Chapter 1586: Witness

"Our master has been through all sorts of storms," Xiao Jianren said proudly, puffing out his chest. "How could this shallow pond trouble him?"

"The Blackwater Pond isn't shallow," Zhang Zitong corrected. "Still, I expect he'll return empty-handed. Our people have already searched underwater several times; if there were any clues, we would have found them by now."

"That's not necessarily true..." Xiao Jianren spoke up for his superior, but without much conviction. He had actually been following this case for a long time and was completely stumped.

If it weren't for the bizarre fact that a prestigious Golden Embroidered Guard had drowned in the pond, he might have even considered it an accident.

Using the Blue Duck's ability, Zu An created a water bubble around himself and surveyed the Blackwater Pond.

The pond contained a decent amount of plants and fish, and nothing looked out of the ordinary; it didn't appear to be tainted by any malevolent presence.

The only noticeable thing was how exceptionally cold the pond water was. However, it was normal for deep ponds to have cooler temperatures, especially in the middle of the night.

He searched around for a while longer, found nothing unusual, and continued to descend.

He had unknowingly sunk nearly a hundred meters, and couldn't help but frown. This pond seemed excessively deep.

For ordinary cultivators, unless they specialized in water-based abilities, diving this deep would already be quite challenging.

After descending another hundred meters, Zu An finally reached the bottom of the pond. There was no light down here, so he took out a luminous pearl for illumination. By its faint glow, he saw that the pond bed was entirely silt and sand, with no plants visible. Occasionally, animal skeletons protruded from the sediment, creating an overall sense of desolation and dead silence.

Such a scene was quite normal for a place like this. Zu An observed for a while, found nothing unusual, and then floated upwards.

He recalled how, in his previous life, he could only witness such underwater worlds through documentaries on television. He never imagined he would get to experience it firsthand in this world.

As he pondered the various details from those documentaries in his previous life, his expression suddenly stiffened. He then abruptly halted and stared sharply at the ground beneath him.

He finally realized what was wrong. In those documentaries from his previous life, even in the deepest parts of the ocean, the seabed teemed with life: various strange fish, bone-eating worms, and so forth.

This pond was only a few hundred meters deep, yet he couldn't detect any sign of life at the bottom. This was abnormal!

He sank back to the pond bottom, placed his hand on the mud, and extended his Qi to probe the ground beneath.

His expression suddenly shifted. There was indeed a space beneath the ground; what appeared to be the pond bottom was actually more like a disguise created by a sophisticated array formation.

Just then, a large hand suddenly emerged from the mud and lunged towards his neck.

The arm's skin was grayish-blue, with bulging veins and swirling death energy. It was shaped like a human hand, but it certainly wasn't; how could a human hand be covered in such dense scales?

Zu An was startled as well and quickly dodged backward. The hand grasped at empty air but relentlessly continued to extend.

Zu An's eyes turned cold, and a cold glint flashed across the dark pond bottom. The grayish-blue hand was instantly severed.

The arm seemed startled and instantly retracted back into the ground.

Zu An frowned, looking at the severed half-hand. No blood flowed out; instead, it transformed into a bluish-black smoke and dissipated.

"Huh?" While Zu An was still surprised, over a dozen large hands suddenly burst from the ground, surrounding him from all directions. There was no space left for him to dodge; one wrong move, and he would be suffocated by this inescapable net of arms.

If he couldn't dodge, he wouldn't!

A sword light flashed, and those thick, tough arms were instantly cleaved into several pieces by an unparalleled sword qi.

A wail echoed from beneath the ground. The sound was extremely piercing and seemed to have a certain impact on a person's spirit, but Zu An's soul was now stable, so he naturally felt no fear.

Without hesitation, he plunged straight down, thrusting his sword into the ground. With the aid of the Blue Duck's ability, his movements in the water were completely unaffected.

As his long sword pierced the ground, a burst of blue runes appeared, clearly indicating that the array formation set up there had activated.

However, it disintegrated almost instantly before the Tai'a Sword.

The mud and sand before him vanished, replaced by an empty space. Clearly, this was the true bottom of the pond.

"Please spare my life, Immortal! Please spare my life!" A small voice at that moment knelt on the ground, kowtowing repeatedly for mercy. He knew he had no choice but to beg, having instantly realized in their brief exchange that he was no match. Furthermore, why did the sword before him emit such a terrifying aura, as if it could destroy him at any moment?

Zu An was somewhat surprised. Seeing so many thick, strong hands earlier, he had expected some colossal creature to be hidden inside, never imagining it would be so small and skinny.

The key was his extremely strange appearance: a pointed mouth like a bird's, a body as thin and small as a monkey's, and something on his back resembling a turtle shell.

His overall appearance strongly resembled the Kappa from Japanese folklore.

"What are you?" Zu An asked directly.

"I am a small turtle from this Blackwater Pond. I originally lived a peaceful life, but a few hundred years ago, I encountered a fortuitous opportunity that awakened my consciousness, and only then did I begin cultivating in the pond," the creature replied respectfully.

"A turtle?" Zu An was somewhat surprised. Having been in this world for a long time, he understood that demon races and yokai were different. Demon races possessed nobler bloodlines and, usually, were naturally capable of transforming into human form.

Yokai, on the other hand, had impure bloodlines and were often indistinguishable from ordinary animals and plants. A few, through some serendipitous coincidence, awakened their consciousness and, after long years of cultivation, also had the chance to transform into human form.

The demon races did not recognize these yokai as their own kind. In their view, they were merely lower beings—even though many shapeshifting yokai were quite powerful.

Furthermore, fierce beasts largely retained their animal instincts. High-level fierce beasts were no less intelligent than humans, but they often prided themselves on their bloodline and form, disdaining to assume human shape.

Zu An said coldly, "So it seems all the mysterious legends of this Blackwater Pond are due to you? You've harmed countless people over the years!"

Seeing his stern demeanor, the turtle spirit trembled with fear: "Immortal, you misunderstand! I reformed long ago and have been diligently cultivating for nearly a century. I haven't eaten anyone."

"So that means you admit to having eaten people before?" Zu An said coldly.

"No, no," the turtle spirit frantically waved its hands. "It's just that those people harbored ill intentions and tried to plot against me, then ended up dying here instead. I thought it would be a waste to leave them, so... But I absolutely had no intention of actively harming anyone."

"You, a yokai, would be so kind-hearted?" Zu An naturally didn't believe a word of it.

"It's true, I want to become the Water God of this Blackwater Pond! How could I recklessly commit killings?" the turtle spirit hastily explained.

"Water God?" Zu An was somewhat bewildered, finding it beyond his common knowledge. However, he was more concerned with another question: "About a month or so ago, someone dressed similarly to me fell into this Blackwater Pond. Do you recall that?"

"Yes, yes!" The turtle spirit nodded repeatedly.

"Why did he drown here? Was it your doing?" Zu An asked sternly.

"Ah, he was already dead when he fell into the water?" the turtle spirit said with a bewildered expression.