Chapter 83 - 76: Underwater Fangs

Chapter 83: Chapter 76: Underwater Fangs

The rain continued its unhurried descent, but Xu Mo’s attention had shifted from the sky to the steadily rising, murky water below his feet. He stood on the third-floor stair landing, his gaze fixed on the wall of the second floor. There, he had used a sharp stone to carve a series of scratches, deep and shallow, to serve as a reference for the rising water level.

At first, the rise in the water level was almost imperceptible. But as time passed, the slow yet unyielding upward trend became clear.

The murky water, at a steady and constant pace, was submerging the marks Xu Mo had carved, one by one. From the initial record marking a depth of just over two feet from the second floor, the water had now silently crept past the three-foot mark and was still spreading upward.

’Something’s not right...’ Xu Mo’s brow furrowed as he calculated in his head.

The intensity of the current rain was nowhere near as fierce as the first downpour. Logically, the floodwaters shouldn’t be rising this quickly, and certainly not at such a steady, continuous rate.

’It’s not from the local rainfall. The water is coming from upstream.’ Xu Mo quickly reached a conclusion. Only a massive accumulation of rainfall upstream, forming a flood crest, or the catastrophic failure of a dam or reservoir could cause this kind of sustained rise in the downstream water level, independent of the local precipitation.

Xu Mo recalled seeing news reports about "flood crests passing through" on TV before he’d crossed over. Back then, he was just a detached spectator, watching abstract water level data, aerial shots of murky rivers, and reporters broadcasting from a safe distance. Although he knew it was dangerous, it was all through a screen; he lacked any firsthand experience.

But now, he was in the midst of this vast ocean, with the endlessly rising flood beneath his feet and apocalyptic debris floating all around. This intangible sense of oppression and the feeling of smallness in the face of nature’s power was something no television screen could ever convey.

The flood crest was no longer a news term but a tangible threat hanging over his head, closing in step by step. You could hear the low growl of the undercurrents, see the water’s surface continuously swallowing familiar landmarks, and feel the barely perceptible, yet very real, tremors of the entire building in the water.

Reaching the rooftop, Xu Mo focused his full attention on the water, trying to estimate the flood crest’s potential height based on its rate of ascent.

It was at this moment that a scene unfolding on the water’s surface in the distance instantly captured all of Xu Mo’s attention, making his heart clench.

About a dozen meters from Xu Mo’s building, on the relatively calm surface of the debris-strewn water, a huge cloud of red suddenly erupted without any warning, then rapidly began to spread.

The red was glaringly conspicuous in the murky yellow water, and it spread with astonishing speed, as if someone had knocked over a giant bucket of red paint underwater.

It was blood. A massive amount of it.

He barely needed to think; instinct gave Xu Mo the answer.

This was no natural phenomenon. Something had been hunted and killed underwater, and it must have suffered a massive, instantaneous wound to bleed so much, so fast.

In almost the same instant he reached this conclusion, another deduction surfaced in Xu Mo’s mind: there was something in the water. A large, ferocious predator.

His previous suspicions were confirmed, and in such a direct and bloody manner.

The corrosion of the Dark Energy wasn’t just limited to the land, after all. Even the freshwater ecosystem had not been spared.

Xu Mo had originally thought that such terrifying mutations would mainly occur in the more complex, biomass-rich oceans. He never expected that the temporary floodplain around him would also breed unknown dangers.

It made sense when he thought about it. Since the darkness of the Eternal Night could affect all life indiscriminately, then no body of water, be it salt or fresh, could possibly remain a sanctuary.

Visibility underwater was extremely low, and these murky floodwaters provided the perfect cover for a lurking hunter. You could never know what kind of mutated creature—what size, what ferocity—was hidden beneath that calm surface. They might have sharper teeth, tougher skin, greater strength, or even have evolved some kind of special ability.

That cloud of blood just now was a silent declaration of sovereignty over these waters—this was no longer a place humans could tread lightly, nor even a place where ordinary fish could survive in peace. A brand-new underwater food chain, full of unknown threats, was quietly taking shape in the apocalyptic flood.

"The water isn’t safe anymore, either," Xu Mo muttered to himself, his tone heavy.

This discovery forced Xu Mo to raise the risk assessment of his current situation yet again. Before, he had his assault boat, which in theory gave him the ability to maneuver and survive on the water. But now, a lethal threat lurked beneath the surface. Could the boat’s hull withstand an attack from an unknown aquatic monster? If he were dragged into the water while underway, the consequences would be unimaginable.

Xu Mo had previously considered that if the water continued to rise, he could perhaps try to move to higher ground in the assault boat. But now, the risk of that option had increased dramatically. On land, he could at least see where threats were coming from, and he could fight or flee. But in an environment with obstructed vision and restricted movement like the water, his advantages would be severely diminished when facing an unknown aquatic mutant.

Moreover, Xu Mo had a major weakness: he couldn’t swim. It wasn’t that he hadn’t thought about learning, or that he hadn’t tried. But two straight months of practice had yielded no results other than a sharp increase in his tolerance for beer, so Xu Mo had given up.

Now, in this environment, that weakness was magnified.

Xu Mo checked the ropes securing his assault boat again, making sure they were strong enough to resist being pulled loose by a monster or the rising water. At the same time, he moved his weapons to a more accessible spot, not just to deal with potential threats on land, but also to guard against an attack from below.

The patch of blood on the water was gradually fading and dispersing, eventually blending into the murky yellow background as if nothing had ever happened. But Xu Mo knew that some things had changed forever. This flood that had swallowed the town didn’t just bring the risk of drowning and disease; it also concealed fangs from the abyss.

SPLOOOSH—!!

Suddenly, a muffled explosion of water, far deeper than any splash before it, erupted from the surface about twenty-something meters in front of Xu Mo. A massive pillar of water, churning with white foam, shot skyward as if some behemoth was engaged in a life-or-death struggle beneath the surface!

Before the spray had even fully fallen, another, even larger cloud of red bloomed abruptly in the churning water and spread rapidly. This time, there seemed to be even more blood, staining a wider area, and a faint, almost imperceptible, metallic scent seemed to drift through the air.

This sudden second eruption made Xu Mo’s pupils contract, his gaze locked dead on that boiling patch of water.

Immediately after, a fiery red figure shot out from the blood-flecked, churning water. It was a fish—a carp, covered entirely in vibrant red scales that seemed to glow against the murky backdrop. Visually, it was nearly a meter long; the dream catch of countless anglers. It thrashed desperately, its scales reflecting the bleak light as if it were using every last ounce of its strength to escape the lethal threat below.

However, just as it reached the apex of its leap, its body about to fall back to the water’s surface under the pull of gravity—CHOMP!

An indescribable maw, filled with ghastly white teeth, burst from the water without warning, lunging out sideways. The mouth was absurdly large, its gape almost terrifying, and it crossed the short distance between itself and the red carp in an instant.

The maw snapped shut with perfect precision. There was no struggle, no process.

With a crisp CRACK, the giant red carp, caught in mid-air, was bitten through its midsection, instantly severing it into three pieces.

The fish’s head, with a small part of its body attached, was flung powerlessly to one side, while the tail fell to the other. The two severed pieces traced brief arcs through the air before slapping down onto the murky water almost simultaneously, sending up two small splashes.

The maw, meanwhile, vanished back into the water with the fish’s midsection, leaving behind only a series of violently spreading ripples.

A third bloom of red spread across the water’s surface. This time, it was the blood of the red carp.

The entire process, from the initial eruption of water to the disappearance of the maw, lasted no more than two or three seconds. Fast. Precise. Ruthless. It was filled with a primitive and efficient beauty of the kill, yet it was also suffocatingly terrifying.

Xu Mo had seen it clearly. That was definitely not any known aquatic species. The ghastly, densely packed teeth and the terrifying bite force it had unleashed were all signs that this was an aquatic mutant, one that had been deeply corroded by the Dark Energy and undergone a horrifying mutation.

So, freshwater had indeed bred such a terrifying predator.

The red carp, over two feet long, had probably undergone some kind of mutation itself; otherwise, it would have been hard for it to grow so large. But in front of that lurking hunter, it was like a mere toy, torn apart with ease.

Beneath this seemingly calm flood, what kind of cruel and intense competition for survival was taking place? And how many more unknown, even more terrifying, existences were hidden there?

Any thought Xu Mo previously had about using the assault boat to relocate was now almost completely extinguished. To travel in these waters would be no different from delivering himself into a hunting ground riddled with deadly traps.