Chapter 3318: The Ancestral Island

They saw one that was a massive eel with glowing bone spines that cracked with lightning as it slithered between waves.

Another was a beast resembling a manta ray, but its wings were tattered and made of writhing tendrils, and its underside held a swirling vortex that seemed to devour light.

A third beast resembled a school of fish fused together, forming a monstrous shape that shifted its body composition constantly, as if it could not decide what it wanted to be. Its flesh pulsed with the same cursed energy as the sea, and each time it cried the sounds vibrated like ghostly sirens.

Elyon used shadow claws to slice through the eel. Lin Mu used his bow to force the manta ray like creature away, and Daoist Chu created layered defensive arrays to prevent the shifting school beast from approaching. Together with Cattaleya’s overwhelming physical force and Little Shrubby’s flames, they held their own.

The youngsters began to relax slightly, realizing that they were surrounded by individuals far stronger than the clan had expected.

It was at this point they began to wonder quietly among themselves.

Shanhu Guimen whispered to Shanhu Ying, "Would we even have made it this far with other mercenaries?"

Shanhu Ying shook her head. "Impossible. No one else would have survived the rift or that whale."

Shanhu Dian looked troubled. "Do you think they will ask for a higher payment later. We have very little immortal stones."

Shanhu Qing bit her lip. "What if they rob us instead. They are strong enough to wipe out our clan."

Shanhu Jie frowned. "They have not shown any greed so far. Senior Lin Mu’s group does not feel like such people."

Shanhu Guimen nodded. "It is true. They have been courteous and honorable."

Even so, the pressure on their hearts remained. They simply did not know what kind of reward would be worthy of their saviors.

As the second day arrived, though the sky remained dark as night, they finally spotted something faint on the horizon.

Lin Mu stood at the bow of the ship and narrowed his eyes. Using both Immortal Sense and his spatial perception, he focused on the shape in the distance.

A small island, surrounded by swirling mists and towering waves, slowly became visible.

Shanhu Ying cried out with excitement, "The ancestral island."

Shanhu Qing clasped her hands. "We made it."

Shanhu Dian began to tear up. "After eight hundred years... our clan will finally return."

Lin Mu kept his gaze locked on the island. Even from this distance he could sense a dense concentration of the cursed energy, far thicker than anything they had felt so far. Yet beneath it was something else.

Something ancient.

He could sense the faint signature of hundreds of dormant arrays woven from supernatural materials, long untouched but still functional.

Daoist Chu sensed it too. "There is something powerful on that island."

Lin Mu nodded. "Yes. Be prepared."

As they sailed closer, the sea around them grew darker and the waves began to converge, as if guiding them toward the island.

The true test of the ritual destination was finally in sight.

The winds howled in low, unsettling murmurs as the ship approached the shadowy outline of the ancestral island.

At first, all they could see was a jagged silhouette wrapped in a swirling curtain of dark mist. It rose from the cursed sea like a half-formed thought, a place that seemed to exist only between moments, neither fully present nor fully absent.

Even the youngsters who had been excited moments earlier now grew silent, clutching their robes as the ship drifted closer. The dark mist churned like a living thing, a carpet of roiling shadows infused with the same cursed energy that haunted the Ninth Sea.

Yet Lin Mu’s Sword Intent continued to blanket the ship in a shimmering veil of invisible force.

The mist curled against it like snakes striking at a shield only to dissolve upon contact. Though powerful, the curse energy could not breach the purity and precision of a Sword Heart Stage intent.

Daoist Chu murmured, "Without Lin Mu’s intent, we would have been torn apart before even reaching the shoreline."

Shanhu Guimen nodded nervously. "Our ancestors must have been powerful beyond imagining to resist this place."

SHUA

SHING

Another wave of cursed energy surged against the ship, but Lin Mu’s intent cut through it like sunlight through fog. After an arduous final approach, they broke through the dark barrier and entered the calm region around the island.

The difference was immediate.

The oppressive weight of the curse vanished like a breath released. The air became strangely still. The sea, moments ago chaotic and vicious, became perfectly placid around the rocky shore.

Shanhu Dian blinked several times in disbelief. "The curse... truly stops at the mist."

Lin Mu sensed it too. It was as if the swirling fog was a curtain separating two worlds. Inside, the curse was sealed out. Outside, it dominated everything.

"Catt, Shrubby," Lin Mu called. "We jump."

They did not need flight or fancy techniques. A hundred meter distance was trivial. One by one, they leapt from the deck, and landed on the rocky shore with soft thuds.

As soon as everyone was off, Lin Mu raised his hand and stored the ship inside his ring. The youngsters watched this with wide eyes. Many clan elders could not store something that large with ease, yet Lin Mu did it as if it were routine.

The moment their feet touched the ground, they sensed the strange feeling of the island.

There was no sand. No soil. No plants. No moss. No sign of animals or insects.

The island was entirely raw stone. Harsh, jagged, unweathered stone that did not resemble natural formations. It almost looked as if titanic boulders had been uprooted from the earth and thrown together to form a crude landmass.

Lin Mu knelt and touched the stone. A faint vibration ran through his fingertips, deeper and older than anything around them. There was a pulse beneath the surface, like the heartbeat of something slumbering far below.

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