Capturing the Fish King

Yun Shou stood at the edge of the boat. He decided to give it a try and see whether a Fish King had truly emerged among this school of Spiny Fin Fish.

If possible, he would catch it and taste it.

He had tasted Fierce Tiger King twice in the simulation, but in reality, he had never tried such a fierce and savage mutant creature.

He picked up his fish spear. It was a two-pronged fork with two points, though only the tips were made of iron; the rest was wooden shaft.

A hemp rope was tied around the shaft to keep the spear from slipping from his hand by accident. It was worth quite a bit—losing it would be the same as working for nothing for several days, or even half a month.

Yun Shou did not use a fishing net. The net in his hands was far too poor in quality. It would be fine for catching a small number of fish, but against Spiny Fin Fish, renowned for their ferocity, it would certainly be smashed apart and bitten to pieces.

After rowing closer, Yun Shou wrapped azure Force Qi around the fish spear and hurled it with the force of a thrown lance!

The long fork, weighing several pounds, flew from his hand like a light arrow. A pale blue afterimage trailed through the air, while its shrieking wind stirred ripples so fine they were nearly invisible across the lake.

A First-rate Martial Artist's Force Qi would completely dissipate three meters from the body. Even with Yun Shou's Foundation doubled, he could not extend it to four meters. But when Force Qi clung to an object, its duration could be greatly prolonged.

Ssshh! Ssshh! Ssshh!

The fish spear plunged into the water and, in an instant, pierced through three Spiny Fin Fish, skewering the three of them unevenly upon its prongs.

Yun Shou pulled the spear back with satisfaction. He had not thrown fish spears many times before, because they consumed too much stamina, had low accuracy, and might not even pierce the fish.

But here, the Spiny Fin Fish had formed a "Fish Dragon Dance," densely packed and layered atop one another. Naturally, the chance of hitting something was much higher.

After removing the three fish, he aimed at the fish tornado without specifically targeting any one fish and threw the spear again!

It hit another two.

In barely a dozen minutes, Yun Shou had spent a little Force Qi, while more than sixty Spiny Fin Fish had already piled up on his shabby little fishing boat.

"A martial artist spearing fish—what does it mean to crush someone from a higher dimension? This is it!"

The school of Spiny Fin Fish, numbering in the thousands or tens of thousands, finally sensed that something was wrong. Through the special means fish used to communicate, one spread the word to ten, ten to a hundred. The tornado-shaped school could no longer hold its shape and began to collapse.

At that very moment, a pitch-black shadow swam upward within the fish tornado.

Spiny Fin Fish were generally around half a meter long. Judging by comparison, this shadow was a little over a meter in length. From its outline, it was precisely the Fish King Yun Shou had suspected!

The Fish King's size was not absurd—at most, it was as tall as a child—but compared to ordinary Spiny Fin Fish, it was nearly ten times larger!

The Fish King swam to the top of the fish tornado. The surrounding school immediately steadied considerably, circling around it once more in the shape of a tornado.

At that moment, Yun Shou was pulling back the three fish he had just speared by tugging on the rope.

Fish King: Target locked! Little ones, charge!

Yun Shou was steering the boat. To ordinary fish, it was merely a slowly moving distance across the lake's surface.

But the Fish King had lived long enough to become a cunning old creature. It knew that this was, in essence, only a featherless monkey standing atop wooden boards. The true opponent was that monkey on the boards. If it drove him into the water, then it would be their turn to call the shots.

The Fish King swished its head and tail. The Fish Dragon Dance spinning around it paused, and the uppermost group, having received the order, began spinning as they charged toward the fishing boat.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Several fish rammed into the bottom of the boat. Another leaped from the water and lunged straight at Yun Shou, only for him to seize it in one hand and give its head several resounding slaps.

Slap! Slap! Slap!

"You've got some guts. The others only dare to ram the bottom of the boat, but you came straight for my face."

He tossed the face-lunging fish onto the boat. Its tail twitched twice, then it stopped moving.

How terrifying were Yun Shou's slaps? These were no ordinary slaps. These were the slaps of a First-rate Martial Artist—those few strikes had likely shaken the fish's brain into mush.

Yun Shou narrowed his eyes slightly and lined up the Fish King.

With a light step on the boat, Force Qi and his Lightness Skill launched his body a full seven meters into the air!

He raised the fish spear high, like Runtu spearing a badger, his arm lifted with power. "Have you ever seen a fish spear falling from the heavens?"

He thrust!

The Force Qi at the spear's tip forcibly parted the lake water, which did not even slow the spear itself. It was as though the lake had willingly opened up, inviting the spear inside!

The Fish King was still shaking its head and directing the school's attack. For a moment, it had not noticed that "the monkey on the wooden boards" had already leaped up.

Screech!

The two prongs pierced straight through the fish's body. The remaining impact shoved it another seven or eight meters sideways through the water, knocking three or four ordinary Spiny Fin Fish unconscious.

The hemp rope behind the spear shaft was pulled taut.

"One shot, one soul." Yun Shou landed back on the little boat, using a force-dispersing Lightness Skill.

Lightness Skills were also a type of Combat Techniques. The Lightness Skill he was using now, like some of his previous Force Qi techniques, was part of the set that came with the martial art Flowing River Technique.

Together with the special Force Qi transformed by that martial art, it created an effect where one plus one was greater than two. Though he had fallen from seven or eight meters up, his final landing speed did not exceed half a meter per second.

Yun Shou was quite afraid that if he landed too quickly, combined with the fish constantly crashing around below, he might actually stomp his shabby little boat apart.

He dragged the Fish King over with the spear. The entire hemp rope was more than thirty meters long, and because the spear had entered from the Fish King's side, the Fish King's resistance was minimal.

Yun Shou tried extending his Force Qi through the hemp rope and found that at roughly ten meters, the Force Qi began to dissipate beyond his control.

He retrieved the hemp rope meter by meter, then finally grabbed the fish spear in one hand and raised the Fish King that was still struggling and constantly thrashing its tail upon it.

The Spiny Fin Fish's Fish Dragon Dance seemed even angrier than before. Previously, they had charged forward under the Fish King's orders. Now, they were fighting to save the king of their school.

This should have been a battle worthy of song and tears, regardless of whether they or their enemy ultimately won.

But Yun Shou bent the two iron prongs that had pierced through the Fish King, fastening the Fish King firmly onto the fish spear.

Then he wielded this strange weapon against the Spiny Fin Fish charging through the water and leaping through the air.

Fighting you with your boss skewered on my weapon!

You want to save your king so badly—did you ask what it thinks about that!? [Swings spear]

You want to see your boss? Then I'll let it come see you. Huh, why did you get killed by your boss instead?

Yun Shou fought to his heart's content.

In half an hour, he had knocked back at least three to five hundred Spiny Fin Fish. After repeated failed attacks, along with his mental assault, the school gradually scattered.

In the end, only a little over a hundred Spiny Fin Fish kept staring fixedly at Yun Shou's little boat. After removing the Fish King, Yun Shou speared them to death one by one and tossed them onto the boat.

However, he soon discovered that the boat could not hold any more, so he threw the corpses back into the lake. On the way back, several large carnivorous fish followed behind the boat, eyeing this strange "big fish" that automatically dropped dead fish.

By noon, Yun Shou had returned to Qing He Village with the Fish King. With a shift of his feet, he followed the lakeshore and walked several li in another direction.

The Spiny Fin Fish King was 1.1 meters long, far too large for a single pot. Yun Shou wrapped a layer of Force Qi around his palm and shaped it sharper than an ordinary blade, cutting branches and chopping wood to set up a grill.

"Hopefully it'll have some effect. My basic Foundation isn't particularly impressive right now; it can only be said to be at an ordinary person's level... and that is precisely my advantage. Not only is it convenient to improve, but the effects of improvement are also 2.5 times greater!"