Arrowsharks were a type of small shark. Its name came from its swimming speed, akin to an arrow leaving a bow. This kind of shark was actually a type of magic beast. Like Fishmen, they had an extremely strong affinity with the water element. When swimming in the water, the resistance they faced from the water was much lower than other creatures. Moreover, they could control the water to entangle and affect their targets.
This Arrowshark was the magic pet Feng Chou had just dived into the water to sign a contract.
For a beginner mage, they could only sign an ordinary magic pet, but as their spiritual force increased, the magic pets they could sign would also become stronger. In fact, an intermediate mage could sign a few weaker magic beasts as their magic pets. At Feng Chou's level, they could even sign a few intermediate magic beasts.
The reason why a mage's spiritual force had to be far greater than the magic pet's was also for safety reasons. Although the magic pet signing ceremony was low level, it was still a kind of soul exchange ceremony. If a mage used too much of his soul during the ceremony, once the ceremony went wrong or the magic pet died, it would cause irreparable damage to the mage's soul. This kind of injury was almost impossible to heal.
However, with Feng Chou's current powerful spiritual force, signing a few magic pets like the Arrowshark wasn't a problem at all.
Feng Chou hid in the Qiankun Pagoda and attached himself to the Arrowshark, swimming towards the cave.
The Arrowshark's swimming speed was almost unrivaled in the ocean. It could reach over a hundred kilometers per hour. Twenty minutes later, the Arrowshark arrived in front of the huge cave.
Feng Chou controlled the Arrowshark to carefully swim into the cave.
This cave was very deep, about three to four hundred meters deep. But what shocked Feng Chou was that the Arrowshark didn't discover the existence of a single ship as it swam to the bottom of the cave. It was as if the hundred ships of the Bloodsail Pirates had disappeared into thin air!
After Feng Chou commanded the Arrowshark to swim back and forth in the cave a few times, he finally discovered a problem.
Qiankun Pagoda, who had added the Eye of Truth to his scan, discovered that in a certain location in the middle of the cave, there were clear spatial fluctuations, a kind of strong spatial fluctuation similar to a teleportation gate.
However, this fluctuation seemed to be suppressed by some kind of power and was already unable to take effect.
With such an amazing discovery, of course, Feng Chou would not give up easily. He controlled the Arrow Shark to lurk at the bottom of the sea in Shandong and waited quietly.
Finally, in the wee hours of the third day, Qiankun Pagoda suddenly sensed a change in the spatial fluctuation.
Then, Feng Chou was shocked to find that at the position where the spatial fluctuations were obvious, the space suddenly shook like water waves. A scene suddenly appeared on the surface of the fluctuating space like a movie.
The screen showed a narrow strait. In the narrow strait, several pirate ships were heading straight for Feng Chou.
As the pirate ship in the picture got closer and closer, the bow of the ship suddenly penetrated the wave-like space and broke into the cave, pressing over the head of Feng Chou's Arrow Shark magic pet. If the Arrow Shark wasn't fast, it would have been injured.
This water curtain-like spatial fluctuation was actually a super-large teleportation gate!
Just how rich were these Bloodsail Pirates to be able to maintain such a portal for so long?
No!
Even a country would not be able to maintain such a war-grade portal for a long time.
Could it be …!
Just as Feng Chou was making random guesses in shock, Qiankun Pagoda suddenly entered an article from the arcane knowledge he had collected into Feng Chou's mind.
This article introduced a kind of natural spatial gate. The article said that due to some kind of coincidence, natural spatial gates would appear in certain places of this world. These spatial gates appeared due to the workmanship of nature. If the natural conditions of the spatial gate did not change, this kind of spatial gate would exist forever.
This kind of naturally occurring spatial gate was strange of every description. Some were very small, not even enough for an ant to pass through. Some were very large, big enough to pass through a mountain peak. Some connected two spaces very close to each other, so close that the distance could not be seen. Some were very far, able to cross half the world.
This kind of natural spatial gate made Feng Chou think of the wormholes in some science fiction works back on Earth. It was also a spatial passage that could connect two distant regions.
If this was a natural spatial gate, then it would make sense. A natural spatial gate was formed due to natural conditions and could exist forever without any energy support. It was not like a man-made teleportation gate, which required a huge amount of resources to maintain for even a minute.
As for why a natural spatial gate would be sealed, it was not hard to explain. A few Dimensional Lock arrays would be enough.
Compared to the huge amount of energy needed to open a spatial gate, using a Dimensional Lock to seal a spatial gate didn't cost much.
According to the article, Dimensional Locks could temporarily prevent a natural spatial gate from taking effect. Even Dimensional Anchors could prevent a person under the spell from passing through a natural spatial gate.
The Arrowshark observed for a bit before attempting to swim towards the light curtain.
As if it had passed through a small amount of viscous liquid, the Arrowshark's eyes shone. It had already left Shandong and arrived at the open sea.
The Arrowshark turned its head to look. Behind it was a stone mountain that wasn't very big. The stone mountain was hollow, forming a huge natural doorway. Below the doorway was a strait that led to the azure sea on the other side of the mountain.
The strait passed through the stone gate and extended into the depths of the inland. Both sides of the hundred-meter wide strait were embankments of bedrock.
Under the stone gate, on the left shore of the strait, there was a stone fortress in the style of the Amazons. On the top platform of the fortress, an Amazon woman in a mage robe was raising her staff to cast a spell. Looking in the direction her staff was pointing, he saw that in the huge doorway of the stone mountain, there was a staff inserted into the rock every few dozen meters. The head of the staff was facing the spatial gate inside the stone gate.
Qiankun Pagoda told Feng Chou that those staffs were part of a large Dimensional Lock. The female mage on the top of the fortress had just cast a spell to activate the Dimensional Lock array and had sealed the natural spatial gate.
Since he had already entered, Feng Chou certainly wanted to find out. He commanded the Arrowshark to swim deeper into the strait.
After the Arrowshark swam two or three kilometers into the strait, the strait gradually expanded and finally became a bay of dozens of square kilometers. On the left side of the bay, on the bedrock shore, there was a harbor. Although this harbor was simple, it was an excellent deep-water harbor.
The wharf was full of Bloodsail and all kinds of ships. There were northern style sailing ships, magic merchant ships, and goblin iron-hulled ships. Feng Chou easily found his five merchant ships.
Behind the wharf full of ships was a town in the style of the Amazons.
Feng Chou went ashore in the mangrove forest on the opposite side of the bay. He once again swapped out his Seahawk pet and observed the town from the air.
The town wasn't big, with about three to four thousand people living in it. About half of them were Amazons, and the other half were humans, goblins, tieflings, and dragons. Most of them were pirates under the Amazons, and some were slaves.
The Bloodsail Pirates were quite powerful, especially the Amazons. Among the thousand or so Amazons, the weakest was a rank 7 or 8 Amazon Warrior. The proportion of high-ranked Amazons was as high as a fifth, about three hundred of them. There were actually more than fifty Master Amazons.
What surprised Feng Chou was that there were Legendary professions in this town, and there was more than one. There was a Legendary-level Amazon Warrior and a Legendary-level Green Dragon Descendant.
Feng Chou commanded the Seahawk to land on a small hill in the west of the town, quietly observing the town.
He discovered that every few days, a group of Bloodsail Pirates would pass through the Spatial Gate and go out to plunder.
These Bloodsail Pirates would return in four to five days if they were fast, and half a month if they were slow. Every time they returned, they would definitely have a harvest. Every once in a while, a few Goblin Steamships would come to the town and leave with the Bloodsail Pirates' spoils of war.
In a corner of the wharf, there was a shipyard. Many Goblin Engineers were imprisoned in the shipyard. The task of these Goblin Engineers was to change the appearance of the merchant ships plundered by the Bloodsail Pirates.
Feng Chou's five ships were refurbished beyond recognition, and then sailed out of the Spatial Gate.
After more than a month of observation, Feng Chou had a basic understanding of the situation in this Bloodsail Town. At the same time, he made a decision.