Chapter 174: The Big and Small Eel Kings

Sure enough, Heitao A provided the answer: 【Growth and Hope Flower, designates the growth of a life form, and will bloom into flowers that bring hope at the appropriate stage. The hope here is the best solution to the predicament the host is currently in.】

"Damn it! You swindler!" Liu Mu interrupted directly. In her agitation, she didn't control the strength in her hand, and the die was actually crushed by her, turning into tiny spots of light that melted into her gradually dimming arm.

The light spots were scorching, burning several glowing points onto her Perfect New Human skin, which, when connected, actually formed the shape from the die.

【Don't say that, Host. This depends on the situation; who knows, it might be of great use later? You should know that even within the system, the Life Dice is an existence with unlimited potential; the system cannot predict the functions it rolls.】

"I don't believe a word you say!" Liu Mu always felt that Heitao A used this scrap-function to swindle her of her electricity. Anyway, this wasn't the first time, and she would be a fool to believe it.

"Stinky fish, to grow so big and have so little electricity, damn you!"

The so-called "when the city gate catches fire, the fish in the moat suffer" was nothing more than this.

Miao Hentian, who was anxious on the shore, saw the light in the lake cut off as if the power had been switched off. The figure trapped by the giant eel shot into the sky amidst the final glow, accompanied by the roar of gunfire as she leaped, the sound of the shots seemingly filled with immense hatred.

"Still alive!"

Miao Hentian forgot to close her beautiful red lips, and then she couldn't close them at all.

The machine-gun fire caused Liu Mu to fly erratically in the air with no point of leverage, but the strange thing was that even with such instability, not a single bullet missed its mark.

The Eel King was a bit weak after discharging so much electricity, but the moment it felt the pain, it had to move—if it didn't move now, it feared it would be riddled with holes and leak.

Although the bullets didn't amount to much for its massive body, there were just too many of them.

The Eel King still had a brain; it squeaked at the human tumbling in the air, tilted its head, and dove straight toward the bottom of the lake.

However, the water here wasn't deep enough, and Liu Mu added another magazine before giving up the shooting.

Falling into the water, Liu Mu had the experience of recharging, so she didn't bother changing back into her high-density swimsuit that had holes in it; she dove into the water in her ordinary coconut-leaf swimsuit.

Of course, if there weren't a 'spectator' on the shore, fearing that someone would go back and gossip to ruin her wise and martial image, she could have worn nothing at all. One had to know that no clothing was as sturdy as her own skin.

This chase lasted over two hundred meters. Liu Mu had been wondering where the other, shorter Little Eel King had gone; well, here it was.

The two large eels were currently intertwined, their bodies twisted like a braid, secreting a layer of transparent mucus that wrapped them into one, with only their tails and heads separable.

This posture forced Liu Mu to be two points more cautious, feeling that the opponent was about to use some ultimate move.

Just as she was hesitating whether to use some high-powered weapon, she saw the intertwined bodies of the two eels begin to bulge from the abdomen, and then this bulge traveled all the way up, reaching their open giant mouths in just two seconds.

The dazzling electric light spheres merged into one and sprayed toward Liu Mu in unison. The beam of light, over a meter in diameter, almost instantly boiled the lake water it touched, rushing toward her with immense heat.

This time, Liu Mu didn't dare to take it head-on; she turned and swam a few meters away, barely dodging the attack amidst a wave of heat.

The Eel King had clearly learned its lesson; the light beam wasn't a simple energy attack, but rather energy converted into something like thermal energy.

Attacking with high or ultra-low temperatures was perhaps the only weakness of this body of hers at the moment. The opponent had discovered this, forcing her to finish the battle quickly.

She was as agile as a fish underwater, but the opponent was a fish itself, and its swimming speed wasn't much slower.

The light beam missed Liu Mu and shot straight out of the lake, turning into countless lightning bolts in the air. The high temperature also scalded many fish that hadn't managed to retreat in time.

There were several more attacks afterward; Liu Mu dodged them somewhat clumsily, while burning more fish and plants in the lake.

Just as things were extremely perilous, Heitao A suddenly gave a red warning. Liu Mu only extracted one piece of information from it: the smaller eel had a Giant Sun Fragment inside its body.

This point alone was enough to make Liu Mu furious.

The fact that the opponent had a fragment inside and was not only alive but could also coordinate with the Da Manyu Wang to perform such attacks meant that they might have mastered a way to use the energy within the fragment.

It was very strange; should organisms on Earth possess such abilities?

Even Liu Mu herself could only use the Anti-matter Engine to achieve the purpose of using the Giant Sun Fragment, yet these two things were merely Mutated Animals; how could they!?

Jealousy makes people unrecognizable. Liu Mu was the same; she had to open that eel up to see what was going on.

Heitao A seemed stupid at this moment, too, scanning for a long time without being able to analyze anything.

She had never placed all her hope on others, and the system was no exception; this was Liu Mu's own battle.

After dodging back and forth eight times, Liu Mu hadn't been able to close the distance to the two Eel Kings much, mainly because they kept pulling away as she approached. After all, their weapon was a long-range attack.

Finally, after the eighth time, the 'Electrothermal Cannon'—let's call it that for now—had a longer firing interval.

The ninth time took ten seconds longer, the tenth time was twenty seconds, and by the eleventh time, the interval was a full minute...

And after the eleventh time, Liu Mu launched her attack.

She didn't try to get close to the two fish again, but instead pulled out a Pickaxe used for road construction in the Mine.

The two ends of the Pickaxe were sharpened to be very keen, and a five-strand Steel Wire Rope was tied to the handle, which had a certain degree of elasticity.

Even underwater, Liu Mu threw it with all her might, and the Pickaxe spun in the water like a roulette wheel as it flew toward the two fish.

The force was so great that it even caused the water it passed through to swirl.

However, the two fish were ultimately too agile in the water, and the first throw missed.

Liu Mu held the Steel Wire Rope, swimming along, and successfully dodged the twelfth attack as well.

Then, she repeated her old trick, but because the two fish were in a hurry to attack and couldn't pull away from her again, the Pickaxe whistled through the water, slashing directly between the two fish heads.

If they didn't want to be slashed, they had to separate, but based on Liu Mu's observations, this Electrothermal Cannon attack required them to cooperate to complete.

Perhaps the Pickaxe was truly too insignificant for their massive bodies; although the two fish wanted to dodge, they weren't prepared to sacrifice their current advantage, so they didn't separate. Instead, the large Eel King took the sharp blade directly with its body.

The sting of a needle was something the two Eel Kings didn't take to heart at all; they even showed contempt.

Liu Mu could understand them: 'We hit you with an Electrothermal Cannon, and you poke back with a needle?'

It was simply a joke.

As for whether it was a joke, the outcome was clear very soon.

"First time, energy attack, one unit!"

Liu Mu didn't need to voice the command; she only needed a thought, and she felt a massive surge of energy erupt from deep within her body.

The energy condensed into a line along her arms and poured into the Steel Wire Rope, almost instantly striking into the bodies of the two Eel Kings.

The speed at which steel wire transmits energy is much faster than a simple Energy Shock; they had no time to react, and the energy consumption was much lower. This strike directly scorched a large area of the intertwined eels.

Because the fish meat dissolved due to the high temperature, this time they were truly completely stuck together.

Even in the water, Liu Mu felt she could smell the burnt scent of fish meat. Of course, it was also very likely that she tasted it; after all, she couldn't care whether there was lake water in her mouth.

The strike was successful, but Liu Mu still didn't dare to be careless; she immediately tore the Steel Wire Rope in her hand and kept changing her position.

Looking at the two Eel Kings again, although they had been heavily struck, they had not lost their footing. Struggling a few times in extreme pain, they immediately realized they could not separate their bodies at all, and their two heads instead drew even closer together.

Before long, light orbs began to condense once more inside their mouths, which were larger than their heads when fully opened.

Perhaps they had also realized from Liu Mu's evasions that she feared the Electrothermal Cannon, so they did not immediately change their method of attack.

Seeing the light orbs merge into one again and about to erupt, Liu Mu repeated her old trick. While it was inconvenient for them to change positions, she flew out another Steel Wire Rope with an iron block tied to the end. Only this time, the rope was twice as thick as the last one; like a fishhook, it pierced into the mouth of the Eel King that contained the Giant Sun Fragment, and before the latter could react, she had Heitao A activate the antimatter energy engine.

While the energy of the slightly smaller Eel King was being rapidly drained, the arm-thick Steel Wire Rope moved quickly inside its body like a living snake, heading toward its energy core.

A Steel Wire Rope of this thickness was already causing no small amount of pain to its body; the light orb was seen shrinking rapidly, and the small Eel King also began to twist in agony.

The antimatter energy engine used the Giant Sun Fragment as its energy drive, so the two possessed an extremely strong attraction, just like powerful magnets.

Especially after Heitao A intentionally strengthened it, even though the Steel Wire Rope was only a medium, it was still driven by the powerful attraction to try and make contact with that fragment.

As the energy was being drained, the fragment inside the body also felt the attraction, and coupled with the stirring of the Steel Wire Rope, the small Eel King almost immediately lost the strength to resist, twisting its snake-like body as it fell in pain.

The large Eel King, implicated by it, also fell along with it, but it still had an electric orb in its mouth; the turn of events happened too quickly, and it was completely unable to spit out the remaining electrical energy itself.

Not only did it fail to spit it out, but as the muscles where their bodies were connected pulled, it swallowed it directly instead.

Being able to discharge electricity does not mean one is not afraid of electricity, just as a venomous snake is also afraid of its own venom.

Liu Mu had not expected to witness the scene of a current backflow; the large Eel King was convulsing from being electrocuted by itself, its will to survive making it struggle in the water.

The strength of both Eel Kings was not small, and with this jolt, they actually tore apart the charred, adhered flesh and blood, separating from each other.

Liu Mu naturally could not be a bystander; she was pulled downward by the Steel Wire Rope connected to the small Eel King and had intended to deal some follow-up damage, but upon looking up, she discovered that the large Eel King's twitching body had actually vanished.

Because of spatial compression, the water from all directions gathered at the place where it had vanished, even pulling out several whirlpools.

Vanished?

Liu Mu reacted extremely quickly, "Where is it?"

Heitao A immediately provided the coordinates, a 3D terrain map; in the blink of an eye, the large Eel King had already appeared ten meters directly below Liu Mu.

Its mouth, filled with sharp teeth, opened wide; although there were some charred marks, it still charged upward with all its might, attempting to swallow Liu Mu in one gulp.

Launching an attack with its most primitive instincts, this fish looked like it had reached the end of its rope.

But its biggest mistake lay in the fact that it thought from the perspective of being a fish; however, Liu Mu was a human, and humans in water would not keep sinking—on the contrary, once a person sinks to a certain depth, it becomes very difficult to continue going down.

Although Liu Mu was being pulled by the small Eel King, she only needed to resist the increasingly greater water pressure.

At this moment, she only needed to change her posture in the water to be carried by the current and change her position, easily dodging that mouth that attempted to eat her.

【Giant Sun Fragment found, proceed with recovery?】

Heitao A's message came just in time; Liu Mu chose to recover without hesitation, and a black object immediately appeared in the grid within the Recovery Space where fragments were stored.

With the fragment in hand, she shook her hand with force and retracted the Steel Wire Rope.

As for that small Eel King, it was already on its last breath and continued to sink.

The large Eel King saw its partner sinking and instantly became frantic, charging toward it regardless of anything else.

Both eels arrived at the bottom of the lake almost simultaneously; the large Eel King used its thick, long mouth to push the small Eel King's body, moving it back and forth several times, but the small Eel King only moved its tail feebly before sinking into the silt.

The large Eel King would not give up, still pushing the corpse continuously, while its tail slapped the lake bottom in anger; the surrounding silt and water plants were scattered by its force, quickly becoming murky.

"Xiao A," Liu Mu had a vaguely bad feeling, "do we still have that Life Dice? Can it be recharged again?"

【Only one Life Dice was obtained from this upgrade. Host, if conditions permit, you can still utilize the space to perform external energy conversion and storage.】

Appearing at the same time was the upper limit for energy storage; Liu Mu could not read those data and units, but she knew roughly how much could be stored.

It was much less than she had thought, and that first wave against the large Eel King had already occupied half of the storage capacity.

"Can't you clear up a bit more space for me," Liu Mu muttered in annoyance, but she still remained in place, not daring to lower her guard.

She could guarantee that as soon as she made a move to escape, the large Eel King below would definitely launch a desperate attack immediately.

Of course, even if she didn't leave, that would happen sooner or later. But being prepared was better than being caught off guard.

Moreover, Liu Mu still wanted to take the two eels back to dissect and see; it was simply unreasonable that they could use the Giant Sun Fragment better than she, who had a cheat.

Just as she was pondering whether to strike first, the large Eel King finally turned its grief into anger and vanished again.

Liu Mu, who had been prepared, turned around and threw a Hand Grenade, hitting the mark perfectly, throwing it right into the fish's mouth, which was only a few meters away.

But trouble was trouble; the large Eel King actually spat out a mouthful of water, pushing the Hand Grenade out.

Time was pressing; it was already too late to dodge the explosion.

A flash of determination crossed Liu Mu's eyes; she caught the Hand Grenade and lunged at it with her whole body.

With one hand, she slapped the eel's upper jaw hard, and with the other, she stuffed the Hand Grenade into its giant nostril; Liu Mu's figure sank rapidly, and she actually hid beneath the fish's mouth just as it exploded.

The large Eel King wanted to spit out the Hand Grenade again, but there was no time left; a muffled explosion occurred, blood and flesh fragments flew everywhere, and as Liu Mu hid below, her shoulder was pierced by an impacting tooth.

She endured the pain and moved away; looking again, one-third of the large Eel King's head, which was over two meters wide, had been blown off, and its long mouth had only a small section left.

The Eel King began to struggle in pain, and blood was also spraying out from its gills; it twisted and thrashed in the water, a pair of eyes stained with ink-green, staring fixedly at Liu Mu.

Liu Mu naturally would not give it a chance to use its spatial ability to escape; her body rolled with the current, and with two Dog-leg Knives in her hands, she used all her strength to stab down hard once she landed on the fish's head.

She gripped the knife handles, her body and brains being shaken so hard they felt like they were about to fly off, but she did not let go; in this situation, the Eel King would definitely want to escape, and then it would use its skill.

It felt like a century had passed; Liu Mu, dizzy from the shaking, suddenly opened her eyes wide. Right before her eyes, she saw fine, rising 【distortions】, and the next moment, the bubbles and lake water suddenly pulled into irregular white lines like boiling pond water.

Then came a sense of dizziness even more unbearable than the shaking, piercing into her brain like an electric drill; illusory buzzing occupied her senses, and although it was a moment less than a second, it made her incredibly uncomfortable.

It felt as if her body was being decomposed, and it was also like severe suffocation, along with a sense of nothingness that could not be distinguished.

【Powerful energy fluctuation detected, host's body severely damaged, repairing, repairing... Powerful energy fluctuation detected, please move away immediately, host! Powerful energy detected...】

The warning repeated constantly; it was not a system bug, but that this dying giant fish had activated continuous spatial travel.

Only after a full eight times did Liu Mu feel the water current again.

She opened her mouth and vomited, not even having the strength to hold the knife handles; her body followed the large Eel King as it sank, limp like rotting seaweed.

However, she soon detached from the large Eel King's corpse and was buoyed upward by the water pressure.

Liu Mu managed to recover a sliver of vision and saw that the place where the large Eel King finally appeared was actually still beside that small Eel King, sinking down, with the two fish just happening to overlap together.

That appearance was like lovers dying for love, clinging to each other even in death.

Vomit blocked her windpipe, and Liu Mu, still in the water, could only cough incessantly while inhaling more lake water; the true sensation of suffocation pressed against her lungs, and even her nerves seemed to be twitching...

The memory of dying in an ice lake in her past life intertwined with her current agony in her brain, as if she were about to ascend to heaven once again in the next second.

Fortunately, luckily, the place where she was located was not the deepest part of the lake, she was not intentionally carrying any heavy loads, and with the help of the system, she finally broke through the surface of the water at the very last moment before death.

Naturally, there was another bout of dizziness followed by coughing and vomiting, and fortunately, through her strong willpower, parts of her body regained the ability to move—her legs could tread water.

Just at this moment, a hand suddenly grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the surface of the lake.