Pitting the Tiger Against the Wolf

Jingtian lay low in his nest for several days, bringing himself back to peak condition.

He had rehearsed the hunting plan for the "Iron-Armored Giant Crab" countless times in his mind: exploit its sluggishness, set multiple sticky and corrosive poison traps along the outskirts of the Black Stone Forest, lure it deeper in, then slowly corrode it from afar with penetrating venom...

It had seemed foolproof.

That day, he quietly left the nest fortress he had maintained for so long, gliding northwest like a shadow toward the vague location of the "Black Stone Forest" from the Hagfish's memory Fragment.

The Deep Sea was dim, and the water pressure remained as usual. Yet the changes brought by eighty years of cultivation were obvious. His control over the currents had become more refined, and he swam nearly twice as fast as he had at birth. Though he still could not be called swift, he was elusive and nimble enough. His body's color-shifting ability had begun to emerge, allowing his dark blue rings to blur in the gloom and quietly blend into the shadows of the rocks.

He kept his senses fully extended across a hundred-meter radius, like invisible tentacles probing in every direction as he silently traveled through the jagged reefs.

Nearly an hour later—though time was difficult to gauge in the Deep Sea—the seafloor ahead suddenly grew steep and treacherous. Vast stretches of towering, sharp black rocks rose from the ground like a grim forest—the Black Stone Forest.

Jingtian became even more cautious. He did not venture in recklessly, instead slowly circling the outskirts as his senses seeped into the dark gaps between the stones like a fine Spider Web, searching for the Soul Power signature of an Iron-Armored Giant Crab.

However, what he sensed made his heart sink.

Only insects and vermin with cultivation ranging from a few years to several decades crawled around the forest's edges. Several stronger presences lurked deeper within, but their auras were cold and strange, with the stiff sensation of multi-jointed limbs. They were utterly unlike the heavy, steady earth-attribute Soul Power of a giant crab.

Was the memory wrong? Or had it migrated? He hid in the shadow of a massive boulder outside the forest and watched patiently.

Then—

"Screech—!!!"

A blinding blue-white bolt of lightning erupted without warning from a patch of darkness deep within the stone forest! For an instant, it turned the sea as bright as day, illuminating the surrounding waters! Immediately afterward, a wild, searing wave of Soul Power filled with destructive intent swept outward like a tsunami!

Wherever the lightning struck, the seawater boiled and dense bubbles surged upward. Several soul beasts with decades of cultivation that failed to evade it did not even have time to cry out before they became charred remains!

Jingtian was horrified. In an instant, he pushed his color-shifting ability to its limit, making his body nearly merge with the black rock behind him. He completely concealed his Soul Power fluctuations and even compressed the Poison Source deep within himself, leaving only a thin thread of perception to cautiously extend forward.

As the lightning gradually faded, it revealed the attacker's true form.

It was a colossal eel over ten meters long and as thick as a barrel! Its entire body was dark blue, covered in intricate silver-white lightning patterns, with electric light still coursing across them. Its savage head swept over the cleared waters with icy yellow vertical pupils. Fine electric arcs crackled between its snapping fangs.

Its Soul Power was dense, violent, and overwhelmingly oppressive—far beyond the hundred-year level!

A thousand-year soul beast! And an electric eel, one of the strongest offensive types! Jingtian judged instantly, a chill running through his body. The Hagfish's memories regarding this area's ruler had been completely wrong! The ruler of these waters had long since changed! That Iron-Armored Giant Crab had likely already become food in this thousand-year electric eel's belly.

The memories of low-level soul beasts truly could not be trusted completely! He silently cursed himself. Their intelligence was muddled, their memories fragmented, and they were even slower to perceive shifts among powerful beings. He had nearly relied on such false information to devise a hunt that could have led him straight into death!

At that moment, the thousand-year electric eel—perhaps it could be called a Silver-Veined Thunder Eel—seemed quite satisfied with the power of its strike. It slowly swayed its tail as it patrolled along the forest's edge, its cold vertical pupils scanning the surroundings as if searching for its next target or inspecting its territory.

Jingtian held his breath and remained perfectly still. His opponent was a thousand-year soul beast, with both the quality and quantity of its Soul Power far beyond anything he could currently match. It also possessed lightning with wide range and explosive force. A direct confrontation meant certain death. His poison might pose a threat, but only if it could hit its target and penetrate both that electrically charged Soul Power barrier and its tough skin. Against an alert opponent, that was harder than reaching the heavens.

For now, his only advantage was concealment—and the fact that the Thunder Eel had not noticed him.

The Thunder Eel circled several times. Seemingly unable to find any more worthwhile targets—Jingtian's concealment appeared to have worked—it turned and swam toward a cave deeper in the stone forest, one with obvious signs of excavation. That was likely its nest.

Only after that enormous body vanished into the cave and its violent Soul Power receded did Jingtian quietly release half a breath, though his mind remained tightly wound.

I miscalculated... His thoughts raced. This supposedly "beginner hunting ground" was occupied by a thousand-year monster. That meant he could not obtain hundred-year soul beast resources here in the near future, and even approaching the area was dangerous.

Should he abandon it and search elsewhere, or...

A thought slowly surfaced like a faint glimmer in a Deep Sea current.

The Silver-Veined Thunder Eel was certainly dangerous, but it itself was an immense opportunity! The life essence and Soul Power of a thousand-year soul beast would be enough to send his cultivation soaring! More importantly, the Soul Power core or certain organs of a lightning-attribute soul beast might contain unusual energy.

Facing it head-on was a dead end, and modifying his poison to imitate its attacks was far beyond his current abilities. He possessed poison, but he was ultimately only a Blue-Ringed Octopus with less than a hundred years of cultivation. His precise control over his own venom was still in its infancy, let alone imitating the energy signatures of other soul beasts.

But perhaps pitting the tiger against the wolf could work.

He needed to find an opponent that could clash with the Thunder Eel, perhaps even leave both sides badly wounded. In these waters, a single hundred-year soul beast facing a thousand-year Thunder Eel would be nothing more than suicide. But what about... a social species?

Jingtian quietly withdrew, ten times more cautious than when he had arrived. He retraced his path and immediately began scouting outward from his nest.

He avoided the stone forest and focused on exploring other directions. To the east, there were nearly five-hundred-year Spiny Grouper in the hills. In the southern shipwreck remains lurked three-hundred-year Ghost-Faced Octopus—though they were both octopuses, they regarded each other as prey. Scattered across the western gravel plains were several-hundred-year predators.

None were safe places, and none housed social species.

Until he turned his attention northward—toward an area where the water was slightly colder and vast tracts of dark green Iron-Bone Seaweed Forest grew.

Before he even approached, his senses detected dense, mixed, yet faintly organized Soul Power fluctuations. There were dozens, perhaps over a hundred of them! The strongest had around two to three hundred years of cultivation, while the weakest had only a few. Their auras were interconnected, like a single whole.

Jingtian hid behind a reef and cautiously extended his senses.

Shapes moved through the Seaweed Forest. They were a school of Red-Veined Iron-Claw Shrimp. They resembled lobsters but were smaller, with gray-brown shells marked by dark red veins. They traveled in groups to forage or patrolled outside simple mound-like nests built from seaweed stalks and sand, moving in orderly fashion. These creatures were not especially aggressive, but they were extremely united and relied on their numbers and terrain to resist enemies. At the center of the colony, there had to be a shrimp queen or leader commanding them.

He observed carefully for a long time. The shrimp colony's territory and the Black Stone Forest... seemed to share a border? No, more accurately, the edge of the Seaweed Forest was separated from the outskirts of the Black Stone Forest by only a narrow trench.

A plan gradually took shape.

The Thunder Eel lived alone. It was powerful, violent, and fiercely territorial. The shrimp colony lived in groups and focused on defense, but if their territory was violated, they would surely fight to the death as a whole. Since their territories were adjacent, there was already natural friction between them.

If he could cleverly provoke a conflict... or even turn it into a war where neither side would rest until the other was dead...

He needed a medium. A "bait."

He looked toward the edges of the shrimp colony, at the individuals patrolling about or foraging alone.

Jingtian quietly withdrew to a safe distance and began waiting patiently. He needed to find a suitable target—one strong enough to interest the Thunder Eel, yet far enough from the colony's core to be easy to capture.

The wait continued for several days. He alternated between monitoring the shrimp colony's movements and the Thunder Eel's activities in the stone forest. The Thunder Eel emerged from its cave to hunt once every three to five days, apparently targeting other powerful soul beasts within the forest or large fish passing by. The shrimp colony foraged and patrolled along fixed routes. Their leader-level fighters usually remained in the core area, while the outskirts were populated mostly by ordinary individuals with only decades of cultivation.

At last, an opportunity arrived.

A Red-Veined Iron-Claw Shrimp with roughly eighty years of Soul Power, a bright shell, and thick pincers had perhaps drifted slightly beyond the main group while chasing a small school of glowing phosphorescent shrimp. It swam into the relatively open area between the Seaweed Forest and the stone forest, near the trench.

That was the one!

Jingtian moved instantly. He suppressed his color and aura to the extreme, like a drop of ink blending into seawater, and silently approached from the side and rear.

The Iron-Claw Shrimp noticed nothing, focused entirely on catching the phosphorescent shrimp.

The distance closed to ten meters, five meters, three meters...

Jingtian suddenly accelerated! All eight of his arms propelled him forward at full force, launching his body like an arrow. At the same time, a highly condensed stream of dark blue venom shot from the tip of one arm like an invisible needle, striking precisely at the joint where the Iron-Claw Shrimp's shell was relatively thin!

The venom seeped in instantly!

The Iron-Claw Shrimp suddenly stiffened, its pincers weakly releasing the phosphorescent shrimp it had caught. They scattered in every direction. It seemed to want to sound an alarm, to struggle, but the neurotoxin had already taken effect. Its consciousness rapidly blurred, and its body began twitching faintly beyond its control.

Jingtian did not waste a second. He rushed forward, wrapped his arms around the Iron-Claw Shrimp, which was slightly larger than himself, and unleashed both his Soul Power—though weak—and physical strength at once. Dragging it behind him, he swam with all his might toward the Black Stone Forest—specifically near the Thunder Eel Cave, though not its entrance. Instead, he headed for a concealed reef field downstream, where he could observe the cave entrance.

The process was extremely difficult. Although the Iron-Claw Shrimp had been paralyzed, its weight remained. Jingtian's Soul Power cultivation was not high, and dragging such a heavy object greatly reduced his speed. He had to race against time and finish the setup before the shrimp colony noticed one of its members had disappeared, or before the Thunder Eel went out hunting again.

Over a distance of only a few hundred meters, he felt as if he had traveled ten thousand miles. At last, he reached the designated location—a region near the edge of the stone forest filled with chaotic reefs and calmer currents.

He quickly placed the paralyzed Iron-Claw Shrimp into a hollow in a massive reef, ensuring it would not drift away with the current. Then, he did something crucial:

Using the tips of his arms, he made several nonfatal but fresh-looking wounds on the Iron-Claw Shrimp's body, imitating the charred marks left by lightning burns—he had observed the remnants after the Thunder Eel's attacks from afar. He did not need to imitate lightning energy itself; the appearance only needed to be roughly similar. At the same time, he carefully scattered a tiny amount of shell fragments that might have fallen off during the Iron-Claw Shrimp's struggle, along with faint traces of its aura, through the surrounding water—especially in the direction of the Thunder Eel Cave.

After finishing all this, Jingtian immediately weakened the paralysis effect of his venom slightly—not removing it, but allowing the Iron-Claw Shrimp to recover some movement and awareness while remaining weak, confused, in pain, and... terrified.

Then, without hesitation, he turned and fled the scene at top speed. He hid far away in a corner where he could observe both the Iron-Claw Shrimp and the Thunder Eel Cave while remaining sufficiently concealed. He completely suppressed every trace of his aura, becoming like a lifeless reef.

The core of the plan was simple:

To the Thunder Eel, an injured, weakened Iron-Claw Shrimp radiating its aura was a "snack" delivered right to its mouth.

The "lightning wounds" on the Iron-Claw Shrimp and the trail of aura leading toward the cave would create the illusion that the Thunder Eel had crossed into their territory to hunt.

When the Thunder Eel devoured the Iron-Claw Shrimp, there was a strong chance the shrimp colony would follow the faint aura and clues of their missing member to this place. Then, they would "personally witness" their own member being wounded—or even eaten—by the Thunder Eel.

Given the unity and protective nature of the Red-Veined Iron-Claw Shrimp colony, such naked provocation and killing would very likely drive them to gather their strength and launch a retaliatory attack against the Thunder Eel!

And all Jingtian had to do was lurk nearby when the two sides clashed, searching for a chance when the Thunder Eel was injured or exposed a weakness, and then... deliver the fatal blow.

The plan was crude and full of holes. The shrimp colony might fail to find this place, might choose to endure it, or the Thunder Eel might disdain such a "tiny shrimp"... But this was the only way he currently had to use the power of a thousand-year soul beast to create an opportunity for himself.

He hid himself completely, as if even his heartbeat—if he had one—had stopped. Time passed second by second in silent, tense anticipation.

The Iron-Claw Shrimp abandoned in the reef hollow was slowly recovering from paralysis. The intense pain and unfamiliar surroundings made it instinctively begin to struggle, trying to escape while releasing even clearer pheromones of fear and distress...

From the direction of the Seaweed Forest, the patrolling shrimp colony seemed to have noticed something unusual and began searching toward the edge in an organized manner...

Deep within the stone forest, that cold and violent aura also seemed to stir faintly...

On the chessboard of the Deep Sea, a dangerous move laid with live bait had already been made.