Hunting and Fishing Under the Spirit Domain Realm

Yun Jingheng did a half-flip in the air, then slowly came to a stop.

The inertia of the rotation was cushioned by the Soul Power at his chest, and his body returned to its upright position from the flipped posture, hanging face down in mid-air.

The sea breeze passed beneath him, causing his clothes to flutter and the damp fabric to cling to his calves in the wind, then loosen, then cling again, in a repetitive cycle.

He opened his arms, letting the wind flow into his collar from under his armpits, the coolness sliding down his neck and down his spine to his lower back.

The coolness carried the salty tang of the sea and the faint, warm dampness rising from the water's surface under the sunlight.

Then he turned his head and looked in the direction of Devil Island.

The dark purple mist still clung to the coastline in the distance, receding further than in the morning. Its edge had shrunk from the bottom of the ridgeline to the middle of the mountain, like a giant beast lying on the slope, its head buried between its front paws, dozing off.

The silhouette of the withered tree stood before the outline of the mist, like a thin needle half-burnt and stuck in the ground.

The roof of the low house was not far to the left of the dead tree, its gray tiles gleaming with a thin, inconspicuous matte sheen in the morning light.

He hung suspended in mid-air, the wind passing by his ears, the distant sea rippling like scattered gold, the world clean with only blue and white.

He looked down at his palm, his five fingers spreading and then closing. The flow of Soul Power between his knuckles was heavier and thicker than a month ago, like a river that was originally water that had become thicker after a winter of freezing.

He slowly closed his outstretched arms.

The wind blew past him, and the hem of his clothes fell down and clung to his calves.

His body lowered slightly towards the sea, and his gaze shifted from the direction of Devil Island to the water below, which was half a shade darker than the surrounding area.

The water shimmered with an unusual dark blue-green hue under the sunlight, as if someone had laid a dark stone on the seabed, its edges blurring outwards and unevenly staining the surrounding seawater.

He saw it.

The Divine Power of the Spirit Domain Realm spread out from between the eyebrows, like a thin veil soaked in the morning light, seeping downwards along the surface of the water.

The senses paused slightly as they passed through the tension layer on the water's surface, then continued downwards, crossing the boundary of the water's temperature stratification, and finally touching a dense cluster of life signals, carrying body temperature, about three zhang deep.

There, hundreds of fish crowded together in a constantly rotating sphere, their heads facing inwards and their tails outwards, with almost no gaps between their scales. The entire group of fish resembled a giant water sphere stuffed full of living creatures, slowly and synchronously rotating in the water.

Each fish carried a small pebble, about the size of a fingernail, in its mouth, the pebble covered with a thin layer of moss that shimmered with an oily sheen.

Yun Jingheng's lips curved slightly.

He tightened the straps of the waterproof bag around his shoulder, then took a breath that filled his lungs, stretching every alveolus from bottom to top, his chest bulging, the skin above his collarbone taut for a moment, and then he withdrew his Soul Power, letting his body fall freely.

The speed of the fall was neither fast nor slow.

The sound of the wind brushing past my ears changed from a continuous "whoosh" to a broken, fragmented "hiss" sound.

His coat hem billowed behind him, like a flag straightened by the wind.

The water was getting closer and closer to him, and the area of water changed from a flat ellipse into an ever-expanding circle, the center of which was directly beneath his feet.

In the instant before entering the water, Soul Power surged from every pore of his body, forming a thin, waterproof membrane around his skin.

The mask feels cool and smooth when applied to the skin, like a very thin layer of oil being evenly applied to every inch of the skin's surface.

The hair surface is also covered by the film, so when water droplets roll between the hair strands, they don't seep in, but only slide down along the ends of the hair, leaving a string of fine water marks that are bounced off by the film.

"Thump--"

The sound of the water entering the water was muffled by the membrane; what reached the ears was a dull, muffled "gurgle" vibration, like being wrapped in thick cotton.

The view instantly shifted from the bright daylight to a blue-green underwater world. Light pierced through the sea surface from above, breaking into countless slanted beams of light, within which tiny plankton floated, like small groups of crumpled gold foil drifting slowly.

His eyes were open.

A waterproof membrane covers the surface of the eyeball, keeping seawater out and keeping the cornea dry and clear.

He adjusted his posture, changing from a vertical descent to a head-down diving position, with his arms at his sides and legs together, his whole body like an arrow shot into the water, rapidly approaching the swirling school of fish below.

When he was three zhang away, he extended his right hand.

Soul Power surged from his palm, condensing into a thin line barely thicker than a hair, with the end of the line splitting into three branches, like a tiny trident.

The silk thread extended from the palm at an extremely fast speed, passing through the water layer with almost no water flow, leaving only a very thin, almost invisible white bubble trail in its wake.

The end of the thread touched the outer layer of the fish ball.

The first thing he sensed was the temperature.

Fish are cold-blooded animals; their body temperature is basically the same as the temperature of the water they live in, with only a little heat generated by muscle activity. In contrast, the normal temperature of human skin is about 33ºC. This temperature difference is very clear in the perception of Soul Power.

The second thing is density.

The pressure created by hundreds of fish huddled together increases from the outside in. The fish in the innermost layer are squeezed so tightly by their companions on the outside that they can hardly move. The movement of their gill covers is compressed to a minimum, and they can only exchange gases by the slow flow of water.

His silk thread slipped through the gaps between the outer schools of fish, like a needle piercing through densely woven fabric, each stitch landing in the gaps between the fibers without touching any end of the thread.

The three forks of the silk thread unfolded inside the fish ball.

Each of the three prongs emitted an extremely fine ripple of Soul Power, which spread out among the fish, silently touching the lateral line of each fish.

The sensory organs distributed along both sides of the fish's body are nerve endings that are extremely sensitive to changes in water pressure and vibrations.

Hundreds of fish paused simultaneously.

The fish's tail remained facing outwards, and its head remained facing inwards, but its eyeballs simultaneously rotated by a very small amount, turning in the same direction—the direction the thread entered the water.

Then Yun Jingheng moved.

He suddenly pulled his right hand back, drawing the threads of Soul Power away from the school of fish, and pressed his palm down.

A planar shockwave exploded from his palm, expanding three times in size as it spread downwards. The edges of the shockwave curled up, forming an inverted bowl-shaped Soul Power shield that completely enveloped the school of fish that hadn't yet restarted its rotation.

The cover is tightened.

Its contraction speed is extremely fast; it only takes one and a half breaths to gather from the outer edge to the inner edge.

Hundreds of fish inside the enclosure began to panic, their tails slapping wildly against the surface, the vibrations from their scales rubbing against each other transmitted through the water.

But he didn't let go.

The Soul Power shield continued to tighten until it transformed from a large bowl into a thin shell that adhered tightly to the outer layer of the fish, almost covering every single scale.

Hundreds of fish were crammed together inside the shell, each unable to move independently. Their tails were pinned down by their companions, their gill covers were blocked by the bellies of other fish, and even the space for their eyes to move was severely compressed.

He lifted the clump of Soul Power shell and floated upwards.

The ascent was slower than the descent because the mass of fish was quite heavy; the hundreds of fish combined were several times heavier than his own weight.

Soul Power surged from the soles of his feet, supporting his body, while simultaneously being continuously channeled from his palms to maintain the stability of the shell. The two streams of Soul Power flowed in parallel within his body, without interfering with each other, like two streams of water of different colors separated in the same pipe.

The water was getting closer and closer to his head.

The light poured down from above, gradually replacing the blue-green hues in his field of vision with brighter tones, like a lamp being slowly pushed closer from afar.

The mass of fish he had caught began to thrash wildly inside the shell. One fish moved, which in turn moved the fish next to it, and the fish next to it moved the fish next to it. The entire mass of fish exploded outward from the center like a lit gunpowder, with hundreds of fish simultaneously using all their strength to crash into the inner wall of the Soul Power shield in different directions.

The mask was sculpted into a wave-like pattern by the impact.

Yun Jingheng frowned slightly.

He spread his right hand's five fingers and then closed them, adding a layer of reinforcement to the inner wall of the Soul Power shield. The second layer of Soul Power surged out from his palm and adhered to the inside of the first layer, like sewing a second lining onto a bag that was about to burst.

The impact force of the fish was largely buffered by the two layers of the cover, and the undulations of the cover changed from waves to fine ripples, and then to almost invisible micro-vibrations.

He emerged from the water with the group of fish.

"Whoosh--"

The sound of water gushing out was partially blocked by the Soul Power membrane, but it still reached his ears, muffled, like a sound heard through a pillow.

The sunlight bathed his entire face the moment he emerged from the water, illuminating the faint line on his brow. Water droplets dripped from his hair, shattering into tiny iridescent fragments in the sunlight.

He hovered three feet above the water's surface, holding a huge, semi-transparent Soul Power ball with a pale blue sheen in his right hand. The ball was filled with countless silver-gray fish bodies, and the tails of hundreds of fish were still futilely slapping against the inner wall, making a fine "rustling" sound that, through the Soul Power layer, sounded like rubbing dry sand.

He looked down at the ball of fish and smiled.

So many fish, though not particularly rare ingredients, should be enough for that kid Tang Wulin to eat.

That guy's appetite is like a bottomless pit. He used to be able to carry away a whole tray of steamed buns when he was getting food at Shrek Academy's cafeteria, making the other students' eyes pop out of their sockets.

He hadn't had a proper meal in a month on the island, and his face had become so thin that his cheekbones protruded. Although he hadn't mentioned it himself, Yun Jingheng had seen him bending over to wash his face by the water vat, and his ribs were clearly visible beneath the thin layer of skin.

That's enough.

These fish are enough to make a pot of thick soup, enough to fry a dozen fish fillets until golden brown on both sides, and enough to fill Tang Wulin's stomach, which had been empty for a month, back up again.

But... how am I supposed to bring it back?

He turned his head and glanced in the direction of Devil Island.

The dark purple mist was still creeping along the coastline in the distance.

At the boundary between the black sea and the normal sea surface, there is an extremely thin, almost invisible dividing line. That dividing line extends outward from both sides of the island, like two taut, dark ropes stretching along the water's surface into the distance, enclosing the entire island within an invisible range.

That's the boundary of Devil Island.

When he first set foot on the island, the moment he stepped across that line, his Soul Power felt as if an invisible hand had gripped his very core, causing it to shrink back from his limbs towards his dantian, forming a tightly curled, immobile ball.

He remembered that feeling clearly; it was like an oil lamp with its wick turned down, the flame shrinking from the thickness of a thumb to the size of a needle tip, barely burning out in the darkness.

And now he is hanging over the outside of the boundary.

Soul Power flowed freely within his body, surging out from his dantian and spreading along his meridians to cover his limbs and bones. The Soul Power channels under his skin were full and abundant, like a river filled with water, the surface of which was level with the banks, ready to overflow at the slightest disturbance.

But his fish, which hovered three feet in front of his right hand, had a thin shell on its outer layer formed by his Soul Power.

The stability of that shell depends on his continuous output of Soul Power. Once he carries it across the dividing line into the suppression range of Devil Island, his Soul Power will be cut off, the shell will shatter, and hundreds of fish will fall from a height of two zhang into the water, disappearing into the deep blue water with a flick of their tails.

And he will fall down.

Or... should I use all my strength to fling the fish toward the island from here?

No, no, with my full power as Quasi-Soul Emperor, the kinetic energy from that swing would turn those fish into mud the moment they hit the ground.

Yun Jingheng hovered in the air, looking down at the hundreds of fish huddled together inside the Soul Power sphere.

"Then, let's handle it here."

As he finished speaking, the Soul Power sphere began to change.

The Soul Power inside the sphere seeped from the outer wall to the inner wall, condensing into hundreds of hair-thin tentacles, each tentacle precisely wrapping around a fish.

In the next instant, hundreds of fish were simultaneously pulled out of the sphere and suspended in mid-air within a three-foot radius around him. Their silvery-gray bodies formed a dense, floating silver curtain of light under the sunlight.

His Spirit Domain Realm Divine Power spread out, covering the entire school of fish.

The texture of every fish scale, the curvature of every fish belly, and the edge of every gill cover were all clearly visible to him, like a finely detailed blueprint broken down into hundreds of parts.

Then he moved.

The tips of hundreds of Divine Power tentacles simultaneously changed shape, becoming thinner and sharper, like hundreds of tiny, extremely sharp blades, cutting into the bellies of hundreds of fish at the same time.

Scaling, opening the abdomen, removing the gills, and cleaning—these four steps are completed in the same instant, the movements so synchronized that they resemble hundreds of fingers controlled by the same hand.

Fish scales, entrails, and gills detached from the fish, falling back onto the sea like a rain of silver-gray and dark red.

The seawater was stained a large patch of blood.

The cleaned fish floated neatly in the air, its silvery-white belly meat gleaming moistly in the sunlight, each incision precisely placed.

He took out his Storage Soul Tool, and hundreds of fish transformed into a silver river that was sucked into it.

He turned and landed back on the small raft, stepping on the wet wooden surface, and channeled his Soul Power down from the soles of his feet.

"Let's go back."

He thrust his palm forcefully into the water behind him.

"Walk--!"

The Soul Power was compressed into a palm-sized wave of air between the palm and the water surface. The moment the palm touched the water, the wave exploded, and the raft suddenly leaped forward, its bow splitting the water and leaving a trail of churning white waves behind it.

"Wuhu--!"

He bent his knees to steady himself, and the sea breeze blew in his face, blowing all the stray hairs on his forehead back.

The outline of Devil Island drew ever closer into his field of vision, as dark purple mist swirled from the ridgeline to both sides, as if making way.

As the raft brushed past the dividing line between the black seawater and the normal seawater, the Soul Power receded from the extremities and returned to the dantian, and a feeling of heaviness instantly enveloped the entire body.

Using the residual force from the previous strike, the raft continued to glide, cleaving through the last dozen or so meters of water. The bow of the raft scraped against the gravel, producing a dull scraping sound.

"OK, safe entry into the port!"