The sudden tremor beneath him alerted him. The island wasn’t what it seemed. There was something more than met the eye. He simply hadn’t identified what it was yet.
The fact that he’d failed to find anything after careful inspection made him even more wary.
Whatever the island’s secret was, it was well hidden. Otherwise, he would’ve found something.
After sitting down for a while, Jiang Chen got to his feet. Before he could take a step, he felt a slight tremor again.
This time, it was even fainter. Since he was on his feet, it was almost impossible to detect. If he hadn’t been primed to notice it because he’d felt the tremor when sitting down, he would’ve been completely oblivious.
“Was there such a tremor before, but I simply failed to notice it because I was on my feet?”
At that thought, he expanded his consciousness and looked for any minute changes in the area.
Eventually, the tremor happened again. Then again after the same interval.
Jiang Chen’s heart sank. “This is very strange. The tremors follow a regular pattern, and they seem to be coming from beneath the ground. Unlike a sudden, dramatic quake, the tremors are steady and rhythmic.”
They were like heartbeats, but much slower than a human heart. About three to four hundred times slower compared to a human cultivator’s heart, in fact.
With that in mind, Jiang Chen surveyed the area even more carefully.
A long time later, his face clouded over. He’d found a pattern. There was a tremor beneath his feet every four hundred beats of his heart. No more, no less.
“Is there something underground?” Jiang Chen’s curiosity was piqued. The tremors were absolutely worth investigating.
He scouted around. The tremors were fainter on the outer rim of the island. The closer he was to the center, the stronger the tremors, but still faint enough that he had to pay close attention to feel them.
He couldn’t glean any clues no matter where he looked. He manifested a pair of wings and soared to the sky. He wanted to look down at the island from a birdeye’s view and find out its secret.
However, his heart sank as he took flight.
An invisible force was pulling him back down. He couldn’t soar into the sky as he wished.
He could leave the ground, but the height he could reach was very limited, and the energy expended was tremendous.
What the...
Jiang Chen was very taken aback. Gravity here was much stronger than normal, about hundreds of times stronger. He’d been moving horizontally and therefore hadn’t noticed, but it was obvious when he tried to move vertically.
“Is gravity that’s hundreds of times stronger than usual the secret of the island?” Jiang Chen was surprised, but didn’t panick.
He activated the Earth Bodhisattva Orb and tapped into the earth energy within himself, changing his gravity to match the island’s.
As the most powerful treasure of the ancient formation sect, the priceless Earth Bodhisattva Orb resonated with the island as soon as it activated. It began to absorb the great gravity forces of the island.
The ground beneath him seemed to sink spontaneously. Then, something unfathomable happened. The island shook! Not just vertically, but horizontally as well!
Jiang Chen could see with his own eyes that the island brought up tall waves as it moved, like a whale cutting through water. Its speed grew increasingly faster.
“What the h.e.l.l, the island is moving?!” He’d seen many strange things in his life, but still this surprised him.
There had never been an island that could move. Could this island be a formation? Or the basis of a formation?
However, he hadn’t sensed anything required for a formation, so that was unlikely. As a formation master, he was confident in his judgement.
What happened next was even stranger.
The ground beneath his feet cracked, the dry earth fracturing. What little vegetation there was crumbled and slid into the ocean.
The terrain continued to change, revealing a greyish-green surface. Irregular, intersecting lines split the surface into varying shapes. There were pentagons and hexagons. The surface looked unbelievably strange.
Jiang Chen considered it for a while. Suddenly, his eyes lit up in disbelief. The strange surface reminded him of something.
He pushed the orb to its full power and absorbed the terrifying force of gravity. His body grew lighter and lighter, and he rose higher and higher above ground.
He looked down from above. His heart pounded. Now he understood!
It was like a turtle’s sh.e.l.l.
The shape and patterns of the island resembled a turtle’s sh.e.l.l, and the island moved in the water like it was swimming.
Even someone with as much experience as him was shocked. The sea turtle was so enormous that people had a.s.sumed it was an island!
The tremors Jiang Chen had felt must be the turtle’s heartbeats. Giant turtles had their own unique heritage. They could slow down their heartbeats infinitely, even to a few beats per day.
He sucked in a breath. If this was a turtle, it must be one that had lived for a very long time.
He’d been wandering about on a turtle’s body for a long time without noticing. If the turtle had attacked, he would’ve been in great danger!