Stranger Danger

“Of course there would be fishes inside a lake.” Yi Pin didn’t notice the strange way his disciple had worded his discovery because he was still absorbed inside his own thoughts. “Catch two for dinner later, will you?”

“Okay!”

Li Longxiang replied affirmatively before reaching out to catch a fish from the lake. He was about halfway there when suddenly Ye Qing caught his hand and warned, “Stop. Those are Snake Fishes. They’re inedible.”

“Wait. Snake Fishes?” Yi Pin jolted back to reality when he heard this. “You’re right! But how can there be Snake Fishes in this lake?”

A Snake Fish was a Malice-class Stranger with a fish’s head but a snake’s body. It was covered in spots and classified as a kind of parasitic fish. Unlike a normal fish, it couldn’t be found in a river or a lake. It was born inside the maws of a giant creature and fed on the remains stuck inside the creature’s mouth to live, effectively acting as its mouth cleaner.

This was why Yi Pin was puzzled, and Ye Qing was wearing a deep frown on his face. The atmosphere aboard the boat was solemn as no one said a thing for a time.

The paper boat sailed forward some more, and Li Longxiang cried out, “Master, senior uncle, look! There are people ahead of us.”

Ye Qing looked. As Li Longxiang said, a lot of people seemed to be standing just above the lake.

“Should we be careful?” Yi Pin asked warily.

“No.” Ye Qing closed and opened his eyes before shaking his head. “They’re all dead.”

Due to how thick the fog was, it wasn’t until they got close that they saw exactly the warriors had died. They were skewered by lotus stems from bottom to top and hung above the waters like tanghulu, every single one of them. That was why they looked like they were standing on the lake.

“These people… died not long ago, I think. Even their bodies are still warm,” Ye Qing commented after a moment of observation.

Yi Pin nodded in agreement. “That’s right. Look over there. Those are the warriors we saw heading into the lake earlier. Yu Qingshui is over there.”

A thought occurred to Ye Qing, and he urged immediately, “Oh shit. We need to go. We need to go now! This is a trap!”

Since the beginning, he had thought that something was off. Normally, the appearance of such a treasure would draw countless Strangers to it. However, he hadn’t seen any Stranger besides the Snake Fishes, which shouldn’t be here in the first place.

There were only three possibilities. One, the Seven Star Blue Lotus was a fake. Second, this lake was the dwelling of a terribly powerful Stranger. Or third, it was all of the above.

Judging from the lake’s unusual oddities and the dead people, Ye Qing was certain that it was the third possibility. As Yi Pin said, there was no way a place that could give birth to the Seven Star Blue Lotus could be overflowing with taint and evil. In other words, a tainted and evil place could never give birth to the Seven Star Blue Lotus.

That was why this was a trap, a trap that a Stranger had set up for its prey.

Besides that, the presence of the Snake Fishes were giving him a bad, bad feeling about this whole thing. If he was right, then they were in big trouble.

Ye Qing had just finished speaking when the lake water suddenly trembled unnaturally. Then, the people hanging above the lake slowly turned around to look at them. The people who should’ve been dead.

“Watch out!” Ye Qing growled, grabbed Li Longxiang’s shoulder, and tossed him into the air before jumping himself. Yi Pin didn’t hesitate to jump as well.

As if on cue, countless lotus stems pierced through the paper boat. They looked soft, but in reality they were as sharp as blades. They continued to stretch upward and chased after the trio.

Clearly, this was how the people before them were killed.

Ye Qing punched down in an attempt to crush the lotus stems into smithereens, but it was his force that was torn apart as easily as paper. Forget crushing them, it couldn’t even delay their advance even a bit. His Burning Wind was the only thing that could deal some damage.

“These things are afraid of fire!” Ye Qing warned before sucking in a deep breath. Then, he threw a punch that was overflowing with astral qi.

“Cloud Vaporization Style”

Boom!

Fifty meters of water abruptly disappeared as if a giant spoon had scooped them out of the lake. The lake boiled, the steam displaced the fog, and countless lotus stems burst into invisible flames and withered.

Yi Pin brought out a horsetail whisk and launched silver lightning at the lotus stems. Surprisingly, it did just as much damage as Ye Qing’s Burning Wind.

Whoosh whoosh!

Unfortunately, their resistance seemed to have angered the lake. A loud, terrifying noise shook the whole place, followed by a series of loud booms. At the same time, the lake water rose from every direction and pressed toward the trio like tidal waves. A gigantic shadow also seemed to be lurking underneath the lake.

“STAY CLOSE TO ME!”

Ye Qing shivered involuntarily as a kind of primordial fear gripped him. While holding Li Longxiang with one hand and Yi Pin with the other, he pushed “Illusionist’s Grace” to its limits and flew toward the entrance.

“Brother Ye, stop! This is too dangerous!”

Yi Pin’s eyes widened in shock and terror as the giant wave came closer and closer. He could already imagine how the wave was going to crush them.

Ye Qing paid the impending danger no heed, however. He continued to sprint across the lake like he was running on land; his footsteps only leaving behind faint ripples.

When he was about six meters away from the wave, Ye Qing abruptly tossed the duo forward.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!”

Both Yi Pin and Li Longxiang screamed uncontrollably as they flew helplessly toward death. Was Ye Qing sacrificing them so he could escape himself!?

Yi Pin’s eyes abruptly turned purple. No one saw it, but it looked like it could destroy the world itself.

Suddenly, the unnatural purple and the power that threatened to burst out of Yi Pin’s body abruptly faded into nothing. The next moment, Ye Qing dashed past them at top speed. His intent and force was at their peak, his vigor and astral qi were circulating rapidly throughout his body, and he let loose a bestial roar that sounded like it came from a dragon elephant. Then, he threw his fist.

His dragon elephant strength was fully activated, his astral qi was fully unleashed, and his mind and spirit were flying together with his fist force.

“Break Through”

Yi Pin and Li Longxiang looked stunned as Ye Qing punched a massive hole through the tidal wave. Not only did the lake water fail to fill up the hole, it was expanding at a visible rate.

The trio flew through the hole and hit the ground. Such was their momentum that they couldn’t arrest themselves until they had rolled across the ground for tens of meters.

Meanwhile, the giant waves finally collapsed and caused a noise that sounded like a massive avalanche. Then, the trio was treated to a sight that stole their breath away before they could even let out a sigh of relief.

“What… the hell is that?”

As it turned out, the lake wasn’t a lake at all. It was a giant maw so wide it was scarcely imaginable how big the actual creature was. The “lake water” was really just the creature’s saliva, and the “tidal waves” were caused by the creature closing its mouth.

The giant maw was still closing when the earth started shaking and breaking apart violently, revealing pitch black scales that were as big as hills and covered in light. They also saw long, massive tendrils that were as big as giant pillars wriggling underneath the earth.

“Are those its… whiskers?” Yi Pin asked in a fearful, trembling voice.

“I… think so?” Ye Qing couldn’t be certain either. After all, he had never seen a fish whose whiskers were as thick as a pillar of heavens.

“Wait, I think I know what it is! It must be the legendary Sky Devouring Fish!” Yi Pin abruptly blurted in realization.

“The Sky Devouring Fish?” Ye Qing asked.

“According to the ancient text ‘Records of the Mountains and the Sea’, there exists a strange, indescribably huge fish who lives underground. It is pitch black like coal, and it dreams of devourings the celestial bodies. When it turns, an earthquake would happen, and when it opens its mouth, it would form a large lake. Hence, it is named the Sky Devouring Fish.”

“The Sky Devouring Fish is slothful by nature and so prefers to stay idle as much as possible. Its preferred method of hunting is opening its mouth to make a lake and conjure all sorts of auspicious treasures to draw prey to it. When a sufficient number of prey has gathered, it would close its mouth and devour them all.”

“Obviously, I have never seen the Sky Devouring Fish before, but what we’re seeing fits what is recorded in the record. There is good reason to believe that the creature before us is the Sky Devouring Fish.”

“The Sky Devouring Fish indeed!” sighed Ye Qing as he wiped the beads of sweat on his forehead. This would explain why there were Snake Fishes inside the so-called “lake”. To think that they had been fooling around inside the Sky Devouring Fish’s mouth this whole time! If they hadn’t escaped quickly…

Meanwhile, the fish’s mouth had shrunk to just tens of meters in radius. As it swallowed, it unintentionally revealed a ton of sharp teeth that were shaped like spikes and as big as mountain peaks. It was horrifying to look at to put it mildly.

“Kekeke! You’ll need more than that to devour me!”

It was at this moment an old man covered in dark green flames suddenly flew out of the water. He was also laughing like a madman. The reason he was able to escape was because his phosphorous flames were burning the lotus stems—or more accurately, the Sky Devouring Fish’s organ—to charcoal. He was none other that the Poisoner, Tong She.

Despite his triumphant words, he didn’t look nearly as triumphant. The skull he was riding on was nowhere to be seen, his clothes were tattered rags, and his presence was incredibly weak.

“Poisoner? I can’t believe that old fuck managed to survive the Sky Devouring Fish…” Yi Pin mumbled in disappointment. Poisoner wasn’t completely out of danger yet, but it looked like he would make it out before the Sky Devouring Fish could close its maw. He should’ve done us all a favor and just die.

“Don’t worry, he’s going to die in a moment.” “What?”

Yi Pin turned around to ask what Ye Qing meant, but he abruptly realized that the Ye Qing next to him was an illusion. The man himself was gone before he knew it.

“I’m almost there!” Poisoner let out another cackle after striking down a bunch of tentacles that were trying to block his way. His tone was full of delight and relief. He was so close to escaping this death trap. So close…

“You can’t escape.”

It was at this moment an indifferent voice rang above him. It sounded determined, confident and certain like it was stating an irrefutable fact.

The next thing he knew, he felt a tremendous fist force pouring down on him like a waterfall.

“It’s you! But why?”

Poisoner was really just hanging to life by a thread. Horribly weakened and caught completely by surprise, there was nothing he could do but be pushed back into the maw.

“Seriously? Do you really not know why I’m doing this?”

Ye Qing watched as the Sky Devouring Fish’s tentacles wrapped around Poisoner and dragged him into the eternal shadow below. Then, he dodged the tentacles flying toward him and returned to the shore.

I didn’t provoke you, and yet you tried to kill me. So why on earth would I let you live?