As Liang Qu stepped out of the academy, he spotted Li Libo waiting at the entrance.
Glancing around, he noticed no one else nearby—clearly, Li was there for him.
"Why are you here?" Liang Qu asked.
Li Libo, squatting by the roadside, looked up and spat out a blade of grass he'd been chewing.
"Finally, you show up! I asked Senior Brother Xiang, and he said you'd be out by the end of the hour. I came early to wait, but you didn't show. I even asked the old man at the gate, and he said you hadn't left yet. I didn't want to disturb the 'scholarly seeds' inside, so I waited for over an hour. Were you busy wooing some noble lady in there?"
"I wish! The kids in my class are all too young for that."
"Then what were you doing?"
"Just had some things to take care of. I got delayed. Have you eaten? If not, I'll treat you. Let's grab a bite together."
"Sounds good to me!"
Li Libo grinned, and the two headed to a nearby eatery to order some food.
"By the way, you seem... different somehow," Li Libo remarked.
"How so?"
"You're not as dark as before, and you seem taller."
"I'm still growing. I haven't been out fishing much lately. Anyway, what did you come to see me about?"
"Oh, right! I almost forgot."
Li Libo pulled out a stack of papers from his pocket and slapped them on the table.
"Old Chen sent someone to the martial hall today looking for you. He said the River God Sacrifice is tomorrow at noon, and you're the chief officiant. You need to recite the prayer in front of everyone, so he wants you to practice a few times and get familiar with the script. The whole process is written down here too. He couldn't find you, so he sent someone to the martial hall. Since I knew you were at the academy, they asked me to pass this to you."
"Got it. There's something else I need you to do for me. Can you go to the martial hall and bring me that big wooden chest from my room?"
"The wooden chest? Sure, I'll check it out and bring it over."
Liang Qu took the papers, folded them neatly, and tucked them into his robe.
He hadn't forgotten that Chen Zhao'an had asked him to be the chief officiant for the River God Sacrifice—a great opportunity to show his face.
The prayer wasn't written in plain language; it was full of obscure terms and phrases that were hard to pronounce.
He'd need to practice it several times.
He'd also have to dress formally for the occasion.
The cloak, robe, and Cloudstride Boots his senior brothers had given him had been kept safe, as he didn't dare leave them at home for fear of theft.
Now, they'd finally come in handy.
After the meal, Li Libo fetched the wooden chest and handed it to Liang Qu before hurrying back to practice his martial arts.
Opportunities like this didn't come often, and both Li Libo and Chen Jiechang had been training like madmen, barely returning to Righteous Prosperity City.
If it weren't for the River God Sacrifice tomorrow, they probably wouldn't have set foot in the city for three months.
Their dedication put Liang Qu to shame.
After all, he had to juggle fishing, studying, and sometimes even lazing around or playing with his three beasts.
He felt a pang of guilt.
He couldn't afford to be so lazy in the future.
Carrying the chest, Liang Qu rowed his boat to Pingyang Wharf and then to Shangrao Dock, where he slapped the water to summon a massive creature.
A long, dark body emerged from the depths, half-hidden in the night.
Its dense scales shimmered faintly as water cascaded down its sides, forming tiny streams that flowed back into the river.
The Immovable, as Liang Qu called it, was now three and a half meters long.
Even if it stopped growing, it was already a giant among crocodiles.
Liang Qu stashed the prayer script and his formal clothes in the boat's cabin, then stripped down to his undergarments and jumped into the water.
The Immovable swam alongside him, escorting him toward the Fat Catfish.
Along the way, the crocodile swayed its body proudly, as if showing off.
This time, it wasn't the Fat Catfish that had discovered the treasure—it was the Immovable!
While digging underwater, the crocodile had stumbled upon a hidden terrain, a secret place that no ordinary person could find without sheer luck.
Liang Qu patted the crocodile's head in encouragement.
Unfortunately, he didn't have anything valuable on hand to reward it.
Still, the Immovable was thrilled by the pat, its tail thrashing the water and creating a stream of bubbles.
When they arrived at the spot, Liang Qu looked up in awe.
Beneath the water was an enormous rock, nearly twenty meters tall—about the size of a small residential building.
At the base of the rock, a fist-sized creature darted around, patrolling the area.
When it spotted Liang Qu, it swam over and perched on his shoulder.
Nearby, a patch of seemingly ordinary mud suddenly bulged, and the four-meter-long Fat Catfish shook off the silt and swam over.
Surrounded by two giant beasts and one small creature, Liang Qu felt a strange sense of satisfaction, as if he truly were the Water God of the vast rivers, commanding an army of aquatic creatures with a wave of his hand.
But the thought of the Toad Brother quickly dispelled his fantasies.
Tomorrow, he'd have to recite the prayer for the Toad Brother.
For now, he'd have to endure.
Sooner or later, he'd have his spicy frog hotpot.
Liang Qu let gravity pull him down to the riverbed.
In water, there's a neutral buoyancy point.
At around five meters deep, the body naturally floats upward, and without any effort, one can return to the surface.
But beyond a certain depth, the chest compresses, reducing overall volume, and the body begins to sink freely.
Without weights, this point is usually around thirty meters.
Here, the water was deeper than thirty meters, so Liang Qu effortlessly descended to the bottom.
Guided by the Immovable, Liang Qu found the hole the crocodile had dug beneath the rock.
As he crawled through, he discovered a massive crack in the rock's base, about three meters wide, with a faint light shining through.
Liang Qu swam into the crack, heading toward the light.
After about four or five meters, the path took a sharp 90-degree turn upward, like a sheer cliff.
On this "cliff," a thick vine as wide as a person's arm grew, resembling the beanstalk from the fairy tale of Jack and the Beanstalk.
The vine was the source of the light, glowing faintly in the darkness, bright and otherworldly.
Liang Qu tried to bite it but found it impossibly hard.
He could only climb it.
After about ten meters, he suddenly broke the surface, his hair dripping wet, and looked around in astonishment.
The inside of the rock wasn't filled with water—it was filled with air!
The space was like an inverted dome, with the ceiling reflecting a shimmering blue light from the water above.
The entire rock acted like a giant lid, trapping the air inside.
Liang Qu didn't hold his breath.
The Immovable had already explored the area, proving the air was safe.
However, as a crocodile, its vocabulary was limited, so it could only describe the cave as having rocks, a hole, and glowing plants.
In reality, the interior of the rock resembled an upside-down eighth note, with the large "belly" being the space Liang Qu now stood in, and the "stem" being the passage he'd come through.
Liang Qu grabbed the vine and climbed onto the platform inside the rock.
Standing upright, he scanned the area and spotted a massive plant in the far corner, its bulbous body as large as a human head.
It looked like a mushroom, with a short, thick, white stem and a cap resembling a ganoderma.
It was deeply rooted in the rock.
Water Ganoderma!
Having spent the past few days studying, Liang Qu was no longer the clueless novice he once was.
He immediately recognized it as a Water Ganoderma, a rare aquatic treasure!
Just as he was about to approach it, a rock on the shadowy wall suddenly shook loose and shot toward him!
(End of Chapter)