff halo beneath Xiao Ran’s feet and said: “I have no friends in the Third Realm. 4 It would be a waste of time to call someone over. Check your side.”

There were nine layered realms in Shenzhou, and transferring between each of them required a flight transfer through the central cities of the realm, which was time-consuming.

“I’ll try.” Xiao Ran pursed his lips. He didn’t have many friends. The only ones who happened to be nearby at that moment were Naozhong and the rest, but they didn’t have any more instances allowed today.

He opened his friends list, and it showed that there were only a few people online nearby with Naozhong, and also… eh?

Xiao Ran’s eyes lit up. He didn’t expect someone to be in the Third Realm at that moment, and even in the Xue Wu Forest!

Xiao Ran immediately dialed to call them, and a delicate and slightly tender voice with a slightly surprised tone came through: “Xiao Ma-ge?”

“It’s me.” Xiao Ran said.

“You haven’t been online for a month. What are you looking for me for, ah?” Guaiwo Ge was surprised.

“I found a hidden copy. Do you all still have more attempts?” Xiao Ran asked bluntly, saying ‘you all’ instead of ‘you.’

Obviously Guaiwo Ge didn’t think too much, and he said: “Yeah, yeah, where are you? Eh? You’re in Xue Wu forest?” Because the maps in Oracle of the Gods were vast and complex, their friends list would show whether or not the friend was online and their approximate location to facilitate contact. Now the information that Guaiwo Ge saw written was ‘Third Realm, Xue Wu Forest.’

Xiao Ran gave him rough instructions about how to approach, and the other party expressed his understanding and set off simply.

Not long after, the sound of water came from the passage between the frozen lake and the pool of water. Two players embarrassedly climbed out of the water like female ghosts.

“I’ll go go go. The water is too cold, it’s so cold this Laozi was quickly becoming a fool……” Guaiwo Ge’s baby face was wrinkled from the cold. The water stains on his little bald head hadn’t had time to refresh, and it shone like a tiny light bulb under the sun.

“It wasn’t quick, you just are.” Another Divine Doctor player with a stoic pace spoke lightly.

“Hey, do you want to be singled out, you grandchild?” It was completely unlike his cute and obedient baby face. Guaiwo Ge conducted himself very bluntly, and would explode as soon as someone teased him.

“Healer has self respect.” Danshen Guai Shei glanced at him. The strange thing was that in terms of their occupations, Danshen Guai Shei was the healer. Although Guaiwo Ge with the Holy Monk career also had healing abilities, he had more crowd control skills and could be considered a secondary healer at most.

But was was even more strange was that when Guaiwo Ge heard him say that he immediately quit the team in anger, clenched his fist, and smashed past with a Qigong Punch.

Danshen Guai Shei leapt sideways, dodging. When he moved his hands, he released a Lingfeng Knife and a Lightning Chain. He walked coquettishly, his skills were sharp, and he didn’t mean to make trouble at all—

The two guys in front of them, they were actually fighting.

Seeing that a murder was about to occur, Xiao Ran cleared his throat and waved enthusiastically at the two of them: “Xiao Yu, A-Chuan.”

“Hey! Xiao Ma-ge!” The one who replied was Guaiwo Ge, but the one who stopped first was Danshen Guai Shei. Guaiwo Ge hit him with a Mysterious Frost Curse, and his handsome eyebrows were covered in frost. Guaiwo Ge was overjoyed, holding his prayer beads as he ran all the way over to Xiao Ran.

TL Notes: [edit] okay i figured out the character situation. i read this too fast the first time and missed a sentence ಥ_ಥ

Footnotes

Fire Cloud Jade = Huoyun Jade (like from Huoyun/Fire Cloud Palace, first mentioned in ch10) Feihua’s career = Dragon of the Abyss, re: ch15 鲛人 = jiao ren à sirens ; 人鱼 = ren yu à mermaids. These are mermaid-style sirens, not bird-style sirens This was first mentioned in ch1 as Sanchongtian, but it wasn’t explained there. I’m changing it to English now that I know what it refers to. It refers to the realms within one server, in this case Shenzhou, the Chinese server.