Chapter 16

Fatty and I went back to the Thunder Pool. Fatty found a rock and smashed Professor Wang’s internal organs until all of the small fish were turned into fish paste. Half of them were then thrown into the water while the other half were hung on a stone on the shore.

I was holding the iron whip while Fatty held the flashlight and drew back to the side. He beat the bronze sword with a rock until it was shaped like a fishhook and then wrapped the internal organs around it.

He also made a hook on the other side of the sword, which fit into the cracks in the floor tiles around the Thunder Pool. We also put our other flashlight on a nearby rock as a second lighting point so we wouldn’t lose sight of things and panic.

After a while, ripples appeared in the water, and something seemed to surge just under the surface. Fatty and I exchanged a look before I said, “These fish seem to have very sensitive hearing. Later, we have to quickly kill—”

But before I had even finished speaking, a black shadow suddenly rushed out of the water and bit the other half of the internal organs on the shore.

The fish’s mouth was so big that it swallowed the internal organs in one gulp and then started to retreat back into the water. But Fatty had been studying up on fishing, so his hook was very good. The big fish’s mouth got caught on the end of the bronze sword hook. I yelled at the top of my lungs, leaped towards the fish’s head, and aimed the iron whip directly at it.

It was just like hitting a stone mill, because sparks flew everywhere. As it turned out, the fish’s head was inlaid with a bronze mirror that acted like a helmet. My hands were hurting from the impact, but I couldn’t worry about it now. When I hit the fish’s body again, the decayed copper coins were so densely packed together that it was like the fish didn’t even feel how much strength I exerted. The iron whip just scraped along the fish’s sides without causing it any harm.

I was quite surprised. I knew that my hands were blackened and that I was a real killer—hell, I could probably crack a skull open—but why couldn’t I beat this thing up?

Fatty rushed over and started scolding me, “Your skills are getting fucking rusty.” He snatched my iron whip and was about to insert it into the fish’s eye, but at this time, the strange fish shook its head fiercely, causing blood to spurt from its torn mouth. The bronze sword hook came loose from its mouth, and the fish was on the verge of going back into the water. Fatty jumped up and grabbed the gills on both sides, causing both human and fish to plunge into the water in an instant.

I paused before I realized that we weren’t the ones who were fishing. Instead, the fish was the one fishing for Fatty.

If it was Poker-Face, I wouldn’t be surprised if he sprung out of the water with the fish intestines in hand. But Fatty was the one who went down. Right now, the biggest possibility was that Fatty would float up on his stomach, and when I turned him over, I’d find that his internal organs were eaten clean.

Fatty was still holding his flashlight in his hand, so I could see a spot of light beneath the churning water.

I didn’t think too much about it and just pulled the bronze sword hook over before jumping directly into the pool. At this time, however, Fatty just so happened to surface and was trying to climb to shore right as I threw myself at him.

“Fuck you…” he started to yell as I pushed him down into the water again.

My brain felt like it exploded as soon as I entered the water.

I couldn’t tell when I was on the surface—although I knew that there were many fish underwater, it was only a guess— but as soon as I entered the water now, I immediately felt that there were all kinds of strange fish around me, each one almost as long as me. As soon as I opened my hand, I felt the sensation of several copper coins slowly swim away from me.

I instantly rolled over and breached the water’s surface right as Fatty’s flashlight landed on my eyes, almost blinding me. The two of us panicked and frantically climbed ashore, but the strange fish didn’t even attack us.

We gasped for breath and looked at the water all over the ground. “Was I too aggressive just now?” Fatty asked.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re aggressive or not,” I said. “We’re finished.”

We were both very depressed. The internal organs were gone, and the fish hadn’t come up again. I figured we’d also become compound-eyed fish sac corpses soon, and it wouldn’t be long after that when we’d decay into feather-light immortals. Fatty thought for a while before rolling over and taking the iron whip and bronze sword from my hand. Then, he took off his shorts and tied the two things to his own calf.

He looked at me. There was only one pair of shorts, so the tie was very weak.

I looked at his resolute gaze and saw the tiny reflections of fish scales in the whites of his eyes. I knew it was useless to say anything more, so I gave him a firm nod and then took off my own shorts and handed them to him. At this point, the lower halves of our bodies were almost naked.

Fatty handed me his flashlight, grabbed a rock, and immediately put his calf into the pool.

The iron whip and bronze sword were meant to prevent the strange fish’s teeth from biting through Fatty’s calf muscles and breaking his leg. Of course, if the mouth was angled just right, the fish could still bite Fatty’s leg off, but Fatty was willing to gamble.

“If I end up disabled, you remember to support me for the rest of my life—ah!”

Fatty had wanted to make a witty remark, but as soon as his calf entered the pool, the water’s surface started churning. The fish were like old perverts who were as impatient as a monkey. I didn’t even have time to react before one of them instantly bit Fatty’s calf and started dragging him into the water.

Not only was the fish very powerful in the water, but Fatty had one leg in and one leg out of the pool. Moreover, the fish had bit down too fast, and Fatty hadn’t sat down in the most comfortable position. As a result, Fatty’s leg was pulled until he was doing the splits.

Almost at the same time, I heard a loud click come from Fatty’s hip. He immediately started shouting, “Ahhhhhhhh!!! Mr. Naïve, pull! Pull, pull, pull, pull, pull!”

I immediately grabbed Fatty’s armpits and tried to haul him backwards. As I exerted all of my strength in my waist and abdomen, the fish’s head finally breached the surface. I didn’t know whether it was the one I had tried to hit before, but it kept biting Fatty’s calf. “Grab its gills!” Fatty shouted at me

I let go of him and threw myself at the strange fish, putting my hand directly into its gills.

The gills were full of barbs, which cut my hand in an instant. I gave a loud roar and continued stretching my hand inside until I felt Fatty’s calf.

Since the bronze sword had been shaped into a hook, the strange fish ended up caught again and couldn’t retreat. I stretch my hand in further and grabbed the iron whip on Fatty’s leg. “Get it up!” Fatty shouted.

Even with the two of us working hard together, the fish was as powerful as a bomb and couldn’t be pulled out of the water at all. I had fished in the sea before and knew that a fish of this size definitely had an absolute advantage in the water during the first twenty minutes. But we didn’t even have a fishing rod. Fatty was starting to feel the pain at this time and shouted, “Kill it! Kill it!”

My hands were absolutely shredded by the barbs and were so bloody that I couldn’t exert any strength at all. Despite our efforts, this strange fish kept bouncing, almost dragging me and Fatty down every time. I shouted again. The water was full of blood—Fatty’s blood, my blood, and the fish’s blood all mixed together.

Just when I was at a loss as to what to do, a huge splash suddenly erupted from the water, drenching the both of us. As I watched, a huge shadow appeared in the water.

This shadow—which was much larger than the strange fish—came up from the water’s depths and directly bit off the fish’s body that we were holding onto.

The momentum of me and Fatty pulling on the fish’s upper body caused us to fall back on the shore, where we sat there staring at the waves in stunned silence.

“What the hell?”

The huge shadow just now was three times larger than the strange fish we had been fighting. Generally speaking, even if the same kind of fish was larger in size than the others, it wouldn’t kill the smaller ones like this. I looked at the pool full of blood and suddenly realized that our blood had made these fish go crazy. The giant fish had come up to bite us but ended up biting its own kind instead.

I opened the mouth of the fish head so that Fatty could pull his leg out and saw that the iron whip and bronze sword really had protected his calf from being bitten off. It looked like the fish’s teeth had gotten stuck in the metal on both sides. Although Fatty’s muscles also had teeth marks and the wounds were deep, he would’ve only been left with bones if it hadn’t been for these two pieces of metal.

Our blood flowed all the way from the edge of the pool to where we were laying, a clear display of how terrible our wounds were.

I suddenly realized that my original plan was a bust. If we fished with any body parts again and this thing came up to take a bite, we’d definitely be swallowed whole.

But at the same time, this was another opportunity. I had discovered that these fish were very sensitive to blood.

I picked up my cell phone, told Fatty to lie down, and ran outside. I rushed to a bonsai that was made of coral-colored pearls with agate soil in a Hongwu glazed red porcelain basin. I pulled out the coral tree, carefully put it aside, poured the agate out, and then ran back to the Thunder Pool with the basin in my arms.

When I returned to the Thunder Pool, I immediately saw Fatty hiding in a corner. I could tell with just one look at his face that something was wrong, so I immediately swept my flashlight over the water. I didn’t know when, but something had come up out of the water. The thing seemed to have a lot of hands and didn’t look like a person or a fish.  

<Chapter 15><Table of Contents><Chapter 17>

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