Beneath the surging Li Lake, Li Hai had no idea how much water he had absorbed.
It could have been a million tons, or several million tons, or even more.
Li Hai didn't calculate it, nor was he bothered to.
He only knew that the basin in the Eastern Forest Garden of Guiyou Cave Heaven was almost full.
Yet, from all directions, countless streams of water still surged in, seemingly endless.
“It seems this Li Lake is very deep,” Li Hai, in his Incarnation as a humanoid vortex, sighed.
“It’s only two or three li in circumference, yet after absorbing for so long, there’s still so much water.”
Just as he was sighing, a huge dark shadow suddenly shot up from the deep, dark water beneath him.
“What a stench~” Li Hai sneered, looking down.
“You must be that fish monster.”
With that, he closed all the Cave Heaven portals, and at the same time, the steel whip in his hand suddenly extended a large section, glowing with a dark red light as he swung his arm, fiercely striking the incoming dark shadow below.
Screech—
With a harsh, heart-wrenching, teeth-grinding screech, Li Hai's powerful whip slid off the dark shadow's body and struck the turbid lake water.
Bang!
With a muffled thud, the surging lake water was instantly blasted apart by the whip, and under a fleeting flash of sparks, a large spherical void appeared.
Li Hai's sharp gaze pierced through the void, and in an instant, he clearly saw the giant dark shadow clinging to it.
A human face, a fish body, several zhang long, eyes like red lamps, six fins and eight arms, completely black, covered in Iron scales.
Sure enough, it was the Li Lake fish monster mentioned by the old village chief.
And the fish monster's personal interface was—
Character Name: Unknown
Rank: Yao Beast → Intermediate
Skills: “Yao Beast Form,” “Poisonous Sticky Yao Body,” “Hard Scale Spinning Blade,” “Evil Gill Turbid Bubble”
Attribute Entries: 【Strength Rank 2】 【Iron Body Rank 2】 【Self-Healing Rank 1】 【Toxicity Rank 2】
Strongest Fragments: None
Just as Li Hai saw the fish monster clearly, the fish monster also launched a continuous attack on him.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh—
Dozens, even hundreds, of cold, gleaming blade-shaped black scales instantly burst from the fish monster's body, spinning and rushing upwards towards Li Hai.
“Damn it, you’re throwing fish scales at me.”
Li Hai's figure flickered rapidly, leaving a trail of afterimages, and in an instant, he dodged all the incoming black scales, while sneeringly extending his twin whips with a swish and stabbing them fiercely downwards, “Die for me!”
Chi~ Chi~
After two crisp sounds, the twin whips, which had suddenly extended to nine zhang and nine chi, pierced into the fish monster's head, instantly Run through its entire body, and emerged from its tail.
Immediately, Li Hai swiftly employed the Raging Dragon Whip's special move:
“Dragon Treading the Sea, Twist!”
Swish swish swish swish—
The pair of steel whips that had pierced through the fish monster's entire body instantly hummed and spun tens of thousands of times, like two long deep-sea drills, instantly grinding all the internal organs and tissues within the fish monster into a large pile of meat paste.
Then Li Hai used another special move:
“Dragon Covering Water, Shake!”
Boom!
It was as if a deep-sea bomb had been detonated.
Centered on the pair of steel whips, a large mass of wildly roaring, surging currents instantly erupted, causing the fish monster's entire body to swell and bulge significantly, and then, a moment later, it violently exploded.
Clang!!
Accompanied by successive waves of circular torrents sweeping in all directions, tens of thousands of fingernail-sized pieces of charred fish meat quickly filled and covered all the lake water within a hundred zhang.
After this, the fierce fish monster was left with only a pale, drifting fish skeleton, not even half a piece of flesh remaining.
With that, the fish monster... died!
As for all its Divine Abilities…
Whether it was “Yao Beast Form,” which all Yao Beasts share, or “Poisonous Sticky Yao Body,” which can secrete a large amount of toxic sticky liquid to greatly increase body slipperiness, or “Hard Scale Spinning Blade,” which can shoot out a large number of steel-hard, blade-shaped fish scales, or “Evil Gill Turbid Bubble,” which can produce highly toxic solution from its gills and spray it out at high speed.
Li Hai didn't learn a single one.
Learn? Learn what? Learn nothing, damn it, not a single one.
Li Hai hated fish the most in his life; they were fishy, smelly, sticky, and slippery.
If he were to accidentally turn into a fish after learning these disgusting Divine Abilities, he would have to braise himself.
Because for Li Hai, only fish made into a side dish for wine were good fish.
“Since this fish monster came from below…” Li Hai looked down into the dark, deep Li Lake and chuckled, “Then its master, the Salt God, should also be hiding down there.”
While chuckling, he turned and kicked his legs, violently pushing off the lake water above.
Bang!
After a violent muffled thud, Li Hai shot down like an arrow, leaving a long trail of grayish-white foam, swiftly rushing towards the bottom of Li Lake, leaving only a vacuum bubble swirling and rolling in its original spot.
...
After several continuous kicks and pushes through the lake water, Li Hai finally reached the bottom of Li Lake.
It was a thousand zhang from the surface, which is three thousand three hundred thirty-three meters in metric units, more than twice as deep as Lake Baikal, the deepest lake on Earth.
No light could penetrate such a thick body of water to reach here, so Li Hai's surroundings were now in absolute darkness, with no light whatsoever.
But with his wild intuition, Li Hai could roughly perceive the blurry situation within a hundred zhang radius.
However, from what he perceived, there was nothing larger than some shriveled small fish and swaying water plants within a hundred zhang.
But Li Hai was not in a hurry.
After twirling the steel whip in his hand, he followed a vague, ethereal sensation and swiftly swam in a certain direction.
And after swimming for about three hundred zhang, Li Hai suddenly stopped.
He looked around, but all he saw and felt was boundless darkness.
“It's right here… that strange presence, yet with a hint of threat.”
Li Hai stood on the muddy lake bottom, looking up and around, murmuring with a solemn expression, “Strange, strange, it's empty here, where could it be hiding?”
He lowered his head and looked at his feet, “Could it be… hiding underneath here?”
Suddenly, a sense of crisis, as if about to be bitten fiercely by a venomous snake, surged into Li Hai's heart.
Without time to think, he immediately kicked open a large area of turbid soil at the lake bottom and instantly retreated dozens of zhang away.
And just as Li Hai retreated to a distance, his original position was suddenly completely covered by an invisible force.
Buzz!
This invisible, strange force was fleeting; it appeared and disappeared in an extremely short time, so fast that it seemed as if it had never appeared at all.
Moreover, it did not cause any visible impact on that area of the lake bottom, not even breaking a single water plant.
But his wild intuition ‘told’ Li Hai that if he hadn't dodged just now, the consequences would have been unimaginable.
“Is it some kind of curse, evil Dao, or Divine Ability?”
Various thoughts flashed through Li Hai's mind.
Then, as he gripped his twin whips tightly, intending to plunge them into the turbid lake bottom below and stir it fiercely.
Boom!