Nash blinked. “Uh… this gentle little stream is supposed to be the legendary Weak Water? Did we come to the wrong place?”

  Dante compared the scene before them to his map, then nodded with quiet confidence. “No. Based on the coordinates and Lauren’s notes, this should be it. I’m eighty percent sure.”

  Lauren didn’t doubt him. After a year of traveling together, she knew Dante’s eye for detail was as sharp as his sword. If he said this was the place, he was probably right.

  She picked up a dead leaf from the bank and tossed it into the stream.

  The leaf spun once, twice—then sank straight to the bottom within a few breaths.

  “Goose feathers don’t float,” the four of them murmured together, echoing the ancient saying.

  Nash’s eyes lit up. “So the stories were true! Don’t let its calm surface fool you—this current’s fierce enough to swallow anything whole.”

  Lauren nodded. “Let’s follow the stream upstream. If this truly is the Weak Water, we’ll find the Weak Tree at its source.”

  They followed the current for twenty, maybe thirty miles, until the water thinned and finally vanished into the sand.

  Before them stretched a vast, endless desert—an ocean of gold beneath a pale sky.

  “This is the end?” Nash said incredulously. “No way. The legendary Weak Water can’t just… stop here!”

  “Impossible,” Dante muttered, scanning the horizon.

  “But there’s nothing but sand ahead,” Westin said, squinting against the glare. “No water for miles.”

  Lauren’s expression hardened. “If there’s no water above ground… then it must be below.”

  She crouched down by the stream’s edge, pressed her palm into the icy current, and channeled her spiritual power. Frost spread outward, freezing the source into clear blue ice.

  The water’s shape solidified—and beneath the frozen surface, they could see it: a thin, glowing vein of liquid snaking away beneath the dunes, disappearing deep into the heart of the desert.

  Lauren saw it.

  Just as she’d suspected, while there was no surface water, a massive current churned deep below the sand — a roaring subterranean river. That was the true Weak Water.

  She withdrew her hand and stood, brushing the sand from her knees. “There’s a vast space beneath us,” she said, her voice calm but tinged with awe. “A huge underground river. That’s the real Weak Water.”

  Dante frowned. “How deep?”

  “Ten miles.”

  Nash’s jaw dropped. “Ten miles down?”

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  Lauren nodded. “If we want to reach it,” she said, glancing toward the distant dunes, “we’ll need to go down from there.”

  Nash grinned. “Alright, leave it to me.”

  The four of them trekked into the desert until the wind howled and the sand grew pale under the sun. There, Nash unloaded a pile of strange gear: black stone pillars, a rune-covered flag, and an ebony formation disk that hummed faintly with spiritual energy.

  He aligned the array with the sun’s position and began hammering the pillars into the ground one by one.

  After driving in three of the eight, he was already sweating. “Brother Dante, lend a hand!”

  Dante hefted a pillar easily. “Where do you want it?”

  “Here,” Nash said, pointing. “Don’t hit too hard. We just need to reach the underground space Ms. Lauren mentioned.”

  With Dante’s help, the remaining five pillars went in smoothly. The pillars linked to the formation flags, all controlled by the disk, forming a small teleportation array that pulsed with a faint blue light.

  “Alright,” Nash said, dusting off his hands. “Conditions are tight — it’ll only transport one person at a time. Who’s going first?”

  “I’ll go,” Dante said immediately. “I’ll scout ahead. If it’s safe, you can follow.”

  He stepped into the array, light flared, and his figure vanished.

  Moments later, his voice echoed faintly from below. “All clear! Come down!”

  Lauren followed next.

  The teleportation light faded, revealing a vast underground cavern. The stone walls glimmered faintly — studded with Bright Light Stones, their cold silver glow illuminating the space like moonlight.

  Beneath them, the Weak Water surged and frothed in the dark — a narrow, furious river that cut through the cavern like a wound. The current hissed and growled, loud enough to drown out Dante’s first words.

  “What?” Lauren shouted over the noise.

  Dante pointed toward the walls, voice raised. “See those Bright Light Stones? They’re companion minerals to ice crystals! That means there’s a huge cluster of ice crystals nearby. They’re even rarer than Five Spirit Crystals — and perfect for your cultivation, Ms. Lauren!”

  Lauren’s eyes widened slightly. Ice crystals were a cultivator’s treasure — purer than elixirs, and far safer. Elixirs, taken too often, left lingering poisons in the meridians, but spirit crystals contained nothing but raw, elemental energy. A single high-grade crystal could be worth more than a sect treasury.

  The thought made her pulse quicken. If she could find a large deposit of ice crystals here… it could change everything.

  Nash and Westin arrived soon after. Once Dante explained, they immediately joined the search. Dante and Nash used spirit detection plates, while Lauren simply closed her eyes and released her ice spiritual power, feeling for the subtle resonance beneath the rock.

  “Found one!” Nash called after a while. “Ms. Lauren, come take a look!”

  The stone embedded in the cavern wall looked utterly ordinary — dull and gray, nothing special to the eye. But when Dante split it cleanly with his sword, a faint blue glow spilled out from within.

  Inside the rock was a fist-sized ice crystal, pure and translucent, radiating a biting cold. Even from several feet away, Lauren could feel the rush of ice spiritual energy pouring off it like a winter gale.

  Lauren placed her hand against the crystal and drew its energy inward.

  A rush of pure, unrefined ice energy surged into her core, flooding her limbs and seeping through every pore until her entire body hummed with vitality.

  So this was what it felt like to absorb the essence of ice directly.

  After a moment, the crystal dimmed, its glow fading until it turned dull and gray—then disintegrated into a handful of powder that drifted through her fingers.

  “How is it?”

  The others watched her, waiting for an answer.

  Lauren smiled, her eyes bright. “Excellent.”

  Nash looked around in disbelief. “I can’t believe something like this is buried under a desert. Ice crystals beneath scorching sand—it makes no sense!”

  Dante chuckled. “Why not? The world’s full of contradictions. Yin and yang exist because they oppose each other.”

  Lauren tilted her head. “So by that logic, I’ll have to dive into fire to find Earth Spirit Crystals?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows?”

  They pressed on along the riverbank, following the narrow underground current. Every so often they discovered another cluster of ice crystals, glittering faintly in the dim light.

  Lauren’s grin kept widening as she filled pouch after pouch.