Hunting Season (Part 2)

This was already deep sea territory, with almost no light, but as the huge creature approached Mr. Xiang Kun and Mr. Liang, it began to emit a pale green fluorescence.

At first glance, Mr. Liang thought the enormous tentacles slowly wriggling and moving in the water were some kind of giant squid mutated into a "Blood-feeding Creature".

But upon closer inspection, something seemed off; the tentacles and central body were not those of molluscs like squid or cuttlefish, but rather resembled those of echinoderms.

Is it a mutated, super-giant starfish?

Is it really possible for an echinoderm to grow to such a large size?

However, Mr. Liang immediately noticed something was wrong; the huge hooks on those tentacles didn't look like starfish, but rather like the tails of sea serpents.

However, whether it's a starfish or a brittle star, they usually only have five or at most six tentacles or arms, but this enormous creature in front of them had more than a dozen tentacles covered with huge barbs, which was quite terrifying.

Is this likely the result of mutation?

Or perhaps this creature isn't just a brittle star, but also a combination of squid, cuttlefish, jellyfish, seaweed, whale, and other marine life?

After all, we don't know what types of "Blood-feeding Creature" it has devoured, what its usual blood sources are, or what its evolutionary direction is.

Mr. Liang wasn't too concerned about the strength or destructive power of this behemoth. After all, he had witnessed Xiang Kun catch that "giant raptor" like a hen, casually throw a "crispy pork knuckle" that disappeared halfway through its flight, and blow up the "mutated lion." It could even control the weather, manipulate lightning, and cause an entire forest to mutate and come to life. So even though this thing, which he would temporarily call the "Giant Brittle Star," looked terrifying and powerful, he wasn't too worried.

He figured it out anyway; his job this time, coming out with Xiang Kun was simply to "eat."

If the sky falls, the tall ones will hold it up; how to fight and how to make moves, Xiang Kun will be responsible.

He didn't plan to actively deal with the "Blood-feeding Creature" like he did in Africa. There was no need for him to make a fuss over something that could be easily solved Xiang Kun a "pig's knuckle."

Unexpectedly, upon seeing the "Giant Brittle Star," Xiang Kun stopped in the sea, paused for two seconds, then suddenly turned around, waved vigorously at him, and then shot off in the opposite direction like a torpedo.

What's going on?

Mr. Liang was momentarily stunned when he realized that several huge, barbed tentacles of the "Giant Brittle Star" had already coiled around him. He was startled and was about to run with Xiang Kun when his body was pushed by the surrounding water and shot out like a torpedo.

However, he hadn't adjusted his direction properly, so his feet were in front and his head was behind, making him look quite awkward.

After following Xiang Kun for an unknown distance, Mr. Liang finally stopped. Feeling somewhat dizzy, he searched for Xiang Kun's location and found him standing in the seawater, watching the faintly visible fluorescent giant beast approaching in the distance, but making no move.

After waiting for a long time, when the "Giant Brittle Star" approached again, Xiang Kun led Mr. Liang to retreat, and while retreating, they went towards the sea.

After several such attempts, the "Giant Brittle Star" seemed to give up, but Xiang Kun then brought Mr. Liang within a hundred meters and manipulated the seawater to carry some arthropods or other chordates onto the massive back of the "Giant Brittle Star" to harass it.

This "Giant Brittle Star" is a "Mutated Creature" and does not need to eat normally. Its blood-drinking targets are not these shelled, fleshy, and bloodless creatures. Of course, it will not be attacked by these small things, but this does make it very unhappy.

So it began chasing Xiang Kun and Mr. Liang again, and red liquid began to spray from the small holes at the base of each barb on its dozen or so huge tentacles, instantly turning the entire seawater red.

However, Xiang Kun swam away with Mr. Liang in time, and by controlling the seawater, he was able to slow down the rate at which the red color spread, and they just swam outside the red zone.

After an unknown amount of time, Xiang Kun finally managed to lure the "Giant Brittle Star" to the surface of the sea, a considerable distance from where they had entered the water.

From an aerial view, not far from Xiang Kun and Mr. Liang, who are suspended on the sea, is a "Giant Brittle Star" that looks like a small, red, multi-legged island. As it approaches the water, its fluorescence changes from green to red.

Dark clouds gathered in the sky, lightning flashed and thunder roared; a storm was brewing.

Mr. Liang, who was floating not far from Xiang Kun, did not use any flying "Biological Component". At this moment, hundreds of small beads of various kinds floated around him. These beads emitted a faint white light, just like Xiang Kun. He felt as if his skin was wrapped in a layer of plastic wrap, and then a gentle force lifted him up and suspended him in the air.

Mr. Liang was somewhat amazed. He knew very well that making an object levitate was far more difficult than making it fly at high speed.

Seeing Xiang Kun's long, electric hair flying wildly behind his head, looking like a god descending to earth, and anticipating the "grand scene" to come, Mr. Liang felt a little excited.

Looking up at the sky, the dense, dark clouds and gloomy firmament, imbued with immense power, gave him the feeling that his body had vanished, his soul had left his body, and he was floating in the air.

Although he had already witnessed Xiang Kun's control of the lightning storm up close at Chongyun Mountain and experienced its awe-inspiring power, it was Xiang Kun "demonstrating" it to him back then, without actually attacking a target. This time, however, it was different... such a huge "Giant Brittle Star" was truly the best test subject for its power.

Looking at the enormous "Giant Brittle Star" that had emerged from the water, still raising the giant spikes on its long tentacles as if to taunt them, Mr. Liang couldn't help but feel a mixture of sympathy and anticipation, unaware of what was about to happen.

"Pound!--"

Because they were so close, the deafening roar and the flash of lightning striking the air occurred almost simultaneously.

As the blindingly thick bolt of lightning struck down from the sky, Mr. Liang instinctively tried to retreat, but his body remained motionless. Then he realized that he was levitating Xiang Kun's power, and the pale white light surrounding him should protect him from the lightning.

After one bolt of lightning struck, another followed, stretching from the sky to the earth. The lightning storm, centered on the "Giant Brittle Star," rapidly spread outwards, creating a network of electric light.

It came with tremendous force and speed, and it left just as quickly. The "Giant Brittle Star" was blown to smithereens, leaving it no time to react at all.

Mr. Liang exclaimed, "So all those actions you took before were intentionally to lure it to the surface so that you could summon lightning to strike it." Despite the immense and terrifying power of the lightning storm created by Xiang Kun, if the "Giant Brittle Star" had remained on the seabed, its power would have been useless and wouldn't have caused it much damage.

Xiang Kun long, frizzy hair still danced in the air, paused for a moment upon hearing this, and said, "No... there are ways to deal with it in the water. I lured it up... mainly because I've never seen such a large 'Blood-feeding Creature' before, and I wanted to take a closer look using natural light, since we can't take it back to study it slowly."

Seeing Mr. Liang staring blankly at him with his round, eyelidless eyes and a wide grin that stretched to his ears, Xiang Kun quickly pointed downwards and said, "Hurry, it's time to drink the blood. I've been carefully controlling the power, but it's still a bit too much. You need to hurry."

The white light around Mr. Liang disappeared, and he fell from mid-air into the wreckage of the "Giant Brittle Star." Mr. Liang was quite experienced in devouring other "Mutated Creature" and did not need Xiang Kun's guidance.

Looking at the shattered remains of the "Giant Brittle Star" below, broken into pieces by lightning, Xiang Kun felt a little regretful. It was a pity he hadn't been able to study it for a longer period of time, or take some video footage to record it.

Because, according to normal understanding, such an enormous "Blood-feeding Creature" should not exist.

Giant Owl, being a few sizes larger, are better suited for hunting medium to large predators. However, many smaller owls, like the Africa Mutated Little Lion, have clearly shrunk after mutation, specializing in other areas to aid their hunting. And then there are the Ultimate Predator, which are completely fragmented, blending into everything around them.

Xiang Kun speculated that the terrifying size of this "Giant Brittle Star" exceeded its own hunting and survival needs. Even if it wanted to hunt blood-drinking blue whales, it wouldn't need such a large size. This size was even a burden. It was very likely that it had some kind of "subjective desire" to pursue a larger size.

Xiang Kun actually knows very little about the "Blood-feeding Creature" in the deep sea. Compared to the land, the ocean is still an unknown territory waiting to be explored.

On land, even in the Africa savanna and the South American jungle, he can detect some "Super-Linked Object," but the sea is still a "blind spot." He can only sense them in the nearshore waters of a few areas, or in places where cargo ships and fishing boats carrying "Super-Linked Object" pass by.

Xiang Kun was unaware of the existence of this "Giant Brittle Star," but Jiang Chun had encountered it in the sea and was almost hunted down. If it weren't for the "Super-Linked Object" he was carrying that allowed Alice to discover the situation and control those Super-Linked Object to delay it, he probably would have been swallowed by the "Giant Brittle Star."

However, the "Giant Brittle Star" seemed to have taken those "Super-Linked Object" that were hindering it as some kind of treasure, so it took them directly back to its underwater nest, which allowed Xiang Kun to pinpoint their location.

If time permits, Xiang Kun would like to study this "Giant Brittle Star" more thoroughly.

When the "Giant Brittle Star" spotted Mr. Xiang Kun and Mr. Liang and began to chase them, Jiang Chun, who was teaching a little boy and girl Chinese near a small fishing village on the coast of Myanmar, suddenly felt something. He told the two children to go back to the house to find their grandmother, and then he got up and jumped into the sea.

More than two months have passed since the last time Eight-Armed Eight-Eyed Giant was spotted walking across the sea on the shore, and Jiang Chun's appearance has undergone some significant changes.

The most obvious thing is that all his hair has disappeared, and he has become bald.

Moreover, his skin underwent some changes, transforming between two materials. On land, his skin looked normal, but underwater, he could actively transform it into scale-like material, and his legs could be temporarily connected. His body became flat, and when he stretched out his arms and brought them together, he swam quickly underwater like a shuttle, his speed increasing significantly.

His eyes also developed an underwater protective membrane, and he gained the ability to distinguish the outlines of objects in the deep sea.

After his body underwent further mutations, Jiang Chun helped and protected the grandfather and his two grandchildren while exploring the deeper parts of the ocean.

Not long ago, after overhearing the two children's grandmother talking about a fishing boat that had mysteriously disappeared at sea and had not been heard from since, he went to the area where the fishing boat might be found to investigate and see if he could find the wreckage.

He hadn't really held out much hope for this needle-in-a-haystack search. But when he was diving deep into the ocean with a deep-sea searchlight, he stumbled upon an underwater "town" made up of several fishing boats. Just as he was puzzled and about to investigate further, a huge tentacle with barbs emerged from the seabed and attacked him.

He couldn't dodge in time and was slashed in the waist and abdomen by a barb as thick as his arm. Fortunately, he was quite agile in the water and had a good reaction speed. He quickly spun around and entered a high-speed swimming state, widening the distance between them.

But if it weren't for a talisman he was carrying, made of many small hexagonal nuts, that suddenly sprang out and stopped him, he probably would have perished at the bottom of the sea, killed by some unknown sea monster.

After escaping back, Jiang Chun was still terrified, and then he thought of the hexagonal nuts that had saved his life.

It was sometime after the night the Eight-Armed Eight-Eyed Giant came across the sea; he found them near a shipyard. These hexagonal nuts inexplicably gave him a strange, inexplicable sense of connection.

This feeling is very similar to the sense of connection he had with the Eight-Armed Eight-Eyed Giant on the night he walked on the sea, with the various points of connection scattered like stars on the beach and in the shallow sea.

So he instinctively collected the small nuts and asked the little boy and girl to keep them for him. As a result, the two children strung some of the small nuts together with a rope and made them into a talisman for him.

Wearing that amulet gave him a strange sense of security, and because of this, even in the water, the protective nut string around his neck would be covered by the fish scales he had grown, keeping it close to his body.

Unexpectedly, those nuts actually saved his life in that critical moment.

He became increasingly certain that the nuts were likely related to the existence of the eight-armed, eight-eyed giant, and that he himself was probably under the protection of that Eight-Armed Eight-Eyed Giant.

That enormous thing at the bottom of the sea... I don't know what it is. Could it be something comparable to the Eight-Armed Eight-Eyed Giant?

Jiang Chun felt as if he had been drawn into a "war of the gods".

But what he was most worried about was the ordinary fishermen. Would they be attacked by that sea monster again? Judging from what he had seen on the seabed, it was probably not the first time that monster had attacked fishing boats.

He hesitated about whether to notify the media or the Myanmar government through some means to let them deal with the monster, but thinking of his previous experience, he gave up.

Ordinary scientific research institutions may not be as good as him in exploring the deep sea, and given Myanmar's capabilities, it would be difficult to get them to allocate too many resources to find and deal with that monster without substantial evidence.

For the past few days, he had prayed in the sea every night, hoping that the Eight-Armed Eight-Eyed Giant would descend to earth as before and eliminate the monster.

Today, he had a premonition that the monster was active again. Although he didn't have the ability to fight it, he thought he could go to the nearby waters and warn any ordinary fishing boats that might be approaching to detour or change course. To be honest, many fishermen in this area knew him, and his prestige was much higher than that of the local officials. If he said there was danger, they would definitely listen to him.

However, not long after he got away from the nearshore waters, he sensed something was wrong, and then he surfaced and looked out at the extremely abnormal thunderstorm at sea in the far distance.

Having spent every day at sea, Jiang Chun naturally knew what normal sea storms and thunderstorms looked like, and he had also seen some lightning storms.

But the lightning storm in the distance was clearly very different from anything that had formed naturally.

His first thought was of the Eight-Armed Eight-Eyed Giant coming across the sea, and then he saw the terrifying lightning, like divine punishment, which was like a sacred giant sword descending from the sky, piercing through the clouds and straight into the sea.

After the lightning bolt struck at the very center of the storm, his heart skipped a beat, his whole body trembled, and he felt an overwhelming sense of excitement and exhilaration.

That must be Eight-Armed Eight-Eyed Giant!

This is divine punishment upon being born!

After the thunderstorm ended, Jiang Chun continued swimming in that direction. When he reached the core of the previous lightning storm, it was late at night and the surroundings were calm. Under the moonlight overhead, he could not see any trace of anything.

But Jiang Chun had a hunch that the monster he had seen at the bottom of the sea, with its enormous tentacles that had almost killed him, had been destroyed by the lightning storm.

With his body half-floating on the water, Jiang Chun transformed the fish scales on his face and half of his body into skin. Then he closed his eyes, raised his right hand, stretched it towards the sky, and imagined commanding lightning to strike the sea.

A few minutes later, he sighed, his body was covered in scales again, and then he submerged into the water.

He was going to retrieve his nut-shaped amulet.