Just as she had done on the eighth floor, she was afraid that there might be something eerie on the seventh floor, so she swam close to the ceiling.
This warehouse was extremely large. After swimming around it twice, Shen Qing already felt a bit exhausted, but she didn't notice anything amiss.
Shen Qing asked Ling Zhou twice and received the same answer both times. There was nothing here like on the eighth floor. Only then did she swim down with a sense of relief.
But as soon as she got close to these treasures, she was pressed down by a powerful gravitational force and fell directly onto a small mountain of pearls.
Shen Qing wasn't prepared and slipped down from the tall mountain of pearls, falling to the ground.
There was a formation here, just like on the ninth floor, that allowed people to stand on the ground.
"I see. That's how these things can be stacked so neatly. It turns out there's a formation here too. Otherwise, these treasures would be flying all over the warehouse," Ling Zhou's voice came, sounding rather gloating.
Shen Qing supported her aching waist and stood up with a grimace. "This Merman Palace is really full of traps everywhere."
After finally regaining her balance, Shen Qing tried to move her waist and found that she wasn't seriously injured. Only then did she start to walk around with confidence.
But the pearls were scattered all over the ground. One wrong step and she would slip and fall again. Shen Qing had no choice but to use her magic to pile up the pearls again before walking on the path with peace of mind.
But while tidying up the pearls, she noticed a box placed under the mountain of pearls she had disturbed.
The box was very large and unlocked. Shen Qing used her spiritual sense to examine it and found that it contained some books and the like.
She walked over, opened the box, picked up the top book, and read out the title. "Merman Palace Diary 1."
The writing was crooked, as if it had been written by a child who had just learned to write.
Driven by curiosity, Shen Qing opened the diary, but the first sentence shocked her.
"Hello, stranger. I hope that you who sees my diary is a hero who can save the Merman Palace. I am a little merman who was born due to the divine punishment."
Shen Qing frowned, simply sat down on the ground, and carefully read the diary.
This diary was written by a little merman who had mutated after the divine punishment. But when he was recording this diary, his emotions were very stable throughout. He didn't seem bloodthirsty and cruel at all.
Half an hour later, Shen Qing finished reading the first diary. Her face showed great shock.
She immediately took out the second diary from the box and quickly read it.
There were a total of six diaries in the box. It took Shen Qing three hours to finish reading them all.
But her views had undergone a huge transformation. Her face showed an indescribable expression. Along the way, both Shen Qing and Li Xian had thought that the merman clan had incurred the punishment of the Heavenly Dao because the clan leader had used a secret technique to restore the vitality of the merman clan.
But according to the little merman's writing, the truth was completely different.
Nearly half of the merman clan had been massacred by the human and demon races. After their clansmen were captured, they weren't exchanged for resources or used as supplements for cultivation. Instead, they were taken to the demon race for sacrifice.
As for what was being sacrificed, the former clan leader never said. The little merman only found out about this by overhearing the adults' conversations after he was born.
After recording this, the little guy added a sentence at the end.
"I don't know if this information will help save the merman clan, but I will try my best to record everything I know. Hero, please save us."
The merman clan's decision to hide in the depths of the South Sea and build the Merman Palace wasn't because they were afraid of being hunted by humans.
It was to tame the fierce beasts in the sea and form an army to fight against the human race.
The former clan leader didn't want to restore the vitality of the merman clan. Instead, he hoped to use a secret method to turn these little mermen into fighting puppets.
They were bloodthirsty and cruel, harming passing cultivators. This was an order from the clan leader.
But unfortunately, these little mermen would go berserk and attack anyone in sight. The clan leader's goal of retaliating against human cultivators was achieved, but his own clansmen were also harmed.
To cultivate the little mermen, the clan leader captured all the eligible female mermaids in the clan and forced them to mate and give birth.
The room where the female mermaids were imprisoned was named the breeding room by the clan leader.
The female mermaids had to keep giving birth one after another.
Chains were locked around their necks, hands, and feet, preventing them from leaving the so - called breeding room.
The reproductive value of the female mermaids was exploited to the maximum. They exhausted all their vitality to give birth to those little mermen who almost destroyed the merman clan.
In the end, there were fewer and fewer female mermaids in the clan.
But in order to keep the mermen being born, the clan leader sent thirty male mermen ashore to deceive the female cultivators on land to leave descendants.
Those thirty mermen who went ashore weren't looking for a way to solve the divine punishment. They were trying to see if their bloodline could fuse with the human bloodline.
If they could successfully give birth to merman descendants with half - human and half - merman bloodlines, then the ones imprisoned in the breeding room would be the female cultivators forcibly abducted from the shore.
The diary also recorded that only six of the thirty mermen who went ashore sent back news to the Merman Palace. The fate of the other twenty - four was unknown.
Helplessly, the clan leader gave up this plan and used a special method to maintain the lives of the female mermaids.
But this method couldn't last long. The bodies of the female mermaids began to mutate, covered with plants like corals and sea anemones.
As the diary went on, the little merman's handwriting became neater.
Finally, he left a sentence in the diary.
"Actually, we so - called mermen born due to the divine punishment don't want to become those bloodthirsty and terrifying things if we weren't controlled by the clan leader."
"So I'm going to escape. I'm going to leave this suffocating Merman Palace!"
"Wish me luck!"
Signature: Li Yuan
Li Yuan wasn't one of the thirty mermen sent out that year. He had run away secretly.
So what exactly was the memory that Li Yuan gave to Li Xian in the Green Wood Sect? And what was in the inheritance land?
Why did he distort the facts and lead Li Xian here?
There were too many questions in Shen Qing's mind, and she couldn't figure them out.
She increasingly felt that Li Yuan's purpose wasn't simply to awaken the sword spirit in Li Xian's sword. He had other motives.
This box was buried in the pile of pearls. If the pearls hadn't all slipped down, she would never have seen this box. So what was the purpose of placing this box here? Did he want someone to see it or not?
There were too many secrets about Li Yuan, which made Shen Qing's mind chaotic.
"Click!"
A crisp sound came from behind Shen Qing. Shen Qing quickly put the diaries into her storage bag, summoned Wu Wang, and turned around.
"Who's there?!"