The boiling ocean seemed to freeze for an instant.
The violent undercurrents vanished without a trace.
As though calm had returned.
But it was not peace arriving. Something even more terrifying was rising from the depths of the sea, rapidly ascending toward the light above the surface.
A swiftly expanding shadow took shape across the waves.
In that brief stillness, everyone felt an indescribable pressure and terror.
A shrill bolt of lightning fell from the clouds. Then, amid rolling thunder, the turbulent sea surface shattered with a boom. Tens of millions of tons of seawater churned into a colossal wave that swept outward.
And a thick tentacle had already extended from beneath the surface, sweeping toward the girl who made no effort to conceal the fluctuations of her Source Matter.
Waves surged forth once more.
The sea wind howled. Under the tentacle's blow, the turbulent waves swept outward, nearly tossing the retreating ship over again. Yamashita, clinging to the railing, was helplessly thrown into the air before falling back down.
He stared wide-eyed in a daze.
Then he saw the slender silhouette, seemingly soaring through the torrential rain.
Beneath the blinding beams of the searchlights, she leaped lightly between every raindrop. Countless tiny pieces of ice formed beneath her feet, only to be swiftly crushed underfoot.
The still-unmastered Yu Step displayed a method wholly different from that of Lin Zhongxiaowu and Huai Shi. Empowered by the Maiden of Frost's Stigmata, it turned the torrential rain filling the sky into footholds!
The sense of balance and flexibility forged through long training in the Inquisition allowed her to shrink her movements to an unbelievable degree in an instant, and to leap as nimbly as a cat from any place that could support her.
Even gravity could not bind her steps.
At that