Chapter 67: Infiltrating the Seabed (Double Monthly Ticket Period)

The vast sea was a deep blue, and the sunlight was dazzling.

After the Kamakura incident in June, the nine groups gathered again. They stood on the sea, chatting about recent events and the upcoming competition.

“Our group has no newcomers this year. There’s no hope for the newcomer award,” Horse Face sighed.

“Even if there were newcomers, we probably wouldn’t get it,” Rabbit said.

“Every year it’s group one and group two. This year, group three has a new cultivator who has participated in twelve battles. Maybe there’s hope,” the monk with hair like steel needles and wearing a Buddha mask said, his hands clasped together.

Rabbit glanced at him and said mockingly:
“Monk, you’ve always been so sincere. That Minamoto Kiyomoto stepped on Amitabha’s foot, but his cultivation is still faster than yours. I think you might as well go and step on it too.”

“Amitabha,” the monk chanted a Buddhist name, his hands still clasped together.

“How on earth did that kid cultivate?” a fat man wearing a Hatsune Miku mask asked, his hands supporting his double chin in thought. “In just three months, he was able to defeat Sister Ayame. Did he eat the fruit of the spirit tree?”

“Fatty, why did you change your mask again? Didn’t you wear this mask before?” Rabbit was in charge of intelligence and had a good memory.

“I had an epiphany recently,” the fat man said in a tone more like a monk than a monk. “I change my wife every four months. I can’t dote on all of them, so from today on, I will only be a fan of Princess Hatsune.”

No one answered him.

Last time, the fat man wore a mask of a woman named Tifa and said that he had found true love and would never like anyone else again.

But despite the fat man’s appearance, everyone in the group recognized him.

His reason for joining the ninth group was very strange—he wanted to be a freeloader and protect his hard-working parents.

After joining the ninth group, perhaps because he was wearing a mask, he was not afraid to speak. He treated cultivation as a game and was very diligent.

With his salary, he not only supported himself but also sent money home, becoming a positive young man in the eyes of most people.

“Needless to say about the newcomer group,” Yuka, wearing a black butterfly mask, spoke. “Our senior group has to work hard. If we can’t get any results this year, the group leader will have to pay for the salary herself again.”

“Have you made any progress this year?” Horse Face asked.

“Hmph~” Fatty put his hands on his hips. “My combat power has increased from 100 to 139. From today on, you will call me Master Roshi! Ah, I should have worn Master Roshi’s clothes!”

He scratched his head in regret.

“I’ve made some progress, but—” the monk said half a sentence, and everyone understood his meaning.

“Me too,” a person with a monkey mask said.

Everyone spoke one by one. The situation was similar. They had made progress, but they were not confident that they could get into the top ten of the senior group.

“We’re too weak. Michiko can’t participate in the newcomer group or the senior group because the other group leaders are cheating,” Yuka said with a sigh.

“I’ll cheer for everyone,” Yanagi Michiko changed to a musical score mask, carrying her pipa case, her voice soft and pleasant.

After the great battle against the Divine Miko and the brief time they spent together while fleeing, the people of the ninth group already knew that Yanagi Michiko had a kind and gentle personality, and they all accepted and liked her.

“Why isn’t the group leader here yet?” Rabbit looked in the direction of Shikoku.

“She’s here,” Yanagi Michiko suddenly said.

“Where?” Everyone looked towards the coast. The sunlight was dazzling, and they saw nothing.

“Here,” Itomi Sayaka rose from the bottom of the sea, a blue water shield enveloping her and Minamoto Kiyomoto.

“Group leader!” everyone shouted in unison, either happy or respectful.

“Yes,” Itomi Sayaka nodded and asked Hanyu Chika, “Ayame, is everyone here?”

“Yes,” after saying this, Hanyu Chika glanced at Minamoto Kiyomoto, who was wearing a fox mask and a school uniform.

As an external member of “Takamagahara,” she knew about this plan, and she had an indescribable feeling in her heart.

Although her own brother was killed by Minamoto Kiyomoto, Minamoto Kiyomoto not only let the ninth group go once, but was now preparing to help them survive the great battle.

Killing is not my purpose—Minamoto Kiyomoto’s words once again appeared in Hanyu Chika’s mind.

“Group leader, who is this?” Rabbit pointed at Minamoto Kiyomoto and asked.

Green sportswear, the name tag on the chest was torn off, long-sleeved shirt and long pants, like a male high school student who had climbed over the wall to sneak out during gym class.

He was on the thin side, with a tall and slender figure, and looked quite pleasing to the eye.

“A newcomer I found. Introduce yourself,” Itomi Sayaka said.

“Hello everyone, I’m Tsugumi. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Please take care of me,” Minamoto Kiyomoto’s voice was about three or four years younger.

“Wearing a fox mask, shouldn’t you be called Fox?” Horse Face said.

“Senior, you… are called Horse?” Minamoto Kiyomoto looked at his horse mask and said hesitantly.

“He’s called Horse Face,” Miss Rabbit said with a stifled laugh.

Minamoto Kiyomoto turned his face away, his shoulders shaking.

“Hey, are you laughing secretly?!” Horse Face said angrily.

“No, no!” Minamoto Kiyomoto turned his face back. Although his expression could not be seen, from his straight back, his seriousness could be seen. “Senior Horse Face misunderstood. I was definitely not laughing secretly!”

Horse Face snorted. Actually, he wasn’t angry. He was used to being mocked.

Who told him his face was long? He could only find a horse mask, but in the end, he was still called ‘Horse Face’.

“Are you a high school student?” Fatty walked over on the water waves and asked.

“Yes!” Minamoto Kiyomoto replied loudly.

“What grade?”

“Second year of high school!”

“Very energetic. What’s your special skill?” Fatty asked.

“Special skill?” Minamoto Kiyomoto asked with confusion.

“Everyone who joins Shintoism has some special place.”

“Hmm—” Minamoto Kiyomoto scratched the back of his head, thought for a moment, and said tentatively, “I can recite the names of over five hundred Pokémon?”

After a brief silence, Fatty burst out laughing like a madman and patted Minamoto Kiyomoto’s shoulder affectionately.

“From today on, you are Fatty’s little brother. I will protect you!”

“Tsugumi-kun,” Rabbit couldn’t help but say, “Fatty’s ‘special skill’ refers to who you joined the ninth group to protect.”

“Oh, oh, I see. Thank you, Sister Rabbit,” Minamoto Kiyomoto quickly thanked her.

“Let’s go down first. It’s too hot on the sea,” Yuka pulled at the collar of her clothes, revealing a little of her fair chest.

The sea was calm, and the sun was scorching overhead. Even with divine power, it was not a pleasant feeling.

“Let’s go,” as soon as Itomi Sayaka’s voice fell, the blue water shield expanded like a balloon, enveloping all the members of the ninth group.

The water shield brought everyone down into the water. The sea, which had been bustling just now, was silent in an instant.

The descent was leisurely, not rushed. Everyone admired the surrounding scenery and observed the flow of the seawater.

Rabbit and Fatty surrounded Minamoto Kiyomoto and introduced the members of the ninth group to him one by one.

Everyone’s personality was originally not bad, and they felt that Tsugumi had an approachable aura, so they all had a good impression of him.
“Tsugumi-kun, how many years have you been cultivating?” Rabbit asked.

“Sister Cat told me not to say,” Minamoto Kiyomoto replied honestly.

Rabbit glanced at the group leader. She was wearing a white cat mask, but no one called her Sister Cat. They all called her group leader.

“Do you know about the newcomer group competition?” Horse Face was too lazy to stand and leaned against the wall of the water shield.

“Yes,” Minamoto Kiyomoto nodded like a teenager. “I’ll do my best!”

“Just do your best. Don’t take it too seriously,” Fatty said. “Some groups are particularly ruthless. The first priority is to ensure that you don’t get injured.”

“Thank you, Brother Fatty!”

“Ahem!” Fatty tilted his head back, and his double chin finally disappeared.

“Tsugumi-kun, why did you join the ninth group?” Rabbit continued to inquire tirelessly.

“I like Sister Cat and want to pursue her, so I came.”

“Eh—” everyone looked at him in surprise.

“Tsugumi,” Itomi Sayaka called out.

Minamoto Kiyomoto stopped talking. The few men in the ninth group gave him a thumbs-up in admiration.

Without entering the cultivation world, in a society where everyone is equal, everyone is timid in the face of overly outstanding people, let alone pursuing a Kosen-level girl in the cultivation world.

The blue water shield sank for a while longer. The sunlight was as thin as a string of light, slanting down between the water waves, and the surroundings became cold.

From time to time, schools of fish would swim by, blocking out the sun. Sometimes they would gather together, and sometimes they would scatter with a “boom.”

Further down, the light completely disappeared, and the surroundings were dark.

A sperm whale called out with a “gugu” and swam past everyone.

A giant octopus descended from the sky, its tentacles full of suckers, wrapping around everyone like a meatball.

The blue water shield neither slowed down nor accelerated. The giant octopus chased them for a thousand meters before letting them go.

At this depth, it was as if the world had been destroyed. They were walking in a dark place with nothing.

The fish here were different from the schools of fish in an aquarium. They were full of wildness and constantly attacked the shield.

The most terrifying were not the attacking fish, but those ‘fish that looked like their internal organs were growing on the outside.’ They stuck to the blue shield and stared at everyone with expressionless faces, which was chilling.

“Every time I enter the seabed, I realize that sunlight is the most precious thing for humans,” Yuka’s voice was not loud, but in the deep sea that had swallowed everything, it was a bit piercing.

“I usually don’t go out. Every time I go to the seabed, I have to go out and sunbathe…” Fatty didn’t finish his words and suddenly held his breath.

In the darkness, a prehistoric mosasaur silently darted out and bit the blue shield.

The sharp teeth scraped against the blue shield, like a knife tip scraping against metal. The sound made one’s scalp tingle.

“There are even animals that have been extinct since the Cretaceous period!” Minamoto Kiyomoto’s eyes were wide open.

“Aren’t you afraid?” Yuka couldn’t help but ask.

“Hmm?” Minamoto Kiyomoto was watching intently. He came back to his senses and said “ah,” “I’ve liked these creatures since I was a child. If Sister Butterfly is afraid, you can think of it as a Gyarados, a Totodile, or a Salamence.”

“I can’t understand the thoughts of a male high school student,” Yuka shook her head.

Through the blue water shield, the scales of the mosasaur could be seen very clearly. They were as hard and smooth as if they had been cast from fine iron.

The blue shield still did not accelerate or decelerate, sinking towards the seabed as if nothing had happened.

The mosasaur bit the blue ball tightly, like a fish that had taken the bait, and was dragged down. In the end, as if it finally understood that it couldn’t eat it, it reluctantly let go.

When they reached the dark seabed, with the help of the divine power light, they looked at the majestic sand and rocks. It was like a corner of the end of the world, and also like the remains of a thousand armies.

The water was not turbid, just without light. Minamoto Kiyomoto had long been accustomed to the darkness.

In the first three days of living in Hakusan Shrine, he would always hear the sound of someone walking outside the dark house, and even coughing.

At that time, he would deliberately forget about Kamibayashi Miko, who was a thousand meters away, and completely throw himself into the darkness.

Something was making footsteps. It was approaching, knocking on the door—the more he thought about it, the colder his heart became, and at the same time, the more excited he became.

Because he knew that the more afraid he was now, the stronger he would become when the day broke.

The blue shield walked on the seabed, passed by the wreckage of a sunken ship that looked like a monster’s corpse, and crossed a hill to a trench.

The dark trench was like a crack leading to the underworld. The blue shield sank into it.

Passing through the darkness, the bottom of the trench was a magnificent temple made of a coral forest, beautiful and dreamlike.

Inside the temple, people were coming and going, and it was very lively.

The members of the ninth group let out a sigh of relief, as if they had come out of a village and walked for half an hour on a night road, finally arriving at the night market on the street.

The blue shield entered the coral palace and automatically dissipated. There was no water in the coral temple.

Along the corridor, many cultivators were setting up stalls. Some were selling weapons, some were selling clothes, some were selling intelligence, some were selling what looked like tattered miscellaneous items, and some were even selling pills.

A small part of the transactions could be done with money. Most were bartering, and curses were a hard currency.

Some of the merchants wore masks, and some were probably already wanted by the government and were too lazy to wear them anymore.

Minamoto Kiyomoto had even forgotten about the competition. If Itomi Sayaka hadn’t been pulling him, he would have long since squatted down at a roadside stall.

The government had a more formal “cultivator shopping street” than this. The Onmyo Bureau had one, but he had only been cultivating for a short time and had no time to go to these places.

Kamibayashi Miko also didn’t think he needed to waste time going to such a place. The clothes he wore, the things he used, and the things he used were all the best.

Rabbit looked at him and said with a smile:
“Everyone is like this the first time they come, but it’s useless to look. You can’t afford it at all. Look, most of us are still wearing ordinary clothes, and we don’t even have a single weapon.”

“Mine, mine, they’re all mine. I’ll move them all back,” Minamoto Kiyomoto seemed not to have heard, and his collecting addiction came on.

“Another one has gone crazy,” Fatty said.

“You have the nerve to say others are crazy?” Horse Face mocked him. “The first time you came, you held onto the armor sold by the third group and refused to let go, causing us to be laughed at by the other groups for a whole day.”

“Can you blame me for that? Who told that person to make the armor look like the Gemini Gold Saint’s cloth? Who can resist that temptation? Don’t you think so, little brother?”

“Mine, this coral temple is also mine.”

“…Little brother, wake up.”

Walking into the palace, Minamoto Kiyomoto seemed to still be muttering ‘mine, mine, yours are all mine.’ No one paid him any attention.

Minamoto Kiyomoto muttered to himself, his eyes observing every passing cultivator.

Occasionally, he would also think: how to get Kamibayashi Miko and Himemiya Izayoi to help him move the coral temple away later—the stalls outside were out of the question, but this temple, he really wanted to collect it.

“Tsugumi, come here. I’ll tell you some things to pay attention to in the newcomer battle,” Itomi Sayaka said, leading Minamoto Kiyomoto to the front.

She whispered in his ear, “Since you’re here, try to get into the top ten of the newcomer battle.”

“This is not a matter of the organization. I’ll say it again: if you give me one yen, I guarantee I’ll solve one yen’s worth of your troubles,” Minamoto Kiyomoto’s eyes were fixed on a stall selling submarines.

“Submarine! Submarine! Selling cheap! The government has already dealt with it as a deep-sea matter. They definitely won’t investigate. Buy with confidence!”

“During this time,” Itomi Sayaka said in a low voice, “you’ve learned a lot of curses from me. Isn’t that enough?”

“The curses are a matter of the organization. I taught you curses and shared my insights, and I didn’t charge you either.”

Itomi Sayaka glared at him fiercely and said, “Alright, if you get into the top ten, you’ll get 20% of the prize money.”

“80%.”

“Why don’t you just rob a bank?”

“That’s a crime. I never commit crimes. I’m a good person.”

“I’m the one who gave you this opportunity. You take 80%, and the prize money is basically gone. 25%.”

“I was kidding. You’re my girlfriend. How could I be so inconsiderate,” Minamoto Kiyomoto’s voice was full of laughter.

“No money?” Itomi Sayaka asked.

“No, what I was kidding about was 80%. Let’s just take 20%.”

“…”

Itomi Sayaka had just received intelligence from Rabbit about the newcomers from the other groups, their approximate origins, curses, past battle records, and so on.

She told Minamoto Kiyomoto everything.

“With your cultivation, as long as your luck isn’t too bad, it shouldn’t be a problem to get into the top ten,” she said.

According to the plan, after Minamoto Kiyomoto won the prize in the newcomer battle, he would immediately notify Kamibayashi Miko and have them launch an attack.

This way, the senior battle, which had no chance of winning, could be cancelled, and the nine groups would share the funds for the coming year—this was Itomi Sayaka’s small conspiracy.

After explaining the intelligence, it was time to enter the venue.

The place where the competition was held was similar to the Roman Colosseum. The arena in the middle was a huge deep pit.

The land in the sea was worthless. In the deep pit, there were small lakes, grasslands, strange rock formations, and cliffs.

The audience sat in a circle, head to tail. The ninth group and the first group happened to be next to each other. The two group leaders were chatting idly.

Minamoto Kiyomoto glanced at them. The leader of the first group was a beautiful and voluptuous middle-aged noblewoman, dressed in a high-class Western style.

He recalled the intelligence Itomi Sayaka had told him.

The leader of the first group, Sanae Sara, was as famous as the Suitengu Miko. All the members of her group were men, and the curses they cultivated were said to be the ‘yang-plucking and yin-nourishing’ that had been passed down from China.

‘I wonder if the Suitengu Miko, who calls herself ‘Little Water,’ also cultivates such a curse,’ Minamoto Kiyomoto thought.

At this time, Sanae Sara, who was asking about the Kamakura Great Buddha incident in June, suddenly closed her eyes and sniffed the air.

“What’s wrong?” Itomi Sayaka asked.

Sanae Sara’s face was intoxicated, and her eyes, which had reopened, were watery.

“There’s a handsome guy,” she elegantly wiped her lower lip, as if she were about to drool. “And he’s a virgin.”

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(End of Chapter)