NOVPUBSeeing that pattern, Wang Ba subconsciously lowered his head to look at the token in his hand.
The pattern on the token was strikingly similar.
"This is an immortal cave of a cultivator from Zhongsheng Continent!"
"I wonder at what stage this cultivator was..."
A guess like this immediately rose in Wang Ba’s heart.
At this time though, the Hole-digging Otter skillfully climbed up from the water onto the shore.
The bead at the center glowed faintly, and a barrier suddenly lit up along the shore.
However, the Hole-digging Otter did not seem fearful at all and squeezed its way in.
Seeing this, Wang Ba and Qin Lingxiao hastily followed suit.
As soon as they climbed up the shore, a barrier indeed lit up.
But what took Wang Ba by surprise was that this barrier gave him a distinct feeling of familiarity.
"Wait a minute, isn’t this the power of Yuanci?!"
"In a formation using the power of Yuanci?"
Wang Ba looked surprised at the bead.
However, due to the action of the token, the barrier seemed unable to affect the two of them.
Soon, they both reached the center of the immortal cave.
Qin Lingxiao, looking around, thoughtfully commented:
"It seems this is a temporarily established immortal cave."
Wang Ba was somewhat puzzled and asked curiously, "How did you figure that out?"
Qin Lingxiao pointed to the edges of the stone bed and stool.
"If a cultivator used these frequently, both this stone bed and stool would have been smoothed by now. They wouldn’t still have such obvious edges."
"Also, this bookshelf seems quite new, but there aren’t many scrolls on it."
Saying this, she went forward to take a scroll to look at.
However, the moment she touched it, the scroll turned into dust.
The bookshelf followed suit and disintegrated to dust.
Qin Lingxiao was immediately stunned.
Witnessing this, Wang Ba abruptly wore a serious expression:
"This temporary immortal cave has perhaps been abandoned for quite a long time."
Qin Lingxiao unintentionally nodded in agreement.
After slow walks around the place, the pair didn’t find any personal items except for the bead. They had no choice but to stop in front of the hanging map.
Neither of them dared to touch, fearing the map would also turn into dust like the previous scrolls.
The map was large but showed no landmasses, it was a sea map.
The sea map had marked quite a few islands, and some odd looking black dots. However, a conspicuous ’X’ crossed out most of these black dots.
As Qin Lingxiao was studying the map, she suddenly pointed at the map’s top right corner in surprise:
"Isn’t that the location of the southern part of the West Sea Country?! "
"What?"
Wang Ba quickly looked towards the top right corner, seeing an irregular curved line at the edge.
However, he realized embarrassingly that he could not determine if it was the coastline of the southern part of the West Sea Country. He was only familiar with a more detailed map of the area, while this map only roughly outlined the general shape with a few strokes.
But Qin Lingxiao was quite certain:
"I’ve seen the map of the Fenglin Continent many times at my great grandfather’s place, and the West Sea Country side is just like this."
Doubting and also believing, Wang Ba shifted his gaze and noticed that close to the so-called ’southern part of the West Sea Country’ on the left side, was marked with a black dot.
Several other black dots were scattered outside of this black dot.
These black dots were strange because they did not have an ’X’ marked on them like the others did.
Yet outside of these black dots, even closer, was indicated with a vivid red dot.
Beside the red dot, there were even some hastily written words that Wang Ba couldn’t understand.
While he was puzzled, the Qin Lingxiao next to him was already stuttering while reading:
"...Cave...leaks...he...blocks..."
However, after reading just these few words, Qin Lingxiao frowned:
"This character seems not to be ’Cave’, it looks more like ’Eye’... this one doesn’t seem to be ’He’, it looks like ’I’ instead."
Wang Ba was a little surprised, not expecting Qin Lingxiao to recognize the text of the Zhongsheng Continent.
He immediately fell into contemplation.
Why did the owner of this immortal cave mark this particular spot with a red dot?
The words he left behind, was it for himself or for someone else? What kind of information did he want to convey?
And what did the red dot signify?
He couldn’t help but look again at the distance between the red dot and the so-called ’southern part of the West Sea Country’ indicated by Qin Lingxiao.
Then he took a look at the black dots.
The more he looked, the more a vaguely familiar feeling welled up in him.
Suddenly, a light flickered in his mind!
This notion made him shudder, and hurriedly took out his logbook from his Storage Treasure.
He quickly flipped to the page he often referred to lately.
On the small piece of paper, he had drawn the directions of the two sea barriers they encountered so far. This was a sketch based on what he observed during this period.
Though rough and simple, Wang Ba instantly held it up next to the position of the red dot.
After rotating the crude map he drew a few times, his eyes widened instantly!
"Those black dots... when connected, they form the sea barriers!"
"The red dot... the red dot is our current position!"
Hearing his words, Qin Lingxiao immediately widened her eyes.
"You’re saying the red dot is our current position?!"
"Then, doesn’t that mean we can find our way home?!"
The biggest problem troubling the two of them was not the sea barriers, but their inability to determine their current location and direction.
In this completely disoriented situation, they dared not walk too far in any unknown direction, since they could end up drifting further away from the continents.
