(Correction for last chapter: Village Chief going to High Heaven was a mistake in Zhai Zhu's notes and has been fixed.)
Harborstate Prefecture, Everpeace Empire. Morning. The sea fog rolled in thick and endless.
Years later, the garrison soldiers of Harborstate City would never forget the sight: gray, misty waves shrouded in fog, when a gigantic one-horned whale burst from the harbor. Its vast body soared overhead, blotting out the docks like a thundercloud.
Then the whale shrank, smaller and smaller, plunging into the heart of the city below.
Before the soldiers could catch their breath, another colossal shadow loomed through the sea mist—a massive turtle-shell warship, its hull encrusted with shells, flying the Black Tortoise Clan’s banner, billowing in the wind.
The great ship barreled straight for the harbor docks, about to smash through—when suddenly, the turtle-shell vessel lifted dozens of zhang above the ground, sprouted four legs, and strode over the ships below, rumbling into the city like a living fortress.
The city’s soldiers stared, dumbfounded, as the massive ship strode overhead. Coiled around its hull were Teng Snakes—giant, winged serpents that beat their wings noisily around the mast. The warriors aboard looked uncanny: turtle-backed, human-bodied, entwined with Teng Snakes, a bizarre symbiotic race—the Black Tortoise Clan.
Tanhaven Prefecture faced its own marvel. Renowned for a thousand bottomless pools, both city and countryside, every pool suddenly dried up—water and fish gone. Peering into the depths, people saw at each pool’s bed a sealed bronze gate.
The prefect of Tanhaven ordered men to investigate. They reported: "The bronze gates are sealed with powerful locks. We can’t open them."
The prefect was baffled and uneasy. Suddenly, one bronze gate creaked open. Out shuffled a squat, scaly man. He relocked the gate and hollered down, "Alright, alright, I hear you, nagging wife! The Human Emperor calls, I’m just honoring our ancestors’ promise—going out to help, not picking fights. I’m the mellowest guy in the Earthwalker Clan! What’re you staring at? Keep gawking and I’ll bust your kneecaps... Not you, I mean those dirt-clod giants up top... I know how to lock a gate, you’re worse than my old lady!"
The Tanhaven prefect and his men watched as the squat, five-foot-tall dwarf with a wild beard carefully locked the bronze gate, then clambered ashore.
The prefect stepped forward, curiosity piqued. "Hey, brother..."
The scaly dwarf glared back, "Dirt-clod giant, don’t even think about scheming on our Earthwalker Clan. We settled this ages ago—the surface is for you dirt-clod giants, the underground’s ours."
The prefect gaped as the dwarf shouted down into the pool, "Wife, let the water loose! Otherwise these giants will try to snatch our underground world!"
At once, waves surged in every deep pool. Soon, all the pools brimmed with sparkling water and fish.
Just as the prefect was about to ask more, the dwarf dove into the earth and vanished from sight.
The prefect and his men stared, stunned. "There are people living underground? How do they even survive down there?"
Meanwhile, in Willow Prefecture, famed for its willow spirit worship, an incident erupted: willow trees transformed into Azure Dragons and soared away.
All across the Everpeace Empire, strange phenomena multiplied. Rumors buzzed through every village and town.
"Quinn, this is the formation I saw in the sky that day. I didn’t have time to study it closely, but I remembered this much."