Chapter 99: The Great Tide Approaches! A Dragon Stirs in the Deep Sea!

At this point, Baichuan realized he had already evolved to the limit he could currently reach, and without extraordinary power — such as the mysterious power of various Strange Beasts.

In the short term, he could only rely on grinding out his body size, but the problem of slowed nerve response when his body grew too large was something he still couldn't solve for now.

In other words, he had truly reached a bottleneck period.

From here on, he could either hope that the blue whale — the largest-bodied creature on this planet — had a powerful and useful ability model.

Or he could explore deeper into the deep sea, but currently the deepest depth he could withstand was only the great white shark's limit, which was just over a thousand meters.

That depth was completely insufficient.

To go deeper, he could only count on the sperm whale's ability model — the deepest-diving creature among all current living beings — but that was only a little over two thousand meters…

Far from reaching the deepest sea area he currently knew of — the seabed at over eleven thousand meters deep.

So after evolving the sperm whale's water pressure adaptation, if he still wanted to keep diving deeper, he would have to rely on Time to grind it down bit by bit.

Until he truly adapted to the powerful water pressure of the deep-water zone.

But here another problem would arise — once he adapted to the water pressure of the deep-water zone, he would not be able to rise back up to the shallow-water zone in a short time.

Because by then, even he would find it hard to quickly adjust his internal pressure to match the external pressure, leading to an imbalance between internal and external pressure, and resulting in symptoms similar to decompression sickness.

Moreover, his previous explorations had also revealed that the deeper the seabed, the scarcer the types of creatures became.

Added to that, Baichuan wasn't really used to diving to such deep regions — it was too dark and deathly silent there.

He was used to light, and didn't much like darkness, although he could rely on his sensory organs to see his surroundings clearly.

So, the choices left to him were not many.

"Looks like that day has finally arrived after all."

Baichuan let out a long sigh — in the end, he still had to investigate the source of such great power in the Great Zhou, for he could never let go of the power of Strange Beasts.

Especially after experiencing the rapid growth of this period, and the wanton freedom that power had brought him.

He could no longer endure a slow, leisurely pace of growth.

After all, he was no longer that weak little snake from before.

It's easy to go from frugality to luxury, but hard to go from luxury back to frugality!

This year, a dragon rose from the continent in the northwest, carrying a great momentum as it came toward the northeast.

This year, a white-haired, four-eyed old man departed from Tiandu, heading toward the northeast.

That was the direction of the rebel army!

The wheel of history began to turn…

……

"Ow~ ow~"

Early in the morning, the crisp cries of seagulls reached his ears.

Yuehan had no choice but to wake up on the swaying, cramped wooden plank — this was his sixth day at sea.

Yet he still couldn't quite adapt to life at sea; unfortunately, he had no choice.

Because he had now fallen to being a slave on this pirate ship.

Thinking back to the beginning, he couldn't help but feel regret — regretting why he had been bewitched and jealous of his neighbor Kelu getting rich, and foolishly followed the merchant caravan out to sea.

Well, look how that turned out — before any wealth was made, the caravan ran into a pirate ship.

Everyone on board who didn't surrender was killed; those who survived were now slaves.

Thinking back to the beginning, Yuehan couldn't help feeling down, and swaying unsteadily, dragged his exhausted body out to the deck to start helping with the cleanup.

This was the reason he could still survive — the pirate captain saw that the kid looked sharp and knew how to please people.

He gave him a chance, letting him clean up the ship's garbage and杂物 to survive.

As he began cleaning up the ship's garbage, Time also began to slowly pass.

However, not long after, the weather above the sea changed just like that Monkey King's face — changing at the drop of a hat.

In the blink of an eye, dark clouds spread, the sky dimmed, and bright flashes of lightning streaked across from time to time.

The thick clouds began pressing down toward the sea surface inch by inch, giving a suffocating feeling.

The waves on the sea surface also began rolling endlessly with the sudden rise of huge swells, battering the pirate ship and making it rock unsteadily.

Rain began to fall slowly.

A cool, thin line of rain landed on Yuehan's face, and the icy touch pulled him back from his world of fantasy.

And at this moment, Yuehan, who had previously been immersed in his own world, suddenly realized that at some unknown point the sky had turned completely black; now weak oil lamps were lit on the ship, and all kinds of sounds rose up, making it a chaotic mess.

"Boom!"

A thunderclap exploded from within the pitch-black clouds, and then bright lightning suddenly illuminated this stretch of sea surface that had been blackened by the dark clouds.

Following this thunderclap, a torrential downpour began.

The world between heaven and earth became hazy, as if separated by a layer of white gauze.

The wind and waves on the sea surface also began to grow larger, and the ship rocked more and more violently.

Faintly, Yuehan seemed to hear a distant, long cry from the deep sea — a sound filled with an ancient, profound air, as if from some mysterious Spirit of the远古 era.

In an instant, Yuehan, who often used to listen to sailors bragging at the countryside docks, immediately knew what creature had made that sound!

It was made by the Spirit of the deep sea — the whale.

Without a doubt, on his first time out to sea, he had encountered the most mysterious great whale of the ocean!

He didn't know whether to count this as good luck or bad luck.

Instinctively, after noticing that no one around was paying attention to him, Yuehan stealthily stood up, taking advantage of the dimming sky, hunched over and holding onto the surrounding wood, made his way to the ship's side, and gazed out at the pitch-black sea surface.

He wanted to see what this most mysterious Spirit of the deep sea looked like.

But the sea surface was pitch-black, and Yuehan couldn't see anything at all.

Of course, if the rain — hazy like white gauze — hadn't affected his view when he had been sizing up the surrounding pirates earlier.

He would discover that those seemingly bold and carefree lords, oblivious to the great storms raging outside, now had brows beaded with cold sweat, and even their hearty laughter and gulps of wine could not still their trembling hands.

"Wooo—"

At this moment, another distant, ancient, long-drawn cry rang out.

But for some reason, Yuehan always felt that this sound was filled with terror, as if some horrifying giant creature were hunting it down?

Yet how could the great whale, the most mysterious being of the deep sea, possibly be hunted down?

It was probably because of his own wretched circumstances that he guessed this great whale must be in a similar plight.

The moment Yuehan thought of his own遭遇, an inexplicable sadness welled up in him.

And at this moment, another thunderclap rang out.

Instantly, the entire pitch-black scene was illuminated by a flash of dazzling lightning.

In that flickering light, Yuehan astonishingly caught sight of a segment of a mysterious creature's body.

It was a slender body covered in rows of hard, thick, palm-sized, beautiful blue-green scales, each scale emitting a faint, glimmering light, giving off a stunning sense of beauty.

One could not help but sigh — what kind of creature's body could this be? It was simply too gorgeous and breathtaking!

Involuntarily, Yuehan gazed somewhat mesmerized at that beautiful body, which kept rising and sinking back into the water.

But just then, a pair of sharp, cold, lofty eyes met his gaze!

In an instant, an overwhelming sense of suffocation crashed over Yuehan — like a snake meeting a cat, or a person stumbling upon a tiger lying in ambush out in the wild.

Yuehan was so frightened that he stumbled back several steps with a "thud thud thud," crashing into a wooden barrel behind him; even so, his face was deathly pale, his expression a mix of shock and uncertainty, and he found himself muttering unconsciously:

"Wh-what was that?"

Just that fleeting glance was enough to freeze Yuehan rigid — it was the fear a human feels in the face of a giant, in the face of the unknown!

At that moment, his pupils contracted sharply.

If he hadn't seen wrong, that was an enormously huge and slender monster!

At that moment, he snapped out of it abruptly, no longer lost in the creature's beauty.

He—he might have run into the protagonist of the story that had always been passed down back in his hometown!

It was a very beautiful story, a legend that deep in the ocean there lived a Lord of the Deep Sea who ruled the entire ocean!

It roamed the surrounding seas every day, as if巡视 its own territory, bringing aid to the people along the coast while also wiping out those cruel pirates.

But Yuehan knew all that was just nonsense made up by the old grannies and little old men back home.

In reality, It was neither merciful nor kind — It was the evil dragon that had attacked the great Imperial Palace of his homeland not long ago!

Unfortunately, perhaps because back in the countryside he was disliked by both humans and dogs, everyone scattered the moment they saw him coming.

As a result, he seemed to have never heard the later part of that story in full…

(End of this chapter)