The water gate gradually fell behind him.
An Youyu held the rudder, looking down to scan the items inside the cabin.
Harpoons and fishing nets were stacked to one side.
The sea anchor lay at the bottom of the cabin with its coiled anchor rope, while the Mind-Guarding Ointment and the gray-black stone pestle were stowed within arm's reach.
Along the waterway leading out of the commune, two fishing boats approached from the opposite direction, one after the other.
Recognizing him, the commune members on board called out across the water.
An Youyu raised a hand with a smile in response, but he did not pull in the sail or slow down.
Before they could ask where he was headed, the Clown was already riding the wind past them, widening the stretch of water between the vessels.
Only after the fishing boats fell behind did he unfold the old map across his knees.
A faded vermilion line stretched southwest from Seven-Masts Anchorage, ending in three words—Ghost Hollow.
He had to hurry.
Arriving a few hours earlier meant he could search a few more shipwrecks and check one more location where Tiger-Head Mushrooms might be growing.
An Youyu folded the map back up and pressed down on the tiller.
The sail caught the full force of the wind, picking up speed once more.
...
The round trip to Ghost Hollow on the Clown would take two days by water.
An Youyu had no intention of wasting those two days idly on the boat.
He had trained back his Three Hundred Pressure, and he had not lost his old swimming methods or combat experience. Still, scattered force was ultimately not a force current, so he had to rediscover the feel of swimming from exertion to release.
"Boat-chasing" was perfect for this.
Back then, in the boat-chasing squad of the fish-transformation camp in the Northern Jurisdiction of the Zijing Tide Court, the ships patrolled as usual while the swimmers practiced alongside them.
When tired or hungry, they would climb aboard to rest and eat, then dive back into the water once refreshed.
This was what they called "boat-chasing."
With his Three Hundred Pressure foundation, he could easily keep pace with the ship's current speed.
Once the Clown stabilized, he lashed the tiller at a tested angle.
An Youyu bent his knees and broadened his back, channeling his Salamander Force along with the heave of the ship to execute the 【Basic Salamander Swim Technique】.
As long as cultivators of the Salamander Swim lineage possessed Salamander Force, they could cast this basic swimming technique in water.
The version he had learned was modified by the Zijing Tide Court; when paired with the breath circulation of the 《Tide-Calming Salamander Swimming Method》, his swimming posture became far more coordinated, boosting his speed by a notch.
With a cycle of breath, his Salamander Force was guided beneath his skin, turning into the clear, slick mucus unique to Salamander Swim cultivators, oozing fine droplets from his skin that soaked into his close-fitting clothes.
At sea, linen and leather were mostly harvested from resource fish and processed through alchemy. Since they still retained a small amount of alien elements, the mucus easily seeped along the grain.
Once soaked through, it formed a flexible, resilient film over his attire.
Divers who had not undergone fish-transformation had to rely on specialized diving gear to reach the depths.
The alchemy diving gear common in Seven-Masts Anchorage could only go down one or two hundred meters. They were expensive to buy, and supplying air and repairs were ongoing expenses, making a complete, reliable set difficult to obtain.
Fish-transformed cultivators had fish-swimming force to protect their bodies. Salamander Swim practitioners, in particular, could constrict and wrap ordinary cloth garments like this, turning them into a form-fitting diving suit.
From a distance, one could no longer distinguish the clothes; it looked instead as if a layer of tight blue-green scaled skin clung to his entire body.
An Youyu flipped over the gunwale into the sea. Water glided down his shoulders and back to his waist and legs, his clothing clinging securely without the slightest drag.
Salamander Swim
...
He practiced swimming alongside the boat for a while.
Gradually, An Youyu grasped the difference between Three Hundred Pressure in scattered force and Three Hundred Pressure in a force current, mastering the exact weight of his exertion and the timing of his release.
Though not as effortless as when he had Formed a Current in the past, his old fish techniques now moved with barely any hindrance.
Scattered force had its own ways of being used; once familiarized with it, it obeyed just the same.
Just as his movements became fluid, an empty gnawing hunger struck his stomach.
How long had he even been swimming?
The few small fish he had encountered along the way were only as long as a finger. Chasing after them would likely cost more nutrients than they would restore.
Just as An Youyu swam up to the bow, those few small fish suddenly scattered in a frenzy quite different from before.
A grayish-brown shadow swept beneath them, then plunged into the shadow cast by the Clown.
A wave lifted the ship's belly high, but from beneath, a pale, gaping maw suddenly burst forth. Two rows of slanted, sharp teeth surged straight for his waist and stomach, followed closely by a thick, heavy fish body.
With a sweep of its large tail, meters of water were shattered in an instant, stuffing the once-empty sea with this huge monster.
Leatherback Shark
An Youyu's scalp went numb.
He could not take this blow head-on!
The moment the thought arose, his fingernail pinched off a small piece of bloody flesh.
【Blood Swim】 was immediately triggered, and a slender blood thorn shot out from between his fingers, disappearing into the dark water in a flash.
Immediately after, a sharp howl of pain burst from below, reverberating through the seawater and numbing his ears.
It likely hit!
The creature's momentum swerved sharply, swimming rapidly away toward the lower side before vanishing into the dark.
Though it was only a brief glimpse, An Youyu could not mistake that blunt, wide snout, the short, stout body behind the gills, and especially that thick grayish-brown skin.
Leatherback Shark.
【Fine-Grade Resource Fish】.
Harvestable Resource: 【Thick Leather】.
The back skin of a Leatherback Shark was thick, tough, and had few scales. Once skinned and tanned, it became soft and durable, resisting hardening or cracking even after long exposure to seawater.
Ordinary divers who saved up money could usually only afford a few scrap offcuts to tailor shoulder pads for diving suits; using a whole piece to make water boots or tool bags was a luxury only wealthy households could afford.
The shark earlier showed no old scars on its back; if he could take an intact whole pelt, it would bring a sizeable addition to the public warehouse.
However, capturing it was extremely difficult.
The creature had no fixed fishing ground, making it hard to hunt intentionally on normal days.
Once fully grown, it could reach nearly six hundred jin or more. Fierce by nature, taking its head-on charge and bite required nothing less than Six Hundred Pressure.
An Youyu currently had only Three Hundred Pressure.
If it truly crashed into him head-on, he would undoubtedly come out worse.
Yet that Leatherback Shark had retreated into the deep dark water at the slightest disturbance, clearly unable to gauge his strength either.
An Youyu was used to this.
Making a living at sea was never about having more raw strength than the prey.
As long as 【Blood Swim】 penetrated, it could travel along the bloodstream. No matter how fierce a fish was, once hit by that sharp pain, it would assume he was even fiercer and hesitate to bite again.
Even if he were bitten, he still had the regeneration of the "Body-Abandoning Salamander."
He could afford to get hurt.
He could afford to drag it out.
The fish technique "Blood Swim" could intimidate, while the fish aspect "Body-Abandoning Salamander" could preserve his life; these two abilities were the true foundation of An Youyu's confidence when diving into deep dark waters and closing in on ferocious fish time and again back in the day.
When he was fourteen, he relied on this tactic to earn a Grade A rating in the year-end evaluation at the fish-transformation camp in the Northern Jurisdiction, receiving the silver-scale merit token awarded by the Zijing Tide Court.
He had been genuinely happy about that merit token.
Looking back now, what pained him most was that very joy he had felt back then.
The Yan Clan slaughtered his parents, erased his name, and then rewarded him with a badge, making him feel that he had not wasted his savior's nurturing.
All those years, he had risked his life for them so willingly.
Absurd!!!
Now, his life was something he had seized back from their hands. Every bit of Salamander Force he regained and every old ability he recovered was capital gathered to slaughter his way back to Zijing Anchorage.
Those who taught him to kill ought to see just how well he learned!!
...
"Gurgle."
The gnawing emptiness in his stomach flared up again.
The fish meat stored in the cabin would come in handy right now.
An Youyu grabbed the gunwale and flipped back onto the boat.
After finishing his meal, warmth gradually returned to his belly, replenishing some of the nutrients expended from swim practice and casting fish techniques.
As for the Leatherback Shark, chasing it would require changing course, and there was no telling how long it would take. No matter how valuable the pelt was, finding the medicine in Ghost Hollow took priority.
As long as that blood thorn remained inside the fish's body, it served as a marker.
At this distance, his Conjoining Membrane could not activate it; but once he got close enough to enter its sensory range, he could trace that connection to pinpoint the shark's location.
He would see on the return journey. If he ran into it again, he would claim that skin then.
...
Rate on N.U.
