By the time Victor Wang obtained the location of the ancient nation of a thousand winds, the afternoon was already half gone. To make use of daylight, and also to avoid giving himself away with glowing light underwater at night, he waited an entire night.
That night, although Dainsleif was living next door and held some misunderstandings about him, Lumine lived across the way, and Little Wen kept watch. Thanks to that, his sleep was fairly secure.
He rose early, filled his stomach to the fullest, then flew over the largest shadow above Cider Lake. There, he conjured a massive rock sphere, encasing himself in it until only his head was left exposed for breathing. With the reassuring weight of stone, he plunged straight down at high speed.
Above the largest shadow in Cider Lake.
Fifty meters… one hundred meters… two hundred meters… The world grew dimmer and dimmer. In the faint light, schools of bass stirred Victor Wang's memories.
Another deep-water dragon skeleton had already been dealt with by the North Wing, which meant no more slimes would be spawned here. Without slime condensate, would Cider Lake's bass lose their unique qualities in the future?
There would likely never be new Consecrated Bass either. If those bass had wisdom, they would surely hate him to death.
Hahaha… ha?
His hands were still trapped inside the rock sphere. At this depth, without lighting up the Day Pearl, it was difficult to see. Thousand Winds was also hard to use because of his rapid descent. Yet Victor Wang thought he saw a massive shadow swimming far off in the distance, a flash and then gone.
His current position was north of Mondstadt's side gate, a bit away from the dragon's skeleton, but not too far. Did he really run into it by chance?
With a thought, he thickened the stone sphere around himself by two more layers and accelerated downward. When his feet touched the ground, movement became much easier than drifting in open water. He finally exhaled in relief.
This trench at the bottom of the lake was nearly 300 meters deep—deeper than where the dragon skeleton lay. Lighting the Day Pearl revealed that, unlike the other place, here there were no slimes spawned by the skeleton, no bass stirring storms. The environment was far more serene.
The ground was covered in a thick layer of fine sand. Occasionally, brown and green rocks jutted out, and patches of verdant aquatic plants clung stubbornly to cliff edges, stone crevices, and other spots sheltered from the currents.
But the earlier shadow was nowhere to be seen.
"The group of Consecrated Bass that chased me were all blown up by Klee. And it's been two months already… Could it really have gone off to… report?"
This deep-water area was vast, nearly two-thirds the size of Mondstadt itself. Searching it thoroughly would take at least ten hours.
The portable elemental particle generator was useless underwater. Elemental reactions were sealed away, and the flow of wind was severely limited. In the past, Victor Wang could handle at most two at once. If those Consecrated Bass attacked in groups, he would have had no choice but to run.
But as Ye Caizhen had said—if what he wanted was here, there was no reason to think about running first. Fortunately, now he had the power of Geo, the earth itself as his backing. If it came to a fight, he could at least try!
Fearless, Victor Wang raised the Day Pearl and focused on his search.
With his prior experience of hunting for the dragon skeleton, he paid special attention to the border between ground and cliff face, even pushing aside sand and gravel to examine. But here, the terrain was clearly solid and whole. The mountain showed no seams, and the sharp cuts looked almost as though carved by human hands.
The mountain of the ancient nation of a thousand winds had vanished without a trace. Mondstadt's island was a mountain stabbed straight down into Cider Lake. Such crude simplicity made one instinctively assume the two were the same mountain.
But if this trench had also been gouged out along with the ancient nation, then its base should not be so smooth.
Half an hour into his search, Victor Wang frowned and clicked his tongue.
A mighty swarm of Consecrated Bass—twenty in total, each four meters long—rushed toward him with terrifying presence, fangs and fins bared.
Perhaps spurred by their species' crisis, they had unlocked potential. Though identical in form to those he'd fought before, these now slashed water blades with their dorsal fins and tails from ten meters away. They had mastered the power granted by consuming dragon marrow.
Water against earth. The blades came—Geo walls rose. Thick stone walls surged from the lakebed, blocking the first wave of attacks.
The Consecrated Bass were not clever enough to focus their strikes on one point, but they did know to circle around the flanks, launching assaults from all sides.
Victor Wang's gaze shifted sharply, his mind racing. The bony armor spawned during their consecration was harder than rock walls. Wind Blades couldn't pierce it. Erosion Blast could, but that was a single-target skill. To fire twenty Erosion Blasts in quick succession would drain him even now—and there was no guarantee of hitting such fast swimmers.
"Should I try it?"
Drawing the Wentian Sword, he noted how even sword aura struggled to spread through the water. But as long as a thin layer clung to the blade's edge, it could still pierce stone.
From left, right, and above the wall came more Consecrated Bass. In the past, they had only rammed with their exoskeletons. Now, having discovered the wonder of elemental power, they preferred long-range harassment. Approach them, they fled. Retreat, and they pursued.
This left Victor Wang, sword in hand, a bit frustrated. He feigned retreat, backing toward the cliff face.
Sure enough, the swarm followed. Their speed underwater was their greatest weapon for kiting prey—but they did not realize they had swum straight into a trap formed of cliff and earth.
Victor Wang pressed his palm to the rock wall. Ten meters away, stone walls suddenly jutted diagonally downward from the right cliff, while another sealed off the rear. One unlucky bass was trapped in a triangular passage, with only the side facing Victor Wang left open.
He rushed forward, sealing it completely. One-on-one. He had to finish quickly—before the others broke through his walls. Remote construction consumed far too much energy.
In the cramped space, the Consecrated Bass's massive body became a burden. It couldn't even turn around. Its proud tail strikes were useless. It could only clash with Victor Wang using the one-meter-long bone blade protruding from its head.
Clang! Clang! Metal against stone. Even imbued with sword aura, his blade couldn't sever the bone weapon. He needed sword intent.
Favonius Bladework Intent!
Never mind if the technique warped underwater—what mattered was the will. With spirit in place, intent was real. After several direct clashes, a single radiant stroke from Victor Wang cleaved half the bone blade clean off.
Gwuuhhh!
The Consecrated Bass shrieked in rage and fear, calling for its kin.
But even when walls were shattered, they were instantly restored, draining Victor Wang's Geo power. The fish outside, unfamiliar with such a spectacle, could only cry helplessly as their companion was slain.
When the walls dissipated, that bass was already dead. The others roared in fury. Victor Wang glanced at them, then trapped another victim.
And so, repeating his true-man one-on-one three times, the Consecrated Bass grew afraid. They pulled back twenty meters. At that range, their water blades lost effectiveness, yet they lingered, unwilling to leave.
"Hmph."
Bracing his feet on the earth, hand pressed to the wall, Victor Wang forced out another distant construct. His face paled at the drain, but to deter them he could not show weakness. Another fish fell. Finally, the swarm understood this man could not be beaten and chose to retreat.
"Why have these fish suddenly become smarter? Their strength hasn't grown much, but the trouble they cause has increased significantly…"
Pressing his temple against sudden dizziness, Victor Wang sighed, then continued onward.
Regarding the ancient nation of a thousand winds, Lisa's claim of knowledge had once surprised him. Kaeya's claim of ignorance had surprised him as well.
Everyone had secrets. When Kaeya's birth father left him at Dawn Winery, he had told him: "You are our last hope."
Surely Kaeya knew much about his family. At the very least, he had to be capable of shouldering that hope, fulfilling what hope demanded. Unless he truly spoke the truth—that the ancient nation held no importance, and thus he knew nothing.
Either way, as long as he didn't stab him in the back, hidden secrets were acceptable. But the result of this event was that Victor Wang would have to spend vast amounts of time probing on his own.
After two hours searching along the eastern cliff wall of the trench, Victor Wang's heart skipped. He sensed something akin to the power radiating from Leonard's constellation. That thing—the power of the Abyss—was pulling at him!
This sense had only manifested after God's Descent. At least it finally had some positive use.
By moving back and forth, he locked the source down to the east, deeper still. Clearing away sand at his feet revealed layers of rubble. The deeper he dug, the larger and more intact the stones became. Their color shifted from dark brown to gray-white—marks of human construction.
At last, a half-intact wall blocked the way further down, slanting askew, its base buried in debris. Too heavy to move, it could only be blasted apart with Erosion Blast.
Four blasts later, the wall—far harder than normal rock—gave way. Behind it lay a slanted, pitch-black passage. Victor Wang had planned to rush in and then seal the breach with Geo. But judging from the sight, the interior had long since filled with water, saving him the trouble.
He slipped inside. The Day Pearl lit up a tunnel wide enough for three Ruin Guards to walk side by side. And he described them as such because indeed, there were Ruin Guards here—scattered unevenly, slumped like weary humans sitting silently against the walls.
His sense of the Abyss's power sharpened. That thing lay straight to the east.