Pu!
The sound of bubbling water filled his surroundings.
His vision was a field of dark green and nothing else. His whole body exuded a strong Cold Energy radiation which resisted the highly poisonous water that was constantly trying to attack the surface of his skin. He held his breath and continued swimming down.
The lake water was very viscous. Without using any special skills, he could not even begin diving. Garen had even hung a big stone from his body to help get himself downwards.
Not long after he’d dived in, his arms seemed to have touched something hard. It seemed to be moveable.
“What’s that?”
Garen pulled it over and suddenly a pale face appeared in front of him. The face belonged to a female corpse and one of her arms had been grabbed by Garen.
The female corpse’s eyes were wide open, though her eyeballs were waterlogged to the extent they were green and black. Her clothes had been corroded and destroyed and most of her body was covered in rotting holes.
Throwing it aside, Garen continued to dive quietly while remaining vigilant at all times.
Gu lu…
A few bubbles floated upwards. The deeper he went, the clearer the water got; from dark green, it gradually turned to a shade of pale green similar to fresh water.
Garen could hold his breath for half an hour without any problems. The constitution of his body had become something that far exceeded normal humans after the transformation by the Hellfrost Peacock Technique. It was becoming the basic larva of the gigantic universe creature, the Hellfrost Peacock. After the foundations, he would completely become the basic larva. In his current state, the radiation which was deadly to normal people would not affect him as long as the Cold Energy around him did not disappear.
Hua…
Suddenly, Garen seemed to have heard a sound from his right. He looked over through his protective goggles but he could not see anything at all aside from the water’s green tint.
Then, finger-long black worms appeared around him in the lake water. They were just like caterpillars with their whole body ensconced in a black and shiny black shell. They moved their body segment by segment and crept towards Garen from all over the place.
Garen was surprised and hurriedly increased the Cold Energy, enlarging the perimeter until it reached a meter away from him.
Soon, the first caterpillar entered the range of the Cold Energy. It quickly turned into an ice stick and sank downwards. The second one also entered into the range and frozen into ice. The same went for the third and the fourth… until the twenty-fifth one.
Only then did Garen sigh in relief. In order to kill these worms, he had consumed at least half of his Cold Energy.
He swam for a bit while looking around, but he did not see any more of these caterpillars.
He began to consider if he should continue diving down…
“With my capabilities, if I continue diving down, the pressure may shorten my diving time, it’d be better if I have diving equipment on.”
He stretched out his hand and stirred the lake water. After brushing away some muddy sediments, he could faintly see some things a few meters away.
He seemed to have seen a dark shadow swimming towards him.
“What is that?”
The dark shadow swam nearer and nearer…
Soon, it entered the Garen’s visual range.
It was a black water snake. The length of its body was around ten meters, but only had the thickness of an arm. It had teeth that were similar to those of cutlassfish and its eyes glow green in the lake.
Garen was not surprised but he was a little happy; this guy was obviously a beast that lived in this water.
He reached out his hand towards the head of the snake and a faint fluctuation spread out.
A look of awe and delight flashed in the eyes of the snake, showing its extraordinary intelligence. It let Garen stroke its head and gently wrapped its body around Garen, forming a circle.
“Bring me to a place that has a lot of this thing…” Garen took out a fist-sized white stone from the pocket of his protective clothing, shaking it at the snake.
His eyes flashed with a faint trace of gold color from the Ancient Nine-Headed Dragon, it was purely a wave that was used for communication. After passing the message to the snake using the way of the Totem World, he was still not sure whether it could understand him and could only keep a close eye on this guy.
The water snake’s eyes revealed doubts at this but it bit the white stone and turned around, swimming downwards towards the left.
Garen hurriedly grabbed onto its tail and his body was brought downwards at a high speed.
The flow of water on both his sides rushed around in a fast manner. The snake’s body simply flowed freely and it was ten times faster than him. After half a minute, there was a dark cliff wall that was full of caves of different sizes like a honeycomb.
The water snake led Garen into a large cave and drilled inside for several minutes. In the middle of it, he encountered a lot of those black worms again. They had grouped together and seemed to be eating something.
The water snake seemed to be wary of the worms and the worms also took the initiative to avoid the water snake. Both groups did not encroach upon each other and only passed by.
Garen, who was still holding onto the tail of the water snake, also felt his scalp tingling. He had killed off more than twenty of them just now using half of his Cold Energy. Now there were even more of them here, at least thousands of them. If they fought under such circumstances, then the chances of him dying would be very high.
Fortunately, the Will of the spirit of the Ancient Nine-Headed Dragon allowed him to be closer to the water snakes and avoid being entangled by these worms.
Glancing back at the thing that was being eaten by the swarm of worms, it was a piece of broken metal alloy. The worms’ sharp teeth constantly tore away at the piece of metal, making cracking sounds.
Passing by the swarm of worms, the water snake began to go up along the tunnel of the cave swiftly.
After some time, around ten minutes to twenty minutes, there was a sloshing sound of water above him.
Garen suddenly felt that he had broken through the surface of the water. He had been brought by the water snake into a somewhat warm cave.
He took a deep breath. The air outside was quickly filtered through the air filtration system in his protective clothing and was replaced by air that was safe to breathe. After that, he began to take a look around his surroundings.
The cave was not big; it was only about the size of a small living room.
However, Garen’s eyes suddenly opened wide with traces of joy.
All around the walls of the cave, including the ground, was paved in white. Surprisingly, it was all large chunks of White Peacock Stone!!
The whole cave was made up of the White Peacock Stone!
“This is the mine for the White Peacock Stone!”
Garen patted the water snake’s head to express his satisfaction.
The snake gave a hissing sound that displayed its happiness. It then turned around in circles before spitting out the White Peacock Stone in its mouth.
“Go ahead, go and take a good rest.”
Garen let go of the water snake and began to explore the structure of the cave carefully. Walking up to the wall, he pressed a button on the collar of the protective clothing.
‘Recording the route taken…’ a line of words appeared on Garen’s goggles.
The route that was taken to come here was quickly recorded down by the chip in the protective clothing.
Sorting out the route, Garen pondered for a bit before going to the wall on the right side, where he removed his protective clothing and exposed his hand directly to the air.
He no longer suppressed the natural release of the Cold Energy radiation and pressed his palm to the wall.
Hiss… Peng!
After the hissing sound, white smoke came out from between his palm and the wall.
A large number of blue threads came out from Garen’s palm and drilled into the stone wall as though they were greedy parasites, absorbing the matter in the White Peacock Stone.
The stone wall soon broke down into powder. As though it was contagious, the area that broke down from the contact with Garen’s palm soon spread out. Less than half a minute later, the stone wall around the cave began to shake slightly. All the White Peacock stone began to break down into a large amount of powder and fell down.
Garen stood in front of the wall with his eyes closed, his body produced some creaking sounds and blue scales started appearing on the surface of his body. His face, body, arms, ears, the skin all over him was covered with scales similar to those of snakes. The protective clothing was gradually filled with a disgusting smell, which was becoming more and more unpleasant.
Opening his eyes, Garen saw the changes on his body.
“The closer you get to the Fifth level, the more the body becomes inhuman…”
Looking at the progress on his Attribute Panel, the completion of the Fifth level had already reached 42% and it was still rapidly increasing.
“As long as I reach the Basic level, there should be a very high qualitative change which should not disappoint me,” Garen recalled the record of the Living Secret Technique and closed his eyes again to absorb the essence of the White Peacock Stone.
His body began to change more and more. his arms began to grow out some sharp points, and on his back, dark blue filaments that were as dense as grass was beginning to grow out; it was similar to hair, but it could easily move around.
The biggest change was his body size and his height began to grow from the original 1.78 meter until it was almost 2 meters. His body’s muscles became more distinct and the scales on his skin became more obvious. He looked like a warrior that was wearing an armor made of snake scales.
Time passed by, as Garen gradually became immersed in the thrill of getting stronger.
******************
Beside the Colorful Lake
The sky gradually turned bright and in the distance, there were more than ten black Mech coats. This group of people was all in the same super-miniature Mechs just like the previous group of Hornets.
This group of Mechs landed and started searching around the lake.
“Boss! I found one aircraft for single use, the model is very new! It should be something that those natural people brought out!”
One of the Mech coats found the single aircraft that was left behind by Garen.
Hearing of the clues, the tallest among the group flew over and landed in front of the aircraft and knocked on the aircraft’s propeller.
“It must be that natural person. Since it was casually put here, then it’s either that he threw it aside or he couldn’t take it away,” his voice was rough but his words revealed his attentiveness.
There was a slight commotion. There seemed to be some people who did not understand the meaning of these words.
“Boss means that this person either left this thing alone or there was an accident and he couldn’t come back temporarily,” a female voice explained on one side.
“Mondeo, are you sure that that natural person killed off your team without wearing any Mech!?” Boss turned around and asked the Mech coat at the very back.
“Yes, absolutely. If it was not for my wits or the fact that he wanted to leave someone alive to ask for information, I’m afraid I won’t be alive and standing here!” Mondeo quickly answered.
The Boss went silent for a while and saw that the group of Mech users was waiting for him to make a decision.
A natural person, a powerful one that appeared abruptly in this place with the ability to quickly kill off five Mech coats was likely to be able to kill off this group of ten Mech coats.
“Do not provoke him, this person is very strong. Maybe it’s an expert that was sent out by those big shots in the region to carry out a task. Even if he’s not, he alone is not someone we can deal with.”
“Those five Mech coats were found, Boss. Why not just retreat first?” someone suggested.
“Retreat, leave this area alone for a while. Do not come here until after that man leaves,” the Boss took the suggestion without being embarrassed about it. In the radiation belt, the strong ruled. Avoidance and escape were not shameful.
The group of people brought the Mech coats and quickly left. Mondeo finally fell in at the end of the line and looked back at the Colorful Lake.
“Natural person…” a trace of longing flashed through his eyes.