After Hu Wenxu and Gao Xiaowen had dealt with all the Deep One hybrids, they realized Lu Li hadn't shown up. They went looking for him and found only one hybrid bound in a fishing net. Lu Li was nowhere to be seen. With no other choice, they interrogated their captive and learned where the Deep One altar was. Then the two of them set off together.
A little earlier, Lu Li had once again vanished into the darkness and appeared behind a hybrid. He quickly snapped his target's neck, then slipped back into the shadows. Several hybrids approached together, carrying harpoons. Lu Li was slowly getting the hang of fighting a group.
When you're outnumbered and surrounded, if you can't overpower your opponents, you have to use your movements and the terrain wisely to create a more even fight.
When we watch TV, the heroes can always take on a whole crowd of mooks, beating one and then another. We can see plenty of the mooks standing around the edges with their knives, so we can't help but complain: if they all rushed in at once, the hero would be dead before long. In fact, that's just because the show doesn't have the budget to film a proper fight. In reality, those heroes use their footwork and the terrain to separate the mooks and split the battlefield, turning a one-versus-many fight into a series of one-on-ones.
Of course, we should ignore all the other plot holes, like how heroes can take countless hits while the mooks go down in one, or how the heroes seem to have unlimited stamina.
Back to Lu Li. If several hybrids surrounded him and all thrust their harpoons at once, he'd be in trouble. So he chose to use the terrain to split up the battlefield. He turned and jumped through a window into a room, hoping to use its cramped space to his advantage.
The shadow behind him writhed and hid beneath the window. If any hybrids followed Lu Li through it, the waiting shadow would teach them a painful lesson.
"What's this place?" Lu Li's Dark Vision let him see the dim room clearly. An altar stood in the center, with several rune-engraved harpoons standing upright on it. Human heads had been mounted on the harpoons, including the old woman who had welcomed Lu Li and the others earlier. A dent in her skull made the sight especially gruesome.
The ability of Deep One hybrids to survive underwater emerged gradually as their bloodlines awakened. Hybrids whose bloodlines hadn't awakened were much like humans: they were land-dwellers. Only after their bloodlines awakened and their organs began to mutate could they survive on the shallow seabed. And only those who completed their transformation and became true Deep Ones could live in the deep sea.
But the hybrids still needed to perform sacrifices, so some of those who hadn't awakened yet had set up an altar here. The hybrids had another altar on the shallow seabed, where the Deep Ones' support point that Gao Xiaowen had mentioned was located.
Lu Li went to the altar and took down the old woman's head. He was still wearing the clothes she had given him, after all. He looked around and spotted the white floral princess dress he'd worn earlier. He had left it at the old woman's house after changing. It had been given to him by the Mermaid Princess, so it was naturally no ordinary garment. After killing the old woman, the hybrids had found it in her house and, thinking it looked valuable, kept it in this room by the altar to divide up after the sacrifice.
Now the dress was back in Lu Li's hands. He wrapped the old woman's head in it and carried it with him. "You gave me a piece of clothing, so I can only return the favor. You got the better end of the deal, anyway. The Mermaid Princess's clothes don't come cheap."
"What are those hybrids up to? Why haven't they come in yet? Have they given up trying to catch me?" Lu Li waited in the room for a while. When no hybrids appeared, he began studying the altar.
He tossed the harpoons and the heads mounted on them aside, then crouched beside the altar to examine the runes. He couldn't make much sense of them, but his good memory let him memorize most of them. As he traced the runes on the altar with his hand, they suddenly lit up with a spiritual glow, and the altar began to turn slowly.
Lu Li stepped back and watched the altar change, feeling the Shadow Magic within him drain away. He hurried to memorize the runes. At last, the altar became a round hole wide enough for three people. Lu Li leaned over to peer inside, then smiled. "I didn't expect to find an extra bonus..."
Without telling Hu Wenxu and the others, Lu Li turned and jumped into the hole. Once he was inside, the opening closed and became an altar again.
The passage was dark and damp, roughly circular, as though it had been dug out. Judging by the marks on the ground, the hybrids often passed through here. The tunnel ran straight, with no branches. But Lu Li could tell by instinct that it sloped gently downward. Judging by its direction, if he kept going, he'd already be under the sea.
"Hmm, someone's here..." Lu Li turned and pressed himself against the wall. A faint glow was approaching in the distance. Several hybrids with Deep One features were carrying torches as they walked toward him. True Deep Ones, like Lu Li, had Dark Vision. After all, they lived on the deep-sea floor. They hated warm firelight and preferred the cold and damp. But some hybrids had only just begun to transform. They'd changed a little, but their Dark Vision hadn't developed yet, so they needed torches.
If Hu Wenxu had been there, he would have recognized the hybrid carrying the torch at the front of the group as the one who had killed the old woman and then pursued them. These hybrids had transformed only recently. They had spent the day performing a sacrificial ritual on the seabed, but their Deep One organs weren't fully developed yet, so they needed to come ashore and rest.
The torchlight drew closer. Lu Li waited quietly as its flames flickered, making the shadows waver. In the instant the firelight shifted, Lu Li lowered his body and covered himself with a layer of shadow. Taking advantage of the changes in light and shadow, he slipped behind the hybrids without them noticing. Most of them felt nothing at all. Even those who sensed something only thought it was a trick of the torchlight.
Lu Li matched his footsteps to those of one of the hybrids and followed the group. Listening to them talk, he stayed behind the one at the rear. Then he suddenly made his move, clamping a hand over the hybrid's mouth. The shadow in Lu Li's hand reshaped itself into a spike and pierced the fish-scaled head without making a sound.
He gently laid the quiet corpse on the ground, then continued following the group and listening to their conversation. He even reshaped his vocal cords to imitate the voice of the hybrid he'd killed.
As they walked, one hybrid after another collapsed at intervals. In the end, only the one at the front, carrying the torch, remained. Lu Li kept changing his voice to talk with the hybrid named Haige. There was a certain kind of despair: you thought you had a whole crowd of people talking to you, but they were all my alts!
Before you continue