Capture the Fish King

Yun Shou stood at the edge of the boat, deciding to test whether a Fish King had truly emerged among this school of Spiny Fin Fish.

If possible, he'd catch one and taste it.

In the simulation, he'd tasted the Fierce Tiger King twice, but in reality, he'd never sampled such ferocious mutant beasts.

He lifted his fish spear—a two-pronged fork with iron tips and a wooden shaft.

A hemp rope was tied to the wooden handle to prevent the spear from slipping out of his grasp; this tool wasn't cheap, and losing it would mean days or even half a month of wasted work.

Yun Shou didn't use his fishing net. The net he had was too poor in quality—fine for smaller catches, but against these notoriously vicious Spiny Fin Fish, it would definitely be torn apart or bitten through.

Paddling the boat closer, Yun Shou coated the fish spear with azure Force Qi and hurled it like a javelin!

The several-jin-long spear shot from his hand as if it were a light arrow, leaving a faint blue afterimage in the air, its whistling wind stirring barely visible ripples on the lake's surface.

A First-rate Martial Artist's Force Qi would completely dissipate three meters from the body; even with his doubled foundation, Yun Shou couldn't extend it to four meters. But when Force Qi was attached to an object, its duration could be greatly prolonged.

Chi chi chi!

The spear plunged into the water, piercing three Spiny Fin Fish in an instant, skewering them unevenly along its prongs.

Yun Shou pulled the spear back with satisfaction. He hadn't thrown it many times before—the physical drain was too heavy, the accuracy too low, and it often failed to penetrate.

But here, the Spiny Fin Fish had formed a "Fish Dragon Dance," densely packed and overlapping, making hits far more likely.

He removed the three fish, aimed at the fish vortex without targeting any specific one, and threw the spear again!

Two more hits.

In just over ten minutes, Yun Shou had expended some Force Qi, while over sixty Spiny Fin Fish now piled up on his battered little fishing boat.

"A martial artist spearing fish—now that's what you call a dimensionality reduction strike!"

The school of thousands upon thousands of Spiny Fin Fish finally sensed something wrong. Through their unique means of communication, word spread from one to ten, ten to a hundred, and the dragon-shaped vortex began to lose its form, scattering.

It was at this moment that a dark shadow swam upward from within the vortex.

Spiny Fin Fish typically measured about half a meter in length, but this shadow, by comparison, was roughly a meter long. From its outline, it was exactly the Fish King Yun Shou had suspected!

The Fish King's size wasn't absurd—at most the height of a child—but compared to ordinary Spiny Fin Fish, it was nearly ten times larger!

The Fish King swam to the top of the vortex, and the surrounding fish immediately stabilized, reforming into a spinning dragon shape.

Just then, Yun Shou was hauling back the rope attached to the three fish he'd just speared.

Fish King: Target locked! Little ones, charge!

Yun Shou steered his boat, which to ordinary fish appeared as a slow-moving object on the lake's surface.

But the Fish King, old and cunning, knew it was essentially a plank with a hairless monkey on top. The real enemy was that monkey on the plank—drive it into the water, and they'd be the ones in control.

The Fish King shook its head and swished its tail. The fish vortex around it paused, and the topmost batch received orders, spinning toward the fishing boat.

Bam bam bam!

Several fish slammed into the boat's bottom, and one leaped out of the water, charging straight at Yun Shou. He caught it with one hand and delivered a few heavy slaps to its head.

Slap slap slap!

"You've got some nerve—the others only dare to hit the hull, but you come right at my face."

He tossed the leaping fish onto the boat; its tail twitched twice and went still.

Yun Shou's slaps were terrifying—not just any slaps, but those of a First-rate Martial Artist. Those few blows had likely turned the fish's brain to mush.

Yun Shou narrowed his eyes, calibrating his aim at the Fish King.

With a light step off the boat, he used Force Qi and Lightness Skill to launch himself a full seven meters into the air!

He raised the fish spear high, like a young reaper aiming at a hedgehog, his arm poised with strength: "Have you ever seen a fish spear falling from the sky?"

Thrust!

The lake water was forced apart by the spear tip's Force Qi, not even slowing the spear's body, as if the water itself opened to welcome it in!

The Fish King was still shaking its head, directing the fish to attack, and hadn't yet noticed the "monkey on the plank" had jumped.

Chi!

Both prongs pierced straight through the fish's body, and the remaining momentum drove it sideways another seven or eight meters underwater, knocking out three or four ordinary Spiny Fin Fish.

The hemp rope behind the spear handle pulled taut.

"A direct hit." Yun Shou landed back on the small boat, using a Lightness Skill to absorb the impact.

Lightness Skill was a type of Combat Technique, and the one he now used, along with some earlier Force Qi tricks, came from the "Flowing River Technique."

Combined with the special Force Qi this martial art produced, it created a 1+1 greater than 2 effect. Even falling from a height of seven or eight meters, his final landing speed was less than half a meter per second.

Yun Shou was worried that if he landed too fast, combined with the fish constantly ramming the boat, he might actually stomp his little wreck to pieces.

He dragged the Fish King on the spear over. The entire hemp rope was over thirty meters long, and since the spear had pierced from the fish's side, the Fish King's resistance was minimal.

Yun Shou tried to extend his Force Qi along the rope, but found that at about ten meters, it began to dissipate uncontrollably.

He reeled in the rope meter by meter, finally grabbing the spear with one hand and lifting the Fish King, still struggling and thrashing, into the air.

The Spiny Fin Fish's vortex grew even more furious than before. Earlier, they'd charged on the Fish King's orders; now, they fought to save their ruler.

This was supposed to be a battle worthy of song and tears, regardless of whether they won or the enemy did.

But Yun Shou bent the two iron barbs piercing the fish king at the tip of his harpoon, fixing the king firmly onto the weapon.

Then he fought the Spiny Fin Fish charging through the water and leaping into the air with this bizarre tool.

Impaling your boss on your weapon and fighting you with it!

You want to save your king so badly—did you ask its opinion?! (Swings harpoon)

You want to see your boss? Fine, I'll let it meet you—oh, why did your king just crush you to death?

Yun Shou was having a blast.

In half an hour, he had beaten back at least three to five hundred Spiny Fin Fish, and the school gradually scattered due to their repeated failed assaults and his psychological warfare.

In the end, only a hundred or so Spiny Fin Fish stubbornly clung to Yun Shou's small boat. After he took down the fish king, he speared them one by one and tossed them aboard.

But he soon found the boat couldn't hold them all, so he threw the corpses back into the lake. As he rowed back, a few large carnivorous fish trailed behind the boat, eyeing this strange "big fish" that kept dropping dead fish.

By noon, Yun Shou returned to Qing He Village with the fish king. He moved along the lakeshore, walking several li in another direction.

The Spiny Fin Fish King was one meter ten long—no single pot could stew it. Yun Shou wrapped a layer of Force Qi around his palm, shaping it sharper than an ordinary blade, then cut branches and wood to set up a roasting rack.

"I hope this has some effect. My foundation isn't that strong yet—just at an ordinary person's level... And that's exactly my advantage: not only is it easy to improve, but the improvement effect is 2.5 times!"