Chapter 14: Encountering Xu Bing Again

After Lin Qiu entered the seahorse’s abdominal cavity, the first place he arrived was the stomach, where everything was awash in corrosive gastric acid. He witnessed with his own eyes the struggling young sea creatures being dissolved by the acid. Terrified to the core, he quickly activated his skill, accelerating in a straight line, opening his mouth wide as a miniaturized set of shark teeth snapped shut with speed.

Since upgrading to level two, both his shark teeth and biting force had reached their limits. With a single bite, he tore away a chunk of flesh. Yet, it frustrated him that his own body was still so small compared to the massive seahorse. As he gnawed his way through, his jaws began to ache and throb. Still, through relentless effort, he managed to carve out a narrow passage in the seahorse’s stomach, burrowing deeper into its body.

Before him now stretched immense blood vessels twisting like underground rivers and a colossal heart. Lin Qiu let out a strange, muffled laugh. “Devouring a level-three sea beast—just how much will my progress bar jump this time?”

Brimming with anticipation, he plunged into the seahorse’s enormous heart, bared his mini shark teeth, and began to gnaw. “I must admit, the taste isn’t half bad,” he commented, digging in with even more enthusiasm.

While Lin Qiu feasted with abandon, the seahorse suffered. Its body was so vast that a single internal wound was not fatal, but the agony was worse than death. When the seahorse drifted to the water’s surface, an island appeared ahead, with a large, stranded ship on its edge.

No sooner had the seahorse surfaced than people on the deck noticed it.

“That’s a seahorse? My god!” a male sailor on deck stared in disbelief at the creature, easily over a hundred meters long. In the sunlight, the seahorse’s pink, scale-like armor shimmered with a fantastical luster.

Beside the sailor stood a woman with her back turned, busy with something unknown. Hearing the sailor’s exclamation, she turned out of curiosity, revealing a mature, beautiful face in her twenties. Who else could she be but Xu Bing?

Xu Bing, an avid seafarer, was stunned by the gigantic seahorse floating not far from the ship. She knew a thing or two about marine life. The largest seahorse she'd seen was only about thirty centimeters long. Yet this one was nearly a third the length of the entire ship.

Floating motionless on the water, the seahorse’s body glimmered with hazy rays under the sunlight, dazzling to behold.

“It... seems dead,” Xu Bing said uncertainly, her pupils contracting and dilating. She noticed the seahorse was floating belly-up and hadn’t moved for several minutes. If it wasn’t dead, could it be asleep?

A moment later, her eyes lit up. She took out her phone, turned on the camera, and began filming this rare spectacle.

Xu Bing had guessed right: the seahorse was indeed dead. After Lin Qiu’s strenuous efforts, he had carved a complex network of tunnels inside the seahorse’s body. The creature was so large that wherever he went, he bit and chewed, which explained the seahorse’s diffuse pain. It hurt all over yet couldn’t pinpoint where.

At that moment, unseen by anyone, a small dolphin emerged from the seahorse’s skull, flicking its tail as it floated on the water.

“It’s her again?” Lin Qiu’s eyes widened in shock and growing frustration as he saw the ship. Every encounter with this woman seemed to spell trouble. The first time, he’d been chased by a great white shark; the second, it was a volcanic eruption; and now, for the third time, their paths had crossed again.

“Surely nothing bizarre will happen this time?” Lin Qiu felt a pang of unease, unaware that a pair of beautiful, delighted eyes were watching him.

“A dolphin! There’s a dolphin here, and it’s so tiny and adorable!” Xu Bing’s girlish excitement overflowed as she gazed at Lin Qiu, her eyes sparkling.

“You’re the dolphin! Your whole family are dolphins,” Lin Qiu muttered, catching her excited voice even from a distance. Since his reincarnation as an orca, his hearing and vision had improved tremendously. So, hearing her call him a dolphin, he couldn’t help but grumble under his breath.

“What’s she up to?” Lin Qiu frowned, watching as a hatch opened on the ship’s hull and a yacht was launched. Xu Bing boarded the yacht and sped swiftly in his direction.

“Wow, so beautiful!” The yacht stopped near the seahorse’s head. Xu Bing gazed at the little dolphin and cheered with joy.

Then her cheer turned into a scream of fright. She had looked up by chance and saw the seahorse’s enormous eye, drooping as if staring right at her. That gaze nearly scared her soul out of her body. In a panic, Xu Bing piloted the yacht away as fast as she could.

The direction she steered was directly toward Lin Qiu.

“When I run into this woman, nothing good ever happens!” Lin Qiu grumbled, diving down just as the yacht sped overhead, leaving white spray in its wake.

“Ah!” Xu Bing let out another scream as the yacht skidded to a stop atop the waves. “Did I accidentally kill... the little dolphin?” she stammered, her eyes wide with anxious fear. The little dolphin was so cute! If she’d really killed it...

Lost in her wild imaginings, she suddenly stopped, her gaze fixed on the dolphin surfacing nearby.

“You’re alive?!” Xu Bing clapped her hand over her mouth in astonishment, her eyes wide with delight.

Watching this madwoman steer the yacht toward him again, Lin Qiu was nearly driven to rage. But this time, Xu Bing managed to control herself. The yacht stopped five meters in front of him, though the ripples from its arrival sent Lin Qiu drifting back over ten meters.

“If it weren’t for your million-plus followers and your considerable influence, I wouldn’t bother sticking around,” Lin Qiu thought to himself.

The octopods of the Kama star system and the Kaqite captivity program left him restless, as if sitting on pins and needles. On this blue planet, every creature was reared like livestock by them. The system had warned Lin Qiu that any further mutation would surely attract those two entities’ attention. The technology of the Kama star system had already advanced beyond three-dimensional space, reaching the fourth dimension. If they chose to descend upon this planet, a single super-spaceship and some spatial folding tech could let them cross countless star systems in an instant.

If they came, it would be a catastrophe for this world. Lin Qiu had no desire to die. With the system on his side, his life was practically a cheat code. As long as he kept devouring, one day he would be as powerful as any being from the Kama star system.

How could he ever give up such a marvelous life?