After Swapping Identities With My Archenemy - Chapter 75

Chapter 75: The Water-Repelling Bead

Confusion swirled in her mind. Why is it the same place?

She touched the surface of the underwater altar; the texture was identical to the one in the scroll. Jiang Huaiyi knit her brows. Although the water was clear, visibility was limited. She strained her eyes, watching the silk paper drift listlessly in the current. It remained stubbornly blank—no new objectives, no notification of completion. Just an empty void.

Frustrated by this stalemate, she continued her tactile search. After a few moments, her fingers brushed against a faint, circular glow.

She swam closer. Embedded in the dark stone was a round, luminous bead. Despite it being daylight above, this orb emitted a strange, ethereal radiance, like a captured piece of moonlight shining at the bottom of the black pool.

It looked like a fluorescent drain plug. She hadn’t noticed it when she first dove in, likely because the surrounding darkness was so dense that it swallowed everything but the most direct gaze. Only by meticulously feeling her way across the floor had she found it.

Her oxygen was running low. If she surfaced now without marking the spot, she wasn’t sure she could find this exact point again in the gloom. Her intuition screamed at her: Take it now. With the Jiao still a looming threat, finishing the task in one go was the only logical choice.

She hesitated, wondering if the pool would drain like a bathtub once the “plug” was pulled. But if the suction were that strong, she would have felt it already.

Taking a gamble, she gripped the bead. It was smooth and slippery, fitted perfectly into the stone. Using a sturdy Swiss Army knife from her small pack, she carefully wedged the blade into the microscopic gap between the bead and the altar. Her heart raced, but she forced herself to breathe shallowly into her apparatus, keeping her movements precise.

The bead budged. As it popped free, it drifted upward momentarily before starting to sink. Jiang Huaiyi snatched it out of the water.

The bead felt warm, almost matching the temperature of the spring. But as her fingers closed around it, something impossible happened: the suffocating pressure in her lungs vanished.

It was a surreal sensation. She was still surrounded by water, yet it felt as if she had suddenly grown gills. She tentatively pulled the breathing apparatus from her mouth. No water rushed in; instead, fresh oxygen seemed to flow through her nasal passages directly to her lungs.

As a fish takes to water, she thought, finally understanding the phrase.

She swam a few experimental laps. She was faster, more agile, and completely at ease. To test it, she let go of the bead. The moment it drifted a few inches away, the crushing weight of the water returned, and she began to choke. She lunged forward and grabbed it again—instant relief.

A Water-Repelling Bead. She had heard of such legendary artifacts from her Master and Uncle, relics of a bygone era that were thought to be extinct or hidden away in the private vaults of ancient sects.

The rope around her waist jerked three times. It was Shen Wensi, signaling that her time was up. Jiang Huaiyi pulled the rope in response and shot toward the surface. Without the heavy stone and with the bead’s power, she moved like a streak of light.

The Temperature Drop

She broke the surface in less than thirty seconds. Shen Wensi, who was still mid-pull, froze in surprise. “How did you get up so fast?”

“Look at this!” Jiang Huaiyi climbed onto the bank, wiping water from her eyes. The moment the bead left the water, she felt a sudden, sharp chill. She shivered, quickly drying off and pulling her clothes back over her thermal layers. Her hair, protected by the plastic wrap, was mostly dry.

In just those few minutes, the spring changed. The thick steam that had been rising from the pool began to thin and vanish. The air grew heavy with a creeping cold.

“I found this,” Huaiyi panted, explaining the altar and the bead’s miraculous power. She opened her hand to show Shen Wensi the prize.

Under the sunlight, the bead looked like a sphere of the purest “ice-type” jade transparent, flawless, and glowing with an inner light. Jiang Huaiyi felt a wave of belated relief that she hadn’t chipped it with her knife.

“The water is getting cold,” Huaiyi noted, dipping her hand back in. The pool was still lukewarm, but the temperature was dropping at an alarming rate. “Do you feel that? It’s like the ‘spirit’ left the water.”

“I feel it,” Shen Wensi’s voice came, sounding strangely hollow and distant. “But I don’t think it’s just the water. Do you feel the cold air coming from behind us?”

Jiang Huaiyi started to turn. “What do you—”

She froze. Behind them, Shen Wensi was standing with her hands in her pockets, staring upward at a towering shadow.

The Jiao was back.

It wasn’t lying in the dirt anymore. It stood tall, its massive head swaying high above them, looking down with those enormous, terrifying eyes. It had approached with the silence of a ghost.

Jiang Huaiyi’s voice was a tiny, panicked squeak. “Haha… why didn’t you tell me it was there?”

“I just saw it myself,” Shen Wensi replied calmly. “I’m telling you now, aren’t I?”

Jiang Huaiyi didn’t wait for a second invitation. She grabbed Shen Wensi’s hand and bolted.

“RUN!” she screamed, the wind whipping past them as the forest floor erupted into the sound of heavy, rhythmic crushing behind them.

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