Magical Girl's Knight Brother

Chapter 668 The Door to Activities

Upon entering the captain's cabin, Tang Zijun and Chang Lei acted as if they were stepping into their own living room, their expressions unchanged. Chang Lei's scarlet eyes swept across the room with a hint of critical scrutiny, while Tang Zijun remained calm and composed, directly locking onto the abnormal energy node at the core of the room.

The captain's cabin was more spacious than I had imagined, and far more luxurious than the outer cabins, or rather, more in line with the crazy taste of a pirate king.

The floor was covered with a thick layer of dark red, hardened, unidentified grime that creaked underfoot. On the walls hung a heavy, faded, moldy tapestry with distorted, blurred patterns that vaguely depicted sea monsters, storms, and burning ships. A huge nautical table, made from a single piece of ebony, occupied the center, its surface also covered in grime and scratches.

Most striking is a huge kerosene lamp with a brass frame hanging directly above the nautical table. The lampshade is mostly broken, but the wick inside burns eerily with a flame that is not warm orange, but rather a ghostly green, cold light that flickers like will-o'-the-wisp.

The green light illuminated the mess on the table: scattered, rusted nautical instruments, compasses, sextants, and several overturned glass bottles dripping with black slime; a few scattered old coins with skull patterns; and an open captain's diary, soaked in dark brown stains, its pages resembling withered tree bark.

In the corner, there was even a broken obsidian sculpture with a distorted face lying on its side.

The entire space was filled with a mixture of solidified madness and decadent decay, as if time had stopped here at the moment of Blackbeard's final madness.

"Tsk, what terrible taste, like a nouveau riche." Chang Lei commented bluntly, kicking aside the half-statue blocking his way. The statue hit the wall with a dull thud, raising a cloud of dust, but no ghost sailors came at the sound. The captain's cabin seemed to possess some kind of independent "domain."

Tang Zijun ignored the historical relics and his gaze fell on a corner of the nautical table, where a large brass basin with sea serpent patterns carved on the edge was placed. At the bottom of the basin, there was still some turbid water that gave off a faint salty smell.

"Right here," Tang Zijun said.

Chang Lei immediately understood, a glint of light flashing in his scarlet eyes. He walked to the basin, flicked his finger, and a wisp of scarlet greedy power burrowed into the murky water like a living snake. The water seemed to be given life, instantly becoming crystal clear, like the purest mountain spring, even emitting a faint, pure aura of water elements. This was Chang Lei temporarily deceiving the nature of the water, purifying it.

Tang Zijun walked to the kerosene lamp burning with eerie green flames. He stretched out his finger, but did not touch the flame. He simply brushed it lightly above the flame, and the originally cold and flickering eerie green flame instantly became stable and bright. The unsettling aura of death in the light was dispelled, and instead it emitted a pure and powerful light source characteristic, like a tamed star fire.

He carefully moved and adjusted the angle of the kerosene lamp, which had been temporarily modified, so that its steady and bright light could be accurately projected onto the center of the brass basin filled with water.

The light penetrated the air and shone into the water.

The moment the light disappeared into the water, something unexpected happened.

The water surface in the basin was no longer a simple reflection of the light. The clear water seemed to have become a living, infinitely deep lens. The beam of light was like a searchlight thrown into the deep sea, stirring up countless brilliant, lively, and lifelike golden and blue rays of light in the basin.

These lights are not random, but rather they move and construct within the water as if they were alive.

The clear water seemed to connect the entire boundless ocean. The light was no longer just light, but outlined the contours of the continents, the silhouettes of the islands, the shadows of the deep trenches, and the trajectory of the surging ocean currents. The entire ocean on Earth seemed to be miniaturized and poured into this small basin.

This is not a traditional nautical chart, but a living, dynamic map "reflected and marked" by the reversed world channel network, based on the actual structure of the ocean space.

Those crisscrossing golden and blue rays of light are the most active energy interaction points, the weakest spatial barriers, and the most suitable channels for dimensional jumps between the real world and the reversed world.

Tang Zijun and Chang Lei's eyes instantly locked onto the precise coordinates provided by Scáthach on the dynamic nautical chart.

The coordinate point shimmered with an extremely dazzling scarlet light deep within the basin, like blood dripping into the water, or like a dangerous heartbeat. Around it, the golden-blue light representing the reversal channel became unusually dense, distorted, and like a raging vortex.

Chang Lei licked his lips, his crimson pupils reflecting the crimson vortex in the basin. "This wrecked ship has no other uses, but it's quite good as a spatial lens."

Although neither of them could understand nautical charts, fortunately, they had something better: reverse navigation channels. This was their area of ​​expertise.

Tang Zijun nodded slightly, her deep black eyes scrutinizing every detail of the crimson path. "The coordinates are still too large, and we don't know the entrance to that secret realm, which might take us quite a while."

"Didn't Scáthach give you a more precise location?" Chang Lei asked.

Tang Zijun shook her head. "What Scáthach gave me was the location where Poseidon's temple fell back then. With the fall of the sea god, the various divine kingdoms under his command also collapsed, including some underwater kingdoms such as Atlantis."

"Those divine kingdoms were affected by the spatial-temporal turbulence and were completely erased from the real world, which also caused the seawater to overflow. Under such circumstances, heaven knows where the clues to those divine kingdoms were sent by the ocean currents."

"So, in other words," Chang Lei thought for a moment, "we only know roughly where Poseidon's temple has fallen, but these coordinates are only in the real world, not the coordinates of the secret realm itself?"

"That's it." Tang Zijun shrugged. "That's why I said this search won't be a simple matter; it will likely take us a lot of time."

"Can't we ask the Bureau of Demon Surveillance to help us? Using satellites or some other method to search would be much faster than us slowly deducting money bit by bit like this, right?" Chang Lei couldn't help but ask.

"I've considered it before, but it's impossible," Tang Zijun continued. "Human technology is currently unable to explore the whereabouts of such a secret realm because they can't deconstruct the inversion passage. To find a suitable location, we can only rely on ourselves to proceed slowly."

"Depend on..."

Hearing Tang Zijun say this, Chang Lei had no choice but to go to the basin and use his Greedy One ability to search for any possible location in the coordinate sea that might connect to the unknown dimension.

During this gradual search, the heavy iron door was silently pushed open a crack.

The old butler, Forsold, entered silently, carrying an exquisite silver tea tray on which sat two steaming cups of richly aromatic black tea. The wisps of white smoke looked especially warm under the soft green light.

He walked steadily, ignoring the oppressive atmosphere in the room, and placed two cups of black tea on the nautical table in front of Tang Zijun and Chang Lei respectively. The rims of the cups were warm, and the aroma of tea was overflowing.

"Gentlemen, please have some tea." Forsold's voice was deep and steady, with the reassuring rhythm unique to old aristocratic butlers.

"Thank you, Butler Fuseld." Tang Zijun looked away from the basin of water and nodded slightly to the old butler. He picked up the warm teacup, feeling the delicate texture of the porcelain with his fingertips. The rising steam temporarily dispelled the heaviness between his brows.

Chang Lei merely glanced at the black tea, snorted, clearly not in the mood to savor it, but he didn't refuse the offer.

Tang Zijun took a sip of mellow black tea. The warm liquid slid down his throat, bringing a rare sense of relief. He put down the teacup, his deep gaze falling on Fussold's calm, stone-carved face. A thought struck him, and he asked the question.

"Butler Forsold, you... or rather, the Afran family has a long and distinguished history. I wonder if you know anything about the Olympian pantheon, especially the temple ruins of Poseidon, the god of the sea?"

The old butler bowed slightly upon hearing this, his voice still steady, yet carrying a hint of nostalgia: "Sir, you flatter me. The history of Miss Avran's family can indeed be traced back to the glorious era of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. However, in that distant time, the glory of the Olympian gods had long since sunk into the abyss of history like the setting sun. Their miracles were hidden, their divine realm was closed, and the connection between mortals and gods was almost severed. Our ancestors also sought the traces of these lost gods, trying to find the power or wisdom they left behind."

Forsold shook his head slightly, his tone carrying an ancient regret.

"But the results were meager. My ancestors had explored beneath the waves of the Aegean Sea, searched for clues to the legendary sunken Atlantis, and even ventured into the ancient trenches of the North Sea... What they found were mostly broken fragments of relics that had lost their divinity, or ruins that had long been eroded beyond recognition by time and the sea."

"Regarding Poseidon's core temple, the gate leading to His true divine kingdom... even the family's secret scriptures only contain a few words, vague and ambiguous, like a lighthouse in the fog, indicating the direction but not the true form."

"Our ancestors believed that the power of the sea god was deeply bound to the ocean itself. The entrance to his temple was not a dead object fixed at a certain latitude and longitude. It could drift with the ocean currents and dance with the deep-sea whirlpools. To find it, one needs not only coordinates, but also some kind of opportunity or resonance."

"Opportunity? Resonance?" Chang Lei pondered these two words, a hint of thought flashing in his crimson eyes, but mostly frustration. "It's like saying nothing at all, what's the difference between this and looking for a needle in a haystack?"

Tang Zijun fell into deep thought. Although Forsold's words did not provide a direct clue, they confirmed his previous speculation—the temple's door was dynamic and required specific conditions to be triggered.

This explains why Scáthach's coordinates can only point to a general area; she needs a more precise method of positioning, or a trigger that resonates with her.