Chapter 32: Hypnosis

This scene made all the merfolk frown slightly, feeling that this fellow had lost too much blood and was now delirious. Lin Qiu watched as the merfolk turned away and continued their vomiting performance, letting out a small sigh of relief.

He looked at the merfolk who kept repeating the motion of opening his mouth, and a cruel smile appeared in his eyes.

"Come here, obediently!"

His mental waves transmitted into the merfolk's mind, and the merfolk's gaze grew dull and vacant as he slowly walked over to Lin Qiu's side.

Glancing around to confirm that no one was paying attention, Lin Qiu chuckled in a low, sinister voice. "Come inside!"

He opened his mouth, and a black vortex appeared. The merfolk before him instantly shrank and vanished into the vortex.

After devouring this one, Lin Qiu finally relaxed; the troublesome matter was settled. He dared not continue swallowing for a while. Fortunately, after consuming so many merfolk, his energy reserves were full, enough to sustain blood production for some time.

With some leisure, he began to study the skill he'd just acquired.

Hypnosis.

This was his new ability.

Devouring sea beasts granted him great power and began his path of evolution; after consuming them, he could also extract their abilities.

Back when he was only level one, he could only assimilate human weapons and convert them into his skills.

But now, as a level two, he could strip the vitality and abilities from everything.

Here, "everything" meant he could devour anything.

With such power, even if a pile of waste appeared before him, he could squeeze out every last bit of value.

Hypnosis was a skill he gained after devouring an octopus.

Not just the octopus—other merfolk had their own abilities as well.

But the system told him that what mattered was the quality of skills, not their quantity.

When he asked what to do, the system replied that he could recycle skills for upgrade points, or fuse them to enhance a particular ability.

Ultimately, Lin Qiu chose skill fusion.

He kept only three abilities.

One, derived from human weapons, was the electromagnetic wave. It could destroy opponents' equipment and disrupt nearby magnetic fields.

The second was hypnosis.

The third was the linear acceleration ability.

He fused all the abilities he'd acquired into these three, constantly strengthening, enhancing, and amplifying them.

Besides skills, he also extracted from the merfolk their ancestral physical techniques through memory fusion.

These techniques, in ancient times, shone brilliantly.

They far surpassed the subtlety of ancient martial arts in the human world.

After all, this was a high-tech era, with supreme body arts evolving perpetually through technology.

Because he possessed the system, after the ocean mutated, he skipped over the ancestral inheritance and physical techniques.

Now, through relentless devouring, he stripped out these techniques, and under the system's guidance, recycled them.

Once recycled, the system processed them per his requirements—essentially, it refined and evolved these physical techniques.

The system's origins were mysterious, surpassing even the universe's greatest warrior race.

The techniques kept merging and strengthening, advancing toward higher levels.

The system also told him that, after reaching the limits of Bluewater Star, further advancement would be impossible.

Unless he left Bluewater Star, battled across the universe, and devoured more advanced lifeforms to extract their physical techniques for breakthrough.

But Lin Qiu was already quite satisfied.

On his interface, he watched countless data streams evolving.

These were the physical techniques transformed into data.

Through the system's processing, some data occasionally disappeared.

The system explained that all that vanished were impurities; only the essence remained.

In the future, as he might enter the land and devour terrestrial creatures or sky-dwelling birds, these techniques could evolve even further.

When he grew stronger, he could dive into the sea to catch dragons, ascend into the sky to hunt birds.

Hearing the system's explanation, Lin Qiu began to imagine his future.

A faint smile occasionally appeared at the corners of his mouth.

"Ah, another fool!"

A merfolk beside Lin Qiu, seeing his silly smile, couldn't help but shake his head and sigh.

But in the next moment, dizziness swept over him, and he saw Lin Qiu's mouth open, revealing a black vortex inside.

"Eat?"

The merfolk murmured this familiar word, his last mental image being the one he'd seen earlier, the gestures of another merfolk.

But there would be no more after that; devoured by the swallowing power, he disappeared without a trace, not even a speck remaining.

"Noisy."

Lin Qiu closed his mouth, muttered, and shifted his position again.

No one knew how much time had passed; the number of merfolk entering the Governor's Mansion dwindled.

In the end, half a day went by without another merfolk entering.

Within the mansion, the ancient city monument stood ten meters tall, yet it never felt crowded.

Looking closely, it was packed with merfolk.

Logically, a monument of ten meters couldn't hold so many.

But this was an ancient city, a legacy from the previous civilization.

Its space had been altered by the technology of that era.

Although the fish appeared pressed together, with little space, once they approached the monument, a new area would automatically open for them, allowing each to stand, all within arm's reach—this was the spatial folding and refraction technology of the previous civilization.

This technology could fold space, expand it, or refract another space using the principles of light.

Thus, a bizarre scene unfolded before his eyes.

Lin Qiu's mouth was growing numb.

The other fish didn't know how much time had passed, but he did!

Two full days and nights.

He had devoured countless merfolk, opening and closing his mouth, but when he checked the progress bar, only half was filled!

There were still five meters left on the progress bar.

He frowned. "System, even if I swallow all these fools, will I be able to fill the monument?"

"Don't worry, host," the system reassured him. "Five meters is a critical point. You'll understand soon enough."

The system's enigmatic words left Lin Qiu puzzled, yet its mysterious tone sparked his anticipation.

And in the very next moment—indeed, the very next instant—his eyes widened, and at last he understood what the system meant by "you'll see soon enough"!