I put a hand on the cold ice that made the double doors of the Water Temple, and I could see a wave symbol carved into the frozen water, with the keyhole in the curl of the blue wave.

As I brought out the key and unlocked the doors, the key shattered into pieces as the doors slid open, and I stepped inside to see the interior of the Water Temple.

Sunlight was allowed to pass through the ice that the Water Temple was built from, and in the center of the room was a giant pool of water that reached up to my ankles.

As I stepped into the water, the water on the far end of the pool rose in a pillar to take the shape of the Water Guardian. His scaly skin was the color of the sky, and fins on the side of his face shook to cast off water as he slithered towards me on a snake's tail. "You have fought well, but I have rotted wood, quenched flame, leveled mountain, and pitted iron. How will you face me?"

"You'll see." I said as I drew my swords, and we began our battle. As I slashed at the Water Guardian, he leaned smoothly backwards, and he lunged at me with his golden staff the same color as his armor, striking my chest and knocking the wind out of me.

I barely managed to clumsily parry his next attack, but the Water Guardian was as swift as a river, with each attack flowing naturally into the next, and every parry only a tiny pebble of disturbance in the stream. "To succeed in battle, one must be fluid, moving around obstacles, enveloping your foes."

"I see..." I said. It was a bit difficult for me, with the hem of my trousers waterlogged and heavy, not to mention that the water gave my feet a little less freedom of movement than I'd like, but I took a deep breath and tried to go with the flow of battle.

The sounds of steel clanging against steel slowly disappeared from my mind, almost as if it didn't exist as I focused on parrying and striking. The pace increase as we tried to break through the other's defense, and I could hardly see anything beyond the blur of steel and gold in front of me.

Finally, I sensed a disturbance in the Water Guardian's flow as he parried one of my swords, and I brought the other one forward into the left side of his golden breastplate.

Swiftly withdrawing the blade, I backed away as water poured profusely from the resulting hole like a waterfall, but the Water Guardian seemed unconcerned as he spoke. "You have earned passage to the Celestial Shrine, atop the mountain. Go to the village, where you will find the golden ladder. And uh, please take a bath. You're covered in ash and dirt."

XOXOX OXOXO XOXOX OXOXO XOXOX

One freezing cold, yet strangely refreshing bath in the Water Temple later, I walked to the bottom of the ladder behind the temple, made with golden bamboo. Unlike the companionways and ladders of the Aquila or any other ship I had been aboard, it didn't creak as I climbed up to near the peak of a small mountain.

After five straight battles in a row, the short trek up the mountain was absolutely painful for me, and by the time I reached the Celestial Shrine, I collapsed unceremoniously at the feet of an thin elderly Bull wearing blue-and-gold robes sitting on his knees while fanning himself. "How do you say water in MooShu?"

"Shui." The elderly Bull said kindly, and as I looked up at him, I said, "I need some shui."

The elderly Bull didn't have any water, but was kind enough to pour me some iced tea, which I gulped down gratefully as I stood up to bow. "Greetings, sir. My name is Matthew Exeter."

The elderly Bull nodded as he nodded his head. "Greetings as well. I am Cao Tzu, your humble servant. May I shine a light on the darkness of your existence?"

"Please do." I said as I sat down on my knees, and Cao Tzu spoke. "You bear with you pieces of Marco Pollo's map. He was once my student, and learned much within the Celestial Shrine."

"Chief among his studies was astrology: the movement of stars through the heavens, and the alignment of the worlds of the Spiral. His map contains a secret: symbols revealing the path to Shangri-La, city of the immortals. Pollo called it El Dorado."

"I will teach you how to read the symbols and decipher my student's map. They reveal where and when the next gate to Shangri-La will open. But you must have all the tables to make such a prediction. You need all of the pieces of the map to find Shangri-La."

Cao Tzu then gazed all around us, and I followed his gaze, seeing that the great turtle Maruzame was swimming through the skyway. "I see much from my vantage point in the Celestial Shrine: I know that the Armada has two pieces of the map, and you also two. Three pieces are yet to be accounted for, but one will come to light soon. Your friend, with the bird, has news for you."

"Every quest has an end, and yours is some distance off. But for now, you must return to where it began." Cao Tzu said, turning his face to mine, and I thought about it for a moment before I realized it. Skull Island...