Enyi slipped into the sea, plunging headfirst into the abyss. Staring outward from within, he felt as though he occupied a place entirely cut off from the world. Because the passage was brighter than the outside, the whole sight resembled a crimson eye blinking open in the pitch darkness.
Bizarre creatures began to multiply the further down he went. A Skinless Fish rushed straight toward him, stripped of its fish skin with raw red muscle exposed to the water, its head resembling a human skull... A skeleton fish?
The Skinless Fish was exceptionally fierce, its jaws agape as it lunged at the sight of any living thing. An ordinary person would have been scared out of their wits long ago, but Enyi caught it barehanded, toyed with it for a moment, and then crushed it to death.
Swimming ever downward, he lost track of time until Enyi suddenly felt as though he had passed through a thin membrane. At a certain boundary, two separate worlds were divided. Enyi plummeted downward, struck by a sudden dizziness. When he regained his senses, he found himself entering an inverted world. Below the water was an exit pointing upward, while above the water lay a bone-dry cave.
Enyi walked toward the end, strolling as casually as if he were wandering through his own courtyard...
"Anyway, the outside world is fascinating..." Xi just kept talking, seeming completely unaware that the Evil Dragon on the other side was already growing extremely impatient.
During the time Xi had been trapped here, he could not escape, and the Evil Dragon had no way to crush him to death either. To pass the time, Xi had no choice but to chat with this bulky creature. At first, the beast would let out a couple of roars—which Xi simply took as a response. Later on, the Evil Dragon simply acted as if the person wasn't even there.
Hmm? Someone is coming? Xi quietly shifted behind a stone pillar.
Before long, a man appeared, locking eyes directly with the Evil Dragon.
A confused fruit upon a confused tree, you and I beneath the confused tree. A man and a dragon sharing confused fruit; turns out I am not the only one baffled here.
"Roar, roar, roar..." The Evil Dragon roared at Enyi. One person was annoying enough, and now another had shown up! If its powers hadn't been sealed, it would have spat a centuries-old glob of phlegm to drown these bugs ages ago.
Enyi had no idea what the Evil Dragon meant, nor did he make any reaction.
"Approaching a god-tier seal, are we..." Enyi stood before the Evil Dragon, entirely unguarded.
Heh-heh-heh-heh... Foolish human, go die. The Evil Dragon quickly raised its claw and brought it down, already able to picture the other being pressed into a meat patty. The thought thrilled it.
Yet the imagined scene of blood and gore did not materialize. Enyi propped up the Evil Dragon's claw with a single hand, effortlessly.
"Still, it is not truly god-tier after all. As long as I have this..." Enyi pulled a small vial from his own hand bone and poured the dark red liquid inside onto the chains.
The moment the liquid touched the chains, they vanished as if evaporating. A howl echoed, filled with immense agony and a faint trace of fear. The chains panicked, loosening their grip and rapidly shrinking back into the darkness.
Roar, roar... I am free. Relying on its formidable physical strength, the Evil Dragon broke through the Barrier and soared away. It had no idea why that man would do such a thing, though it wanted to kill Enyi—or rather, it wanted to kill everyone it laid eyes on.
Xi watched this scene unfold, powerless to do anything. But he had long since grown accustomed to such things. In a world so vast, how insignificant a single person's strength was; there were simply far too many things one wished to change yet could do nothing about...
Enyi cast a mocking, ambiguous glance in the direction where Xi was hiding, making Xi's heart leap straight to his throat. Fortunately, Enyi merely glanced at him before vanishing into the darkness.
...
"Splash." A column of water suddenly burst upward from the river's surface, shooting straight into the sky. Like a bugle call, it instantly awakened the sleeping beast. The tranquility before the mountain rain had been shattered, and pillars of water rose one after another in quick succession.
The water pillars crashed wildly across the river's surface, finally merging into a water tornado tens of meters wide. The calm river suddenly began to churn, whipping up wave upon wave of gigantic swells that smashed fiercely against the banks.
Caught completely off guard, people were swallowed by the surging tide. Cars sat gridlocked at intersections, unable to budge as frantic people leaned desperately on their horns. Watching the water steadily rise, panic gripped everyone's hearts. Somewhere, a child began to cry, and immediately a cacophony of various sounds erupted from all directions.
Disaster had arrived. Some people were driven to desperation, utterly hopeless; some felt profound fear and wept silently; others scrambled desperately for their lives just to survive...
"Come here, give me your hand."
The little girl stared at the hand extended by the stranger, her crying slowly subsiding. She didn't know this person, but she recognized the clothes. Her mother had said that people wearing these clothes were good people who came to help them.
"Get lost, let me up first." A man in a suit hurriedly scrambled onto the rescue boat.
"You're frightening the child."
"Hmph, a bunch of commoners, what are they compared to my precious life?" The man lifted his chin. "Let me tell you, I'm the vice president of the Elson Group."
Hearing that he was the vice president of a major corporation, the crowd immediately fell silent. They might have been cursing the man for being unreasonable just moments before, but right now, they were exceptionally quiet.
"Master, please."
"Ah, right, right."
Just then, a young man helped an elderly monk over. The man was thoroughly displeased by the appearance of these two and started to march over, only to inexplicably tumble headlong into the water.
"Hahahaha..." Someone let out a laugh first, and soon the entire crowd burst into uncontrollable laughter.
"Let's see who dares to laugh, bad luck." Looking utterly embarrassed, the man clambered back into the boat.
As the elderly monk passed the man, he threw a subtle, untraceable glance in his direction.
Yet this was merely a minor interlude within the catastrophe; at this very moment, scenes of life and death were playing out everywhere. The sirens wailing overhead droned on endlessly, acting like the death knell of the netherworld, constantly reminding people—calamity had arrived.
Ever since the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, large-scale floods of this magnitude had virtually never occurred here. Yet at this moment, the Three Gorges Dam seemed like a mere decoration, its floodgates flung wide open.
Control room. The operators had fallen one by one in pools of blood, while a lone figure walked with a bizarre gait among the corpses, occasionally emitting a chilling, ghostly chuckle...
The giant waves conjured out of thin air filled the air with mist. Through the hazy vapor, a flash of red darted past. Amidst a roar, the water tornado grew increasingly massive in response to the call.
It stepped out from the layers of towering waves, entirely unaffected. Standing tall atop the crest, it looked down upon all living beings.
The crowd plunged into utter panic; never before had they witnessed such a monster.